eX de Medici, Gender War, 2017, Watercolour and Egg Tempera on Paper, 114 x 345 cm
Opening Reception with the presence of the artist: Friday, 25 May 2018, 7-9pm
Richly ornamented and apparently beautiful, eX de Medici’s work interrogates the politics of power and gender relations. Working in the demanding medium of watercolour, often on an unusually monumental scale, De Medici’s practice engages with politico-economic systems of control and the ways in which these are constructed and distributed through violence. This exhibition extends de Medici’s exploration of corporate morality, mass surveillance, data collection and the consequences that accompany the abuse of authority.
eX De Medici is one of Australia’s most significant artists. Her work has been extensively collected by public museums, including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; and Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.
For the artist’s first solo exhibition with Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore, de Medici will present a medium-defying seven-meter-long watercolour from the 2017 series Spies Like Us featuring CCTV encrusted telephone towers, and new “smithereens” paintings from which the exhibition takes it’s title. De Medici has drawn inspiration from Canberra, the Australian capital city where the artist has lived since childhood. A central work of the exhibition will be a large-scale watercolour and egg tempera , Protect your Insecurity, which depicts a grand monument clustered with paint-splattered CCTV cameras. This work references the Australian–American Memorial, a public sculpture outside the Department of Defence in Canberra, the pinnacle of which is topped with a stylised figure of the American Eagle.
The monument acts as a bridge between the two bodies of work presented in Smithereens; the tower from the 2017 works being from the same location. The telephone tower works will be complemented by new paintings utilising a shared motif which mimics the soft-serve corporate babbling of multi-national corporations. Images in which everything is broken; blown to smithereens.
Art, says de Medici, has no ability to make a difference, but we must raise the alarm. If we don’t we are complicit.
Venue: Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore, 5 Lock Rd, #01-06 Gillman Barracks 108933 Singapore
Opening Hours: Mon – Sat: 11am – 7pm; Sun: 11am – 6pm
When: 25 May - 24 Jun 2018, 11am - 6pm
