Painting and Politics

Date: 19 July 2007

Out on the rolling, raging sea

Constellations - paintings by Peter Neilson

Elegance is evil. Viewing paintings by Melbourne artist Peter Neilson is like watching film noir fraught with corporate intrigue. Armani suited CEO's plot takeovers and tragedy behind teak desks and broadsheets.

Slender long legged women float through layers of high-rise offices in star spangled gowns. Floors rise underfoot into walls, windows open onto war zones or outer space, oceans pool inside basements, lights swing wildly overhead - all evoking a sense of a world fraught with danger, suspense and imminent collapse.

Peter Neilson, now one of Australia's widely recognised artists, has devoted his painting to a sophisticated political critique of economic rationalism, globalisation and the corporate underworld.

A mix of high-class glamour and evil permeates his visual narrative. His mostly large-scale work is layered with room upon room of towering offices collapsing in upon themselves. Perspective is distorted. Both surreal and op art his canvas is a maze of flat surfaces which bend and slide opening in on themselves. Walls morph into perilously slanting floors; figures glide graciously through dark corridors and confer with sinister intent over business transactions to live jazz.

Neilson's palette of shadowy greys, browns and black voids is highlighted by icy viridian green surfaces, blood red curtains and white business shirts.

"The art of Peter Neilson is very much a product of urban Melbourne radicalism. He was born in East Melbourne in 1944 and grew up in the inner - Melbourne suburb of Essendon where he formed a life long affiliation with the local football club," writes Dr Sasha Grishin art curator and critic, Australian National University. "Neilson, in a visual language, raises similar philosophical concerns as (French philosopher Jean-Pierre) Lyotard, when he speaks of late capitalism legitimating its power by stressing the system's efficiency, no matter how much the argument is lacking in logic."

Neilson's family were socialist and active members of Melbourne's peace movement. As a boy they took him along to rallies and assemblies on the banks of the Yarra where he met Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger. A generation on he took his family to peace rallies against the war in Iraq which now feature in his paintings.

Peter Neilson graduated from RMIT with a Diploma in Fine Art in 1964 firmly holding the conviction that art should have a social function, not just an aesthetic.

Constellations is testimony to this.

Constellations - paintings by Peter Neilson

See also

http://www.peterneilson.net

For further information

Contact:	Zoe Reynolds
Union:	Maritime Union of Australia
Email:	zoe@mua.org.au
WWW:	http://www.mua.org.au/

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