WEBVTT
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(gentle music)
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(gentle upbeat music)
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So the two portraits that I'm gonna talk about today
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are two of my favourites in the exhibition.
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I think they're fantastic,
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not only for their sort of visual similarities,
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but also the kind of narrative behind the two sitters works.
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So the first one is Hari Ho's
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2005 portrait of Dadang Christanto.
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And the second one is Dusan Marek's
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1965 "Scientific priest".
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Dadang Christanto, he is
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an Indonesian man of Chinese descent
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and he moved over here
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to Australia kind of later in life
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but he had to survive through the whole Indonesian genocide
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of the 19, of 1965 to '66.
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And it sort of plays on this sort of concept of
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the fact that during the Indonesian genocide,
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they'd often sort of chuck bodies
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into bodies of water
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and every now and then you'd walk past
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either the beach or a lake
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and you'd just see kind of body parts
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sticking up from places,
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which is really quite a horrific image
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but it's obviously one that's stayed with him
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because when Harry ho asked to take his portrait,
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he said, "where'd you wanna take it?"
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And Christanto immediately went, "the beach".
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So they went down to the beach and apparently
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the story of this particular portrait
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is that they were at the beach.
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They decided they were gonna dig a hole
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that was deep enough for Christanto to sit in.
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And so he is sitting there covered in sand and ha hope
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pours a bucket of water, sea water, on top of him.
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And when sand is made wet, it starts constricting.
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So the look on his face is one of,
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basically, "I can't breathe."
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"I'm absolutely terrified."
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And I think that sort of expression on his face is similar
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to that of the scientific priest in Marek's work.
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In that... so both sitters, well,
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I assume, the scientific priest is somewhat
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of a self portrait.
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Though it may not be.
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I like to think that it is.
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But both of them were migrants to Australia
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But Marek came over to Australia really early on
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'cause he had to escape Stalinist Slovakia in 1948.
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So he came over here.
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He was in a migrant camp, moved to Adelaide, moved to Tassie
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did all this stuff and got really into surrealism.
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And I really enjoy this work because, you know,
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it's called scientific priest and it looks like a globe
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but it looks like a, sort of,
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almost it lays to me like nuclear waste.
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And like in the context of the 1960s
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when it was painted, this holds a whole, sort of, like,
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cold war situation.
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I really enjoy that sort of questioning
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and the questioning gaze
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'cause one of his eyes is half filled with water,
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and the mouth is surrounded completely in yellow,
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and there's a little red spot way up above his ear.
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And I just find that the more you look
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the more you can sort of imbue meaning
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into the different, the different colours.
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And I do kind of enjoy
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that they both have elements of the natural world as well.
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So the scientific priest, it looks like a globe
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but it's not, not the globe as we know it, I suppose.
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Yeah.
It's kind of got
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that level of, like, there's no there's no blue,
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but there are really really deep colours
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that could be ocean.
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And I feel like it also, you know
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it has you questioning just the name, "Scientific Priest",
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has you questioning that sort of line between,
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you know, contemporary science and God.
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And the role that people play in that sort of dichotomy.
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And I just, I think looking
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at them next to each other, I don't know
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they make me feel like they're telling me something more
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than just being two portraits.
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And I find that really powerful.
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That's incredible.