Botanica Humana Group Show in Melbourne
I’m in a group show called Botanica Humana in Melbourne with 12 other artists. It opens on Thursday 3rd May 6-8 pm, 424 Smith Street, Collingwood at Here We See – Gallery There. It is on until May 27th, 2018. Here is some more information:
https://hereweseegallerythere.com/portfolio-item/929/
The painting is: Cameron Hayes | In the end they wanted even cats to know them | 2017 | Oil on linen | 198 x 254 cm
Schopenhauer said life is a choice between loneliness and vulgarity. In this picture the most congested area of traffic is the red carpet. To get people to move in this painting you need to lure them with red carpet despite the carpet being draped over a rickety skeleton of a disused theme park.
Because of facebook, twitter etc… everyone can get everyone to know them. People are now left with only cats to impress. Cats are the least impressed by people and therefore become the most powerful of all animals. Soon cats run the world, people work to build giant scratching poles and perches with windowsills. Because cats communicate through smells people are forbidden from cleaning and wearing facemasks and nose plugs. Big brother cat face posters control people from every corner.
Other animals are now trying to get to be known by strangers as well and jungle animals are climbing with their information plaques (facebook pages) to get into the zoo cages so they can be seen by more people and tuna fish are hiding in tins so that they can get into their red carpet – the supermarket.
People aren’t wearing pants to show that they could be on T.V, post boxes are overflowing with sent letters no-one wants to receive, planes are being loaded with people’s facebook pages (information plaques) while the owners wait on luggage trolleys.
Like the animals fighting to put their information plaques in the zoo cages, priests are fighting to speak from the one pulpit while men and women dressed in diapers fight to reclaim the bed where they were nurtured by their mothers and made to feel that the whole world was interested in only them.
Exhibition at Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York, 6 January – 17 February, 2018
Ronald Feldman Gallery will exhibit a series of figurative paintings by the Australian artist, Cameron Hayes, for his fourth exhibition at the gallery. The paintings evoke the phantasmagoric worlds of Bruegel, but his scenes address the contemporary world. The paintings, some as large as 6’ x 8’, are visually complex, depicting groups of manic figures in absurd scenarios. Hayes’ vision of the human condition is comic and bleak, yet laced with poignance. The detailed paintings reward a close reading.
Join Cameron who will be in New York to attend the exhibition reception.
Ronald Feldman Gallery
31 Mercer Street , New York
Exhibition reception: Saturday 6th January 2018, 6 – 8 pm
Image: Martina Navratilova versus Chris Evert Lloyd
Oil on linen, 194 x 254 cm
Martina Navratilova’s dad left her family when she was three and committed suicide when she was eight. Her first coach was her stepfather. She grew up in communist Prague where even if you had a father he was horribly emasculated by the government system. In her mid teens, Navratilova took her complicated psychology to the women’s tennis tour of the late ’70s where players were given mops and aprons for winning tournaments.
Chris Evert’s dad was a tennis coach. As the women’s tennis tour grew, it became clear that women playing for money and fame could not compete against an opponent playing for her father’s love.
Los arboles de mierda de Mexico
Los arboles de mierda de Mexico by Cameron Hayes, 2003, oil on linen, 14 x 90 inches.
This is about a taxi ride in Mexico. The driver speeds and swerves in the chaotic streets, a contrast to the careful and calm way he has cut the outlines of the porno images he has pasted on his steering wheel and dashboard. Le Merced, the world’s largest market, has the world’s largest porn section. Porn is so abundant that the merchants use it to wrap their sales. Porn litters the entire area. When you look down, you realize you are walking in a sea of erections and shiny vaginas.
Behind the porn section is a “park” where old prostitutes lean against trees, which have been fenced off to stop people from leaning against them. From behind the trees emerge pimps with vicious dogs on a chain.
On the right is Garibaldi Plaza where all the Mariachis wait to be picked for a party on Friday or Saturday evening. Couples drive up to be serenaded, and frantic hosts go to audition Mariachi bands. Most Mariachis go to Garibaldi Plaza to pretend to have a gig or to try to get in on someone else’s gig. They pose, prance, show off their outfits and generally do nothing to make it look like something.
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On his birthday Endora gave Darrin a magic mirror which the owner can use to swap lives…
On his birthday Endora gave Darrin a magic mirror which the owner can use to swap lives with anyone he captures in it. When Aunt Clara delivers the mirror she crashes the van and the mirror shatters into thousands of pieces and so everyone in the neighbourhood can swap lives with somebody else, by Cameron Hayes, 1999-2003, oil and glitter on wood, polyptych, 56 x 87 inches overall.
On his birthday Endora gave Darrin a magic mirror which the owner can use to swap lives with anyone he captures in it. When Aunt Clara delivers the mirror she crashes the van and the mirror shatters into thousands of pieces and so everyone in the neighbourhood can swap lives with somebody else with unsatisfying consequences.
