"Flinders street Sniper" Photograph

high degree of the work I produce is a reaction against how we are living in a post industrialised world in relation to Baudrillards hyper reality theories , like the acceptance of the war on terror, the war on the enviroment, the abstraction of most plants and animals from our natural enviroment; and the exceptance of models and simulations in there replacement. The world as we Know it today is dramatically different compared to what we knew of it a hundred years ago, people have become addicted and complacent of eveyday things like cars, ipods, coca-cola and they have replaced the natural products of earth with the unatural human invention, now as the simulacra. Not to say some things are okay as long as they have a limited impact on the natural enviroment but unfortunatly most people live beyond there means in west in a decadent society. Therefor I try to approach these issue's from one man's point of view, that is informed from many source's, (books,journals, internet, popuarl culture, traveling, conversation, magazines, music, photography, phillosophy and my own experience's. Mainly in the past I have represnted these ideas, issue's in oil paintings and drawings in a surrealist style. more reacently my style has change to a semi realist style, hyper realist,with a surrealist compostion and conceptual ideas . With that said I do not really like to pin myself to one particular style, medium, or materials and therefor letting the subject matter inform these things.As Andy Warhole said in an interview with Geen swenson, 'that in the future artists wont just work in one style but many differnt styles'.
I also like to produce works of beauty, like arbitary watercolour backgrouds similar to Jackson Pollacks work in the Abstract Expressionism movement. I then paint an image or image's of beauty like flower's or animals in Gouache painted over the top of an abstract background. To create an intresting and asthetically beautiful piece full of life, that can also make subtle comments on our enviroments through the use of abstraction.
I am Currently in my third year of a degree in painting At Victorian College of the Arts VCA ,doing an undergraduate in fine arts painting and i have won a major award at the VCA called the Valerie Albiston Award worth $10000.