Glow-In-The-Dark Alien Autopsy (2002)
Oil on board, 30.5x30.5cm
Private collection
The starting point for this painting was the toy of the title. This a friend had brought back from the USA for me, and I happened to like it in the packaging sufficiently to leave it there. Six years later, when looking for a subject for a trompe l'oeil painting, I thought that this would make for a suitably challenging subject. The image behind this to the left is a still from archive film showing the first nuclear bomb prior to being tested in Alamogordo in July 1945. The whole UFO craze in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s stems from Cold War paranoia: without nuclear weapons, and the threat of instant annihilation, it is doubtful that anti-communist hysteria would have reached such heights. Having permeated the culture at large, the UFO phenomenon leaves behind such ephemera as the Glow-In-The-Dark Alien Autopsy. The image at the lower right is a photograph of a British soldier wearing protective clothing after Britain exploded its first nuclear weapon at Monte Bello NW Australia. Britain's policy of 'independent nuclear deterrence', i.e. of having its own nuclear weapons, as well as those at US Air Force bases on British soil, had the result of making it a target for the USSR in the Cold War. The two notes in the painting don't really relate to anything in particular, but the reference to posters suggests sci-fi fandom perhaps (the Post-It note actually refers to the framing of the painting).
©copyright 2005 Nicholas Middleton