My work is a finalist in Hazelhurst Art on Paper 2017. Show opens @hazelhurstgallery Fri 19 May, 6pm. Runs til 16 July 2017. The Empire's New Clothes, 2017, Indian ink pigment marker, coloured pencil and synthetic polymer paint on cotton paper, 127x97cm/50x38in. The titularly referenced tale and it's idiom about logical fallacies become an allegory for British colonialism in this self portrait as Queen Alexandra, monarch of the United Kingdom of Britain and Empress of India. Based on a 1902 photograph in her coronation attire, the Queen wears her crown featuring the famed Koh-i-noor diamond, however her other jewels and gown adornments have been substituted with items that the East India Company traded out of India. This English company originally owned in shares by wealthy merchants and aristocrats, took its interest in India from trade to territory via private military power, eventually coming to act sovereignly on behalf of the British crown before the latter took direct control in 1858. The artist, as Queen, offers her own ancestrally Indian body wearing the invisible gown of these colonial legacies. She stands bejeweled with the peppercorns, cardamon, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, tea leaves, cotton, silk worms, opium and ebony seed for which her motherland was colonised. Her eyes reflect the global reign of the British Empire at the time of Queen Alexandra’s coronation as her thumb bleeds against a thorn of the white English Rose that she prepares to behead with her ivory-handled scissors. #britishcolonialism #india #eastindiacompany #queenalexandra #selfportrait #textaqueen #hazelhurstartonpaperaward (at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre)
