Battani’s Place – a place, a home, a rupture, 2013

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I was attracted to Alex’s anthropological yet poetic vision from the start. I feel I know this tension between nihilistic sentimentality, the rational, and artistic ineffability. I certainly shared similar experiences – of waking as a young lad in a strange makeshift bed full of expectancy as the day dawned; having baths in a shallow enamel pan in front of the fire at night; potties under the bed; hot mash and cold mutton; finding comfort and the familiar amongst exotic smells and sounds. Yet I was afraid of being sidetracked by the allure of the past though encouraged by Alex’s attraction to my crushed paintings.

And realised in this installation they become more than that. More like crushed ideas, crushed dreams, ghosts of thoughts and memories, blowing through the landscape, the space, the place, the house, the home – vanquished perhaps or dead, but always replenished, in conflict or belonging, blow-ins and blow-throughs, attractive but flawed, damaging and damaged, always moving on, but always present – elements of a home anchored in our remnant arcadia.