Kaylene Whiskey is an indigenous Australian artist living and working in a small aboriginal town in South Australia. In her paintings Whiskey appropriates the visual language of aboriginal art (using the dot technique and earth tones) but instead of depicting natural or abstracted forms as is done in the more traditional artworks, she paints series of comic strips, imagining what would happen if her favourite American pop icons were to come to her home town. They feature Cher, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton and the like, their speech bubbles written in english but spelled in a way which is evocative of an aboriginal accent. They are often pictured growing Minkulpa trees, which is the native Australian tobacco plant. History (particularly Australian history) is often whitewashed and manipulated to suit a western point of view; Kaylene Whiskey is able to reinvent American pop culture from an aboriginal perspective in a way that remains playful and joyous.
How does this relate to my own work? I was interested in the way that Whiskey brought the format of the comic strip into the realm of ‘high culture’. My work at the moment is centred on dialogue, which I have up to this point been exploring through performance and video. However, these pieces made me think about new ways in which dialogue can be presented. There could be something interesting about recording fleeting or awkward remarks in a permanent, visual way (such as in the form of a speech bubble), as well as the suggestion of dialogue through videos of people conversing without sound, or the sound as a piece in itself, removed from the video footage.
Giulia's Art Kingdom 