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Dissimulo Munus

Notations on the Manifest Image and the Revealed World

Curated by Craig(ston) Hebbel 

Kerry Allan, Philip Andrews, Craig(ston) Hebbel, Dariusz Jacewicz, Jeanne O'Neill, Mark O'Neill, Roger Paine, Daniel Harvey (film), Darryl Rogers (drama), Peter Rankine (music) 
Urszula Szulakowska
Eyeline 06
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To consciously launch oneself into the blackest of voids of post-modern negation is the eighties version of the old Dionysian purgation of soul, not through ecstasy but through a deliberate deadening of feeling. Alternatively, it is a recall of past mystical practices: non-belief which takes its order from the pattern of ancient austerities. This little-known group of local ar­tists have abandoned a positivistic spirituality in order to leap into an unstructured intellectual abyss. The "cloud of unknowing" did not creep up on them. Rather, they lassoed it and, in calmly enumerating its characteristics, they discovered its nature as the potential of sym­biosis with high technology. The formless indeed had form and was taking shape as a metaphysics no longer confined to the polarisa­tion of self and other on which all doctrine depends. 

The artists had operated on the perimeters of the main city art scene for a couple of years before producing the current work which is vir­tually a manifesto of their existence. They are a valuable addition to that fragile set of more ex­perienced artists whose presence in Brisbane is always endangered by the economic and cultural necessity of removal southwards. Their present work was initially encouraged by the former co-ordinator of the QCA gallery, Craig Douglas and former gallery assistant, Lindy Johnson, and, subsequently, by Keith Bradbury with Irene Girsch and John Stafford. Such valuable activities at the QCA are sadly neglected by the inner city. Due to its unfortunate in­accessibility, the gallery has not been able to play the dynamic role in local art which its often imaginative sponsorship should guarantee for it. 

Certainly, this kind of expensive and com­plicated work requires institutional support. Where else could

DisSimulus Munus. Performance, Queensland College of Art Gallery, 1988.