The '96 retrospective established Larry Bane as the prototypical Irish artist for the new millenium:  provocative, challenging, compassionate:  eager to engage in the discourse on emerging identity issues.  Larry disappeared from the Irish art scene soon after the retrospective, and reinvented himself in the charming coastal town of Southwest Rocks, Australia. In Fourteen Antipodean Pieces, Larry challenges us to deal with one of the most pressing issues of our times:  the issue of ‘issues’.  What is an issue?  Must it invariably be addressed?  Does it have to emerge?  These installations provoke, challenge and inform simultaneously.  Enjoy!

  Bas
 
 

Issues  In this piece the answer to the whole conundrum of ‘issues’ is exposed to the bone, providing, of course, we suspend disbelief and detach ourselves from cultural stereotypes.  The work is created in fiberglass, patinated with fine sand that has been airbrushed.  Subtle colourations – cerulean and ochre – appear in the upper parts.  The discourse engages our attention on two levels.  At the intellectual level the piece deals confronts the issue of ‘issues;  on the emotional level it must be approached with caution:  it is easy to be allured by the frivolous sentimentality, and overlook the pathos of the piece.
 
 

Dissertation on systemic tokenism  This piece actually created within a few months of Larry’s arrival in Australia.  It is a critical work that milestones a revitalization of his creativity.  Systemic tokenism in western societies has been rampant for a long time, and has been the subject of Larry’s wrath in several previous essays.  The piece is executed in fiberglass, but on a small scale:  it measures only 2.4 metres across.  The subdued patina is a bold and courageous step.  Note the irregular, almost rounded elements in the background that speak to the systemic aspect.

Awakening 237  Of all the installations in the exhibition, this one speaks most  directly to an issue that is tangential to the issue of issues.  Larry has been concerned about the assault on postmodernism by elements wedded to the American right – an assault led by the reactionary Barzun.  In From Dawn to Decadence Barzun opines that ‘…the culture of the last 500 years is ending…’.  Awakening 237 shows that there is no such ending.  Transgender issues and issues of diversity and cultural appropriation are confronted head on.  The recurrent circular to oval motif speaks to multiple ways out of our dilemma.  The piece resonates with allusions to diversity and multi-culturalism.

Lacky siders The edgy mood of Australian society after the internment of refugees in the first years of the new millennium is captured here.  Australians are all recent arrivals of course, except for the aboriginal peoples. This work is highly literal, speaking as it does to a geographic sense of space – scattered outposts of Anglo Saxon culture on a parched landscape.   The essence is simplicity, and an antique grammar that is essentialy pre-post-modern, with baroque undertones.
 
 

Towards a resolution The title alludes to unresolved issues of sexuality, equality, gender bias, diversity, and the discourse on multi-culturalism.  The work is an arrangement of ovoid elements arranged and intertwined with spongiform masses.  Setting aside the raw emotional elements, the piece engages us on several levels.   The appeal to issue resolution is obvious, of course, but are transgender issues really resolved here?   The ‘in your face’ allusion to diversity is overstated perhaps, leading us to miss the main point that Larry is making:  societies are dealing with multiple issues, but we must be careful in our haste to overthrow old patriarchal, elitist and discriminational orders not to overlook new, emerging voices – voices that may speak to emerging debates, and concerns with a diversity of discourse issues.

Compassion  The guru of anti-post-modernism  - Jacques Barzun – ended his trite summary of 500 years of western cultural life with a demented rage against many aspects of our lifestyles.  He asserted that compassion was ‘..The sign of the right-minded, truly human person;  compassionate was the highest compliment one could pay to the living or the dead.  All victims deserve pity and help, and as victims outnumbered everybody else (so to speak), since any person might turn victim overnight, there were plenty of opportunities for compassion’ (p. 787).  The meaning of compassion is evident here.  Unusually for Larry, the number of ovoid elements is reduced, so that they resemble a single recurring motif.
 
 

The dreamtime  An arrangement of ribbed elements, careful patination (a hallmark), and close attention to issues of structure as reflecting functionality are the hallmarks of this work, executed, we are told, as a riposte to the patriarchal and penilistic overtones that dominate Australian society.  The question posed is not as obvious as in other Bane pieces, a reflection perhaps of the artist’s immersion in issues of identity and transliteration.  The bold  horizontal element at the bottom of the work – an assertion of Bane’s tight control - is a reference to anecdotal elements in some of his Irish work, particularly those shown in the '98 retrospective.  The title alludes, of course, to the subtle underlying discourse on aboriginal rights.

Arrival  Even the most unobservant cannot escape the obvious dominance of Gothic elements here.  The ovoid motif seen elsewhere has metamorphosed into rectilinear elements that rise, overarch, and ultimately dominate the work.  This domination - an allusion to issues of patriarchy, neo-conservatism, and paternalism - is achieved at a price:  the understating of tonal variations that range from sienna to cerulean.  The work, unlike most of the other installations in the exhibit, was sand-blasted from a single sandstone block.

