rod moss: intervention

Rod Moss legendary painter from the fringes of Alice Springs brings us more of his arresting imagery - a closer look into Aboriginal daily life in the desert. Often perplexing but always engaging, these graphic works can appear both mundane and sardonic. Tongue in cheek references and suggestive poses by the Aboriginal subjects simultaneously challenge both our knowledge and ignorance of Aborigines and Indigenous life, often wryly quoting famous masterworks from European painting history including Manet, Bellini and Caravaggio. You can almost hear the viewer muttering…”do they really live like that?”…

Rod Moss has been painting this scenario for over 25 years and he doesn’t look like giving up yet. The title for this new body of work 'Intervention' comes at perfect time for the natural story-teller that Moss is: He writes of returning to Alice Springs from a sabbatical in Europe.

“I was traveling overseas for 7 months last year. Almost the first thing I heard from Indigenous friends when I landed back in Australia was that the army had invaded Central Australian indigenous communities in knee-jerk response to the Little Children Are Sacred Report. Was this only the most current modality of the coloniser's handiwork? Well, we have our own history of Dreamings that collaborate in this work. And I had only just left the home of Caravaggio whose 1609, Nativity I deployed in this instance. When I started this (and it was on request of Noreen Hayes, who wanted a painting of her baby and her) the Whitegate mob were incensed that they were being treated differently from other Australians.

Similarly in another recent work 'Fallen Man'..., Bellini's 1516 work, 'The Drunkenness of Noah' is referenced. Little needs to be added to the overdriven press of alcohol abuse that continues to threaten and destroy indigenous lives. Of course, that the NT has, according to some sources, two and half times greater drinking per capita than elsewhere in this thirsty country, is not the singular province of its indigenous population.

Another work in this collection that makes a connection to older art is, 'Le Dejueur sur Teppa Hill', and it relies on the ‘frenchified’ title somewhat alluding to a Manet. The Stratco building, which wasn't there when I dreamt up the painting, just offered that crunching irony….And I didn't do a thing about getting Xavier or Lenny Cavanagh to gesture in the Manet mannerism! It was just a lucky throw of the dice…”

Through his painting and drawing Rod interprets the cultural interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Central Australia where he resides. Using graphite and synthetic polymer paint he carefully constructs narratives that challenge conventional images and endow his subjects with a common humanity. The blinding light of the desert environment renders a new way of seeing and elicits a gentle interrogation of the nature of what is accepted as realism.

To anyone who knows a little art history, it’s obvious that the poses of the Aboriginal figures in Rod Moss’ paintings are taken from a series of Western masterpieces. For example, the singers of Gospel Singers come from Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres, the road workers of Road to Arltunga come from Courbet’s The Stonebreakers and the men sprawled on the ground in Raft come from Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. And, once we realise this, an irreducible strangeness enters these works. But how exactly do these poses make Moss’ figures look? How is it that these poses actually inhabit these bodies?

As always in art, it is a matter of looking closely and describing what we see. It is absolutely in the way these bodies are painted and not in any “controversial” subject matter that the true provocation of Moss’ work is to be found.On the one hand, as we look at this imitation of another by these bodies, we might say that they are no longer who they appear to be but are precisely posing, taking up an attitude for some invisible gaze outside of the canvas. It is almost as though these figures seek to incorporate our look upon them, imagine how they are being seen by us, so that what we see when we look at them is literally our own gaze embodied in them. This is obviously Moss’ point about the way that these figures are merely the reflection of a certain white gaze upon them, with all of its preconceptions and stereotypes, before which they turn into images of themselves.And yet, on the other hand, if this pose can appear as something these bodies consciously put on, it is also something that divides them from themselves. That is, the more these bodies lie or slump in their earthly desolation, the more we become aware of something else in them, And what is this mysterious, sublime substance that so attracts us to these figures, makes us desire to participate too in this enjoyment known only to them?

FW12058

   FW10479

FW12067

FW10459

FW12069