Rogue Pop-up Gallery

Wart – About Face

Opening: Saturday 7th March 2026
Exhibition Dates: 4 Mar - 29 Mar
Wed-Sat: 11am-6pm
Sun: 11am-5pm
Mon-Tues: CLOSED

Location:

130 Regent Street Redfern

Featuring:

WART – About Face
What a title. With a snap to attention the paramilitary commands of mid-
morning school assemblies come to mind. It’s the 1960s and summer assembly
days are boiling hot, someone is fainting, and children have leant to play at
marching orders. “About face” is performative, what philosopher Gilles Deleuze
called ‘order words’, particular expressions that have no inherent content other
than a call to action.
As such Wart’s “about face” demands attention to seemingly disparate but
related agendas: fragile environments and equally fragile mental health. If only it
were that simple, that with a command an indifferent populace could be
instructed to ‘about face’ and change the direction of otherwise preoccupied and
overly stressed planet-depleting lives. With the extinction list growing at an
alarming rate, the world’s wildlife is under increasing stress, as are the numbers
of those suffering with conditions of mental health. Some adapt and cope, and
others don’t. Not all species do as well with habitat loss as the Ibis, or bin
chicken, one of Wart’s favourites, and a familiar resident of Sydney’s urban
streets. Mental health advocate and animal lover Wart, known for performing
with a Band-Aid across her forehead, has developed this exhibition around
themes of mutual care of each other, critters included, and the world we share.
Her motto is: “broken brains, good heart.”
Laid out across two rooms, this exhibition is organised in parallel zones. The first
room entered, Endangered Diptychs, greets the viewer with walls of wildlife, the
concertina form of an artist’s book, and a set of sculptures. Heads and Tails is a
series of paintings comprised of five diptychs: three sets of birds and two of
animals. Against aqua blue skies paradoxically suggestive of ‘not a care in the
world’ Wart presents a selection of endangered species: the yellow-green Orange
Bellied Parrot, the yellow-splashed Regent Honey-Eater, and the Far Eastern
Curlew. Grounded on Australia’s iconic red dirt, the Spotted Quoll and the
Numbat share those same bright skies.
Each of the birds and animals has been cut in half; their upper and lower torsos
separately framed. Hence, the ‘broken’ diptych is savagely symbolic of their
endangered status. Furthermore, this fracturing of their images underscores how
homeland territories have been carved up. Tragically, mating practices have
been brutally disrupted, with birds and animals left stranded, calling forlornly
for their ‘other half’.
Of this series Wart had this to say,
“It’s time yes Heads or Tails, we are, as a nation, such gamblers but do we
want to gamble the lives of our precious animals…
It’s time…. to use our heads so we can keep on having some tales to tell.
It’s time… to make a stance and protect our wildlife.
A variant of Heads or Tails, reproducing the separated upper and lower torsos of
the paintings, has been reimagined in the sculptural forms of Oddlongs Come and
Play. Presented as a relative of the children’s game of ‘match up the sides of the
blocks’ this work is an invitation to engage in environmental ‘repair’, to put the
birds and animals back together again. As in the adage of ‘learning through play’
these sculptural forms have been designed as a form of cognitive
re/programming.
In Poet tree (inertia creeps) the narrative plays out in concertina form in a ‘book’
taking the shape of a graphic novel loaded with snatches of poetic code and vivid
line-work puzzles to crack: again as a form of multigenerational play. The text
“press paws” is an invocation to reflect on the plight of the creatures in the
natural world, their collective “paws” under pressure enough from land clearing,
introduced species, pollution, and accelerated floods and droughts brought on by
climate change, not to mention the decimations of mining predations. “Unceded
seed” introduces the concept of Rights of Nature. Already New Zealand has
accorded the Whanganui River the protection of personhood and civil rights.
Hence, the idea of “unceded seed” provokes the question of why not give the
same protections to native seed, and local fauna?
The Second Room is attuned to human fragility and staged as a journey into
mental health, with a particular emphasis of the physical effects of powerful
psych drugs. Getting the shakes and other unpleasant adverse effects of the
medications can be overwhelming. The management of these aspects of
treatment has been under-scrutinised in the public health system, much less
publically talked about. By way of opening up a conversation, Wart’s artist’s book
Wobble and Calm is populated with the ‘graphic narrative’ of splintered line-
work that takes the viewer through the experience of fragmented states of being
as lived by those on psych drugs.
