If we add the angst of undergraduate students and the incel vibes of Chifley enthusiasts at the ANU, we arrive at some truly existential stuff to look at while shitting.
With nothing better to do, our brave team of photographers sought out the best and the worst of ANU’s bathroom graffiti. And here it is, in no particular order, and dissected to an extent that God never predicted.
The one that started it all, the OG. I, for one, am obsessed with the idea that a whole period of Banksy’s works are ensconced in bathrooms all over the world.
However, all good things come to an end. You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. Et tu, comrade graffitist? Whereas once you could mediate peacefully on the meaning of art and the over-hyped nature of modern art, now we are greeted with a sack of hairy testicles, absent of the penis. So, no change really?
Moses walked down from the mount with ten commandments. But lo, one was lost to time. Many philosophers have searched far and wide for it. Keith Dowding and Ben Bramble spent many a night competing to unlock this hidden truth. But they are no match for this bathroom vandal. Don’t beat it dry kids.
They say more is less. Direct and straight to the point, this artist knows what they want. They’re not about beating around the bush. How exactly we get such pics to them, is a whole other question, possibly worth a few good meditative poos to figure out.
Rumour has it that mushrooms with psilocybin used to grow on the hill of Parliament House and that entrepreneuring ANU students could pick them. I think this artist uses such intertextuality to create a postmodernist critique of the transience of modern life; placing it in a locale where the viewer is both vulnerable but already participating in a natural, non-capitalistic exercise, forces them to consider the unsustainable tempo of modern life. Yes, this is definitely true.
Some of life’s most beautiful creations grow in its darkest places. Just as nature reclaims the nuclear wasteland of Chernobyl, we have here, a figurative tulip growing in a literal shithole.
Ah yes, the most heinous graffiti of all. Gendered bathrooms.
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