Everything is coming together for my June 8th show at the Mulberry Cafe’s Defacto Gallery. Here are some sneak peaks!
Some finished framed photos
I would live forever if I could, but not this way,
like a star formed out of void, traveller on roads,
endless bound highway.
Star-spangled but not proclaimed, unnamed star
warrior, soft lit amidst the vast cosmos, riding the waves
of the astral sea, that astral ocean full of cosmic events, visions
of grandeur yet minor in the ever expanding nature of those things.
WOULD LIVE FOREVER IF I COULD
BUT NOT LIKE THIS
A STAR FORM OR A LESS TRAVELLED ON ROADS
ETERNITY BOUND
yet world weary.
New Concepts for Supra-Violet Emanations
Artists have to climb a rather large mountain in order to look down on their work, elevated heights offer insight but also a rather constrained air supply. The act of climbing often is the process of art making, but the finished process is more the descent. A cycle of ascending, viewing and clambering down allows for invention and iteration, inception and concept.
EMERALD CITY embodies our dreams, desires and idealism, admitting the nightmarish realities that come when these utopias are usurped by our greed, our desire for security, or pinning our communal hopes on a single saviour who wields great power.
EMERALD CITY plays with specific historical references that reveal us launching ourselves towards disaster, taking the 1930’s and 1940’s as case studies of liberal ideology subverted by the authoritarian, Fascist, Communist and Totalitarian regimes which commit atrocities in the name of progress, blighting the present in the service of a “brighter” future.
EMERALD CITY focuses on the vulnerability of youth, the most impressionable and idealistic age group, from Soviet Pioneers, Nazi Youth Brigades, American Boy Scouts, to Belgian Navy Cadets and Cambodian Youth Soldiers. These hopeful images of brave comrades in arms, moving in disciplined unison, filled with hope can reveal the dark propaganda that clouds freedom of thought and expression.
EMERALD CITY uncovers the parallels between these historical groups, so comfortably situated in the past, and our contemporary political states, where the same dreams and nightmares recur.
EMERALD CITY is the culmination of a one month long residency at Calgary’s EIGHTOHNINE space. (http://badalmer.com/809/category/residency/).
