While many visitors to Sydney Contemporary might not be taken aback by the suggestion that the US president's head is empty, Melbourne-based artist Callum Morton's "Helter Shelter" offers just that — plus a chance to climb inside 45's noggin, if you dare.
A Luna Park-esque, hollow-headed @realdonaldtrump — firmly planted at Barangaroo #Momument32 #HelterSkelter #LunaPark #trump pic.twitter.com/dkpNj7ecvA
— Andrea Booth (@AndreasBooth) August 28, 2018
"So it's pretty obvious what this is," Morton told Timeout Sydney for an article published Friday. "It belongs to the language of the parade float or the kind of protest float… To reduce a figure like Trump to that kind of caricature is of interest to me."
"The hollow brain of Trump is a shelter — a furnace, if you like — where you can sit," Morton says. "It's not really about Trump so much… I've been meditating on these figures of power for a number of years. It's really about how a figure like Trump becomes so powerful. In the world we live in, there's always been figures like this — snake oil salesmen. He's kind of the PT Barnum of his time that makes up truth."
Helter Shelter's description on the exhibition's website notes the installation mirrors the famous "Face" at the entrance to Sydney's Luna Park amusement park, a huge grinning clown face half-buried in the ground that sits across the river from the Exchange Place in Barangaroo, where Helter Shelter is located.
The main fair, at the city's Carriageworks multi-arts center, will take place from September 13-16, but should you find yourself in Botany Bay before September 24, you can still find the Trump head at Barangaroo until then, along with several other featured works of art.
Trump isn't a new subject for the art world: even before he was elected president in November 2016, he had already been featured, albeit mockingly, in a set of nude life-sized statues collectively called "The Emperor Has No Balls."
Roughly a half-dozen of the nude statues, created by artist Ginger and placed by the anarchist collective Indecline, were seen in cities across the US in the summer of 2016. While four of them were destroyed, the sole surviving "Emperor" was auctioned off in Los Angeles for $28,000 in March of this year, Sputnik reported.
