The piece consists of the placement/arrangement of 3 bodies in a series of 3 staged vignettes. Faced away from the audience, the unidentified bodies may stand for the everyman, but also in their aspect as representatives of age, the young, the old, the new and the eternal.
The first image of two standing children shows outwardly the easy impost of humans on the flora and fauna of Canberra. But take away the debased utilitarian concept of a foolishly created capital and what we have is intrinsically and unmistakeably a fullsome representation of the rural youth of Emilia Romagna (1) who at Mussolini’s behest imposed an ancient ideal of youthful despoilation upon Italy in 1922. The seemingly casual innocents in (school) uniform are clearly redolent of the blackshirted (uniformed) youth of the Fascisti who marched triumphantly on Rome on October 30, 1922. That it is Australian youth who stand challenging and representing the defeat of European liberalism, the overthrow of enlightenment and the destruction of tradition is no plain device, but a telling portent. There are no Edelweiss pirates on Australian soil.
The second image is of the children fallen, or so it appears. The viewer may firstly perceive here is the collapse of nihilistic Fascism, the rejection of the power of youth, the failure of the new, the re-establishment of ancient order and precedence, but look again, this is a negotiated fall, there has been no collapse, the supposed fallen are attentive, alert, resting and ready to spring immediately back to a standing position, ready to overthrow at any moment again the ‘old’ order. They are the waiters in the wings looking for the chink in the armour of age. This thus is the threat of the new and the young, that they are ever present, ever waiting, ever ready. The past is always with us, but so is its replacement.
The final image is in some respects a Chronos manque - a looker into time, but not here looking both to the past and simultaneously the future. In this instance with eyes averted, back turned, the viewer is thus left unsure of direction and so caught between time/s so that they cannot from this vantage point tell which is present, which is future, which is past. Are we receding or arriving and if either to what point. Is this the defender of age and experience over the righteous anger of youth, or a progenitor of times collapse.
But time past and future notwithstanding, the central singular individual (or indeed singularity) at which our eyes are focussed plays another role. Is this the figure outside of time, the eternal figure that may answer the question that has been around since the idea of God was first implanted? What are you, my God? asked St Augustine(2) this image answers that question. But it also denies the possibility of access to what is revealed. For, whilst we may see the very incarnation of God, yet we cannot look into the eyes of God, through our failings we are still cast from Eden, the viewer found wanting is thus rejected, the impossibility of a true knowledge of God is returned.
(1)
“I read in the eyes of those young men the divine smile of triumph of an ideal” Benito Mussolini – Thus we took Rome from My Autobiography (1924)
(2)
Quid es ergo, dues meus?
Summe, optime
potentissime, omnipotentissime,
secretissime et praesentissime,
pulcherrime et fortissime,
stabilis et incomprehensibilis,
immutabilis mutans omnia,
numquam novus numquan vetus
What are you, my God?
Most high, most good,
most potent, most omnipotent,
most hidden and most present,
most beautiful and most strong,
stable and incomprehensible
immutable and ever changing
never new, never old. - St Augustine
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