Weimorano that's not a dog that's a question!
Why dogs? Why anything?

Why dogs? My friend and artist Stuart Elliot has done 3 dog shows in Perth over the last 20 years. As his retrospective exhibition Veudplatz was coming to Albany, this seemed to be an ideal opportunity to do 'dogs' in Albany. I could have come up with something more original, I deliberately chose not to. The old adage about 1% inspiration 99% perspiration is part of the reason, the other reason is that I feel quite strongly that the arts industry tends to over intellectualize most mixed art shows, stitch work together with a concept through the work or the catalogue. Occasionally the work and the catalogue admirably support each other at other times they diverge spinning off to different horizons with intelligent sentient beings bravely trying to pull it all back together. Others look on bemused keeping the class system alive by becoming the non-cognoscenti. It's hard to do that with DOG, you're on safe solid ground, we are all the cognoscenti, we are speaking the same language.

The word dog can be traced down the language tree as far back as words like Mother and Father. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA has shown that domestic dogs originated at least 100,000 years ago. Archaeological sites have found wolf bones mixed with hominid bones at various sites up to 400,000 years ago. Close examination of fossilized faecal matter indicates the two species shared the same diet.

Dog is there in the deepest darkest past of humans, lycanthropically howling under the late pleistocene moon or domestically cuddling into our beds on the coldest of ice age winters' nights. Wolven wild oats being continually re-sown into domesticated doggies hypothetically explaining the extreme diversity within the one species, from the Mexican Hairless to Irish Wolfhound. Faithful hound to the Big Bad Wolf running through our myths and dreams, comfort and fear constant bedfellows. "How much is that doggie in the window?" to "The bloody dingo did it." Yet the wild dog continually crosses over to the other side, the she wolf rearing the abandoned infant, The White Wolf standing above and apart from the pack with a set of mores that wouldn't allow it to raid your chicken run. Or is it us, anthropomorphising, wishing that we were still wild and free and yet the noble savage?

The controlled and the uncontrolled, the space of comfortable domestic safety to that wild and unrestricted power of dangerously dancing on the high-wire. These are some of the discussions I have had over the phone, on the veranda, in the car park and much of it over the internet as below.

"At some times of our lives and in some places, we can feel trapped by social expectations regarding our domestic role which may be in conflict with our personal desires to live a less restrictive, more individually fulfilling life." Bev Iles Art Student

I am personally drawn to the wild and anarchic, ideas that challenge comfortable notions that are out on the edge or deliberately break with conventions. One glorious evening at Perth Institute Of Contemporary Art, all the local Grande Fromages were there; the business patrons, curators, art academics, art bureaucrats and art politicians, to see big art. It all seemed so big, all the right glossies, expensive champagne (you could tell, it had small bubbles in it). I was floating lonely as a cloud when a woman who I hardly knew physically grabbed me and insisted that “I must come into the women's toilets.” How could I resist? There was a crowd of mixed company at the door inside the women's toilet, it was wall to wall like a Melbourne terrace house party, the chatter was lively, intense and interspersed with hearty laughter, the ambience a million miles from the stuffed shirts on the gallery floor. I was with my people. Why were we there? A couple of artists had decided to re-decorate the hand basins and mirrors. The mirrors had clear Perspex boxes placed over them and contained different layers of evenly spaced coloured Aeroplane Jelly. Within the jelly were little bits of plastic and little toys. You could still see yourself in the mirror but through the jelly. Kooky matching lit candelabras had been placed in the soap holders. A little set of beautiful shrines within the women's toilet. It was a clever and concise marriage of concept, material, technique and timing. Possibly the gallery had organized this, I like to think it was a piece of gorilla art unsanctioned and that security could turn up at any time to chase us out of there like wild dogs from the chook pen. More people were enticed from the gallery floor into the women's toilets by women going out and grabbing them in the same manner that I was grabbed, more champagne arrived. The men's initial reluctance to enter and break an accepted norm was broken once they took in the whole scene. I left as the party was in full swing. I didn't want to be the last man standing.

What was better there? What was the attraction? Something naughty something nice. Broken conventions, stuff art let's dance! Something a bit wild, outsider art, something nobly savage and irreverently beautiful. Something to check our pretensions, pomposity and the constant danger of the inherent narcissism of the arts. Or was it that the artists spoke directly and eloquently with a wit and charm that was inescapable. It's hard to say who cares for one delicious moment the women's toilet was the place to be, however I have never had the urge to go back there.

I have asked the artists involved in this Dog project to consider and respect their audience, to use pathos, ethos and bathos (cognoscenti or non-cognoscenti stupidity). Also for them to express a full range of human emotions within the context of their explorations of Dog. I hope as an audience you can find something thought provoking or of beauty within individual works, or the project as a whole, that will make it a worthwhile experience. I hope that the community will want to do a project like this again with the Boat, Cat, Horse, Show.  I don't really care what the idea is so long as we all can genuinely participate.

I have had the wonderful experience over the last few months of visiting artists in their studios, breaking bread with them and drinking beer. I have made many new friends of people that I didn't previously know, people who I now admire and respect from knowing them and I like to think that they may feel the same way about me.

See images of the above images at (http://iewpoint-other-work.fotopic.net/c678871.html)