PARTY’S OVER – STARTS OVER – Jason Grant

«Where better to creatively critique debt than in Greek cultural institutions? Usually state sponsored community cultural and arts organisations are the first casualty of austerity ideology. Even in my hometown Brisbane, the relatively secure resource-bolstered Australian economy didn’t stop the new conservative sate government – in the name of debt reduction – axing the peak literary awards as its most urgent post-election task. The most treasured evidence of the best of humanity is always the most expedient sacrifice to market priorities.

So those of us outside Greece watch with anxious fascination, either rationalising our immunity or wondering when will it be our turn?

Amplifying news fragments into weighty ontological or existential gestures seems an efficient way to deal with all this tragic absurdity. The work’s symbolism sometimes seems overly obvious and sometimes ambiguous, but the evocative tensions between text and image justify any simplification.

The quiet, composed images and the final scene of the empty table swallowed in darkness, suggesting death and absence, are also universal realities not far beneath the slippery surface of monotonous spectacle.