IN THE spirit of the Southern Highlands Arts Festival and the annual Art Studio Trail, which kicks off on the weekend, we have featured two pieces of art from our mate Dudley.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Since art can often be difficult to understand, Dudley has provided a description for each piece to help you fully appreciate the intricacies of these challenging post-modern masterpieces created at his Bullio studio.
Catch you on the Trail.
Unchanged
THIS picture depicts a young Eskimo called Nannuk catching a polar bear in an ice hole, on the far northern tip of Alaska. He is using a technique handed down through the generations.
A time-honoured trick that has outlived modern technology. First he cuts a small hole in the ice, then sprinkles white Arctic snow peas around. When the polar bear bends over for a pea, Nannuk quickly moves in from behind and kicks him in the ice hole.
You can see a fierce blizzard has just moved in, obscuring our view completely, but if you look closely through the sleet and snow, towards the very middle of the painting, you may just catch a glimpse of the unusual white handle on Nannuk's battered old hunting knife.
As you will have no doubt guessed, this handle is made of whale tooth, but the obvious and powerful symbolism is that it was given to Nannuk by his father when he was on his death bed five years earlier.
So was his great white coat and the igloo to the far right of the picture.
This wise and respected old hunter was killed by a polar bear on this very same ice shelf in a snowstorm, not unlike the one you can see. When Nannuk dies, he will hand on to his own son, the coat, the igloo and the battered old hunting knife with the white whale tooth handle. Things don't change much in this part of the world. Yes, just like the snowstorm, the imagery is blinding. Anyway, you can see that in the picture, can't you? It's all there in white and white.
Changed
THE tired old Somali hunter in this watercolour is about to change a light-bulb in his wooden hut on a very dark African night, near the bank of the Shebeli River. It is mid-winter, not a star in the sky, darkness fills the air. The windowless room was plunged into pitch blackness when a clapped out light globe blew just 10 minutes ago.
He has never changed a light globe before. The unmistakable expression on his face clearly indicates a fierce battle going on inside his head.
A disturbed mind, torn between the forces of light and dark. Good and evil. A delicate balance between ancestral wisdom, handed down over generations and the onset of modern technology that threatens everything he has ever believed in. The only night light he had known before came from campfires, the sun and the moon, or the whites of his lover's eyes.
Fear is etched in his dark features as he now holds a 40 watt light globe in one hand and a dead antelope in the other.
He is confused, frightened and can't see a thing. Mesmerised by a rapidly changing world that is about to overtake his culture, challenging his very existence.
He stands before you in this picture, on a pitch black African night, searching for meaning, searching for truth, searching for reassurance and searching for the bloody light socket so he can put in a new globe and finish reading the Kama Sutra before heading into the desert in the morning.
But why am I telling you all this? Surely you can see it yourself.