nicholas nicola etchings


CONTEMPORARY

Contemporary digital artwork which may also be considered 'experimental' printmaking will be featured including the following series: *  Especially in the contemporary series  itself further images maybe regularly added in response to ongoing daily observations by the artist. It should be mentioned that while downsizing complex issues down to simple headlines it can be said that some of the opinions/ statements are meant to be provocative and to 'stir the pot' but it is not the intention of the artist to deliberately offend anyone - that would be both dehumanizing and counter-productive. Discourse/dialogue is meant to be initiated even though a final agreement may not be reached.

group photo of first world tourists on 7 day package tour of indochina

wedding cake island

johnny cash and the innate meaningfulness of each individual life in a thousand worlds (followed by enlarged text)

modern archeology: travel mementoes

contemporary

australian mateship  (pioneer life and the destruction of aboriginal society)

use-by-date

american war boogie woogie  (followed by conventional text).

american war boogie woogie II

the defence secretary  has his fingers crossed behind his back.

colombia: where is the west? *

start

found objects

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GROUP PHOTO OF FIRST WORLD TOURISTS ON 7 DAY PACKAGE TOUR OF INDOCHINA. (ANKOR WAT).

WEDDING CAKE ISLAND.  (SYDNEY).

  johnny cash and the innate meaningfulness of each individual life in a thousand worlds

 johnny cash and the innate meaningfulness of each individual life in a thousand worlds

As I sifted through hundreds of old photos in dusty cardboard boxes I sanguinely noted how quite a few of my favourite ones have been ruined or lost. I realised how these half-forgotten, faded paper images had taken on a nostalgic ‘archival quality’; ‘visual soundings’ of the past which I had been motivated to review after it dawned on me at the Apostrophe Café exhibition the autobiographical nature of my printmaking. Johnny Cash’s video clip of singing Hurt came to mind: a montage of images of his life juxtaposed to lyrics brooding on the very transience of it. Johnny Cash’s rendition makes me, at least, aware of the innate meaningfulness of each individual life. Memory is lost with death. Thus, the human impulse to capture with symbols (written and visual language) any ephemeral moment before it disappears; to picture the present as it invariably becomes the past so it will be recounted in a future yet to come and for generations yet to be born; the unborn to know the dead. Life is in between: a firework that briefly lights up a vast dark sky. I recall what a friend said to me at a Darlinghurst rooftop New Years Eve party as the fireworks lit up the Kings Cross skyline: “There are a thousand worlds.” Within the many tiny fireballs within each immense floating fireball I could imagine a separate life vignette; yet all to be enveloped by the night.

The artist as shaman in the cave re-presents an afterlife ‘other-world’ that will not fade; whose immortal qualities need to be mirrored in this mortal world so life can continue seamlessly when the human spirit ‘ascends’ from a physical self-contained perimeter (re: the human body) that will dissolve; to an ever constant non-material boundless ether: eternalness. Much present-day art may no longer serve an overtly religious function but there is still an inherent desire that continues to link us to our Neolithic forebears: to defy time; with the simple press of a mobile camera button a fleeting present is crystallized. Life as ‘readymade’; every human being a ‘found object’; the ordinary transfixed as extra-ordinary.

With the mass availability of instant digital photo technology and of mass digital high speed visual transportation systems such as the internet it is apparent that the mass urge to record ‘life’ has enormously magnified; each individual can immediately be the ‘historian’ of oneself; each digital ‘icon’ can become an additional fragment of a new ever-mutating paradoxical ‘eternal present’ re: that endless electronic window: cyberspace; what is particular and private can be contextualised as a microcosm of the universal and public; (such is the perceived commonality of human experience). Art democratized. Each life does count; Johnny Cash asks what has he become? Old; wise - but then dust; yet, I can watch every stage of his life through images on a virtual desktop that will not fade; sustained only by light: that ‘other-world’ on the cave wall is now readily available anywhere on the globe on every computer and television screen; each life can be viewed and appreciated; just as art on a societal level exists to form (and reform) and preserve cultural memory every individual memory also has the opportunity to transcend death; our unlimited human imagination continually multiplying; as well as limitlessly able to record in multiple ways what each generation sees what it diversely means to be human for all time – lest we forget.

