Constance ARI

This work is a peaceful contemplation at once personal and universal (or, rather, neither personal nor universal). It contemplates the commonly and questionably held notion of time in linear trajectory. A highly personal and physical experience is reconsidered some twelve years after the act. The physical reference remains, body and soul change. If a part of me (then) remains in me (now) what is the measure by which we grow? How do we mark this passage in art? What can an artwork make of (into) time?

Andy Wear was born and raised amidst the lawlessness of Queensland’s rurality before hitching a wagon ride to the bigsmoke (a.k.a. Brisbane) to join a punk-cabaret act known affectionately (by some) as The ‘Rippers. All the while this shameless art-school-dropout persisted with visually creative pursuits, culminating in that fateful day when a performance art happening went terribly wrong. Midway through tattooing the words arsenic parsnip Christianity fridges and dust (upways down) onto his dough-toned gut, he looked out unto the crowd and wept. No more did he perform. Some ten years later, Andy Wear moved to Hobart and exhibited here (for instance, the Salamanca Arts Centre) and there (for example, CAST Gallery) in a painterly format, before approaching Inflight gallery, who agreed to indulge his wish to revisit that fateful day.