Artwork information

‘…I have deliberately brought together all the pictorial clichés that have come to represent Polynesia, including images of lush tropical vegetation and flowers along with the recognisable figure of the exotic Pacific Island temptress, the dusky maiden. Using an excessively colourful palette and thick layers of glossy enamel paint I have created a sumptuous painterly surface overlaid with seductive virginal women.

While it may appear that I am merely replicating the stereotyped European construction of Polynesia by appropriating female nudes from colonial photographs and well-known Tahitian paintings by Gauguin, this is merely a decoy to draw attention to the fact that camouflage is my painterly weapon.’

Graham Fletcher

This painting’s title, DPM2 refers to the military name used for camouflage: Disruptive Patterned Material. The paint is applied over a contemporary Samoan siapo (barkcloth) surface. (Sea Knowing and Island Looking, 2002)