Synecdoches      Moana Project Space  2013

Curated By Kate Mullen & Dale Buckley

The Racer, Diamond Face, The Associate, The European, Composition, Ball Breaker '88

I remember the day Stewie came off his bike, there were a few of us about. We were maybe 11 or 12 years old, playing as if we owned the world. It was bad, one of the worst I’d seen. He came off at speed, contacting the road hard, but that wasn’t what did him in - it was the slide on his back across the roads hot surface that did the damage. It hurt him and the tears welled up. He lifted his t-shirt to reveal a full back graze - raw flesh and torn skin, a clear fluid sat on the surface. We fell silent, in awe, it was the worst self inflicted injury we had seen. Stewie pulled down his t-shirt and started walking home. We walked behind him pushing his broken bike. That is when the magic started. The blood came in as he walked, soaking and oozing into the weave of the fabric, amazingly a head appeared then a face. There was no mistaking it - we all saw it. A bloody face, maybe even a self-portrait bleeding through his tattered Hang Ten T-shirt. We didn’t see Stewie for a few days. When he got back to school the first thing we did was check the scab. All the girls had a pick. We didn’t say any thing to Stewie about the image, it seemed right to keep it to ourselves.

MH   2013       

​