Printed works on polycarbonate
Danny McDonald's recent series of unique state prints can best be described as a form of forensic romanticism; a testimony to the artist's ongoing quest for pictorial sublimation through investigative play. Rather than proffering clear meaning, their primarily abstract imagery invokes the inscrutability of coded messages via a beguiling sequence of letters, numbers, partial shapes and barely visible backdrops. Their apparent three-dimensional depth, created by an unusual combination of computer-derived and traditional printing techniques, invites slow contemplation. Layers of scientific formulae – DNA, genetic sequencing, the patterns of micro-technology – are placed over close details of grass, sky, gravel and other natural textures so as to embody the residual energy of the artist's latest creative experiment: a voyage into the world of medical science.
Environment has always provided the substance of McDonald's practice and this exhibition is no exception. These images represent the debris of his foray into medical science's image-making techniques and demonstrate his hypothesis that art and science are intimately linked in their 'objective' outlook on the world. Products of an inaugural artistic residency in the Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, they trace his discovery of medical technology's cryptic and microscopic visual lexicon. Their dual imagery appears to parallel the artist's feelings of intrigue and anxiety about working within a hospital environment – a place where nature continually battles nurture. Although a stranger in this context, McDonald would have been familiar with many of the processes used by medical professionals around him: experimentation and information manipulation; recording and documenting: analysing and theorising from found 'evidence'. These techniques relate to both 'artistic' and 'scientific' methodologies, as the artist's work suggests.
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