'Sane' - Anne Bentley
25 June to 23 July, 2010

SANE began as accidental therapy to counteract relentless building works going on around and on top of her inner west workroom.

“I was already playing around with some collages but the frustration and noise was so aggravating that I stopped one afternoon and thought, ‘Right you lot - Take This!’ and the images just leapt into the work. I titled it just how I felt: Get Off The F---ing Roof!”

Pleased with the piece, Bentley realized that some old “educator” books from 1905 would benefit from a Frankenstein like treatment and so set about selecting illustrations to make new images.

Listening to David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album prompted Bentley to think about George Orwell’s 1984 (on which the album is based), which in turn lead her to Animal Farm, and then to current politics, culminating in a ship’s rat quoting Bowie to some pigs.

When looking at Bentley’s A Spanish Interior, Richard Hamilton’s re-working of his original Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? comes to mind.

In Bentley’s piece, a macho bull with over-sized testicles and the face of Picasso (he was a big fan of bullfighting) is ignored by the famous 1960s Matador, El Viti.

Is Bentley reflecting on the constant interplay between domesticity and popular culture, or is she sending up and perhaps even questioning the relevance of Picasso today?

In over 25 works, SANE is imbued with a wonderful sense of fun – Bentley has a movie director chameleon hiding behind a snake and in another, a Roman god points at microscopic bacteria titled Look! Anthrax. There are iconic kewpie dolls spewing out of a blue tongue lizard’s mouth while two little dolls stand on the lizard’s back holding brains on stems like balloons. The brain stem balloons feature throughout SANE – popping out of chimneys, the top of a skeletal finger and in the hands of a little Indian girl.

In keeping with an early 20th Century look, Anne Bentley has created a brand new set of works that will both intrigue and entertain… “I simply look at our human world; its media and entertainment and, really, we are an eccentric lot”.