In this powerful representation, intercut with instances of Wart’s trademark
humour, the struggle to get by is palpable. Deceptively simple and unfolding in
the mode of a graphic novel, the ‘wobbles’ are a series of jagged line drawings
demonstrating catastrophic peaks and troughs of mental disturbance.
Punctuated by the sheer falls of precipices, or towering waveforms, the mental
journey is perilous. And then there is the calm. The wobbles flatline. The drugs
are kicking in. You feel the relief. And have come to understand a lot more of the
existential stakes of the hard-won daily battles of mental health.
In the painting series The Jutters …And The Calm Wart homes in on the face as
the jittery medium of expression of what lies beneath. Under various conditions
of legibility, the psychical underside of interior turmoil manifests as a tangle of
intensely fractured lines and shapes that transforms across the set of eight
paintings to stabilise in a fully formed face. It is as if the face can’t properly exist
in or for itself under conditions of mental disturbance but can only be realised in
a composed state of mind.
Uncannily The Jutters …And The Calm mirrors the psychical analyses of the face,
the primary site of affect, in Deleuze and Guattari’s masterwork, A Thousand
Plateaus. Furthermore, by way of another uncanny coincidence, much of their
discussion is based on an analysis of the close-up in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of
Joan of Arc (1928), a film that traced Joan of Arc’s journey of faith through tightly
framed camerawork on her facial expressions. In 2004, Wart performed in Javier
Tellez’s La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc: Rozelle Hospital (2004), a revisiting of
Dreyer’s original.
In The Undercovers the exhibition takes a turn to the pre-linguistic realm of the
psyche, a realm that could be described as prior to faciality and its codes. This is
a realm where psychical forces of thought and feeling can be imagined as
marshalling themselves in readiness for more definite expression. Determinedly
not quite representative these gentle paintings trade in mystery and a certain
mode of withholding.
Lipstick Smear and Shut the Fuk Up, by contrast, reveals the darker aspects of
abuse: the silencing and the shutting down of the voices of those diagnosed with
a mental health condition. The smudge of smeared lipstick represents that
violence, which, though not necessarily physical, manifests as a psychical
indicator of a fragile mental state (things are not going well), while the final
painting with the mouth delicately stitched up, is a potent metaphor for the
barbarity of that silence.
The Secret Phases of Fear (reworked) has a long history. It was first exhibited in
2006 in For Matthew and Others – journeys with schizophrenia (Campbelltown
Arts Centre) and again in Good Neighbours at Art Bank (2017) and Four Women:
(I do belong) Double at Lismore Regional Gallery (2017). Originally installed as
larger sixteen-piece painting set it presented a chilling insight into what it was like
being taken in an IPCU (Intensive Psychiatric Care Unit). Don’t be fooled by the
innocuous title that makes no mention of the terrors of high walls and solitary
confinement, and gives no indication of the horrors that took place in the boondocks
of Rozelle Hospital in 2004. Revisiting what remains of the series (many were sold),
this subset of paintings can be interpreted as a form of therapeutic reworking of a
damaging treatment some twenty years on from a much better place of improved
mental health. A video interview with Wart explains the work in her words: “They are
paintings of someone going through emotional turmoil, through real fear” (
https://wart-the-website.com/secret-phases-of-fear-2005/). The twenty-year interval
speaks volumes in itself of the slow processes of trauma recovery. (Details for the
catalogue essays that accompanied the earlier iterations of this work are listed
separately in the endnote below, and are by Anne Loxley, Daniel Mudie Cunningham
and Djon Mundine.)
In the following Q&A Wart gives the backstory on the genesis and development
of the works in the exhibition:
1) AF: Wart, you had as a pet a parrot named Fingers. Can you talk about your
relationship with this bird, and, more generally, about your ongoing affinity with
birds. I’m thinking of your previous exhibition Eye See Pink, Black and White in
which the black and white Ibis, affectionately known as Sydney’s bin-chicken, but
held as sacred by the Egyptians, is squared off against its flashier cousin the pink
flamingo.
