Untitled (The White Album), 2003
Exhibited: Fraught Tales – Four Contemporary Narratives, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003; Mori Gallery, Sydney, 2004
Anonda Bell, exhibition catalogue essay, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003
Not all tales follow a precise linear format. Some have a different level of complexity, reflecting a manifested saccade. Instead of being sequential and progressive, these tales may instead be an amalgam of disparate issues and instances. The resulting narrative drawn from these distinct visions may in part retain fragmented coherence, or instead defy all attempts at comprehension. Luke Parker is interested in precisely this phenomenon. Through his work, he looks at what he describes as the 'anti-narrative'. The story he tells is of inversion, mirroring and, occasionally, inconsequential parallel worlds that may or may not have a causal impact on one another.
Looking at a time of major upheaval and change, his work consists of discrete images that discuss aspects of life from the late 1960s. Each work bears witness to a particular instance or circumstance from history. The name of the work refers to a self-titled album released by the Beatles that had a plain cover and came to be known as ‘The White Album’. This album was celebrated at the time, and made infamous when cult leader Charles Manson cited it as a source of inspiration for his gruesome activities. The phrase ‘helter skelter’ was used as a title for a song, referencing a piece of children's playground equipment, and misquoted by a Manson follower at one of the crime scenes. The state of flux, the shifting meanings and subjective interpretation parallels Parker’s art practice as he samples visual material and fuses disparate elements to form a decentralised whole.
In past practice, Parker has demonstrated an interest in vicarious chance collaboration through the act of appropriation and his reworking of the art of another. In this installation, one drawing references a temporary artwork executed in the late ‘60s by Robert Smithson, a work that consisted of pouring water-soluble glue down a mountainside. Two drawings play on Bruce Nauman's homage to Marcel Duchamp. Parker has drawn from a Nauman self-portrait photograph depicting the artist as water-spouting fountain. Following the chain, in turn, Nauman's work referred to the infamous 'readymade' artwork by Duchamp.
The inherently fragile nature of the physical drawings created by Parker is mirrored in his choice of subject matters that are often about impermanence. Each of the historic art works that Parker references are about changing states of being. All of the artists cited are concerned with creating works that resist continuity, instead maintaining fugitive states and, in time, changing or disappearing altogether.
Exhibited: Fraught Tales – Four Contemporary Narratives, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003; Mori Gallery, Sydney, 2004
Anonda Bell, exhibition catalogue essay, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003
Not all tales follow a precise linear format. Some have a different level of complexity, reflecting a manifested saccade. Instead of being sequential and progressive, these tales may instead be an amalgam of disparate issues and instances. The resulting narrative drawn from these distinct visions may in part retain fragmented coherence, or instead defy all attempts at comprehension. Luke Parker is interested in precisely this phenomenon. Through his work, he looks at what he describes as the 'anti-narrative'. The story he tells is of inversion, mirroring and, occasionally, inconsequential parallel worlds that may or may not have a causal impact on one another.
Looking at a time of major upheaval and change, his work consists of discrete images that discuss aspects of life from the late 1960s. Each work bears witness to a particular instance or circumstance from history. The name of the work refers to a self-titled album released by the Beatles that had a plain cover and came to be known as ‘The White Album’. This album was celebrated at the time, and made infamous when cult leader Charles Manson cited it as a source of inspiration for his gruesome activities. The phrase ‘helter skelter’ was used as a title for a song, referencing a piece of children's playground equipment, and misquoted by a Manson follower at one of the crime scenes. The state of flux, the shifting meanings and subjective interpretation parallels Parker’s art practice as he samples visual material and fuses disparate elements to form a decentralised whole.
In past practice, Parker has demonstrated an interest in vicarious chance collaboration through the act of appropriation and his reworking of the art of another. In this installation, one drawing references a temporary artwork executed in the late ‘60s by Robert Smithson, a work that consisted of pouring water-soluble glue down a mountainside. Two drawings play on Bruce Nauman's homage to Marcel Duchamp. Parker has drawn from a Nauman self-portrait photograph depicting the artist as water-spouting fountain. Following the chain, in turn, Nauman's work referred to the infamous 'readymade' artwork by Duchamp.
The inherently fragile nature of the physical drawings created by Parker is mirrored in his choice of subject matters that are often about impermanence. Each of the historic art works that Parker references are about changing states of being. All of the artists cited are concerned with creating works that resist continuity, instead maintaining fugitive states and, in time, changing or disappearing altogether.