Arthur Apanski may be far away from his home country of Belarus and the KGB, but the 56-year-old still holds strong views of the world.
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“I didn’t want to become a part of entertainment and decoration for houses of rich and powerful,” he said, explaining the thoughts behind his macabre paintings and sculptures.
“So I wouldn’t [express] anything else rather than death, life, birth and the responsibility of existence as human beings.”
I see this as my personal duty before I’m gone from this planet, to tell the truth the way I see it.
- Arthur Apanski
As you walk beyond the foyer of the Wollongong Art Gallery you are met by a giant black grenade, impressive with its subtle blue LED lights which highlight the world continents moulded into the round globe.
In the corner stands a robotic mannequin with shiny silver wings like an angel, only they’ve been constructed from sharp blades, the piece titled “Corporate drone Shiva One”.
Apanski’s second exhibition at the gallery is called Anthropocene, creatively expressing his views that the planet is going through another period of extinction (such as what happened to the dinosaurs).
“I see this as my personal duty before I’m gone from this planet, to tell the truth the way I see it,” the self-taught artist said.
Apanski left Belarus as a refugee in 1997 and moved to Australia, without any family in tow.
He said coming to our country signalled a new sense of freedom for him and he was “astonished” by our bright blue sky, the colous, the nature and the ocean.
For his latest exhibition, some works have been constructed in collaboration with Philip Giradot, a builder who was intrigued after doing renovations on Apanski’s home.
He credits Giradot as a good friend now, noting he wouldn’t want to spend two years with just anybody to make sculptures – especially if they had “a massive ego”.
For the last 20 years Apanski has been consumed by what he calls the sixth extinction (anthropocene) and represents through portrait and landscape paintings and scultpure.
He examines the connection between consumer society and extinction, with current works on exhibition produced from 2010 to 2017.
Anthropocene will run at Wollongong Art Gallery until July 16.
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