The Height of Elegance
What:
The Height of Elegance
Where:
Utopian Slumps, 25 Easey St, Collingwood
When:
Opening Fri Feb 27, 6-9pm
Exhibition runs until March 21
Related links:
Thomas Jeppe is the founder of Serps Press, and Associate Editor and Photography Editor of WON.
A story before we begin. Well, it's more of a seed than a story, one of those things that you recognise immediately as significant but only appreciate and understand as you watch it grow.
Sitting one day among the videotapes, books and canvases in his family's lounge room in Perth, Tom pointed out a painting that his Mum had done for him. It was of a bull terrier I think, painted in blacks, blues and purples, sitting proud to the left, wearing a pair of old wayfarers. Having subsequently lost those sunglasses Tom told us how his Mum had gone to the insurance company taking a picture of this painting as proof and was, amazingly, reimbursed.
Though it's largely unrelated, imagining the scene of this wonderful story in the context of Tom's upcoming exhibition gives a sense of how direct a work can be and how humour and visual simplicity can really convince. In The Height of Elegance, adapted symbols, lyrics and implausible inventions are represented through painting and sculpture. Tangible and personal, the ideas contained in these works, like those sunnies, become the ‘genuine article' - existing to a point, understood to a point, but reminding us that believing is an active, sometimes precarious decision.
Medium: Mixed
Drink: Anything, as long as you look good holding it
Keywords: Collingwood, Utopian Slumps, Thomas Jeppe, Art
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