Toby Halligan

The inspiration for a need to empty out a storage unit. I began painting during the COVID lock downs in Melbourne and now there are hundreds of pieces – many of them huge - that reflect weeks/months of work. 

I recently met my donor daughters in Melbourne and just finished a job at parliament so it’s time to either start selling paintings or destroy them in some kind of poetic way. 

I prefer working in abstracts because I want my art to evoke emotion and to give the audience space to project their own interpretations onto each piece. I used to watch “Mr Squiggle” as a kid – I always loved the idea of upside downs and of work that’s open to interpretation. I’m an admitted lawyer and - like many lawyers - I went into comedy - writing for TV for a decade or so. I’ve also worked in state and federal politics. 

As a result I know that Australia does not in fact have ‘free speech’ at all. We have very expensive speech that’s ‘openish’ at best, shackled by defamation law, a right wing press, and the perverse incentives of entitled insiders keen to keep their place at the table. 

It feels like we live in a time where so much of the world is so f**ked up that the idea of spending time painting, let alone buying art is a weird indulgence.

I don’t think it is though - art is a culture’s response to trauma. My art is often very bright because the stuff I was thinking about was pretty grim - and some works are probably a conscious attempt to self-sooth. Or I’d opened the purple and thought I might as well use it. 

I’d often just spend hours combining colors, watching ink slowly flow down the surface of paintings – it turns out watching paint dry can actually be quite captivating. It’s certainly better than the news! 

There are ideas, artistic movements, specific artists behind all of this but what really connects everything in this show is that it’s decoration with ambition – mostly that ambition is to brighten your day or a space or create an interesting object that open conversations – those conversations might be “why would you pay for something like this” in which case the answer could be “Oh he’s a neuro-diverse gay guy who studied law, performed stand up for years, wrote for a lot of TV shows, and has worked at various levels of state and federal government and it’s hard to talk openly about some of his experiences so he paints weird abstracts” or “We needed a blue thing to match the drapes”. 

Either way I can’t afford these storage unit fees anymore so buy some stuff plz.