Johnny Romeo
MARQUEE MOON
New Paintings
July 14th, 1977. A freak storm has ripped through New York, cutting out all power and plunging the city into darkness. Chaos reigns the streets, as violence, looting and arson erupt throughout a sweltering New York teetering on the edge of destruction.
Amidst this dramatic backdrop, internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo makes his fiery return to Tasmania with his thrilling new exhibition, MARQUEE MOON. Following celebrated and sell out shows in New York, Sydney, the Gold Coast and Auckland in late 2018 and early 2019, Australia’s leading culture jammer delivers an incendiary collection of new original paintings that plunges headfirst into the mayhem and restless energy of the infamous 1977 New York Blackouts. The series showcases Romeo’s inimitable Kitsch Pop style at its most confident and vivacious, as bursts of surreal imagery and vibrant colour arrangements gloriously collide in an explosive celebration of the dreamers who dare to follow their calling amidst a city on the brink or ruin.
MARQUEE MOON takes its name from the towering 1977 debut record from renowned American art-punks Television. The album’s sprawling 10-minute centrepiece ‘Marquee Moon’, in particular, acts as the conceptual backbone to Romeo’s latest series. Despite being released months before the New York Blackouts, lead singer Tom Verlaine’s lyrical exploration of a man’s journey from the darkness of self-doubt to the hopefulness of following his dreams powerfully captures both the madness that engulfed New York City in 1977, and the promise of rebirth that lay in its wake. The ‘marquee moon’, as the single source of light on New York’s darkest night, becomes a central metaphor within Romeo’s series for taking control of your life, radically embracing freedom and creating meaning in a crazy world.
The series bristles with an irrepressible, primal energy that evokes the harsh summer heat and civil unrest that threatened to tear apart the very fabric of New York City. Romeo cheekily re-envisions the world of the 1977 NYC Blackouts as a neon-drenched concrete jungle, where the danger of lawlessness is tinged with the promise of new beginnings. Technicolour beasts parading as rock stars and superheroes rub shoulders with Pop culture icons as they swagger through the mean streets of the Big Apple, all eager to make something of themselves among the rotten core of an urban wasteland. Tom Verlaine’s insistent yelp of ‘the kiss of death, the embrace of life’ in the song ‘Marquee Moon’ is transformed into a powerful statement of intent within the series, a point captured masterfully through Romeo’s vibrant colour arrangements and bold, graphic imagery.
Despite the grungy, urban setting of the New York blackouts, the series urges audiences to see the ‘marquee moon’ as a symbol for dreaming, a clarion call to look up to the heavens and rise above the mayhem of the world below. Classic science fiction and comic book imagery are cleverly weaved throughout the series, creating a Technicolour lunar landscape where the freedom to dream is found in the limitless possibilities of space and flight. The artist masterfully translates the soaring, celestial melodies and spacey ruminations of Television’s ‘Marquee Moon’ into electrifying odes to escapism that are charged with a palpable sense of urgency.
Johnny Romeo’s penchant for inspired, eclectic Pop culture references is taken to soaring new heights in MARQUEE MOON, with the artist employing his signature razor-sharp wit and spirited wordplay to create a visual love-letter to the year 1977. Bold word assemblages rife with hilarious double-entendres cascade off each canvass, calling to mind iconic music and film from 1977 ranging from the hard rock swagger of KISS and Ram Jam, to the seductive new wave of Blondie and the intergalactic adventurousness of Star Wars. The focus on 1977 cleverly emphasizes the vital role that the New York Blackouts had on shaping the future of Pop culture and its role in both galvanizing punk rock as a movement and giving birth to hip hop.
MARQUEE MOON is a bombastic celebration of the renegades and visionaries who dare to find meaning in chaos, and strive to forge new beginnings amongst the ruins of a world in crisis. Brimming with offbeat humour, explosive colour arrangements, and graphic gusto, the series sees Australia’s King of Pop re-envision the urban decay of the 1977 New York Blackouts as a feverishly frenetic Technicolour wasteland, where the only hope for redemption can be found under the glow of the Marquee Moon.
Opening reception with Artist – Friday 2nd August, 2019 | 5:30-7:30pm at Penny Contemporary,
187 Liverpool Street, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia | www.pennycontemporary.com.au
Any enquires regarding Johnny Romeo’s MARQUEE MOON can be made directly through Penny Contemporary (info@pennycontemporary.com.au) or by calling the gallery on +61 3 6231 5655 or Sonia on +61 438 292 673
Exhibition Dates: August 2nd – 26th 2019.
July 30, 2019