2010, A Painting is a City, 120cm x 60cm, mixed media on plasterboard.

In this place, governed by over-privileged, bought-and-paid-for halfwits, grey, becomes the norm. A union of fragmented wholes forcibly collate under the control of a shadowy greed peddling snake oil to a masses, repeatedly condescended for their blindness after having their vision robbed and yet ever worshipping their oppressors, somehow falling in love without any choice. It matters not how much you protest, such is the way of things thus, if you see this, it will be when you’re alone. Many believe in taking the blue pill – that duly attending classes, debates, social functions, exhibitions, performances, plays, gyrating to the stupid, mindless music the machine decrees, or being subjected to other such forms of cultural ephemera within this place, shall in some way impart liberation. As they shuffle along and behave accordingly, decadent institutions sanctioned by state bureaucracy disseminate bourgeois propaganda, nullifying the middle-classes in the exact same manner as alcohol, sport and celebrities do to the proletariat and apathetic university students. Some believe in to be or to protagonise one of its so-called subversives, though to what outcrop such wit remixing the mainstream via the outside/r, as it were, but to merely lengthen the tentacles of the beast? No. Such things can never exist beyond, nor will they change the banality, conformity, laziness, ignorance and self-centredness that form the landmarks of a media eating itself. Others believe in taking a journey inwards to seek counsel from the voice of reason that dwells within the depths of an unseen abyss as vast as the cosmos itself. This acknowledgement lies partly in believing that Bukowski was right all along – it’s the trivial things what’ll drive a man over the edge and little, if any of it, is worth caring about. Here, walls come crashing down intuiting a certain kinetic release liberating one from all those greys, raising every colour to the fore, meaning that, during an intense moment oscillating between pure awe and dread, your eyes can see.

© Percival Alexander