Soliloquies From Small Spaces

Andrew Varano

Opening 03.05.17 6-8pm
Artist Talks 25.05.17 6-7pm

I cried at that video where the ex-marine with PTSD got a puppy for Christmas. So, so small in his big, big hands. After an incident at work I went for a long bushwalk alone, thinking about how at a picnic once someone told me that a Spartan warrior’s armour weighed 18 kilograms and that they left weak babies in the fields to die.

The I Ching said that my withdrawal need not be a defeat, but could be as proud and confident as the retreat of the sandpiper before the incoming tide. Repression is when you bury a painful feeling or thought from your awareness at the risk that it may resurface in symbolic form. In the multiplayer game server PU55YB4CON69’s shield had a beautiful male face on it that looked like Bas Jan Ader crying.

I lit some uncrossing candles in my garden where the bad energy had pooled. Bas’ mother Johanna Adriana Ader-Appels: “When he passed the border of birth, I laid him at my breast, Rocked him in my arms. He was very small then.”

At work he said to me; “Do you know what my history is where people have shut me down?” I told him he wasn’t my daddy. Sublimation is when you redirect unacceptable, instinctual drives into personally and socially acceptable channels.

The Bocca della Verita – that sad, soft face – was made to be a drain cover in the temple of Hercules, providing a release for the rain pouring through the open ceiling. Imagine Hercules crying in reverse, as if some god were pissing into his mouth from Mount Olympus. Regression is reverting to a less mature way of handling stresses and feelings. Wouldn’t it be nice to fit inside a clam shell?

‘soliloquies from small spaces’ is a new exhibition by Perth based artist, Andrew Varano, which is concerned with defence mechanisms, the manchild, hiding and the colour green.