TONY GARIFALAKIS: DIRT
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Front Gallery

Catalogue text by Ted Gott

Continuing Tony Garifalakis' exploration into the world of bizarre and disturbing aesthetics, Dirt was an installation-based painting and drawing exhibition. A fusion of disparate cultural and artistic practices, Dirt incorporated elements of both 'low' contemporary subcultures and 'high' classical art, including Victorian funerary art, baroque theatricality, horror cinema, classical interior design and decoration, rock culture and memento mori painting. Recycling the iconic clichés of horror, Garifalakis created an uneasy dialogue between authentic experiential terror and its culturally inherited signifiers. Dirt proved to be a highly contemporary and engaging exhibition, as it transformed Gertrude Contemporary’s Front Gallery through April 2003.

Tony Garifalakis is a Melbourne-based artist who recently completed his Master of Fine Art at RMIT. Solo exhibitions include le grande grimoire at TCB art inc, Graveyard boys and Cemetery girls at Penthouse and Pavement, Demonaz Doom Occulta and Metal Theory at 1st Floor Artists and Writers Space, and Bad Blood at the Centre for Contemporary Photography. Group exhibitions include Only the lonely at Block, Sydney, The final 1st Floor show, at 1st Floor Artists and Writers Space, Spookyat Glen Eira City Gallery, and SKIN at the Deste Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece.