WEALLEANS, Rohan, 1971-
Blade Healers (Painting)
Winning a national art award in 2003, the year
he completed his MFA at Elam, brought Rohan
Wealleans instant notoriety.
The judge described the winning work as a
huge bright vagina that he wanted to crawl inside,
ensuring that the sponsors, a Waikato
electricity supply company, immediately
turned it down for acquisition. Since then,
Rohan Wealleans has carved out his own
special place in the pantheon of male artists
with dodgy sexual politics. The consensus,
even amongst curators who like his work, is
that the artist “flays his surfaces and opens
them in a labial way”. Writers shudder at his
“invasive, violent even misogynistic” incisions
into acrylic paint as if it was flesh. Blade
Healers 2008, recently purchased for The
University of Auckland Art Collection, shows
Wealleans five years on, still unrepentant in
his wielding of the craft knife, apparently
now ready to construe the cutting itself as
therapeutic.
_1984.jpg.thumbnail.jpg)