Darrin is sick of his life in the suburbs and thinks to himself he is possibly sick of his wife Sam as well. He wishes he could have been a football star instead of being stuck in this life. However, he can not identify any other life which he is certain is a better life than his own; and equally difficult to face is the prospect of abandoning his own unique potentials and “special-ness”. He is doubly thwarted by his own doing, as the successful advertising slogans thought up by himself for the company he works for, McMahon and Tate, have made it more difficult for him to identify a suitable life swap by making everybody feel fat, inadequate, and boring with bad skin.
After many attempts Darrin decides the best way to use his magic mirror is to lean it against his house and run circles around it thus producing thousands of Darrins younger than he is in the present and having the opportunities to improve his own past rather than take another life he is unfamiliar with. In this way Darrin can explore all the possible life choices he didn’t take.
However, this plan is discarded as he becomes obsessed with finding the adult women which were once the young girls he had crushes on before he reached puberty, and uses most of his younger self Darrins for this purpose. He is also desperate to have his younger Darrins re-enact episodes of his childhood where he was personally cruel or allowed cruelty to go unchallenged and victims to go unhelped. Using McMahon and Tate billboards Darrin paints the scenes from his childhood he wants corrected. One important victim of his childhood was a girl with a bowel disorder called Carty Farty, who used to get her clothes from the lost property box and as a child Darrin gave her a grubby old tennis ball for a birthday present as a joke.
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Officially Filed under ART CONTROVERSY
It’s official – Art Controversy! Prince, we need you to write the score!
Although it feels like it could just keep going Cameron Hayes’ show finishes tomorrow! Two further articles on the final stretch officially confirms this show has been an ART CONTROVERSY! Who would have thought? Apparently no-one for the past 8 years, but who knew? Melbourne City Council joined in on the act by informing the artist that his exhibition listing was taken down from their website ‘What’s On’ as it breached the Code of Conduct for “appropriated Indigenous ceremonial styles and clan motifs”. However, no-one from the council visited the show, they couldn’t explain how it appropriated styles or motifs, they couldn’t provide an explanation of due process, nor could they provide any recourse for rebuttal. Interesting! But at any rate, it provided further media attention, an extension of the show, and more visitors.
Read the article below!
The article appeared in Melbourne’s MX Newspaper, Friday 31st August, 2012
It continues! Hayes’ show at Dark Horse Experiment has been extended so you still have this week to go and see it. It’s attracted great attendance, media attention, academic interest – not bad for a cancelled show!
The gallery is open Wed – Sat 12 – 6 at 110 Franklin St, Melbourne.
Cameron Hayes’ extensive body of work created over the past 8 years – The Incomplete History of Milikapiti – will be on show at Dark Horse Experimentgallery in Melbourne from tonight until the 2nd September.
Come and visit the show. If you have any thoughts or questions, contact Cameron. He might even be in the gallery some days.
Have a read of this article about the body of work before you go. It’s pretty interesting. And, if you can’t get to Melbourne to see the show check out this blog and the Dark Horse Experiment website for the full catalogue.
The Incomplete History of Milikapiti
When all the Whites came to Milikapiti, they gave all the Tiwis sugar, flour, beer and the dole. The Tiwi hunters – famed for their ferocity and courage – were no longer needed to hunt and kill food for the community. The Tiwi…
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Kick after the siren, Tapalinga Hawks vs Milikapiti Magpies
Cameron Hayes. Kick after the siren, Tapalinga Hawks vs Milikapiti Magpies – 3rd December 2002, 2004, 101 x 152.5 cms
If you see rubbish on the ground, why pick it up when you can set it on fire? If there’s a chair in the way of the TV, why move it when you can burn it to the ground? Just about every problem in Milikapiti can be solved by covering it in petrol and reducing it to ashes.
During burning season, you are woken up on Sunday mornings by kids in nappies walking around your backyard with a 1.25 litre plastic coke bottle full of petrol and a box of matches hoping to find some tiny shrub or blade of grass that hasn’t already been burnt to a crisp. Every house in Milikpiti has an iron drum constantly billowing smoke out the front, and the community dogs have to get up on hind legs and look into the fire for the less burning things to eat. Most Milikapiti dogs have burnt noses and tongues.
“History is subjective, people can pick out events and stories that they think are important.” And that is what Hayes is referring to by making up past dates to accompany the images in this body of work. This painting (above) was painted in Milikapiti. The artist’s local neighbours would visit him at work, an easel set up under the house. This painting was quite popular. Someone suggested it should be on display in the community club; another neighbour found it funny , stating it reminded her of how it used to be when she was a child. The community now has strict regulations regarding alcohol consumption, no alcohol was permitted at football matches while the artist was there. Hayes says of this work: “The main part of the story is how white Australian culture tries to order Tiwi life. In the background rubbish is burnt (Tiwi) rather than collected – rubbish pile burn offs, and this helps to explain why they are all over the field. One as an aesthetic device and two to reinforce the theme of the picture. Two ways of handling a problem in concert. Football is another analogy for white culture trying to order Tiwi life according to their rules, in this case footy rules. Here the whole team is standing on the mark, opposing team members are hugging. The rules work to a degree, but are adapted by the local culture, not fully accepted.
