Yellow Canoe 2010

Curator: This is "Yellow Canoe," a mixed-media piece by Ashley Bickerton from 2010. The artist blends acrylic paint with other materials to create a vibrant, almost surreal landscape. Editor: My first impression is sensory overload! It's intensely colorful and theatrical, with these alien figures floating in this clear water filled with flower petals. It feels staged, but in a very intriguing way. Curator: Exactly. Bickerton often uses appropriation as a central theme, referencing and remixing imagery from diverse sources. In this work, there’s a deliberate tension between the idyllic tropical scene and the strange, unsettling figures within it. This prompts a conversation about how culture, power, and identity intersect. Editor: The choice of a canoe, traditionally a symbol of exploration and connection to nature, now seems fraught with symbolism. Are the figures natives or invaders? What stories are buried beneath all those bright flowers? The artist employs visual tropes associated with the tropics, almost to the point of hyperreality. Curator: The blue-skinned figure holding what appears to be a high-tech energy drink under a parasol challenges the very notion of 'authenticity.' It is post-colonial critique via the lens of hyper-consumerism and the commodification of paradise. He places the native, rifle in hand, holding an infant— almost the modern day Madonna and Child. Editor: The rifle held by the green figure is a very strong element and stands in striking opposition to the flower crown. The whole scene teeters between a tropical advertisement and a silent threat. It asks, who is the "other," who benefits, and at whose cost? Curator: Thinking about our contemporary understanding of global economies and the ever presence of western pop culture, it's challenging to not interpret the yellow canoe, not as something simple or of one message, but rather, as a complex, often conflicting story of modernity, with an island narrative steeped in cultural appropriation and the loss of indigenous cultures. Editor: It reminds us of how symbols evolve, acquiring new, often contradictory, meanings as they travel through time and across cultures, leaving layers of context in their wake. Curator: And in turn we, the viewers, are left questioning our own relationship to the visual and material languages present here. Editor: Precisely. A vibrant visual experience.