Stephen Eastaugh
HUMAN GAG. (What has one leg and bleeds? Half a human.), 2022
acrylic, watercolour pencil, wax pencil, fake earth, watercolour paper
23 x 30 cm

Artist statement

Across the world more people are being gagged from speaking freely than ever before and that’s not funny. As a pessimist, I fear this but I try to see the larger picture which turned me briefly into a smiling optimist as I created these Human Gags and considered our universal absurd lunacy.

It is extremely sad that we humans can’t seem to operate peacefully on our pretty little blue planet. I sometimes imagine aliens in a distant galaxy justifiably making bad jokes about how pathetic, greedy, violent and stupid we seem to be. Picture aliens sitting at a bar many light years from Bendigo drinking fluoro-orange toxic cocktails while laughing, screaming and blabbering interstellar xenophobic jokes. 

Artist bio

Eastaugh graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1981. He is a visual artist with severe wanderlust as for the past four decades he has been on the road. Studios have been set up on an icebreaker at the North Pole, a lab in Antarctica and many other locations scattered over all continents. Geography and dis/location have fed his practice which has been characterised by texture, research and the creation of new mixed media work in response to extensive travels. Eastaugh has held 100 solo exhibitions since 1987 and is currently based Broome W.A.

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