WART: Actually I grew up with a menagerie, my brothers and sisters included…
but my eldest sister had canary’s (in a goldmine) and my late brother (1962-
2022) bred quail and peach face parrots….we had plenty of animals which I
immersed myself into when our Mum died in 1973….hmmmmm But yes , the Ibis
has been stalking the bins in my area for around 15 odd years…
They got released from the zoo 30 years ago and chippo used to be a water way,
they have cleverly adapted to our ‘bin juice’ , they are surrounded by miners and
pigeons, we used to have sparrows , magpie family and a crow …I have lived in
my place for 28 years…..
Fingers , wot a bird, a rainbow lorikeet, made me larf, it, like my cat Moonlight,
was musical and both of them had the run or flap of the flat…..where moonlight
played the piano, Fingers would wrap his claws around a saucepan handle and
bang to his rhythm , I had a drummer and a pianist in my animal family….. much
amusement!!!!!
2) AF: In Eye See Pink, Black and White you champion the Ibis paying homage to
the urban adaptability of this remarkable bird. Many other species have not been
so lucky given their reliance on nutrient chains and habitat that are fast
disappearing. Can you say something more of the story behind Oddblongs? Plus,
as a painter (cartoonist, poet and performer) what prompted this new
engagement with the medium of sculpture, and your decision to reimagine the
children’s game of blocks?
WART: I spose I was thinking and have always been For the animals Fauna and
flora but it compounded in a performance I did at Cementa 21 ? where I did a
eulogy piece about my Dad , Kandos was surrounded by fires , there was smoke
in the air, we, myself and Victoria Spence (performer and Founder of LifeRites
Funerals) did this piece in a little stone church ….. we built into the performance
that the audience could light a candle for a loved one or sprinkle or wash in
water themselves with water for the fauna and flora being ravaged by the fires….
It was profoundly moving and a full house…. The audience were then led to a
watering hole, the railway hotel as a wake and place to talk reminisce and it was
a hot smokey afternoon
That is wot made me want to look and think about wot I could do
Thru conversations with Bec Dean the ideas firmed up….i as a word worker
remembered a game where you wrote a statement , folded it and someone else
would add another and so forth…… you usually got something pretty weird and
wild to work with
There was Exquisite Corpse which originated with the Dadarists. The block idea
became a firmer option and The ODDLONGS were formed. Its name not being
realised until later in the process and I also after seeing the prototypes realised
there are 36 variations in one pair of The ODDLONGS showing basically you cant
mess with nature is it cryonics
NATURE is VULNERABLE. Don’t Fuk It Up ANYMORE
THESE ODDLONGS are FRAGILE
Be gentle with them its there first time
3) AF: Discussions of mental health are still very much ‘Hush, Hush’, in particular
on the gargantuan effort of managing the physical adverse effects of those very
powerful psych drugs. And we hear even less about how that world is governed
or managed. Or the hierarchies of doctors that have to be negotiated between
those treating the mind, the shrinks, and those mitigating the damages of the
drugs to the body – the shakes, the bloating, the constipation and so forth. To
what extent is the realm of mental health a secret world of power and control?
WART: The constructs of western medicine are imperialistic, patriarchal, and
colonialist, the world of psych treatment since the 80s is in a mode of drugs
rather than discussion around social, economic and environmental needs…nd
have the ability to imply that if you overstep your line they can push your drug
intake up to shut you up……be seen but not heard…..patriarchal crap
..tho some psychs are forward thinkers and not necessarily shrinks, but harder to
find in the public sector.
They can use forms of social control, over use of cto, community treatment order,
social control thru heavy sedating drugs , which can be under police wotch….
So yes there is sooo much power to the doctor and not much credence to a psych
patient……you learn very quickly you area lowest grade person…..and can be
very drugged to fight it
4) AF: And how have the drugs themselves evolved over the period you have
been taking them? What are the improvements? And which are the drugs, still
prescribed, that are to be avoided?
