OUTBACK EXPLORER

James Dodd

21 May - 26 June 2010 | CCAS Gorman

The outback has had many guises in Australian folklore, mythology and contemporary culture. These have been discussed ad infinitum so I won't bore you with another variation of the part heroic frontier, part unforgiving embodiment of terror, part red hearted siren stereotypes - I'll just cut to the chase. I like it out there. I like thinking about it in all its potentials and I like making art about it.

Graffiti is hardly the first thing that springs to mind when considering the outback - especially when the majority of contemporary society has forgotten what 'graffiti' actually is. Graffiti to me is not displaced hoodlums clinging to the outside of passenger creating illegible psychadelic vomit fonts. It is not a Keith Haring drawing in a museum and it is not an Os Gemeos masterpiece diligently wallpapered to the exterior of some Disney-esque European castle. Graffiti, to me, is simple hand-made residues left by individuals in public places. The kind of innocent and nasty statements that have been recurring for centuries such as 'JD 4 AE', or ‘Jimmy is an asshole', is the kind of graffiti that is exciting to me. Graffiti is crude, unresolved and unsolicited and the Australian outback is filled with it. (James Dodd, 2010)