ARTHUR APANSKI AND TONY TWIGG

Hangover

 

July - January 2016 at Darlington Installation Project

 Arthur Apanski takes a moral position in his art.  And it is a principled stand. He is against war, the greed that motivates it and along with it the suffering it delivers. My contribution to our collaboration was pragmatic in comparison. I was the one to offer Arthur’s skeleton wrapped in Australian bank notes a chair.

 

 

With deft precision Arthur’s works confront the viewer, in this case with the idea of money. For Arthur money, at best a necessary evil is the route of man’s inhumanity to man. Although it is ironic that once the war over money is fought it is money that we send the consequent refugees left struggling to begin life a new. Money spiralling in ever more incomprehensible numbers defines our homes as crippling mortgages and it’s money that we carelessly spend on a coffee, a movie, even lunch as a diversion from the sobering burden it becomes. Arthur has it right; we are “money to the bone”. The moral, like all morals however is open to interpretation and pragmatic presentation..

Arthur stood back from his work, examined it briefly. Satisfied he picked up his mobile phone, to arrange his next appointment. Like Elvis he had left the building and me wondering if one mans hangover might be another man’s inheritance.