DIPTERA - Revisited and Reconstructed

While in London in the early 1990s I presented an Installation where a dead fly was sandwiched in a slide and projected in a star shaped format within the gallery space. This work, on one level, was to highlight an Australian icon in a visually reconfigured way. On another level it was to investigate aspects of representation and illusion.

Diptera, began as a series of collaborative installations by myself and two other artists, Peter Johnstone and Rod Spinks. The project was first exhibited in 1993, as an associated project within the Fifth Australian Sculpture Triennial at the Museum of Victoria. It was then exhibited at the Southgate promenade, during the Melbourne Festival the same year (which can be seen 'sampled' in the DVD presented in this exhibition) It was also presented at the Warrnambool Art Gallery in 1995 and Mildura Art Gallery in 1996.

The initial idea was to introduce the audience to an unofficial Australian icon, an organism generally viewed in a negative light - the common blowfly. The idea grew conceptually and became multi layered. We then wanted to create a visual interplay between the artificial and the actual, drawing attention to our preconceptions of a "natural" world. We also aimed to question the form in which an artwork should take and what constitutes the pronouncement of what an artwork can be.

On this occasion the project has been re-presented as a montage, almost a 'greatest hits' brought together within the framework from which I, personally and presently work, ie. digitally. It was my intention with this work to present a technological altarpiece, where the viewer is confronted with all aspects of illusion, even the inclusion of perspex sides refers to reflective illusions as well as acknowledging the initial projects use of perspex boxes to contain the actual flies. The quote; "Who saw him die......" is a   ryme from the 18th Century by William Oldy. This quote acknowledges a form of visual analysis, where the fly might see more than the human.

It has been noted that the representation of a life-size fly often appears conspicuously placed in several 15th Century European paintings, usually the fly has no symbolic meaning. The subject matter of these paintings was usually religious and some historians have assumed that the fly served as a protective talisman, to deter actual undesired insects from leaving dirt marks on the brush work of a sacred theme, an early form of art conservation. This can be seen in the work of Carlo Crivelli (see reproduction). In this painting it is as if the fly inhabits our world not the represented saintly world. He has created an illusion to destroy an illusion 1

1 Untricking the Eye- The Uncomfortable Legacy of Carlo Crivelli, Johnathan Watkins, Artscribe, 1989.