Upholding the ideal of democracy
Helen Johnson
(October 2006)
Artist statement: "This work deals with the rift between an idea of the individual within a democracy and the broader political framework which they exist within. The position which the political system occupies is, for many people, verging on the abstract. This is particularly so in Australia, where political accountability to 'the citizen' becomes increasingly eroded and abstract.
To me the idea of 'the citizen' sits at odds to the idea of the capitalist 'consumer', one being a member of a body which ideally moves towards the grater good, the other based on a cycle of personal desire/fulfillment. The work is an attempt to illustrate these ideas in a tableau which becomes almost like a game, images to be deciphered revealing themselves to be not as they first seemed, and an attempt to describe the real position of the individual within democratic society, versus the position we are given to believe we occupy.
These ideas about democratic systems, in particular the Australian democratic system, which is binary and disempowering, have been translated into an abstract work, because to me it is an abstracted idea to begin with. There are a number of elements in this work which can be read in two ways, embodying the irresolvable dualism of a capitalist democracy, and presenting the viewer with a choice of interpretation. I have chosen imagery of empires, hierarchies and climbing, all moving towards grand aspirations, but contextualised here as crafty, parochial objects.
Upholding the ideal of democracy
