Jason T Austin.

I was frustrated earlier in the year as I had been working on a painting of a couple of men named Charles Marks and Edward Feeney who had been involved in a duel, a murder/suicide pact which took place in Treasury Gardens, Melbourne in 1872. I’d spent a lot of time researching the couple and wanted to portray the men, as I believed they were. Marks was the younger of the two and seemed to be the more outgoing, Feeney was melancholy. But this painting just wasn’t working for me.

In my frustration I cut a piece out of the canvas and having spent so much time with the subject matter and on the painting itself I abandoned the project for maybe another time.

Having had portraits taken of themselves just before their duel at Treasury Gardens, my painting was a reimagining of these portraits with ravens, denoting lost souls.

Although the painting as a whole disenchanted me, there were still things that I liked and they became elements that I included in The Koalas with Galahs. The ravens became galahs; I recycled the wallpaper motif that I had adapted from a popular wallpaper design from Victorian times.

The Koalas with Galahs is a comment on colonialism. In this painting the Koala, an iconic native Australian animal adopts the manner and dress of Victorian gentlefolk.