Viruch Pikhuntod: Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

8 November – 6 December 2008

Thai-Australian artist Viruch Pikhuntod‘s latest exhibition Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet, takes its title from a line in T.S Eliot’s poem, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’

Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet brings together two related streams of Pikhuntod’s practice – painting and papier-mâché sculpture. In this exhibition of new work, Pikhuntod works with the concept of “masking”, based on his observations of people’s behaviour in contemporary society, who increasingly wear masks to play out their various roles. Pikhuntod’s papier-mâché masks are modelled after animals. These animal-like roles which we “wear” result in the “law of the jungle” – where the powerful can often be found bullying the weak.

Pikhuntod’s painting and sculptures are influenced by childhood memories of traditional Thai stage productions of the Ramayana, an important Hindu literary text, often recounted as masked performances. The repeated triangular form found in Pikhuntod’s paintings is a powerful motif which the artist describes as having Buddhist significance – as a symbol of a pagoda or a stupa, as well as a reference to the repeated patterns of behaviour within lifetimes, and from lifetime to lifetime.

“Pikhuntod’s practice brings together aspects of his complex cross-cultural experiences,” says Aaron Seeto, Director of 4A. “His paintings are fresh and lively – they bring an important Asian perspective to Australian painting, and comment on how we live in this contemporary world.”