"Artist's Statement"

For A Colour Me Dead Presentation

published in the catalogue for Parallel Collisions - 12th Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, 2011
Philip Brophy looking down on the world

I work with fairly typical topics. The Body. Gender. Sexuality. Stuff like that.

But please don't confuse me with those writers and artists who intend to deliver some socio-political service by illuminating the dark politics of ‘the world’. I have nothing to contribute to how society might develop healthy attitudes to sex. I have nothing to say which might help you in your co-dependent abusive relationship. And I’ve never promoted the idea that psychoanalytic theory is some sort of subliminal controlling fabric of life, love and all forms of social contract.

I don’t provide manuals for understanding. I don’t form arguments. I’m not here to convince you of anything. I am of no real value within whatever systems you perceive value. I’m not professional and I can hardly type the word ‘career’. I have no practice – clinically or artistically. I’m not of your community or network. I don’t use the word ‘we’. Much of what you say during a dinner conversation – especially if it’s something ‘you read the other day’ – will create a dull pain at the back of my retina.

I deal with sperm, blood, chromed plastic, bass, mauve fur, eucalyptus tissues, black lino, elbow joints, the smell of Subway shops at midnight, the sound of rubber lining squeaking in train carriages – and how they are all sexual. I deal with intensely miniscule sensorial fragments which become worlds unto themselves. I am gratefully non-humanist and thankfully parafiliac. I support those who fuck anything that moves. And I identify with those who fuck anything that doesn’t move.

If you’re OK with this as an ‘artist statement’, you might find something interesting in what I say in my Colour Me Dead presentations. But if you are an economist, an anthropologist, a sociologist, a journalist or a politician, translation notes will not be provided.


Text & image © Philip Brophy. Photo by Pancho Colladetti.