Ice Cold in Alex

Depicts a personal response to the artist's visit to the War Memorial in 2002, containing items from the Memorial's national collections; the Changi doll (with artist's self portrait); a Ukrainian refugee doll, the propeller and nose of a Second World War plane; an ambulance truck, a palm tree (symbol of the North Africa Corp.), the head of a rooster and a glass of beer . The title of the painting is also the title of a 1958 film, a wartime drama set in North Africa, where the main character, Captain Anson, seeking to reach the safety of Alexandria, Egypt, promises to himself to fulfill his wish of 'an ice cold beer in Alex'. McLean Edwards is best known as a figurative painter, producing works that combine elements of humour and the macabre. His caricature-like portraits and figure studies, often including a self portrait, are renowned for their comic sense of social realism. His style and imagery is influenced by artists as diverse as Sidney Nolan (expansive, abstract backgrounds) and William Dobell (figures with elongated and distorted limbs). His work also makes allusions to the work of Old Master painters; French artists Manet and Ingres, Dutch and Flemish traditions of the seventeenth century and the art of the Spanish painter Goya. Random elements from the past and present, serious and comic are combined in his paintings, crammed into the picture space and set against abstract, non-descript or theatrical backgrounds.