Mail Room

On the 30th of December we discovered the following brief but to-the-point comment attached to our review of the Year in Art exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery from November.

“You are a fuckwit with no life.”

Perhaps ruminating on what they had said, the anonymous poster came back the next day to make it a little clearer:

“Sorry, I spilt that too quickly, a little like your blog, impotent at best, but you invective is infectious. What I really meant to say is as follows; you are a Dickless fuckwit with no life.”

On January 2nd, our mystery poster came out of hiding and sent us an email under the subject heading You Maggot:

“Unlike you, coward, I shall stab you in the front. Keep on hiding behind your nowheresville little blog, right where you belong, you insignificant shit eating maggot. Never insult my family name again – Xavier de Medici.”

We had to really think hard to remember what we’d said about eX de Medici to warrant what at first glance looked like a genuine death threat. Stab us in the front? We delved back through the posts:

“At first glance, two large drawings looked great and we resisted going up and have a gander until the end – sort of like saving the dessert ’til last so you walk away with a sweet taste. eX de Medici had two drawings, Skull (Willow) and Skull (Camo). They are big, clean and are meticulously done. Then we discovered something kind of crap – there was a written explanation of the works hanging next to the two pieces. What a package – pretentious name and an explanation that makes sure that you walk away with what the artist thinks you should know. To paraphrase Tony Montana, we don’t need that shit in our lives.”

We’re still not sure how you get eX from Xavier, it must be some kind of Latin thing, and to be honest we liked the drawings, just not all the unnecessary writing and explanations. And we thought the nom de plume was silly. But if it really is his name, we’re sorry about that. So, full of Xmas good cheer and New Year’s tidings, we advised, hey man, cool out, we just didn’t like your art work. Chill. Happy new year.

But eX was having none of it:

“Next time you dont like someones work, be a grown up and consider the close line you draw to defamation in a public arena. By the way you little twit, I certainly dont like your skanky boorish work either nor will I ‘chill’ as you so patronisingly suggest. Get Fucked.”

It must be some kind of achievement to both a boor and a skank, but we didn’t really think about that as the hate steaming off the page was palpable. We mentioned the possible death threat to someone who told us that Xavier De Medici is a tattoo artist who lives and works in Kings Cross. We had images of Gypsy Jokers dropping by the Art Life office with a big chain so we decided to do some research. Imagine our total and utter confusion when it turned out that Xavier was a woman who lived in Canberra and was good mates with Peter Garrett!