Robert Hague, King & Queen (after Don Dale). 2016, hand coloured lithograph on cotton rag paper, 70 x 70cm, edition 25
“Queen Elizabeth II poses atop the throne (Coronation photo, Cecil Beaton, 1953) in full regalia, surveying the nation from beneath a Don Dale spit-mask (Don Dale Detention Centre, 2016). Beyond her in the grand romantic vista sits a solitary Modernist sculpture, ‘Black Sun‘ by Inga King (1975). King was a refugee of Nazi Europe who found love and a home in the foreign landscape of Australia, and until her death aged 100 in 2016 was a subject, like all Australians, of an often blind and indifferent Crown. This whole series focuses down on craft in art, the notion that the domestic can speak about us and the wealth of broken things that surround us” – Robert Hague.
