Adoption, 1993-2003
Light jet print from Polaroid original
, Number 5 from an edition of 15 + 2 A/Ps
100.0
x 100.0
cm
SOLD
Provenance
Provenance
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney
This bluntly titled photograph is a document of black, plastic-toy babies presented on a tray by the artist, and printed to a scale that, as if a chocolate crackle, tempts a hand to reach in and pluck one from its paper casing.
It is an unforgettable and uncompromising image from Deacon, who has long used dolls to make her political pictures. They give the perfect mix of insouciance and gravity: essential ingredients in her delivery of devastatingly kitsch humour.
Hannah Fink elaborated in her seminal text on contemporary Indigenous art:
‘Her home-grown theatre of the absurd stars members from her copious collection of Aboriginal kitsch, battered thrift shop effigies that carry the burden of the grotesque incongruity between real and imagined Indigeneity. There is nothing vicarious about Indigenous suffering, however, and beneath the jest is the living hurt of a history of poverty and contempt.’ (Hannah Fink in 'Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia', Sydney, 2004)
Image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and the artist