Steven Rendall

Steven Rendall
born United Kingdom 1969; arrived Australia 2000

Nineteen sixty nine 2019
oil on canvas
Geelong Gallery
John Norman Mann Bequest Fund, 2019

Steven Rendall’s paintings are littered with references to technology, science, art history, horror movies and pop music. Materials, images and meanings are scavenged and rearranged in various ways.

With the exception of the 27 astronauts who have travelled to the Moon and the 12 who have walked on its surface (to 2019), our experience of the Moon is largely a mediated one: we experience it predominantly through the lens of telescopes, photography and film.

Rendall disrupts, fractures and recontextualises mass-printed images promoting and celebrating lunar exploration and journeys into the unknown. The collaged and painted imagery of Nineteen Sixty Nine derives from a commemorative publication marking an anniversary of the 1969 Moon landing. Rendall collages together various segments of the Moon’s surface, emphasising its grey tonal range.