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Brian O'Doherty has commented upon the "radical forgetting" almost endemic to an art system which is based (voraciously) upon marketable products 1
This argument seems most applicable if one considers the negligible holdings of seventies' conceptual work of the public galleries both here and overseas. By contrast Peter CripRs' work manifests what one might call a "radical memory". The five paintings, objects and texts in this exhibition have a clear base in conceptualism, but it is very obviously a rematerialised conceptualism. Thus the work is very much of the present while developing upon the strengths and weaknesses of conceptualism; an Australian example of what Achille Bonito Oliva recently has called "nee-objectivist" art 2. While most of his peers have gone in the direction of post conceptual painting (for example Imants Tillers, Tim Johnson, Peter Tyndall), Cripps has continued to produce object based non "flat"3 products. In this way it is difficult to categorise the work. In her catalogue essay for this IMA 'show Sue Cramer suggests that, "In a curious kind of way, these works inhabit a Dadaist realm that is somewhere between the sculptural and the everyday object "4. The intellectual lessons of the seventies though are very much a presence in the work, both literally, as with the huge (366 X 366 cm) Chinese Cultural Revolution poster, as well as conceptually.
Since he began work as an artist almost two decades ago Cripps has been constructing his own archive which will appear at a later date as the Caravan, a persona museum in some ways akin to Percy Grainger's "music museum". This practice has its origins in Cripps' abiding interest in the nature of history per se and