Troy-Anthony BAYLIS Postcard (Acacia and Sandy) 2015, reconstructed faux-mesh. Courtesy of the artist.
Postcard (Acacia and Sandy) by Troy-Anthony Baylis 2015
This artwork measures 1.2 metres high by 2.6 metres wide and is made from reconstructed faux-mesh material. The work is attached to the wall and forms part of the artist’s Postcard series, one of seven shown here. The work is rectangular in shape with large sections cut away around the perimeter of the work. Emblazoned across the centre of the work read the words rendered in uppercase, TO ACACIA RIDGE FROM SANDY HOLLOW.
Meticulously executed by repicking and reordering found Glomesh bags and material from second hand stores the type takes on a pixelated square quality, angular in its form like the digital typeface found spat out from an early computer program known as bitmaps. The colour of the text moves from a deep burgundy through to a lighter shade of dark to light brown before returning to the original deep burgundy for the bottom proportion of the words, ‘SANDY HOLLOW.’ From top to bottom across the four lines of text the colour change shifts like a computer rebooting. The background is cream and refracts the light shimmering with its polished faux-mesh metal surface. Exhibited stretched against the wall, it is reminiscent of chain mail or armour on display and what, like a breastplate, was once created to be worn on the body.
Troy-Anthony Baylis’s Postcard series references Aboriginal breastplates and whilst exploring place names, Country, Indigeneity, and colonial histories the series also traverses the queer aesthetics of Drag Queens, adornment, disco and the dance floor. Speaking to his peripatetic upbringing, moving from town to town, seeking a sense of belonging; Baylis’s practice is similarly characterised by a back and forth, an intersectionality of sexuality and indigeneity, colonisation and migration, histories and aesthetics, art and craft.