Politicised but pretty, that’s how Canberra painter and Riverina born eX de Medici described her first solo show in three years which has gone up at MAMA.
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In Sour Crude the artist explores the realm of corporate influence on public systems.
Given her upbringing as the daughter of political scientists, eX de Medici said she was always more interested in the bigger picture rather than personal struggles in her work.
“I started seeing a number of years ago how corporations were shaping public policy,” she said. “(Before) one corporation would be going for all the oil ... what's evolved over the years is how they're clumping together.”
The result is watercolour paintings with a sickeningly sweet visual language which is a mixture of symbolism and the slightly grotesque like in her painting Eat Me Golden Fleece which represents the takeover of Australian petroleum company Golden Fleece by Caltex and ultimately all of it is owned owned by global oil giant Chevron.
De Medici said it was the story about how Golden Fleece was “absorbed by much bigger beasts.”
“Their (corporations) influence in our governments are so profound, and i think that's reflected now in terms of discussions on corporate taxation and how no one pays anything,” she said.
The series includes three larger pieces that preceded Sour Crude thematically and feature large detailed guns.
MAMA curator Bianca Acimovic said de Medici was a highly sought after artist and to showcase someone of her caliber was a boon for Albury and the gallery.
Ms Acimovic said they were forming relationships with commercial galleries to bring leading artists to MAMA especially practitioners who could demonstrate what was happening currently in contemporary art.
De Medici has several paintings in the National Gallery of Australia and her work often fetches hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For half of her 30 year career she didn’t even touch a paintbrush instead opting to travel to America to start a tattooing apprenticeship in 1989.
De Medici still tattoos today and said it both influenced and changed her publicly released artwork, mostly because it had made her more precise.
Sour Crude has opened and runs until January 24.
