Swallow Me Whole

www.harrymerriman.net

@true_ish_blue

My practice spans photography, video, digital painting and collage to critique the colonial identity of Australia through its lasting and current impact of media. Media, in the sense of my practice, focuses primarily on film and advertising as well as how visual media helps create a national selfhood. The focal points of this selfhood are identity, fiction, and history as well as the ways in which they have been used to create a contemporary Australian identity.

By deconstructing and reappropriating Australian tropes, symbols, media, and pop-culture iconography I attempt to strip the colonial fiction from the romanticisation of the lifestyle it seeks to portray. Combining digital painting with photo media I want to question how fiction and artistic embellishment have been used to create an idealised society. My work combines physical material which is digitally scanned and then altered with the assistance of artificial intelligence to create artworks that are a mixture between reality and my own interpretation. By doing this I want my work to reflect to audiences the processes of being sold an identity in the hope that we can move forwards towards a future of reconciliation.