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My Birthday Party

A shrine-like altar piece that pays homage to the vernacular of ephemeral child’s play. And fittingly this parallel universe/arcadia is structured around the sublime
landscape of two mountain peaks that loom over my day-to-day activities, incrusted with plastic icons that watch over my every move like Mt Rushmore
until exploding with all the dramatics of Mt Vesuvius on party day.

The mountains are crowned with couples.  The left peak holds a robot of Herculean proportions whose voice booms out “My mission is to destroy;”
his partner a blow up girl resembling a hyper-real sex toy; the right peak holds heroic Optimus Prime and his virtuous Barbie.  These pairs articulate
the ever-present binary opposites of being human.

Alfred E. Neuman stands in the middle, arms out, simultaneously crucified as Christ and bewildered as human. The confusion and indifference towards
his own futile amorality is fundamental to Alfred’s humanist character as captured in his mantra: “What Me Worry?” – popular culture’s
“To be or not to be…” However, Alfred does have a hot chick!  Alfred/Jesus as the commanding centrepiece is reinforced by
Terry Richardson’s photograph depicting Vincent Gallo as a crucified Jesus.

In the heavens above the mountains the Sex Pistols and Robert De Niro (as Ace Rothstein in Casino) are the real autonomous gods and have the
final say over the goings on in this universe. In the middle of the mountains below Alfred, Edward the teddy bear sits solemnly, his emotional state
displayed through the little porcelain figure next to him of a young boy setting out on an endless journey with innocent enthusiasm.
Edward and the start of his journey is set to the backdrop of Uncle Sam’s skeleton leaning against the Golden Gate Bridge looking out over the
night skyline of San Francisco depicted in the ‘Dead Set’ Grateful Dead poster. Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Captain America (Peter Fonda) from
Easy Rider are shown in mid flight on their bikes, giving context to the real motorbike in the centre of the piece, setting the scene for the journey down
the mountain and opening up all the daydreams and nostalgia associated with road culture.

The party is as much a day of anxiety as it is a day of celebration, as the questions that arise are inevitably tabled. The film still of a helicopter carrying a
classical statue from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita hints towards the relationship between old and new gods and beliefs.