WART: Yes there are slow improvements but only if you are in the know,.. I
helped set up the first sexual health clinic in a psychiatric hospital (Rozzelle
Hospital c2000s)???? and was privy to some of the contents……of the drugs
There was a new antipsychotic drug for men to help with sexual function and
nothing for women of course…..they used to give radical hysterectomies to
women in psych wards….such control or imbed depot so conceiving wouldn’t
happen….men in suits deciding hmmmmmmm
Its an arcaicic system that needs change, tho there are some new lighter drugs, a
lot of shrinks prefer the drug way….easy control…..rather than listening and
interpreting
I have been soo overdrugged that I was very incontinent…. A truly embarrassing
and eggstreemlee uncomfortable time…. They didn’t care…. It shut me up but
not to my exceptional GP who found me a drug to stop it…. They the shrink gave
me massive injections in my bum every month and to stop it I had to sniff a
drug….. weird visual….
My GP became my ally and we worked at getting me out of that situation
Some drugs make you constipated sooo mean and not only does it do that but
gives you the shakes and depletes your bone density…. Hmmmm and I was going
thru men a pause. Soooo bad for me… I soon was removed from that cycle by
another great expand mind psychiatrist, and she is a woman… love that
Does the doctor doctor the way the good doctor doctors. Doctors …….
Aaarrrhhhh DOCTORS
I have very lucky and unlucky I have experienced both sides of the dial, the drug
em stage and the more listen stage hmmmmmmm…. Good medicine should do
no harm
Bad medicine is lazy medicine
5) AF: In previous conversations you mentioned one of the least known physical
effects of psych medications: of the face becoming frozen and immobilised,
unable to express emotions. This is at odds with the astonishingly expressive
qualities of your paintings for example Secret Phases of Fear (reworked) where
the psychical underside of your mental state could be said to have found an
outlet. Can you say something more about this phenomenon and/or its
relationship to your paintings?
WART: Interestingly that series originally were dark and stark backgrounds, I
was always going to do something with those 3( secret phases of fear) and I was
recovering from a severely broken wrist held together by 9 screws and a bent
plate….. there were 10 screws but I had a loose screw!!! I am used to that,
HaHaHa and they had to re operate and took it out….. which really set me back in
the healing stakes……. But as I started my rehab, I worked so hard at moving my
cyborg wrist that I decided to rework those three and the more I did I was
building a different feeling surrounding the anguish were bright in yer face
colours, slowly my feeling of self worth was coming back ….. in eggsplaining the
originals they were done after a pyschosis where I was in isolation unit at
Rozelle Pychiatric hospital
Revealing the total horror I had felt at that time…early2000s??????? I think
Just thinking, I have always been searching for my face….I hid from fotos…I
couldn’t find me in the realm of drug culture of some , well most of the psych
doctors…….me being my face……it seemed to me to be emotionless,
eggspreshionless, a blank, so I tried to find mine in paintings and words….it’s
ongoing but I am gradually becoming more aware…….sorta. There are many
scars… …many shields …self esteem is no where but nearly now here…..just
saying
When I was first put in the bins I couldn’t work out wot the fuk was going on… It
took a few years for a diagnosis, which incidentally changes with how your
doctor doctors you…. So my next series in the early 90s were under the title
Mood Swings 1 and 2.
Coincidently I was put under the Guardianship board and they basically had to
take me out of the studio set up and as an outlet for me to pursue my creativity I
wrote and fanged out on guitars… this led me into more performance based
work and getting 2 books published.
I am now based in a studio situation again thru grants sales and have been for
the last 7 years
Endnote
For Matthew and Other: Journeys with
Schizophrenia Campbelltown (2006)
Anne Loxley, ‘The Charisma of Schizophrenia’, in Dysart andFenner (eds.), For Matthew and
Other: Journeys with Schizophrenia, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2006, p. 42
Good Neighbours Art Bank 2017
Daniel Mudie Cunningham, ‘Mental Olympics: in between breaths
with Wart’, in un Magazine 11.1, un Projects, Melbourne, 2017
This is also available on Wart’s website, https://wart-the-website.com/mental-olympics-2017/
Four Women: (I do belong) Double Lismore Regional Gallery 2017
Djon Mundine, “Four Women: (I do belong) Double.” This is also available under publications on
Wart’s website, https://wart-the-website.com/four-women-i-do-belong-double-2017/