Posted in Indigenous Training

Artistic response to Covid

Darwin lockdown inspires metal art

I am a metal artist living in rapid creek and I made a sculpture that represents Corona Virus. I was inspired by the aggressive images of covid 19, if you get covid you may need oxygen from tanks to stay alive and sadly some do not make it, the cross represents the death toll. The current corona virus strain is so virulent and aggressive, so the sculpture had to look mad and angry like a wild beast. The circular saw blades are symbolic of the virulence and speed that the delta strain can cut through the immune system. It is made of tradies tools, old car parts and stolen burnt out cars that were left in the urban fringe around Darwin.

Burnt out car parts make good art.

“Metal Art” is about the intersection of urban living clashing with the bush, the expended machine age is dumped on the urban fringe where the two meet and chaos is the outcome or some would say urban hell. Car parts, metal machinery, the industrial revolution found in the bush, dumped, burnt and now reinvented into machine art. All components are found or scavenged nothing is new. Steel products that were made for car parts or machinery are now just lying in the bush. With these works James reinstates some of the value into the workmanship that went into these creations.