On 17 March 1993, the body of photographer Angelo Campana was discovered in the burnt out remains of the newly opened IEG Waste Recycling Plant in Corrimal. According to the coroner's report, his death had not been caused by this fire, but from fatal head injuries incurred by the deceased's head being repeatedly bashed with a theodolite. This is the immediate crime which is appears to be investigated in Dennis Del Favero's sleuthian compilation of words and images, objects and installations called 'Prima Facie'.
Nuclear conflagration - whether real or imagined - captivated the post war psyche. Endist images of one form or another were developed in response to what many foresaw as the likely outcome of a third world war.
While AIDS does indeed affect everyone in our society, at the moment in Australia we are seeing predominantly a gay and lesbian artistic response to the epidemic.
Thus we come full circle to view the cemetery not as a necessary inconvenience to be isolated on the edge of town and visited once every few years but as a resource that can make a positive contribution to the community.
The cinema's ability to represent death - the act of dying, bodily transformations, decay, the corpse - in astonishing realistic terms helps to explain why film, the moving rather than the static image, has become the central depository of death narratives (ancient and modern) in contemporary culture.
The artist looks at the paintings which were developed for the Health Commission on education, prevention and caring in the AIDS environment. Using an Aboriginal perspective these paintings were produced as a powerful series of posters.
Exhibition review Symmetry: Crafts and Kindred Trades and Professions Curated by Kevin Murray
University of South Australian Art Museum
8 September - 8 October 1994