I wanted to think about this before I said something, to late. 3 in the morn is all right. I’m not a student or a scholar so I’ll write this just as I see fit. Australia the Land of the scared, I have been supported by an idealistic welfare system in NZ and therefore I lay some of my beliefs on and to the people of NZ, but a people living on a land that has serious and catastrophic history needs to be taught, learnt about and made one with so that the ghosts of seriously fucked can be lived along side with. But you’d have to be a well balanced individual to want to learn about that, and as a country of children of convicts, famous for not getting enough love themselves where is this role model suppose to spring from. It is like watching an abused chimp trying to nurse an infant with a lump of concrete. So it is instead paved over, since the local indigenous numbers are more like 1 or 2% it is spookily and easily done. And what I am saying is simply respect. Aboriginal people are not given respect.
It is my opinion that any opinion is some indication of what a person is willing to say about what they really don’t know much about but are willing to hear and learn more about it from the rest of you. So with that in mind I will continue to recall my impressions of Australia as experienced here in the bubble of Melbourne, with a few impressions gained from earlier forays on the Gold Coast. Plus a lot of tele watching. Is NZ aware that quality NZ programs like “Neighbors at War” and I think “Police 10-7′ or something, you know 11.30pm late night tv nz style showing people being idiots is Australian Major network Prime time TV. Tuesday nights at 8pm. That’s all you will see of NZ and I think betrays teeth to what is usually portrayed as friendly rivalry.
My first psychic research trips into the landscape of Aussie right now was done reservedly. I couldn’t name an Australian artist (Bands excluded) that I was interested in, generally there is a glut of painting all trying to paint out wall paper over the glaringly obvious, the spiritual rot of humans in this picture perfect landscape. I wrote earlier an idea that I’ve floated before, that those living in major cities suffer from a lack of perspective that has them all crawling and itching to get up each others arses to see the view. You see it in NZ too where one little aesthetic innovation will sporn a wave of activity but with the low population numbers NZ gets away with the gaps in between aesthetic movements, meaning you can see them for what they are. Here and in other major cities I have visited the alternative is “alternative’ the gap is smeared over and criticality is a department in a corporation. The only reason NZ is ‘better’ is our low numbers, village life is re-created here, everywhere there are cells of cultural behavior, I have met myself at least twice running into the back of one of these clicks, we’re all making the same work, only I think mine is TRULY better, wow with out italics it would be hard to tell. But I digress, here is a page unedited (sorry academic wankers) from my notes.
“Sunday 17 June,
I’m a tourist and like all tourists I didn’t come here to see your particular rendition of what was fashionable in the west through the ages, though pleasant enough. I want to see what is here originally and what was here uniquely. In the cause of other research I read snippets of how where I was staying was considered of some importance to the Woiwurrung because of a scarred tree in Fitzroy gardens. I wanted to see it. It’s on no maps. Walking around the park I found 12 tributes in bronze and brick to the wonders of popular taste. With carefully laid out paths I ask at Cooks house for directions, they hand me a pamphlet , No. 13. There it is rotting away. With foot paths almost running through it the distain for this heroic symbol of Aboriginal occupation and continued existence is almost enough to make me scream. The Brick and mortar shelter right next door for the caretaker, their driveway backing up to the sacred site. Droves of children lead by teachers visit Cooks house, on the map, followed by a Lilliputian village, on the map. They look bored - but how can you tell when you don’t care what you tell them. “
By Design or by design, this was my experience. And it truly sucked. I will go so far to say that what I have learnt about Nazi Germany began to be laid over what I was seeing, Cooks house became a Guard House in a Concentration camp and what is horrifying is that I don’t think this isn’t an accurate comparison. I am watching kids and tourists get their picture taken in front of symbols of old England complete with Union jack flying, and all I see is the swastika’s power and the ability of it to drive people insane. I have a scholarly book about a particular Aboriginal Nation, what they call a group of peoples who had a high percentage of shared words in common. I can’t read it, I’ve flicked through it, the methodical horror inflicted upon… you have to read the detail it is unbelievable. Makes the whole “lost’ or stolen generation thing look like a goodwill mission. And that is Australia. To me so far.
Here are more notes. as is.
Australia the land of the scared. Everyone is scared here –the men all seem to want to live up to bumbling boy idiots to graduate later as bloated and spookily blank plantation owners. Woman are startling beauties, that’s it, together their fear is as white as their teeth chomp into the next pretty thing. Everything here has to be painted pretty because Aboriginal Australia is so fucking black. So fucking black that the Midnight Oil song “Beds are burning” is played 24/ 7 here, out of every mall, supermarket, boutique store, every car horn, bicycle bell and rumble of friendly tram., The ground painted over in white, Red and blue is shit thick in plastic images pasted to promises of better life ‘your living it’ and I don’t see it. I just see a nation running scared by not enough love now placed in the position of being parents to children they are scared of. And the only instruction manual is buy. That is what Australia has tried to do. You should see the pain of it not working on the face…, the wondering what to do when they look up from doing a good job and it’s not working. Why aren’t the problems going away. Like a four year old who’s pissed his pants – How could this happen to me – I’m right!
Australia’s overcompensation for the fact that they can not touch the ground with out being burned morally ethically and the rest is seen in every casino Vegas style Architectural monument to success spewed forward by the plan. It is in the feeling as I walk the street that I am in a replica of a city built inhabiting people that care.Like that fake Venice casino where you smell the chlorine I went to the Harbor and smelt the human shit.
I feel that I’m living in an extremely comfortable cartoon, pretty and clean and ripped off. Where everyone has the same dream, replicas of me are already here, being here makes them have to move over, but they just wait patiently for me to leave, see they don’t need me. Australians – and this is the most frightening thought, are completely self sustaining. They don’t need anything or anyone. They have built a snug cocoon and their moral crack in their fiber is their fiber. Like NZ’s Treaty we whistle through the hole in our teeth bared.
I feel being in a big city is a disadvantage to knowing where it is at. With the ways in which information is physically and psychically transferred these days being in the center of a web like formation only indicates that you are stuck. When the real view is as far out as you can get. That’s what I see in this city and it matches what I have experienced of NY or London and the likes. That cities are nets where the flotsam has been erected in semblances of displays – but in no way do they mirror or act as symbolic occurrences of what is happening in culture, this is now taking place at rates and in dimensions to small, numerously instant and complex to ever be fixed, except as something dead- a relic- of a past moment. This city can’t see itself so everyone in it stares at the wall. When a window won’t satisfy the desperately real need for a view the tower of lies built to hold all this up looks a lot like a painting, done again and again.
To conclude in good infotainment style BUY MY PAINTINGS, Shot Red Cross (series), see the images included. They will exist while I am here but I think I’ll have to chuck them when I Ieave on the 27th of July. They were put on display for one night only, for an opening here at Gerturde St, I had these in my studio which I opened up for the night about 30 people have seen them. They are $3000 each. They are Vinyl on Glass in Aluminium frames with holes. 1.2m x 1m. They are delicate but reasonably stable and price includes a custom built transportation case. Contact me via this site or email your intent to Gertrude Street at: info@gertrude.org.au
Thanks,
Business man me.
TAO WELLS
