Mongrel Rupture, Rubicon ARI, 2018.

Mongrel | ˈmʌŋɡr(ə)l/

noun: mongrel; plural noun: mongrels

  1. A dog of no definable type or breed. (mixed-breed, half-breed, hybrid)

   2.    Any animal resulting from the crossing of different breeds

           Synonyms: Cross-breed, cross, mixed breed, mutt, yellow dog, kuri, eye-dog, pariah dog; informal: mong, bitzer.

    • Offensive: a person of mixed descent.

verb: rupture; 3rd person present: ruptures; past tense: ruptured; gerund or present participle: rupturing;

  1. 1. (especially of a pipe or container, or bodily part such as an organ or membrane) To break or burst suddenly.”If the main artery ruptures he could die.”

                      Synonyms: 1. Break, fracture, crack; split, fissure, blowout

                      “A recent series of pipeline ruptures”

                                         2. break, fracture, crack, breach, burst, split, tear, puncture; informal: burst. i.e. “An abdominal hernia.”

  1. 2. breach or disturb (a harmonious feeling or situation).                             Synonyms: sever, break, breach, disrupt, divide, cleave, split, separation, parting, division, alienation.

Mongrel Rupture consists of a suite of paintings that attempt to address the affect of the inaudible buzz that oscillates underneath the surface of a post card landscape; a weighted cloud that hovers over the Australian continent. Deliberately ambiguous and elusive with the denial of a palpable legibility, the works are concurrently accessible and impenetrable in their meaning, retreating to the undefinable. On the surface they possess a kind of silence that is not unlike the unspoken narratives that stain Australian history.  The impetus of the works reflect in their own materiality, and eludes to the emptiness of historical settings; Europe or Australia, the imagined landscape. Images are wiped out, erased, architectural references imbrued with personal narrative, played against the canonisation of the history of painting itself.  The private becomes intimately entwined with the public and vice versa.

Nathan Jokovich completed a Bachelor of Visual Art (Fine Art majoring in Painting) at the Victorian College of Art, University of Melbourne, Australia in 2015. He completed a three month artist residency program at Galerie 102 Studio and Projectraum, Berlin, culminating in a group exhibition as part of Berlin Art Week, 2016. Notable group exhibitions include Trans Cultural Nova, Greta Gallery, Zagreb in 2014 and New Directions 2016, at Hawthorn Studio and Gallery, Melbourne in 2016. He was short listed for the Majlis Travelling Scholarship, Margaret Lawrence Gallery in 2015 and curated The Sound of Things Falling at George Paton Gallery, Melbourne in 2015.