“Slide Night: Justin Clemens”
Justin Clemens
14 Oct → 14 Oct 2009

The image (click on ‘Read more’ to view it) is a Gustave Dore engraving of a scene from Milton’s Paradise Lost, when Satan, trying to escape Hell, arrives at its gates which are guarded by Sin, a half-woman-half-reptile creature and Death, a formless repellent monster. It later turns out that Sin was first born from Satan’s head when he conceived rebellion against God; he then raped her and dumped her; she’s now given birth to Death, who raped her in turn, and she now gives birth to hell-hounds that crawl in and out of her womb to feast on her insides, while Death and Satan keep trying to kill each other (paradoxically enough since neither, technically speaking, are really alive) to prove who’s the best…. Hopefully appropriate for slide nights for Melbourne art-scene?

Justin Clemens is the author of three books of poetry, a novella, several tracts on cultural theory, lots of essays on contemporary art, and some other quasi-aesthetic materials. He teaches at the University of Melbourne.

The Slide Night is a weekly series of talks in which different artists and arts practitioners discuss the influences – formidable and otherwise – in their own practice. What are the important influences in their practice? What got them started in the first place?

$5 entry.