eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness

47 46 EX DE MEDICI: BEAUTIFUL WICKEDNESS Endnotes 1 Garth Nix, Clariel , Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2014, p.378. 2 Spearhead’s Metal Art, ‘How to: Simple Xerox/photocopy effect! 2021’ [Photoshop tutorial], YouTube , November 2021, <youtu.be/VRQXnHt8zTo >, viewed November 2022. 3 Paul Andrew, ‘Skin scribe for the tattoo tribe’, Melbourne Community Voice , 16 April 2005, no.173, p.9, accessed via The Ari Remix Living Archives , <remix.org.au/artist-ex-de-medici-is-a-voice-of-dissent-in-the-australian- art-world-skin-scribe-for-the-tattoo-tribe-melbourne-community-voice- mcv-april-16-2005-173-p-9/>, viewed November 2022. See also ‘Homes Gallery Saturday’ exhibition, which was located at 91 Northbourne Avenue, Turner, ACT, Saturday 3 May 1985, until its demise; photocopied flier, Courtesy: The artist. 4 eX de Medici, ‘Scenes from the Ivory Tower’ [artist statement], 26 October 1987, Courtesy: The artist. 5 Samantha Littley, ‘The more things change . . .’, in eX de Medici: From the Room of Dorian Gray [exhibition catalogue], Wollongong Art Gallery, Wollongong, NSW, 2020, n.p.; accessed via Wollongong Art Gallery , <wollongongartgallery. com/exhibitions/Documents/eX%20de%20Medici%20From%20the%20 Room%20of%20Dorian%20Gray%20exhibition%20catalogue.pdf>, viewed November 2022. 6 During this period, eX de Medici’s many ephemeral performances included I’mWalking (All Along the Road I’mWalking) 1985; see Rob La Frenais, ‘The spaces between the myth’, Performance Magazine , no.42, July–August 1986, p.9; accessed via Performance Magazine , <performancemagazine.co.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Performance-Magazine-42-July-Aug-1986. pdf>, viewed November 2022; however, her performance at ‘ANZ ART '85’, Auckland, 1985, and Scum , performed at Fotofeis Forum, Glasgow, 1997, are not covered here. 7 Lisa Waller, ‘Pauline not your average publican’, Canberra Times , 12 February 1989, p.26; accessed via Trove , <trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ article/120910232?searchTerm=tilley%20devine%20cafe%20lyneham>, viewed January 2023. 8 eX de Medici, Godscience #2: Tattoo for an Imperialist Who Thinks He’s God 1994. 9 Neil Howe, Parallel Realities: The Development of Performance Art in Australia , Thames & Hudson, Port Melbourne, Vic., 2017, p.108. 10 Sylvia Kleinert, Act 3 Canberra: Ten Australian Performance Artists: Aleks Danko, Graeme Davis, Bonita Ely, Dale Frank, Joan Grounds, Lyndal Jones, Jill Orr, Mike Parr, Jill Scott, Stelarc, Ken Unsworth , Canberra School of Art Gallery, Canberra, 1982. 11 The artists of the Bitumen River Gallery Collective, including Neil Roberts, have exciting trajectories of their own; see Anni Doyle Wawrzyńczak, How Local Art Made Australia’s National Capital , ANU Press, Acton, ACT, 2020; however, on this occasion, my attention is focused on eX de Medici’s photocopies of this period. 12 Speaking of (Pistol) and (Wedding Cake) , the artist wrote: ‘They are a gridded group, so they were printed at Canon. Only Canon had these printers . . . the inkjet multiple printers were still prototypes in 1985, very quickly replaced by the laser version. These two and a few others were made in 1985, as the laser printer prototypes arrived in 1986’; email correspondence with the artist, 27 March 2023. 13 The artist was familiar with Ian Burn’s Xerox book #1 1968 and Udo Sellbach’s Deluge 1983, both photocopy works in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; phone conversation with the artist, 28 October 2022. 14 eX de Medici would work with Canon in Canberra, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne over a period of 11 years (1985–96), developing a strong relationship with Rodney Bates, General Manager of Canon (Canberra) in the process; phone conversation with the artist, 25 March 2023. 15 This vacated solicitor’s office was located in Crawford Street, Queanbeyan; phone conversation with the artist, 28 October 2022. ( Wedding Cake) and ( Pistol) were included in ‘Bad Girls: Twenty Witness 1000’ , Canberra Contemporary Art Space, 8 February – 16 March 2013. 16 Samantha Littley, ‘Something wicked this way comes’, in eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, South Brisbane, 2023, p.20. 17 The inspiration for (Wedding Cake) comes from a dysfunctional moment in the life of eX de Medici’s maternal grandmother that was captured in a tiny format photograph of her wedding day; phone conversation with the artist, 28 October 2022. The original image that informs ( Pistol) is from a postage stamp-sized illustration in John Ogilvie, Imperial Dictionary of the English Language: A Complete Encyclopedie Lexicon, Literary, Scientific, and Technological , Charles Annandale (ed.), London, 1882–83; the sampled juxtaposition is of the floral pistil (the female reproductive organs of the flower) and pistol from the dictionary. 