GEORG WHELAN

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I'm an Australian artist based in Brisbane. Working through figurative painting, film photography, drawing and text. My work observes rituals, constructed narratives and metaphorical depictions referencing a spectrum of sources from high/low brow art and its tradition, Iconography, religious art and more obscure elements of culture such as memes and bathroom graffiti.

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My recent works are largely looking at the Australian identity through a post-colonial lens and are made in the genre of figurative painting. While I am a self-taught painter and what I do is really quite folky, I like to reference the academic history of painting and employ techniques and methods that are quite traditional while making space for more naive and abstract elements. While at a glance I have been told my work looks to be engaging in a sort of critical theory, and perhaps it does, but for me personally painting is mostly concerned in the process, I treat the tradition of painting as alchemy which can be learnt and the process itself as a meditation as much as a trade.