The beer cans I’ve used as an aesthetic device too. They are quite easily understood as they were everywhere, and on the footy field, the sun fades them and they become aqua in colour, they actually look quite beautiful. And when I was there it wasn’t a judgement that there were beer cans or that it was an embarrassment.”
This work was also included in the local art competition The Footy Art exhibition in 2005, where Kevin Sheedy (Essendon FC Coach at the time) awarded it First Prize. – M. Soni, June 2012.
Three Tiwi women, three Hello Kitty bags and bits of hard to identify axed up native animal
Cameron Hayes, Three Tiwi women, three Hello Kitty handbags and bits ofhard to identify axed up native animal – 31 March 2012, 2012, mixed media, dimensions vary around 50 cm high.
“The humour found in the incongruous meeting of cultures has also been used in the soft sculpture installation The Hunters, 2012. Three elderly women are going hunting. They are wearing inappropriate t-shirts. Those who have ever lived in remote communities would recognise such a scene. Often there is only one shop with limited stock, usually the clothing range is t-shirts featuring popular rap bands, song titles and slogans, or multi-national brands. Here Hayes has used the lyrics from a song called “Horny” (yes, really) by Mousse T, a ludicrously banal pop song that was very popular on Australian radio. The figure is also carrying a ‘Hello Kitty’ bag, one of the world’s largest brands it has permeated nearly every remote corner on earth! The incongruity of the cuteness, the inappropriate slogans, the blood, and carcases – it displays the unique way of life, the idiosyncrasies of the Tiwi people. Hayes also uses this simple, funny scene as a metaphor for what he describes as an ‘ill-fitting culture’. The European choices, the white Australian lifestyle just doesn’t quite meet the women’s needs.” – Marielle Soni, June 2012
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Dirty Nappies
Cameron Hayes, Dirty nappies, 2006, mixed media.
Hardly anyone believes in promised wives and just about no one would use it as an excuse to hurt a child. Hundreds of nappies are brought in on the barge every fortnight. It’s hard to dispose of them, so some people throw their dirty nappies on each others roofs. Once I was sitting under the tree, waiting for the shop to open with some children, when the one still in nappies wanted money. She kept trying to sit on my lap and put her arm around my neck. It felt like when you’re unexpectedly falling and tasted like a mouthful of your own blood. Hardly anyone believes in promised wives, and just about no one would use it as an excuse to hurt a child.
cameronkhayes 
During the looting of the Kerch Museum babies traded with ancient coins
During the looting of the Kerch Museum babies traded with ancient coins by Cameron Hayes, 2002-3, oil on linen, 65 x 100 inches.
Time does not beget wisdom. During the Crimean War the Kerch Museum housed one of the world’s best collections of ancient artefacts. The soldiers of the Russian, Turkish, English and French armies did not wait until the battle was over to loot and destroy the contents of the museum. The battlefield became littered with stolen and abandoned priceless ancient vases, statue rubble, marble arms and legs, historic maps, public records and fragile shields and delicate spears.
The average age of a general in the Crimean war was 77. It was the last war in which inexperienced old Englishmen without military talent or intelligence could buy control of an army of young men. Generals directed a battle from a safe distance and insisted on living a civilised lifestyle despite being on a battlefield. They drank and washed from the top of every stream whereas the young soldiers got Cholera and Typhoid from drinking water from the bottom of the stream. The young men were forever soiling their pants and coughing up phlegm. They became deaf from the close range of the canons, and crippled by the activity of battle, appalling sleeping conditions and worst medical services than the older generals.
The old men were relaxed and invigorated by battle, comforted with the knowledge that in war how old you are is measured not by how far you are from birth but by how close you are to death. So in this environment all the young soldiers were in fact much older than they.
During the looting of the Kerch Museum babies traded with ancient coins, and many of the local children have loaded themselves with looted Hellenistic Period coins. They are finding that despite their wealth they are being ignored at the antique auctions, turned away from the all-you-can-eats and the slot machines merely fire back their coins quite hard and at shin level height. Most tragically their money will not buy them the medical attention, which is reserved only for the old generals.
Some old generals have tied strings of babies around the vegetable gardens to protect them from bombs and erected baby scarecrows. Other generals have tied babies to the front of their horses like fluffy dice. A bomb has landed and exploded in the local fortune teller’s shop, sending thousands of fortunes flying into the air. They are chased by giddy old men through the battlefield and across minefields, while a palm reader has set up shop to service distraught wives who collect blown-off hands and arms in search of information about their husbands.
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