Purple (August)

August is a little time since the deaths of Bowie and Prince, musical adventurers of vast exposure who created their images in managerial style. We were drawn into their contrived fantasies, but kept at a permanent distance. Their spectacle was incessant, in keeping with capitalist production. Bowie was every colour, a thin white duke in red shoes dancing the blues. Prince made a signature of purple. Spectacle was used to express changing personal identity, yet their distance was essential for success. They were signs of change, but grief at their deaths was grief for ourselves and our own passing youth.

Purple (January)

Purple of Hermannsburg attracted attention. The purple of London were sceptical, mountains could not be that purple. Best purple prose writers paled with disbelief. Royalty had apoplectics. Bishops turned purple. Cognoscenti, fed on diets of purple people-eater movies, went looking for something more mauvie. But Namatjira sales were steady (as The New Yorker likes to say). Purple outback had its place, though London had no idea this was only the beginning. Only the beginning for walls, vivid as January. When they step through the gallery door, purple pinot-sippers gaze upon Hermannsburg presents, take stock, search for words, test their superlatives.