HEROES & VILLAINS

Through a selection of traditional paintings, digital paintings and photography by the artist GM Spiers covering the last 40 years, the opening exhibition at the Laneway loosely explores the idea of Archetypes, in particular the Hero and their evil twin, the Villain.

The psychologist Carl Jung, a contemporary of Freud, proposed that every person is born with an unconscious shared ancestral experience of knowledge and imagery that he called the "Collective Unconscious". These innate and unlearned evolutionary experiences form the foundation on which each person develops their own experience of life, coloured by their unique culture, personality, and life events.

Underpinning this concept is the notion of Archetypes. These take the form of symbols or memes which appear repeatedly in our dreams, mythology, literature and art.

Perhaps the most persistent and powerful of all Archetypes is The Hero, who must overcome adversity and suffering in order to triumph over darkness. The Hero is invariably accompanied on the journey by his or her evil twin, The Shadow or Villain, who may in fact be the irrational, unpleasant and unpalatable side of our Hero’s own nature.

The exhibition highlights certain key figures ("heroes") who left an indelible mark on art and culture in the 1970s and 80s, an influence that continues to this day.

These include David Bowie, painters Francis Bacon and Max Ernst, writers William Burroughs and J.G. Ballard, and electronic music pioneer Richard H Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire.