NYAB Event - Cameron Hayes "The Incomplete History of the Millikapiti"

Cameron Hayes "The Incomplete History of the Millikapiti"

This event has ended.
At Ronald Feldman Fine Arts
Media: Painting, Sculpture

Cameron Hayes, an Australian artist, will exhibit several large-scale narrative paintings and a soft sculpture installation, which are based on allegorical stories. With visual complexity, the paintings depict groups of manic figures in absurd scenarios, both foolish and wicked, viewed from far away and high above. The wildly inventive stories relate to White European and indigenous histories and describe a world that is both comic and bleak.

The exhibition features a series titled The Incomplete History of the Millikapiti, which recounts the disastrous effect of the white culture upon the Aboriginal community, even when well-meaning. In the installation, After all the whites gave all the Tiwis glasses, the owls lost their power and became domestically violent, the Tiwi people, who are famous for their artwork, are represented by Hayes as stuffed animals. Disturbing and often violent scenes document the community’s loss of innocence related to the irrelevance of their former life in modern times and to the introduction of alcohol and sugar.

In a painting about the introduction of pets to Africa, which causes the jungle animals to adopt the vanities of human behavior, the Russian scientists learn that the key to happiness is to keep expectations low. Another painting relates to Pavlov’s experiments; animals will crave anything if they can suck through an utter, and a parade of kids ring bells to turn on a shower of deer’s saliva. Other paintings take as their subjects Helen Keller, the first rap museum in Fatehpur Sikri, and the Greek Goddess Cassandra, who ends up living at the racetrack.