don’t worry

As the number of coronavirus cases trebled in Melbourne this week, other countries struggled with upticks in infections, the economy foundered, and public demonstrations about racism continued, I was reminded of Mark Hilton’s sculpture, ‘dontworry’. This was one of the most popular, photographed and provocative works in ‘Melbourne Now’ at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2013.  It is an ironic title for an artwork that ‘letter by letter’ highlights the myriad things we should absolutely worry about. Although made back in 2013 it is also a work that talks about today.

The best words to describe Mark are thoughtful, meticulous, dogged and uncompromising. dontworry, Mark’s most personal work, took four years to complete as each letter was painstakingly planned, sketched, modelled and often re-thought. From time to time I would visit Mark in his studio in Fitzroy and look at the scattered heads, tortured shapes and other body parts that littered his work surface. I was reminded of the artisans in Renaissance Florence and also of Rodin ceaselessly working on his ‘Gates of Hell’ as Mark struggled to get the work ‘right’.

I first met Mark when he was part of the Gertrude Contemporary Studios program back in 2008/9.  But, the earliest works of his that I can remember seeing were a sequence of illuminated lightboxes in the darkened Gertrude Contemporary gallery in 2006. The exhibition was called ‘Collective Autonomy’ and each light box was executed in a different traditional cultural style – Medieval fresco, ancient Persian court painting, and Chinese coffin-lid carving. Mark had re-visited historical painting tropes to depict scenes of contemporary Australian culture. Issues of sexual abuse, gang rape, racist and gendered violence, and the power dynamics in Australian Rules football were re-imagined using these diverse and historical aesthetic approaches. One particularly memorable work was a lightbox (Alexandra Avenue) which referenced the notorious stabbing deaths at Melbourne’s Salt Nightclub in 2002 where one man was hacked to death and two others drowned in the Yarra River attempting to escape. The art was tough, bleak and troubling.

The lightboxes were extraordinarily vivid and accomplished works and are well-remembered by people who saw them. Mark made a few more for his inclusion in ‘Primavera’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2008. He could probably have made a career out of creating light boxes but, as far as he was concerned, he was finished with that project and was moving on. At the time Mark was supporting himself, and his art practice, working as part of the installation team at the NGV.

Mark’s next major work, completed in 2007, was Shit Happens.  Using an old wooden extension ladder, Mark strategically broke the rungs in such a way that when light was shone on the ladder, the words ‘shit happens’ appeared as shadows cast on the wall.  The ladder was installed in the Gertrude Contemporary gallery so that visitors had to walk underneath it to enter the space – playing on the superstition of bad luck from passing beneath a ladder. The work was both whimsical and serious and spoke of the reliance we place on things that are there to support us, the possibility of self- sabotage, and the vagaries of existence. Being forced to enter the gallery with the potential promise of bad luck, invoked the likelihood of future karma.

In 2007, Mark also made a work using an old car tyre which would prefigure dontworry.  Called Infiltration of the rhetorical by the real this work featured groups of religious figures seemingly emerging from the surface of the tyre – similar to the figures that appear carved in church pulpits by Nicola Pisano or the baptistery doors in Florence by Lorenzo Ghiberti. The tyre was included in the Helen Lempriere Sculpture exhibition and was suspended from a tree like a children’s backyard swing.

Mark’s following project was included in NEW11 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne in 2011. This time his works included an engraved bone, several sump oil paintings, and the letter ‘t’ which would become part of ‘dontworry’. An interview about the project can be listened to at: https://acca.melbourne/explore/podcasts/

The letter ‘t’ is titled Enie, meanie, and, although cast in resin, resembles a leaden cross that may be found in a northern European church. The work is based on a small engraving The Hanging (1633) by the French printmaker, Jacques Callot – part of his ‘The Great Miseries of War’ series. This anti-war series is one of the best-known set of prints produced in France in the 17^th century. Callot’s engravings abound with scenes of the barbarity and carnage that Europe witnessed during the Thirty Years’ War. In The Hanging soldiers, who have committed atrocities, hang ‘like wretched fruit’ from a tree as they are called to account for their crimes.

