Mitch Cairns and Sven 't Jolle: Fruit and Veg and The Wisdom of John

The Commercial is delighted to present Fruit and Veg and The Wisdom of John, a two-artist exhibition by Mitch Cairns and Sven ’t Jolle. The exhibition offers a very human set of propositions in the artist-makers’ distinctive voices underpinned by a shared poetics of the everyday and ‘t Jolle’s explicit denouncement of war and capitalism.

The title of the show transposes an Australian vernacular idiom onto a trope of still life oil painting (originated in fifteenth-century Flanders, ’t Jolle’s homeland) — a quintessential expression of bourgeois luxury. A small text work by ‘t Jolle bears a quote from the artist John Heartfield (1891 – 1968), known for his anti-fascist stance, that may be translated as: “War and corpses the last hope of the rich”.