TERRY CULVER

Aluminium Wire Mesh and etched acylic stand. This work is ostensibly me. Or a part of me, the part that is here, now in the present. Bikie is modelled from my own motorcycle gear, and represents both the ‘contemporary’ and my position within it. It is the ‘modern’, the city, speed, fast living and the dangerous. It is also about freedom - the freedom in particular that becoming a motorbike rider has given me; the freedom of the road and every other cliché that comes with it.

Aluminium Wire Mesh

Aluminium Wire Mesh and acylic coat stand. Cocky consists of a flyscreen mesh oilskin coat on a clear acrylic hatstand. A mesh Akubra sits perched on another arm. On the floor a pair of flyscreen Blundstone boots lies casually strewn as if recently kicked off. This uniform, unlike Digger is in the process of being used. Ghostly and ethereal, it doesn’t reflect back to the dark turbulent years of wartime but is timeless and redolent of the ethos of rural Australia.

Aluminium Wire Mesh

Aluminium Wire Mesh. This work reconstructs a World War One soldier in the Light Horse Infantry. The uniform is replete with badges, insignia, water bottle, rifle, bandolier, spare horse-shoe pack, ostrich plumes and gaters, and is made entirely from aluminium flyscreen wire.

Aluminium wire mesh

Aluminium Wire Mesh. The 1970’s of my childhood were still rife with examples of gendered activities, and weekends made them self-evident. Groups of headless hoons huddled over erect car bonnets, mothers vacuuming and cooking, fathers mowing, changing the oil or clearing the gutters; everyone had their designated tasks and they all fitted neatly into their suburban sex roles. Lawn-mowing was symptomatic of this era and of these differentiated and gendered behavioural patterns.

Aluminium Wire Mesh

Aluminium Wire Mesh. In my childhood everyone had a barbecue. And in my neighbourhood many of them were home made, not the fancy metal and gas ones you see today on the 12th floor of apartment buildings, but good solid brick and mortar types. The barbecue is symbolic of mateship. It contains echoes of the tribal gathering, maturation rites (“Son - you can light the coals today”) and masculine intercourse. Being home-built implies an almost apologetic tipping the hat to the pioneering spirit

Aluminium Wire Mesh

Aluminium Wire Mesh. The design for this work came from my memories of my fathers own shed that he built in the back yard in about 1973-74. The general attitude of the times allocated the house as the domain of the wife/mother. She ran it, cleaned it and patrolled it as she often spent most of her time there. If the man of the house was a drinker, he could claim his space down at the pub after work with his mates. Or if he wasn’t, he needed to create his own - a personal ‘male space’.

Aluminium Wire Mesh

Digital image. This image comprises many thousands of photographs from all avenues of my life to construct my body and images from my PhD research to make up the sepia background.

Digital image

Vegemite, Sao Crackers, Silicon and Varnish In this self portrait I become everything I dislike about the ocker. Portrayed as a beer-bellied, smoking, thong wearing, stubby drinking couch potato, I attempt to make the portrait the antithesis to who and what I am. Of course, the work is meant to be funny, and in that quintessentially Aussie way, humour is often about taking the piss. (Well don’t piss yourself laughing…yeah I know its piss weak…whah…ok now I’m getting pissed…Oh piss off.)

Vegemite, Sao Crackers, Silicon and Varnish

Digital image comprising of about 4,500 digitally altered images of skin cancers constructing a replica of Max Dupain's iconic 'Sunbaker' photograph.

Digital image

Artificial Flies on Flyscreen Door, Corrugated Iron, Timber Floorboards, Garden Fork, Leather Boots. This door characterises the qualities inherent in the bush, rural Australia and the outback. The image on this door is intended to be a self portrait as a bushranger, an anti-hero. A figure that symbolises the early history of this country and the contradictory position bushrangers held in the formation of a national identity. Moonlite was the name of a bushranger

Artificial Flies on Flyscreen Door, Corrugated Iron, Timber Floorboards, Garden Fork, Leather Boots

Aluminium wire mesh, timber, fake bricks, fake tiles, plastic plant. This door salutes urban Australia and the early years of Australian film by utilising a scene from a classic black and white film called Jewelled Nights (1925) starring Australian actress Louise Lovely with myself in the role. Because the nature of film is about artificiality and make-believe, I used fake brick wallpaper, tiles and a plastic plant to reinforce the fictitious nature of on-screen and also off-screen identities.

Aluminium wire mesh, timber, fake bricks, fake tiles, plastic plant

Aluminium wire mesh, steel, perspex, carpet. speedos. This door is based on my own bedroom door which is modern, aluminium with floor to ceiling glass panels and opens onto a balcony with views over Sydney harbour. The carpet at the foot of this door is to suggest that, unlike the other two doors, this door is looking outwards. The lifesaver has gained a prominent place in the annals of Australian icons and still maintains a respected place in the culture.

Aluminium wire mesh, steel, perspex, carpet. speedos