Imagine having the flexibility of wearing your hair loose and flowing...maybe pulled back in a simple rubber band, or allowing your long locks to swing expressively in front of your face. It’s a natural feeling and style, that epitomizes your love for individualism, they are your Dreadlocks.
- Shonte’ Stephenson
The Dreadlock Society: A Creative Salute to Individualism
The beach has long occupied a special place in the Australian identity. Callum Galletly is like a bored, menacing pre-adolescent with a magnifying glass on a sunny summer day. With the same kind of sickening curiosity with which one probes a blister, his work probes the culture of our society; highlighting the gaps between cultural representation and reality. In his recent work, Callum has taken aim at beach and surf culture, his installations offering a caricature of infantile escapist summer fantasy populated by sunburnt skulls and sweaty sunsets. Australian popular culture venerates summertime leisure and travel as authentic escape routes from the stress and monotony of modern life. As our expectations become further removed from reality, it becomes harder to manage our overwhelming desire to escape.
By Jaden Gallagher
