Week 5: Troy-Anthony Bayliss

Troy-Anthony Baylis was born in1976 with Irish and Aboriginal heritage and is a descendant of the Jawoyn people from Australia’s Northern Territory. Troy-Anthony Baylis is a visual artist, performer and social activist. In his visual arts practice, the artist employs strategies of narration that have been developed in the intercourse between traditional Aboriginal art and Western art of the first half of the 20th century. Troy is part of a larger contemporary movement, Indigenous and Queer, building on art, film and literary explorations of Indigenous culture that are evolving across Australia. The artist has 3 "performing bodies" which he uses in both his art work and performances. He adopted the term "performing bodies" from Judith Butler because he says they help him convey emotion in ways possibly unavailable to him if he were in his own skin. His three persona's include Kaboobie, Ricky Mortus and Barbara Cartland. Kaboobie is a die hard Kylie Minogue fan who mostly performs Tina Turner. Bayliss himself has a huge Kylie Minogue collection which he sometimes exhibits. Ricky Mortus is a play on both the term rigamortis and Ricky Martin. This character is more male and he uses this to articulate death. Finally there is Barbara Cartland who is the world's largest selling romance novelist. These persona's are important due to the influence they have on the artists work.

The painting below depicts Kaboobie lying in a desert offering her body as 2 shelters. It is part of a series called "Ricky Mortus Southern Death" which was Bayliss' first show at Tandanya in Adelaide 12 years ago.

'Nude Kaboobie Too Humpy'

'Four Familiars'

The image above, also from the Ricky series, features dogs inspired by drawings from early explorers who depicted dingoes in this way.

Bayliss describes the following works as "emotional landscapes". They are painting in oil onto canvas reaching lengths of 2 metres tall. He says in these images he is imagining his country and that these paintings are like love letters with the one on the left having a full stop at the end. He also described it as "works which blow air kisses at modernity". The image on the right was painted with white out.

Below is a work which features the detail of 8 sunsets which are all knitted. The piece stands 4 metres tall. It also relates to the Sunset print series produced by Andy Warhol in 1972. One reviewer stated that 'his choice of material guarantees the softness and his choice of colours creates equally radiating images. The knitting process, however, creates a surface structure that Bayliss highlights, emphasising it by incorporating surface pattern.'

While Bayliss was travelling Berlin and Germany he became fascinated with breaking the assumption that Aboriginal artwork should be made and shown in the country.By doing this he challenges the meaning of a work when it is placed in a different environment. The individual sunsets wrapped around trees also represent the care of trees and even the debarking process carried out by Aborigines.

These are Bayliss' sunsets back into painting. Others were emotional landscapes, these are emotional sunsets. There are16 in the series.

The knitted poles are depictions of Aboriginal artefact's such as burial pole which are used to articulate an absence and/or a death. They are knitted on one continuous row on round needles. The artist sometimes exhibits these individually and sometimes in a series. There are 10 altogether. Bayliss did explain that when he was creating these pieces that concern was voiced by associates and other Indigenous artists saying that it might be wrong to reproduce the burial poles. However he felt that this was only an interpretation and not a reproduction of a burial pole.

 

Bayliss' blue poles can be referenced to Jackson Pollocks blue poles. These poles were temporarily displayed outside Government House as a monument to colonisation. They are made of electrical wire coated in plastic.

These condom, beanie look-a-likes are a play on words by Barnard Arkee who produced the artwork 'not an animal or a plant'. Bayliss stitched onto his works 'am an animal am a plant' using circular needles. The image beside it is another series in which he stitched the lyrics to the Annie musical hit "The Sun will come out tomorrow". Bayliss felt that this was a song about surviving oppression which he had personal experiences with throughout his life.

 

"First Queer is an art object I constructed using multiple textile processes. The body of this sculptural work has been knitted with acrylic wool, afterwards the surface has been embroidered with text using the same material as the knitting. Buttons were sewn on with the cotton thread using the same acrylic material. I constructed a queen sized pom-pom and attached it to the tip of the body also sewn on with cotton.'