Skull Springs (Levitating Galah), 2008
synthetic polymer on skeleton
3.5 x 10 x 4 cm
Tom Mùller's galah has come to rest having been posted from Skull Springs where it was picked up by the road outside Mt Tom Price. Through the coating of paint, Mùller flattens out its skeletal remains giving rise to connotations of still birth. There is not only dislocation from habitat but between generations. Mùller has previously explored how animals have been naturalised or contained through their inclusion in the heraldry of his European heritage and now considers their place in the face of the Statess development.
Jasmin Stephens
Curator, Fremantle Arts Centre
... Also exploring duality is a work by Tom Mùller. A partially mummified galah, carefully brought south to Perth from its resting place of skull Springs in the Pilbara, has been embalmed in lolly-pink paint. The skinny bones, bent with death, are weighted with the heavy application of acrylic toxicity. Removed from its original organic location, it has been positioned on an egg-shaped plinth low to the floor, Mùller re-placing the bird again upon 'ground', but here as an object. The intimacy of mortality, a witnessing of the way in which the bird's body has curled up as it has desicated, is combined with garish pink-hued modernity, viewed here in the artificial light of the gallery. The result is a salient homage to the bird's life and a mediation upon the collision between the natural and the manmade
Nyanda Smith
The Yellow Vest Syndrome: recent West Australian art. In Artlink, vol 29 no 2, pp 84-85.
Jurassic Mountains, Mirroring Rat, 2009
synthetic polymer on skeleton, ash, flour
10 x 150 x 150 cm