I was reminded with all the stories around the Indo-Pacific and naval activities of some artworks from my 1992 solo exhibition Dualities. I was 24 and they have that graphic style from the era as I was doing graphic design back then before I discovered paint and canvas. It is the same theme, starting with dry pastel on paper in very vivid colours (1). All titled the same, Ship of Fools. This first image was actually the last incarnation. I started off with some pen and ink cross hatch drawings (3), the theme then evolved into an etching/aquatint on cotton rag (2).

My Rearview Mirror posts are a remembrance of things I did in the past, which have come full circle to bite us. The exponential exposion of AI, and the launch of ChatGPT, has made everyone aware that AI has made a gigantic leap and left the test tube. Those of us in the margins of creative thinking who tried to warn policy makers over a decade ago perhaps feel less awful about that today. After all, they have ignored bigger fish like Stephen Hawking…

This is a digitised visual diary entry I made in 2005 and later used in my paintings for a solo exhibition called The Assassination of Judy Garland back in 2013. I have a lot of sketches and studies which never seen to see the light of day, and I’m turning them into prints in some cases, or adding them into my studies of the present. This one was scribbled Energize Mr Ellis on a print I found in one of my files. It was about fragmenting materiality, or disintegration such as dropping something in an acid bath, in this case, myths of American exceptionalism…

“William Blake’s character Orc and I did a metaphorical bar hop and imagined our way into a bar in Richmond on a typically cold, wet winter Melbourne evening. The windows were steamed up from the kitchen and after many whisky shots we were both worse for wear. Back in my real-time studio of course, it was gin & tonics…So, in my imaginary studio conversations, Orc was in verbal stream-of-consciousness about how men saw their violence as crucial to their hero’s journey…

This is a new drypoint print about my ‘imaginary’ meeting with William Blake’s Orc from his poem America a Prophecy (1793). In my process of painting Australia a Prophecy in 2021, I engaged with William Blake’s poem America a Prophecy and that poem’s main character Orc. The following is a transcript from my 2023 talk to The Blake Society in January 2023. I used the term “imaginary conversation” in a performative way to bring my process alive in that talk and to walk the audience through the concept of a focused imagination as a ‘doorway’ into the visionary processes…

This print was created as a visual prayer to my God (but choose your own with my blessing:) to prevent the architects of the AUKUS agreement from completing their frightening visions - for visionary power can be used for any ends. I hope it assists you to create your own navigational tool that doesn’t break too easily in rough storms…As we witness Blake’s Lions and Wolves (Australian & US &UK governments, military and supporting journalists) converge to show their true identity in their attacks and silencing of those opposing AUKUS …

This post is a little drip-feed post of excerpts from my Dad’s unfinished memoirs. I’ll keep adding to it off and on. He died in 2018. Dad (Ramanathan Gopalkrishnan) was only 8 years old when war came to Penang in Malaysia in what we now call the ‘Indo-Pacific’. His father, my grandad, was assumed dead after not returning home after the 1941 bombing & occupation of Penang by the Japanese.

I’m posting two drypoint prints I printed as part of a print-mentoring session with WA fellow Artist Monika Lukowska last week. It’s titled Conversations with Orc III, but in my mind I’m already calling it The Spirit of AUKUS,… when I entered into this imaginary conversation about the AUKUS agreement and the Indo-Pacific, Orc started to ‘act-out’ the battles of his past…

“A story only the Far East could tell”. “Daring”. “Your dream of Romantic Adventure come true”. - Clark Gable. - Jean Harlow - Wallace Beery. - Rosalind Russell. No, this is not another speech by US General Mike Minihan. It is a classic 1935 Hollywood movie called ‘China Seas’ directed by Tay Garnett from Warner Bros Studio led by two memorable movie stars Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

This year is the 90th birthday of my late father Ramanathan. He had a passion for the work of Father Bede Griffiths, the English Benedictine Monk who went to India and became a very revered spiritual teacher. This is a video to reflect on, a lecture Father Bede gave in Perth in 1985 attended by my father. He was so excited when he returned home, and in 2023 it feels very right to invite others to share in my memories.

It came as a shock to many in my Australian multicultural network that not only was I born in England but I have identified with it throughout my entire life. It has shared a special place with my Indian and Chinese heritage of my parents, my connection to their Singaporean and Malaysian roots and formed my understanding of the flaws and pain caused by British colonialism… I have always been inspired by my father who transformed his experiences of colonialism through his deep faith,…

These are some early details from a series of works I’m working on concurrently in 2022. Anticlockwise from this top left and beneath, details from two canvases which started as a long 3 metre triptych (but I ran out of puff sorry). First one is called “Made in Taiwan”; the second is called “Supernature”. They are inspired by music from the late 70s. During the lockdowns I was listening to a lot of 70s Euro disco.

I’ve known Kelvin Ferris for over 10 years and, in that time, it has been clear to me that his service to Australia at the Battle of Coral-Balmoral during the Vietnam War in 1968 has remained a constant and difficult companion. This year, shrapnel embedded in his chest from that battle moved out from his ribcage. After it was removed, he seemed more open to talk about his experiences…

This is a homage also to 70s Europop and disco anthems like Marc Cerrone and his classic dance hit Supernature, which to me during the early Covid19 lockdowns was really prophetic. The painting has references to an Egyptian God escorting the dead, our constantly changing attitudes to death throughout the Millennia from the gruesome to the spiritual, our internal monsters manifesting in the growth of the far-right, and Marilyn because, well, who wouldn’t want Marilyn dancing on your grave, especially since this painting is part of a theme across several canvases which I titled: Shadow Dancing. It is painting about our ecosystem fighting back.

These are my first drypoint prints for decades - Akinesia and Gloria which I did today. My pet project is reworking a selection of my visual diaries over the past 3 decades. I wanted to do a series of prints, but it's been two decades since I did any etchings and I don't own a press. So, I'm incredibly grateful to printmaker Monika Lukowska-Appel here in Perth in Western Australia at the Midland Arts Junction who ran a workshop for artists in my area.

My painting re-imagines William Blake’s poem America A Prophecy (1793) exploring Australia in the Indo-Pacific. I followed a similar journey to Blake, exploring my own spiritual and mythic values, in the political theatre across decades. Blake’s character, Orc challenges our view of what’s right and wrong. ‘Australia A Prophecy’ asks if military leaders see themselves as Orc the Saviour or – like the Hindu God Shiva – Orc the Destroyer of Worlds.

I don’t know what made me pick up an old copy of E.M. Forster’s 1952 anthology of essays Two Cheers for Democracy, but I did. I re-read one of the most engaging pieces of writing I read back in 2010 when I was researching for my exhibition The Assassination of Judy Garland….

On the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, it feels natural to me to revisit the paintings I did from 2003 to 2005 to process the profoundly altered society we were navigating at that time.In hindsight, I can see how we altered our world. I found the policy profession after this event no longer demanded of its practitioners…

Bildungsroman is a self-portrait which continues my exploration of the universal spiritual and philosophical canon to ‘Know Thyself’. I have followed a multi-faith journey held together by the creation of a personal God that expresses my own culture. We talk in private, so painting us speaking in metaphors maintain that sacredness…

This drawing is how I felt after watching George Floyd die on the internet and the BLM riots and the Covid 19 pandemic lockdown, I can only post this and hope we will get through this together. SInce then we’ve also had January 6th in the US….

I somehow got chatting with Prof Victoria Pagan, an expert in classic literature at the University of Florida in the US who was teaching an undergraduate class on The Oresteia. My painting A Many Splendored Thing (2020), and the Furies became a trigger for a class discussion.