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MODERN ARCHEOLOGY : TRAVEL MEMEMENTOES  which belong to the artist.

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CONTEMPORARY 

 australian mateship

These poems are in response to the historical record of pioneer frontier life in Australia which came at such a ruthless cost to the original population. Consider the many massacres, atrocities, displacement from land etcetera. The Myall Lake Massacre was one major source for these poems.

 

USE-BY-DATE 

AMERICAN WAR BOOGIE WOOGIE   dealing mainly with the second iraq war *

* Followed by American Boogie Woogie II after Conventional Text. 

conventional text  

 everyone in america feels shamed

 american shame

 chief advocate for this war

 rumsfeld

 torture school

 someone in the administration has been teaching and authorizing these people how to carry out these torture techniques

 an R rating war

 this war is for mature audiences only it is morally pornographic

 environmental concern

 those higher up in the command chain made this abusive environment

 the next september 11

 the next september 11 will also be exploited

 defence-secretary rumsfeld finds it impossible to answer a question

 I’ll ask it again: who was in charge of the interrogations?

 b/rat administration

 this administration is a secret we live in dangerous times and this administration is dangerous

 the word is rape

 a male US military police guard had sex with a female detainee

 an apologist talks about realpolitik

 there are always atrocities

 a democrat speaks

 senator kennedy said it was shameful

 under new management

 saddam’s torture prison has opened to U.S. MANAGEMENT.

 body count

 90% of prisoners were wrongfully arrested

 the midnight oil which warned us

 U.S. forces get the nod a setback for your country

 holy technology

 we have forces that can fight in the darkness as well as in the light

 the president assures us

 we’ll honour the rule of law

 the president would never lie

 we are fully committed to your national dignity you are a people of integrity

 war is peace

 we are not technically at war

 redemption through blood on the video

 an american was beheaded to redeem through blood the abuses

 the writing on the wall:

 keep fighting the americans!

 a very modern question

 can we fight a war in a media age?  

 the president asks

 why do they hate us?

rumsfeld makes a vehement denial that this behavior was driven from washington d.c.

 it’s not how it works!

 george likes donald

 you are doing a superb job the nation owes you a debt of gratitude

 the wild logic of the dogs of war

 wild dogs intimidate a naked detainee this naked detainee is bitten by wild dogs

 a rebuttal

 abuses not happen in battle heat planned in saddam’s renovated torture prison

 dirty dozen churn president’s stomach

 the president was deeply disgusted by the dozen new unpublished photos

 the president is ashamed

 the president cannot believe these shameful activities were carried out by americans

 war logic has it’s own technique

 we are not at war we are not there to free iraq it [iraq] is already free

 steroid quagmire

 if the marines leave iraq it will be like the lebanon on steroids

 an apologist’s pressure cooker

 there was strong pressure to find information on the terrorists and W.M.D.s

 rumsfeld boasts and sniggers to the troops at baghdad of whom some may die tomorrow

 I am a survivor!

 evil eye

 blue is the colour of the crusading eye

 what some of the arab newspapers think

 it is an evil policy in iraq not evil soldiers

 the white house spokesman says sorry half a dozen times with pictures/ with new pictures/ with even more new pictures/ with a never ending supply of new pictures

 

SORRY

SORRY

SORRY

SORRY

SORRY

SORRY

 unrequited satisfaction breeds dissatisfaction

 the apology is not enough said the man in cairo

 the america the president knows

 the america that I know is compassionate AMERICA IS COMPASSIONATE

 

 

AMERICAN BOOGIE WOOGIE II 

The Defence Secretary  has his fingers crossed behind his back.

COLOMBIA : Where is the West? 

start 

FOUND OBJECTS 

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* It should be declared that in Group Photo of First World Tourists On 7 Day Package Tour of Indochina (Ankor Wat) and Wedding  Cake Island that they are photo collages which involve stock photos  from the internet placed on top of original photos by the artist. In Neo-Platonic Form another stock photo from the web has been used. In Colombia: Where Is the West? there are also other photos/images which have been appropriated from various literary/film/stock sources in  the four  visual/literary pieces. In LAW 303 a stock photo from the internet has also been used 

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