AUKUS Chronicles/Studio Notes: A Visual Prayer for Protection from The Captains of AUKUS, new drypoint prints
The Mental Fight (digitally adjusted drypoint print-in-progress), by Carl Gopalkrishnan March 2023
I did 4 prints in my drypoint session with Monika this month. I posted one of my “Conversations with Orc” alternatively titled “The Spirit of AUKUS” in reference to 3 prints documenting the psychology of William Blake’s violent saviour archetype Orc during imaginary studio conversations for my painting Australia a Prophecy. My followers are well aware that I am person of faith and my story. A former Catholic who embraced the multifaith journey across all faiths and healed the many faith contradictions within my own family and with my gay identity. I still face the same discrimination by academics, other artists and policymakers as I have each decade for having a faith period, that hasn’t stopped, but I keep to my vision as an Artist and just do my own thing. Over the decades my art has become my prayer on so many levels.
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 (coming to an ordinary family & workplace near you soon), Blake’s poems explore ‘Evil’ as a non-corporeal energy that shape-shifts into society’s orthodox religions and institutions in society. Prayer, after all, is hopeful
Blake’s epic poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell comes to mind. To blend in, our ordinary Satan-next-door energy evades our radar and looks perfectly reasonable. He thrives in our secular psychological dialogues where emotion, mythology and morality is considered inferior tools or argument. Experts have long admitted that it is hard to prevent sociopaths attracted to the violence of the military and combat to be detected. But I think, like all organisms, we give off unique vapours, vibrations and movements that are detectable.
In a literary sense - and applied to the AUKUS decision today - our ‘ordinary Satan-next-door’ has no need for theatrical Stephen King-Style Luciferian stereotypes. He/She/They can blend into our political, military and media establishment and sound perfectly reasonable - and this week they did. In our fear and disconnections from each other, we blithely ignore the prophetic warning of William Blake’s poetry written before the creation of the fields of psychological operations and information warfare. This print, like my other, has already been nicknamed another name by a friend (why do they not like my titles?). I put it in the title of this blog: “A Prayer to The Captains of AUKUS”.
