Exhibited at 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres
Photography: Paul Steed
From the Biennale catalogue: “The seven paintings of The Raft (2019) are rumination on memory. Via Egiziaca a Pizzofalcone n.74, Quartiere San Ferdinando, Napoli, describes an early encounter with American soldiers in a post-WWII occupied Naples; “I go back to a mixture of two smells: shoe polish and beer-soaked urine…” The fragmented body is also a recurring motif. With flailing legs drowning at sea, Iacobelli’s Spanish-titled painting loosely translates to describe an upside-down world in which countries guarding global peace are also the greatest manufacturers and international exporters of weapons. “The world economy is the most efficient expression of organised crime” (2020) features not only nightmarish dismembered hands and feet but a cartoon thumbs down vaguely reminiscent of a Facebook “dislike”. Iacobelli’s installation is an atmospheric form of social realism; his critique of global power structures is channelled through elusive imagery and turpentine-washed surfaces.”
