Artist: Richard John Killeen
Date: 1985
Museum: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (Auckland, New Zealand)
Technique: Aluminium
Monkey’s Revenge comprises 79 cut-out aluminium pieces, each of which hangs on a nail. According to the artist’s instructions, they may be arranged in any sequence provided that they touch one another. An image of Charles Darwin brings to mind ideas about evolution, but the work welcomes multiple interpretations and its title suggests more colourful ways of looking at how humanity has evolved.Many of the images in Monkey’s Revenge were derived from the pages of reference books. Killeen says, ‘I collect images that interest me and then, once I’ve got them there I use them as raw material . . . like an encyclopaedia.’His ‘cut-out’ artworks are like virtual museums in which the images are selected, sorted and grouped from natural and cultural subjects as diverse as technology, medicine, the military, science, anthropology, art and biology. While the works remain resolutely open-ended, as viewers we seem compelled to draw these threads of knowledge together, making our own connections and stories.See more detail about this artwork
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