IT’S art at its most provocative and political.
Incensed at the way the Voice referendum descended into a mud-slinging farce and the resultant NO vote, South Fremantle artist Rob Boulden created a series of satirical paintings of white Anglo Saxon boys for his latest exhibition That Wild Colonial Boy Dance.
Bursting at the seams with youthful energy and vim, the acrylic paintings depict boys playing in the idyllic countryside, but their seemingly beautiful playground is riddled with dark colonial guilt and violence.
There’s a boy wearing a polka-dot gas mask and brandishing a gun, another playing Aussie rules with a black mask, and a boy riding a toy bike and about to chuck a spear.
• Paintings from the exhibition That Wild Colonial Boy Dance.
Dark journey
“I painted white adolescent, Anglo Saxon boys to highlight our immaturity as a nation (particularly that of a high percentage of our elected representatives) and the fact that we are still a nation in thrall to white males with a seeming misogynistic and racial bent,” Boulden says.
“The boys wear the colours of a particular international fossil fuel company that loans its financial support and logo to some children’s sporting activities.”
Boulden says his burst of creativity was fuelled by a dark TV journey that touched on child abuse and corruption.
“When the Voice to Parliament was first mooted, I had a strong premonition that the majority of west ozzies would vote No, so I turned from a series I was two thirds of the way through about the abuse of children by powerful people (in this case Epstein) and started an equally angry series about the historical abuse of our first nations people,” he says.
“The Epstein-pieces with a bit of a twist, became part of my Dance series.”
The exhibition also contains a companion novel Boulden wrote about an old white man recalling his life during the ‘settler period’.
“It is as violent and sometimes pornographic as the colonial/settler period was often apt to be,” he says.
“The old man monologue was completed in about nine weeks of isolation at a farm on the south coast close to the roar of the ocean.
“At its completion three other monologues were added by other male characters all born in the 1980s and when Oz was just beginning to accept itself as a multi-racial community…though with first nation people firmly embedded at the bottom of the ladder. It will be expanded into a longer novel.”
Boulden has led an interesting life – he lived in Hanoi for a long period where he was co-owner of a gallery for emerging Vietnamese artists, and was an art commentator for a blog and various magazines in the city.
In 2014 he moved back to Perth and bought a house near the dog beach in South Freo, where he goes for daily swims.
He’s had solo exhibitions in Freo and Geraldton, as well as group exhibitions in Sydney, and has a fine art diploma from TAFE in Perth.
So after a NO vote in the Voice referendum, where do we go from here, and does Boulden see a unified Australia anytime soon or are we destined for a protracted civil war?
“I guess we can begin to heal divisions with a rewrite of Oz history that needs a lot of white truth telling and an acceptance of those truths. These truths should encompass a re-write of Oz female history,” he says.
That Wild Colonial Boy Dance is at the Terrace Greenhouse Gallery on the corner of South Terrace/King William St in South Fremantle until June 2.
The offical opening (tonight Saturday May 18) includes a dance party with the Jude and friends fiddle trio and kicks off at 6pm. For more info see terracegreenhouse.com.au.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK