Jason Moad
Profile
As a realist painter I deal in contradiction. I produce images that ostensibly portray an objective view of reality, a seemingly concrete environment that one might inhabit and navigate. In truth, this is an illusion, a trick played in pigment and oil on a flat surface.
The scenes depicted are completely synthetic, with details drawn from multiple sources and vantage points, rather than a single real place that one might actually visit. These disparate elements are woven together in a fashion that is convincing enough to suspend disbelief for the viewer. In this way a painting can become more than mere reportage- it can allude to something larger and become greater than just the sum of its parts.
My earlier paintings are set outdoors, concerned with notions of the romantic and the sublime. The later works are exclusively interiors, all imagined as an expanding vision of some grand, virtual museum. Uniting both bodies of work is an overarching concern with a quality of memento mori, an attempt to prompt in the viewer a moment of existential reflection.
Museums have always been magical places to me. I have strong memories of school excursions, visits to the old museum on Swanston Street where I first made Phar-Lap’s acquaintance. Museums are places where objects and creatures, some dangerous or long gone, have been removed from their context and can be examined with impunity. Museums are also about illusion. They project an air of control and suspended animation and yet also reflect upon the inexorable passing of time.
This new body of work began with the White Shark paintings. Like museums, they have been an abiding fascination for me. Indeed, the model for these paintings hangs, with an engagingly toothy grin, in the foyer of the Melbourne Museum. During the course of these first paintings, I came to realize the versatility of the museum as subject, and its ability to ground and give context to a seemingly unlimited range of concerns.
I imagine I will be exploring it for some time to come.
