James Vernau: Weapons of Mass Destruction

The denizens and passers by of down-town Subiaco have recently been the civilian targets of the visual smArt weapons of James Vernau's exhibition at Free Range.

A barrage of red Burley footballs beckons to AFL enthusiasts on their way to see Australia's game at Subiaco oval. "Are they for sale?" the passing punters ask, "No," they are told, because these are on loan from Burley and will be returned when their tour of duty for art is at an end. Displayed on their neat cruciform stands they are quite at home in the ex-shop window of the gallery and the artist has already received enquiries about supplying the stands for commercial purposes. Displayed as they are, the footballs also remind this viewer of photographs of modern combat aircraft, with every deadly piece of ordinance and ammunition carried on board aesthetically arrayed on the tarmac in the foreground.

Deeper into the room stands a Westinghouse wringer washing machine, rescued from a verge-side collection. This is visually propelled skyward by four red triangular fins, and is ominously plugged in. In its squat, cylindrical obsolescence there lurks the memory of the cold war and the threat of the bomb. One senses that perhaps this machinery hasn't yet been turned off, only the observer has been disarmed.

Against another wall stands a small gas barbecue, its round plate put to good use cooking falafels on the exhibition's opening night. Its source of energy? A rocket- finned gas cylinder.

At the heart of the gallery sits an armchair and a television monitor, fed a continuous stream of Tarzan films and American War movies starring Ronald Reagan. At the centre of all this subtle strategic weaponry, this part of the installation resembles some kind of suburban command centre. But the artist seems to be asking us who is at the controls? The television remote control and its buttons are conspicuously absent from the armchair.

Despite the title of the exhibition, there is no indiscriminate carpet bombing in Vernau's works, only precision strikes into the world as we know it, post cold-war and in a new age of terror. But do we see it all? Vernau asks us this as he quietly states in texts at the periphery of the exhibition, "My life is good, Sometimes I forget."

The bombings in Bali have decisively linked the sport of the untouched lucky country, Aussie Rules, with the tragedy and suffering of casualties of acts of violence and terrorism. Whitegoods are only one string of several in the bows of manufacturing giants such as Westinghouse, who sell weapons components as well as washing machines. As we fill up our car, muttering in disgust about prices per litre, or burn gas for the weekend barbecue, it is easy to forget from this distance that people die for the control of these fossil fuel resources.

At the centre of it all is a moving picture, entertaining and absurd, that renders the world black and white, clean cut and inevitable. In these films America supplies us with heroes, whose confident self-righteousness blazes a trail into the darkest jungle with missionary zeal. Volunteering as their sidekicks, surely Australia can do no wrong, and might share some of the super-hero spotlight.

In this show, the armchair is our designated place, spoon fed and entertained, but in our passivity there is complicity. The great strength of Vernau's show is its simplicity and openness. He asks us to look twice. A simple steel stand at once gives an unstable object stability in space, but renders it symbolically volatile and ambiguous. Who are the victims and casualties behind all that we continue to consume, and at whose expense is our Australian way of life maintained?