Greater Dandenong's Unwrapped Exhibition Artist - James Hale

JAMES HALE

UNWRAPPED

This virtual exhibition, part of the City of Greater Dandenong's Unwrapped: Celebration of LGBTIQA+ Arts and Culture, is one of three exhibitions by artists using paper as a medium to explore their lives and experiences.

James Hale is a queer artist based in Melbourne.

He makes small, colourful, text based oil paintings on cardboard. They can be sad, bitchy, sexy, devastating, offensive, funny, bitter, fatalistic, inscrutable, sensitive, stupid, or profound.

James Hale’s works are bold, thought-provoking and witty.Their minimalist nature intensifies the thoughtful meanings and musings behind the work.

His use of cardboard as a medium stems from it being readily available and affordable. However, in time the medium has become integral to the work.

This unique medium allows him to make art wherever and whenever he can.

This accessibility and ability to make art at any time is also central to the themes of his work which tangentially examine a wide range of issues, moments in time and observations.

These painted statements are then complemented by his razor-sharp written descriptions, further unwrapping and exploring the paintings they sit alongside.

This is me unenthusiastically observing trends and thinking about the fine line between ironically hideous and actually hideous, and how the line shifts over the years.

Much of the camp paraphernalia listed in Susan Sontag's Notes on camp (Tiffany lamps, Aubrey Beardsley drawings etc) is no longer considered camp.

Now it's considered expensive.

A complete detailing of the wild sexual adventures of many during Melbourne lockdown

In December 2019, a friend messaged me a Tweet from the genius American writer and critic Tobi Haslett "Ridiculous that I went this entire decade without becoming the subject of a queer painting" he followed this screenshot with "that makes one of us" which I immediately wrote on a piece of cardboard, photographed, and sent back to him.

A slight tweaking of the marvellous New Order song Bizarre Love Triange, because a triangle is hardly bizarre anymore.

A wise move, I think.

In 2007, my friend (redacted) relayed an interview she had seen with (redacted). The interview, for (redacted) was from the early 1990s and very crude and sensational. The interviewer asked the question "(redacted)?" she replied "feel it" and why shouldn't she?

You must remember this.

A friend was watching Casablanca and was inspired to pen these queer new lyrics to "As time goes by" as you do.

I want to be very clear on this point - I Love (with a capital L) Andy Warhol. I also love Valerie Solanas, whose 1968 shooting of Warhol eventually lead to his death in 1987. Talented and mentally ill with equal profundity, her SCUM manifesto and her brilliant, hilarious play "Up your ass" are only just beginning to be understood in 2020. Any day now, she could finally be taken seriously as a realist writer.