Species enhancement by international gene pool

The idea for Wild Thang: post pop from the MCA emerged from my experience of viewing permanent collections in regional art galleries. Most of these collections began in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a major cash injection and after the initial flush of funds and public interest many of them languished. Consequently regional galleries in New South Wales (and Victoria and Queensland) have large bodies of work from a time period and aesthetic framework that are often considered difficult at best and unfashionable at worst. Most Directors and Curators I spoke to, looked in despair at the mass of third and fourth generation large, brightly coloured, vaguely sculptural and architectonic hard edge abstract works as well as similar numbers of pop-inspired and photo-realist figuration. Such seminal purchases and acquisitions were now regarded as the dinosaurs of those respective collections.