Aldo Iacobelli

  • The Raft

    The Raft

    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.”

    The Council is making a serious effort to make our footpaths safer for all age groups by allocating extra funding for the repair of footpaths, as well as the removal of the dangerous nuts from trees such as the Queensland Box, through blowing them onto the road to be picked up by a street sweeper
    A page from the notebook
    The wall (“walls work, just ask Israel”)
    Via Egiziaca a PIzzofalcone n.74, Quartiere San Ferdinando, Napoli
    “En el mundo tal cual es, mundo al revés, los países que custodian la paz universal son los que más     armas fabrican y los que más armas venden a los demás países” 
    “The world economy is the most efficient expression of organised crime” (EG)
    The conversation

  • Return

    Return

    Curated by Linda Marie Walker
    9 February – 10 March 2019 


    The Riddoch, Arts and Culture Centre, Mount Gambier

    This is the first time Iacobelli has shown work that spans his forty-year painting career. The works gathered in RETURN were selected through memory, conversation, and unwrapping stored works, with some works having never been shown in Australia. The works have diverse subjects, not least the language of painting and drawing, the histories and traditions and challenges (representation and resemblance, for instance). The painter is also a sculptor, and objects accompany paintings, as well as stand for themselves.