18 Kate Eichhorn, Adjusted Margin: Xerography, Art, and Activism in the Late Twentieth Century , MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2016. Eichhorn also argues: ‘while not necessarily queer by design, by virtue of historical circumstance and the fact that xerographic copiers were especially well adapted to clandestine uses, xerography came to play an integral role in the intersecting AIDS activist and queer rights movements of the 1980s to 1990s’, p.160; I thank exhibition curator Samantha Littley for this reference. 19 Virginia Cook, ‘Artist shown as worker’, Canberra Times , 20 February 1986, p.5. 20 ‘Work Saints’, Bitumen River Gallery, Canberra, 9 February – 2 March 1986. 21 With insight, local reviewer Sonia Barron described the performance as expository rather than judgmental; see Sonia Barron, ‘Charcoal and explanations’, Canberra Times , 28 February 1986, p.11. 22 Lisa Waller, ‘Nowhere’, Canberra Times , 5 November 1987, p.30. 23 ‘Anywhere’ from THAT Contemporary Art Space showed at Bitumen River Gallery, 18 February – 15 March 1987. ‘Nowhere Utopia: Uto (No) Topo (Place): An Exhibition of Photocopy and Faxed Images from Bitumen River Gallery’ showed at THAT Contemporary Art Space, 3–14 March 1987. eX de Medici’s work Scene from an Ivory Tower included ( Pistol) , along with images of gauntlets, a scold’s bridle, iron lung and gorget. The catalogue featured an essay by Sylvia Kleinert. See also ‘Bitumen River Gallery’, The Ari Remix Living Archives , <remix.org.au/bitumen-river-gallery/> , viewed November 2022. 24 ‘ARX '87: Australia and Regions Artists’ Exchange’ was hosted by a collective of artists and cultural producers in Perth; the residency was hosted by Claremont School of Art. Works were printed in colour at North Ryde, Sydney, and in black and white at St George’s Terrace, Perth; phone conversation with the artist, 28 October 2022. 25 Quoted from Coda and Baroque Exterior , in Ern Malley, The Poems of Ern Malley: Comprising the Complete Poems/and Commentaries by Max Harris and Joanna Murray-Smith , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988; phone conversation with the artist, 28 October 2022. Ern Malley’s poems were assembled by James McAuley and Harold Stewart as a collaborative hoax designed to pillory modernist verse; ironically, today, 'Malley's' poetry is read more than the individual poets’ own work. 26 This strategy reappears in works such as Blue (Bower/Bauer) 1998–2000. 27 Shown at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, as part of the exhibition ‘Another Scene from the Ivory Tower’, and later included in the ‘1990 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art’, the 40 heads were drawn from a larger body of 200 images taken over a six-month period; see Anne Virgo, ‘ I See, I Keep Quiet (Scenes from the Ivory Tower) 1989’, in Mary Eagle and Daniel Thomas (eds), 1990 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art [exhibition catalogue], Art Gallery Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1990, pp.36–7. By this time, the relationship with Canon was less a formal residency; the balance was beginning to shift as the artist’s exhibitions in increasingly prestigious galleries were repositioning the medium of photocopy, to the point where Canon wanted their logo to appear on the images produced for inclusion in the ‘1990 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art’ and in the exhibition catalogue for ‘60 Heads’. 28 Mary Eagle, ‘Introduction: New meanings for an Australian culture of many cultures’, in 1990 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art , p.8. 29 eX de Medici used the Canon four-colour laser copy system at Canon in Fyshwick, Canberra. 30 ‘60 Heads’ was co-curated by Jane Barney and the author; the exhibition toured for two years, beginning in March 1996 at Canberra Contemporary Art Space and concluding at Fotofeis in Scotland, in 1997. 31 Jenny McFarlane, ‘No dumb surface’, in Jane Barney, Jenny McFarlane and Gordon Bull, 60 Heads: eX de Medici [exhibition catalogue], Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra, 1996, n.p. 32 eX’s alias is a composite of her confirmation name, Xavier, coupled with the surname of the powerful mercantile family who ruled Florence, and subsequently, Tuscany, from 1434 to 1737, a constant reminder of the power of Church and capital. Bitumen River Gallery was a collective, so exhibition programming and other decisions were made as a group. The media of fax and photocopy were selected not only for ease of transport, but because they allowed for the de-emphasis of the artist as auteur; the faxed message that formed part of the exchange was similarly designed to lessen the focus on the individual. 33 See also Anneke Jaspers and Hannah Mathews (eds), Vivienne Binns: On and Through the Surface [exhibition catalogue], Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne), Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Sydney) and Powered by Power (Sydney), 2022. 34 Gordon Bull, ‘Blood simple’, in Christopher Chapman (ed.), 1996 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art , Art Gallery Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1996, p.58.