Sebastian Moody
Sally Brand
Sebastian Moody from 100% expression
In the text-based practice of Brisbane emerging artist Sebastian Moody there is a consistent concern with viewers and their reactions. With gestures both grand (such as the imposing statement “BUILT UNDER THE SUN” at Brisbane’s South Bank) and slight (the text “Primal man craves fire‚” posted in newspaper personal classifieds), Moody continually seeks a response, and considers each a little victory. However the response Moody seeks is never specific as his text works are fragmented, ambiguous and their precise intent continually debateable. What is important then, when encountering Moody’s work among the city’s landscape of advertising slogans, is the priceless freedom of choice that they wish to provide. In his most recent exhibition Generation: Point, Click, Drag, produced collaboratively with Craig Walsh as part of Moody’s 2003 Youth Arts Queensland Mentoring Program, the significance of the viewer’s response was again highlighted. Presenting gas masks and body bags emblazoned with the Nike logo, Walsh and Moody questioned the legitimacy of the audience’s, and also their own, ideological freedom within contemporary historical, social and economic contexts and the War on Iraq. Linking recreational sport and the war on terror, the show suggested the game of our current condition and the possibility that only a finite set of choices and responses exists. This gesture, intending to provoke a response, was not however predetermined as perhaps the response which commodity slogans endorse or games sanction. Rather, in his practice Moody seems to continually seek to conserve the reader’s free will in this increasingly authoritarian society.
RealTime issue #57 Oct-Nov 2003 pg. 39