The empty store  Masterly control of the materials (fiberglass and resin), subdued colouration, and the juxtaposition of dissonant elements, these are the hallmarks of a piece that refers us to previous works dealing with issues of the suppression on diverse voices.  The ‘empty’ context alludes to a recent winner of the Tate Modern prize.  Bane’s humorous response to that event was evident in an installation in the '98 retrospective in which we are referred to the classic ‘Empty Store’ scam run by Sergeant Bilko (AKA Phil Silvers).  (Having trouble borrowing from friends, Bilko bought an empty store.  When word got round, investors clamored, nay begged him, to accept their money, despite protestations that it was just an empty store).  The piece retains a sense of humour without abandonment of the deeper sub-texts on issues of gender bias.

Triumph of postmodernism  Postmodernism has been defined as "the vast process of the destruction of meaning".  Larry Bane’s work, of course, is commonly pregnant with meaning, dealing as it does with multiple-layered issues of patriarchalism, gay-lesbian-bi-sexual-transgender and pan-sexual rights, diverse cultural voices.  Nonetheless, despite the presence of recognizable motifs, this piece speaks to issues of destruction of meaning, in the sense that meaning is absent.  Horizontal elements bisect the piece into multi-layered ovoid ‘cells’

Dublin, 1916  "Ireland may, or may not, have a future.  It certainly has no past.  Brian Boru and Oisin are contemporary figures.  Some years, as a matter of bare chronology, divide Queen Tailtu, Roderick O’Connor, Strongbow, Cromwell, Parnell, and Arthur Griffith.  To the Irish mind they are all men of today, at the farthest men of the day before yesterday.  The historical mind (enjoyed by all the European nations except the Turks) which is capable of regarding the past with unemotional attachment is totally absent in Ireland.  There it is still as easy to arouse enthusiasm in the names of Cuchulain and Smith O’Brien as in the name of Daniel Breen.  An audience of Kerry bogtrotters can as easily be stirred to a frenzy of tumultuous hate by a few well chosen words about Poyning or Strafford as by a like reference to Lord Carson or Sir Hamar Greenwood.  It follows that no Irishman has ever written an impartial history of Ireland. …Michael Collins was scarcely cold in his grave before he became the hero of as many mythical adventures as Fionn.  There was only one difference.  If he had survived, Collins would, no doubt, have written his own biography".

This ghastly poison was written by C.H. Bretherton, the odious English correspondent of an English paper in the 1920’s.   Bane is deeply interested in history, and particularly Irish history.  He was appalled when he discovered Bretherton’s poisonous tome ‘The Real Ireland’, a work that could not be published in our era on account of its overt racism.  Dublin 1916, according to Larry, is a refutation of Bretherton, and an assertion of Ireland’s past in the context a modern, diverse, multi-cultural state that has taken its rightful place on the European stage.  Ovoid elements speak to issues of culture and diversity.  The piece is executed in plaster, concrete and resin.  It is notable for the use of thin elements that traverse the repeated ovoid motifs.

The dancers  This is the second of the two pieces in the exhibition with strong allusions to Ireland.  It is actually a bronze casting, although the heavy patina makes this hard to discern.  This piece works on many levels; it resonates; it speaks to issues of stereotyping; it registers several dissonant notes that may cause discomfort to some.    Bane has written elsewhere of the achievements of a culture reviled by the likes of Bretherton (see above).  To the invention of the penny whistle we must add tap dancing, the soundtrack to Barry Lyndon, and the invention of the car bomb - an achievement that resonates around the globe, from Lebanon to Baghdad (Shome mishstake here surely: ed.).

Issues  This work gives its name to the exhibition, and deserves to do so.  The ovoid motif is on two levels:  multiple small-scale elements, and a single large element that dominates the central field.   In the depths of the central motif (beneath a thick layer of resin!) we glimpse lurking ovoid elements.  The work is a response to the conservative project in the United States.  It addresses the threat to issues of diversity, GLBT rights.  It questions the moral authority of patriarchal Christian churches in western societies.

Farewell to Gundagai We are confronted by several large ovoids, an obvious illusion to Bane’s discomfort with the rightist elements in Australian society.  Like the previous piece, this marks a critical stage in the development of Bane’s work.  The move away from multiple ovoid elements externalizes his disillusionment, and alludes to other motives, perhaps even a dissatisfaction with the role of the artist in a consumerist society.  The work speaks in a subdued voice to issues of entitlement and race.  There are several subtle references to developments in New York, London, Los Angeles and other ‘art’ centres.  The handling of paint around the large ovoids is ‘masterly’, to use a word that speaks of outmoded relationships between the artist and society.