PURE HUBRIS

2009, Oil on Linen, 152 x 152cm

Finalist, the 2009 Whyalla Contemporary Art Prize

With the demands of the 24 hour news and entertainment media coupled with the public’s seemingly ever-decreasing attention span, the qualifications required of today’s celebrity are both dubious and minimal. For example, a celebrity can be someone who has lost (or gained) a lot of weight, or even someone who has done nothing more than sit around the Big Brother house. This led me, inevitably, to think of Paris Hilton.

Careers and businesses have been built on following her actions and she provides the content for a host of media from magazines to television and the internet. Yet she has done nothing more from being born (an achievement she shares with even the most unfortunate amongst us) albeit she was clever enough to do so with a famous surname. It is a career built upon nothing, a structure without foundation. The spiral staircase seems appropriate, as it not only echoes the human DNA double helix spiral, but also winds around itself in a whirl-wind; the perfect metaphor for the hubris that accompanies today’s media “personalities.”