Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun and other follies

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun and other follies is the title of a new exhibition by the Tasmania-based Milan Milojevic, who digitally collages images drawn on his vast and uber colourful archive of absurd flora, fauna, landscapes and figures. Many images drawn from 18^th and 19^th century renderings that he cheekily places into the spectacle of an existential comedy/drama. This new body of limited-edition prints demonstrates this in all its phantastic and satirical glory. Given the old cliché of history repeating itself and what Milan terms “the current state of the planet”, early colonial themes and aesthetics inspired by explorer, Joseph Lycett’s 18^th – 19^th century landscape prints, have been revisited. The Exhibition of 28 still life and tableau works in the exhibition reveal Milan’s signature absurdity with strange botanical wonderlands inhabited by extraordinary creatures and forms. Visually intriguing, often bizarre compositions are the product of his unique hybrid practice which utilises a combination of digital and traditional printing processes he has mastered over the last 45 years.

(The artist and FireWorks Gallery, 2024)

Exhibition Works

An Officer and the Princess A/P (ed. 3) 2024 & Impossible Banquet A/P (ed. 3) 2024 are inspired by David Sinclair’s book Sir George Macgregor and the Land that never was. The story of Poyais, a Central American country fabricated and sold by Macgregor to Scottish immigrants in the 19^th century, inspires these works. They are compendiums of flora and fauna from a fictitious place and imaginations of one of history’s most elaborate hoaxes.

(The artist and FireWorks Gallery, 2024)

 

The Great White Hunter 1-12 A/P (ed. 3) 2024 explore repetitive motifs from Milojevic’s distinctive lexicon, such as strange wildlife, carnivorous plants, topiary, guns, volcanos, balloons and the ever-prescient faithful companion and offset these in environments redolent of Lycett, located within a peculiarly Tasmanian colour palette and suspended in rich layers of engraving sources.

There are 12 prints in The Great White Hunter series that can be purchased as individuals.

Text courtesy of Dr Joy E Barber-Milojevic, from Return of the Great White Hunter exhibition catalogue (Despard Gallery, 2024, 5)

 

Race to the top A/P (ed. 5) & Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun A/P (ed. 5) 2024 depict the protagonist, multiplied numerous times and in various guises, tumbling, climbing, peering into a telescope, goggled up, pontificating, careering wildly and in an absurd number of stances. Within a highly sexualised landscape, he is variously spinning out of control, mystified, implacable, determined. Although remaining self-confident, he is plunging into the ravine.

Text courtesy of Dr Joy E Barber-Milojevic, from Return of the Great White Hunter exhibition catalogue (Despard Gallery, 2024, 5)

 

In Marine Vivarium A/P (ed. 5) 2024, Vivarium V A/P (ed. 5) 2024 & Vivarium with Fish and Flamingo A/P (ed. 5) 2024, Milojevic draws inspiration from illustrated Medieval bestiaries, historical engravings, tapestries depicting weird and wonderful animals, museum dioramas, and Wunderkammers.

Marine Vivarium A/P (ed. 5) 2024, Vivarium V A/P (ed. 5) 2024 & Vivarium with Fish and Flamingo A/P (ed. 5) 2024 can be purchased as individuals.

Text courtesy of Lucy Hawthorne, from Terra Incognita: A duck-billed what? (Devonport Regional Gallery, 2021, 9)

 

Domes 1-9 A/P (ed. 5) 2024 are nine exquisitely fabricated ‘dome’ still life prints that teem with verdant life. Functioning as ‘curiosities’, these images of objects are miniature worlds comprised of waterfalls, birds, butterflies and hybrid creatures, cherished and preserved on perpetual display in domes. In one, a lone butterfly escapes the glass, merely to peer inside. The final in the series depicts the Great White Hunter himself trapped and immortalised forever upon a plinth. He is exhibited enclosed, surrounded by predatory, swarming creatures. Milojevic is a first generation migrant and viewed through this lens the domes may be seen as demonstrating a persistent element in his practice (i.e. that of the memento, a reminder of home, a souvenir for the visitor to take away and covet).

There are 9 prints in the Dome series that can be purchased as individuals.

