gallery 2
May 17 - Jun 13
Simon Gregg
Alphamale
image: Unbecoming Behaviour 2004 oil & acrylic on board 92x72cm
Comprising 24 new works, ALPHAMALE showcases childhood animalism in all its forms. Inspired by a documentary on gorillas and monkeys, ALPHAMALE applies the social behaviour of apes in the wild to children growing up in a domestic environment. We are voyeurs as small humans learn to grapple and negotiate their way around domestic spaces – through houses, backyards, and other familiar territory. Like animals in cages, the children play with and challenge their homes, and eventually, come to assert their dominance over them and, by inference, all that lies within.
ALPHAMALE continues Gregg’s 10-year interest in depicting archetypal boy and girl figures, as they twist, leap, tumble and dance their way through homages to domestic disquiet. Each picture evokes a sprawling and surreal suburbanism, where fragments of the everyday slowly metamorphose into a dark visual language of wonder and fascination. Like the Go-Betweens’ song Streets Of Your Town, beneath the suburban idyll something darker is lurking. Beyond the red tiled roof and the guilt-free sprinkler on the back lawn, there are secrets.