The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian

2013
Inkjet on watercolour paper
90 x 60 centimeters

This digital print was made much in the same spirit as the previous one in this series. As a high school teenager I was intrigued by the depiction of violence in the painting of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian by the Pollaiuolo brothers in the mid 1470s and how it compared to the violence I saw on television and at the cinema in the 1960s.

My version is set in an suburban Australian court with an SUV vehicle parked in the driveway, one of the executioners is phoning his boss that the job has been done and a curious neighbour records the incident on her digital camera, possibly to upload to social media. The executioners have misused a utility pole for their deed, much like rural American vigilanties in the earlier half of the twentieth century did when they exercised mob justice.

The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian : The National Gallery, London
Object of Desire : The Guardian

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