The base of Mark’s ‘t’ tree begins with rising coils of DNA which morph into the trunk of the tree on which there is the title of the work in Gothic lettering encircling the trunk. The branches spread out and on each bough there are eight bodies hanging –representing social outcasts, people who are scorned, or victims. These include: an old woman with a walking frame, a blind girl, an illegal immigrant, a woman in a burka, an indigenous male, a pregnant sex worker, a drug addict, gay men engaging in sex, a cripple, a thief and a beggar. All are clear stereotypes who have been vilified and marginalised. The top of the tree has edelweiss flowers. Edelweiss was the insignia of the 1^st Mountain Division of the German Wehrmacht in World War II which was responsible for multiple large-scale war crimes.

The title of the work refers to the old children’s counting game which results in the highlighting or exclusion of an individual from a group. While the resemblance to a cross suggests persecution in the name of religion, the references to genetics and ideologies is a reminder that there are many systems which categorise and vilify ‘the other’ to shore up one’s own sense of security when feeling vulnerable or wanting to assert power. The political and judicial events in America with respect to ‘dreamers’ and ‘gender diversity’ are current reminders.

‘t’ was the first of the elements that Mark made for dontworry. Over the next three years, Mark crafted the other letters. The title ‘dontworry’ is taken from both the song by Bobby McFerrin ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ which was a No. 1 American pop hit and song of the year in 1989, and its source, the phrase used by the Indian mystic Meher Baba. This rather  mindless exhortation encourages us to just accept things without too much question: ‘in your life expect some trouble, when you worry you make it double – don’t worry, be happy’ the song goes.

Mark directly challenges this in his sculpture where each letter relates to an episode of hurt, violence, disillusionment or injustice that he, or people in his world, have experienced. Scattered across the letters are scenes of racism, paranoia, exploitation, addiction, molestation, and self-harm played out in the suburban landscape of the artist’s youth.

Our teenage and young adult years often provide us with our most enduring memories as they occur at times of heightened emotion and our ‘first independent’ life experiences. Issues of identity and group affiliations help us define our sense of self and our connections to others. It is not surprising that many of the images in Mark’s sculpture present vignettes of his and other’s formative experiences during this time.

There are many scenes of dramas hidden behind closed suburban doors – the safe haven of home which may not be safe – or bullying enacted in schools or the workplace. The escape from violence only leading to the discovery that there are few safe places in the world for those with limited resources.

The first letter ‘r’ in ‘worry’ is titled I am a banana and is about mental health issues. It starts with a young child sitting on a pile of children’s blocks which spell OCD, ADHD and BIPOLAR.  His parents stand behind him and are clearly bewildered and frustrated. Over the rest of the letter, we see the lad ageing and his health declining as he experiments with drugs, becomes psychotic, self-destructive, hospitalised and homeless. Mark witnessed this journey among his friends and was frustrated that despite much talk about mental health, nothing seemed to change.

The ‘o’ in ‘worry’ depicts children at school where an authoritarian teacher is instilling life messages. One child with his back to us and wearing a dunce’s hat has already been belittled and excluded; another lad is made to write ‘survive to use’ (the title of the work) as lines on the blackboard. The protagonist is seated in the front, confused and scared, trying to make sense of the world.  As the scenes shift, we see this child kneeling beside the bed of his dying father, involved in an episode of sexual violence, and then dead while incarcerated as a young adult.

The opening letter ‘d’ (titled ‘danger bird flies alone’) describes Mark’s time in New York following the attacks on the World Trade Centre as well as his trip to China when it was experiencing an outbreak of SARS in 2003. Confronted with countries in crisis, grappling to understand what is happening and take control, Mark presents a collision of images from the ‘dystopian world’ that was playing out in front of him. Workers wearing hazmat suits and masks carry a coffin while a headless chicken scurries about. Below them is a subterranean world of greed that survives as others starve. To the right we see animals balanced on top of each other as they ascend toward a heavenly maternal goddess – are they Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or the survival of the fittest?

Mark created dontworry seven years ago, but the artwork is relevant, prescient and important. Racism, domestic violence, the exploitation of children, drug addiction, mental health issues, and even a pandemic are depicted in the sculpture It is impossible not to worry today when issues of safety, victimisation, vulnerability, and helplessness are pervasive.

As Chris McAuliffe wrote in his essay ‘you do shit, it’s done, and then you die’, in the book which accompanied the work: ‘dontworry doesn’t or can’t scan like a well-told tale. Life is the kind of mess that slogans can’t fix’.