AustLit

Epigraph: memory swings back                / round
time is time travel to places
where I can re
write
the way it was done 

'For her 1993 work Lick and Lather, the artist Janine Antoni created fourteen busts in her own likeness. From a mould of her head and shoulders she cast seven life-sized replicas of herself out of chocolate, then seven more out of ivory-coloured soap. The resultant sets of almost-identical busts depicted Antoni in sharp, fine detail: eyes closed, hair slicked away from a low, heart-shaped hairline, lips with a barely perceptible downward turn. Once they were complete Antoni lovingly, languidly erased her features from each of the busts by gently licking and nibbling those made from chocolate and bathing with those made from soap. Afterward only the suggestion of herself remained, each statue masked with a smooth, newly-indistinct face that could belong to anyone.' (Introduction)

'During the devastating bushfires of 2020, a few seconds of footage became emblematic of the limitations of the Australian Prime Minister. In The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, Sean Kelly recounts the moment: Morrison was visiting a bushfire-afflicted town and approached a firefighter who told him, ‘I don’t really want to shake your hand.’ ‘Morrison moved his hand to the man’s left hand and grabbed it, appearing to move it slightly, then walked on to the next person.’ This apparent Morrisonian malfunction was shocking as an instance of thoughtless disrespect, but it was, Kelly believes, congruent with his approach to public life. More recently, Australian of the Year Grace Tame was subjected to Morrison’s strategic obliviousness, when her pained expression, as the Prime Minister shook her hand and posed for a photograph at a pre-Australia Day event, was made only more conspicuous by his resolutely blank grin, the face of a man unequipped to acknowledge or negotiate anything other than total compliance. Morrison behaves like this because he takes his task to be the arranging of images that will be seen by millions of potential voters, with every action in service of selling himself to that public. Therefore, the individual before him, the firefighter or the advocate for survivors of sexual assault, is erased.' (Introduction)