Text courtesy of Dr Joy E Barber-Milojevic, from Return of the Great White Hunter exhibition catalogue (Despard Gallery, 2024, 6)

 

Never ending story (series of 20) A/P (ed. 5) 2024 takes the form of a myriorama or “endless landscape”. The background in each image universally aligns with all others, thereby allowing viewers to create their own imaginary landscape and narrative. This world is one of pink flamingos, merlions, and ravenous hogs with fins. Two-headed eels arc unnaturally above the water surface, while flying fish hover in formation above. Stylised plants provide perfect resting places for exotic parrots, while hybrid butterfly-hummingbirds suckle at enticingly coloured flowers. Whether the flamingo should have its back to the scaled tiger is completely up to us.

 

Never ending story (series of 20) A/P (ed. 5) 2024 can be purchased as a series of 20 or as individuals. 

Text courtesy of Lucy Hawthorne, from Terra Incognita: A duck-billed what? (Devonport Regional Gallery, 2021, 12)

 

The Land that never was (or Is) 

The Land that never was (or Is) is Milojevic’s first solo exhibition at FireWorks Gallery comprising nine limited-edition prints including one on short pile fabric.

The artists work explores contemporary cultural identity and the complexities of a cross-cultural position. The imagery in the artist prints evolves from two worlds – one evocative of a European landscape and the other reminiscent of a Tasmanian one. The impulse to construct fictional narratives and spaces is a response to collected stories of a homeland Milojevic never witnessed, and is instead based upon memory, myth, and fact.

Aesthetic and visual languages developed by 18^th and 19^th century engravers such as Thomas Bewick and naturalist artists (such as John J Audubon) have informed and inspired Milojevic’s imagery. The artist uses a combination of digital technologies and analogue (traditional etching and woodcut) print techniques to create highly patterned chimeras of fictitious flora and fauna. With this ‘hybrid’ printmaking process, as the images change, one world disintegrates as the other gradually comes to the surface. These complex constructions originate from a collection of marks and textures - built up over many years – which he scans into the computer and then reconstructs and overlays into his imaginary landscapes.

Milojevic’s works frequently employ design principles of symmetry and repetition. The ordered appearance of ambivalent forms makes the prints seem both alien and familiar, like fragments taken from nature that have been enlarged and re-contextualised to form new species.

Through experimentation, the artist has created a magnificent universe populated by imaginary flora and fauna that generates a sense of wonder in its audience. This ‘wonder’ is accompanied by the uneasy knowledge that the world created is a dystopian one, a fabricated version of reality that nonetheless seduces. With technicolour intensity, spectacular forms leap from the paper, into the space the viewer inhabits.

The artist and FireWorks Gallery, 2023

Exhibition Works

Golum (after Audubon) (Ed.2) 2009/23 is inspired by images of a series of birds as homage to John J Audubon. The ‘Golum’ appears in a (1969 first English translation of the 1957 original in Spanish) book by Jorge Luis Borges titled The Book of Imaginary Beings. (Artwork printed by Ian Jeanneret)

Once Was Is (Ed.3) 2021 depicts both a landscape past (imagined) and present (fact). (Artwork printed by Ian Jeanneret)

Elements in the work Big Tree 2 created 2016/23 originated from images in the 2016 series Night &Day (The Tree) where the ‘tree’ is the only constant.

Night and Day (The Tree) 2016 is a series of thirty-two panels inspired by diverse sources such as 18^th and 19^th century engravers/naturalist artists, Japanese woodblock prints, Hieronymus Bosch, psychedelic music/art as well as Jorge Luis Borges and Edvard Munch’s ‘Frieze of Life’.

Tide after Tide (Ed.5) 2021 is a celebration of the sea and what it offers up to us. (Artwork printed by Ian Jeanneret)

Ten Days (Ed.3) 2023 is a commission for Tasmania’s recent ‘Ten Days on the Island’ festival. (Artwork printed by Art House Reproductions)

In Possession (Ed.5) 2022 the landscape is constructed from prints recording the exploration of Terra Australis Incognita. Discovery, Colonisation, Possession. Possession is nine-tenths of the problem.

Terra Incognita Rug (Ed.3) 2023… strange, beautiful, and uncomfortable concocted flower-animal-landscape forms allude to my own cross-cultural position as an Australian first-generation migrant. The works exist in a liminal space, reminiscent of truth and redolent of a world rich with infinite possibilities. 

Portal 3 2011 is inspired by French wallpapers which, during France’s Age of Discovery in the 16^th century, utilised flora and fauna in their design. These motifs were not only used for wallpapers, but also with furniture and general interior design and decorating practices.

The artist 2023 unless otherwise stated