Michael Zavros

Great White, a unique and long-awaited solo exhibition by Michael Zavros, marks his return to Melbourne after a decade. This exhibition is a testament to his mastery of aspiration, autobiography, and juxtaposition, which he deftly explores across various mediums such as painting, photography, and sculpture. Alongside new works the show will also include a pair of historic works from Zavros’ personal collection. Together, these pieces form a conceptually rich tapestry of references, inviting viewers to delve into a narrative that weaves between contrasting elements.

Common contemporary themes of ambition, beauty, and decadence are contextualised and countered by Zavros’ autobiographical tone, which sits within the conceptual currents of absurdity, appropriation, identity, and history. These concerns are depicted within his customary spectacular interiors and whimsical landscapes or housed within playful still lifes. Yet, each work, with its layers of meaning, leave more questions than answers. Zavros’ work prompts viewers to reflect on their interests, existence and assumptions, stirring emotions and building tensions as they gaze.

Two paintings talk about the layered approach and underpinning ambiguity of Zavros’ practice: the title work and The New Belvedere. Great White comes with a slew of motifs, meanings and metaphors, for instance: do the two glistening white elephant tusks form an arch like that of a shark piercing the water’s surface? Does this reference to an elephant and the title suggest the metaphor of a “white elephant”, a possession challenging to dispose of and whose costly maintenance outweighs its use value? Similarly, the historical figure of the “great white hunter”, a term used to describe affluent white European hunters crossing Africa’s plains, a history that continues to highlight the racial and colonist aspects of game hunting. The trophies they hunted would often be turned into taxidermy, an art form Zavros has a keen interest in, collecting a number and producing paintings contextualising these trophies often alongside other trophies of aspiration in Zavros’ world: art, desirable furniture, clothing and cars, and the role of the “trophy child” or “trophy dad”. The work references a photograph by the late Peter Beard, the handsome American socialite photographer and hunter who settled in Africa documenting the last of the Big Game.

It could be all or none of these, or more. If it were to touch on some of the elements above, it is a fair representation of Michael Zavros, the son of Greek immigrants, whose identity is complex — like the contentious Greek marble he is seen viewing in his At the British Museum self-portrait. Michael Zavros the artist, whose primary role in life outside his dedication to his family is that of his practice, which could be said is a living manifestation of the “white elephant” — a costly endeavour, full of endless questions concerning its value (social and otherwise), reasoning and emotional maintenance? And, of course, representative of the love of his family — here his daughter Phoebe — seated on the marble checkerboard floor in the house he has built for his family. But all these references also place Zavros in a context of power and representation, both under the skin of and boldly demonstrated in his works with their scenes of beauty and desire. At play here is an underpinning of the slowly declining power attributed to the white man, who still acts as a predator but is also at threat of extinction. This idea of the collapse of western civilisation is implied too in the aforementioned miniature painting, At the British Museum, which alludes to discussions around provenance and repatriation, a contesting of culture and how the life and narrative of an object continues and changes when placed (or forced) into new contexts.

The New Belvedere, the fourth picture in a series, is fused with this layering and abstruse articulation. Ripe with Zavros’ quintessential themes of mythologies, aspiration, beauty, decadence and narcissism, this hyper-aestheticized painting is a fusion of the 18th-century ornamental building, or “folly” — The Belvedere, found in The English Gardens of Versailles — a recurring theme and landscape in Zavros’ work— with a mirror finished weight-lifting bench planted on the grass at the front of the scene. A surreal juxtaposition and composition, this work’s depiction of a building with no practical purpose, aside from its beauty, calls back this idea of the white elephant. The painting evokes the 2006 film Children of Men, in which the protagonist encounters Michelangelo’s David and Picasso’s Guernica in the home of a powerful man; here, Versailles might be the playground for a megalomaniac, in which the gardens form a private gym, a folly within a folly, a nihilistic hedonism.

The nihilism of Zavros’ work exists with a light touch, yet the hedonism is ripe, but its presence unfolds between several references and interpretations. He is the master of juxtapositions, whose desire is to be precisely representational, but in this realism also calls into question the “reality” of things.