Matthew Quick: Monumental Nobodies

In his series ‘Monumental Nobodies’, award-winning Australian artist Matthew Quick refers to the image of power, yet he reverses and distorts its meaning through his conceptual approach that reveals, with a fine humorous touch, pressing issues of society, unfolding a reality that often hides behind appearances, carefully constructed and misleading structures that people tend to perceive from a narrow, usually given, perspective.

The aura of emperors and gods is eliminated by adding ordinary objects to replace their crowns and thrones, turning them into powerless nobodies. There are also references to individual freedom, social control and surveillance, the deceitful behavior of rulers who intentionally fail to act as they speak.

The works of Matthew Quick are, therefore, a reflection of a world where deification is no longer possible as it would be ridiculous to those who see beyond the veil of illusion and discourse, and leaders lack the means of manipulating their image into becoming a kind of omniscient and omnipresent super-beings.