True Names

[mattd]

True lies...unless you use dna...
Blood spilt in anti-war anger
By DENNIS SCHULZ
Wednesday 16 January 2002
When Ararat artist Geoff Todd decided to use his own blood as a painting 
medium, he was unprepared for the psychological result.
Todd had chosen to paint in his blood to make a dramatic statement decrying 
Prime Minister John Howard's decision to become involved in the war in 
Afghanistan. But when the images began to take shape on his canvas, the 
blood/paint took on an intimate  meaning that the artist never foresaw.
"I was overcome by the fact that this was more serious than I intended," 
says Todd. "It has a sort of sacredness."
The first of Todd's paintings, (to be catalogued as "artist's blood, 
acrylic medium and charcoal on canvas") are now complete, with two to be 
entered in the Dobell Prize for drawing at the Art Gallery of New South 
Wales later this year. They are works expressing the artist's outrage over 
the decision to commit troops to a foreign conflict.
"It worries me that we were prepared to respond so aggressively, so 
quickly," says Todd. "I think Mr Howard's response was too quick. No one 
took a breath and I know that politicians at that level are allowed to take 
a breath."
An artist of international repute, who is perhaps better known in Europe 
and South-East Asia than in his native Australia, Todd has never 
sidestepped controversy. At the opening of a 1996 Indonesian exhibition, a 
Todd drawing of a nude was ordered by police to be covered. The work was 
later shown at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.
Then, as Indonesia prepared to go to the polls in 1999, he produced a 
one-man show at the Museum Benteng Vredeberg in Yogyakarta depicting the 
turbulent life of revolutionary hero Diponegoro. Todd's work struck a chord 
with Indonesians who were searching for candidates of substance, epitomised 
by the 19th-century ascetic who nearly brought the colonial Dutch undone.
The idea to use blood as a medium came to Todd, 51, while working at his 
studio/home in the old Terminus Hotel in Ararat. Angered by reports that 
the provenance of works by Aboriginal artists were being questioned by 
urban art dealers, Todd reasoned that the only way indigenous artists would 
be able to establish authorship was to provide blood samples on the back of 
their paintings that could then be DNA tested.MORE AT...
http://theage.com.au/entertainment/2002/01/16/FFXVE7RPGWC.html