Unstill Life

Stephen Eastaugh: an unstill life
7 July – 29 August 2010
an MPRG exhibition

Stephen Eastaugh is a visual artist with severe wanderlust (or perhaps even wonder-sickness). Over the past twenty-five years he has travelled to over eighty countries across all continents, rarely staying for longer than three months. Movement and change have defined his life, work and the production of art. Experience has become the object, and the object then the marker that has located Eastaugh in time and place.

Stephen Eastaugh, Bombwallow (Cambodia) 2008
acrylic, linen, thread
Courtesy the artist.

Inspired by Eastaugh’s map-making, the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery has developed an exhibition that will display sixteen of Eastaugh’s works, joined visually and conceptually through a timeline and interpretative texts written by the artist of his many journeys between 2004-2008.

Destinations and through stops during this time included Australia, Thailand, Taiwan, North Pole, Greenland, Cambodia, Jordan, Israel, Netherlands, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Antarctica, Santiago, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Tokyo, South Georgia Islands, Ushuaia, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Denmark, London and Uruguay; many more than once.

Eastaugh commented, “I have seen a number of penguins in Antarctica seemingly ok just walking oddly away from the colony. Lost? Suicidal? Who knows?

Robert D Kaplan tells us that nomads make history and refugees are the victims of history. In the animal world to stray from one’s home terrain is usually suicide but in my world the risks and dangers of strange lands are assimilated into my paintings along with the positive experiences of my self-inflicted dislocation.

It seems that in most species there are a few individuals who wander away from the pack, the home range or safe areas. It is theorized that these wanderers are unknowingly on reconnaissance missions. If the home region of the clan or pack is suddenly swept away by natural disaster it seems like a good idea to have an evacuation plan ready or at least some information from the wanderers who may have discovered a new safe haven. This makes sense so I could also adopt this biological or neurophysiologic theory to explain my ‘travel sickness’.’

MORNINGTON PENINSULA REGIONAL GALLERY
Civic Reserve, Dunns Road, Mornington
Tuesday–Sunday 10am–5pm