Study for the Drone Stripped Bare of all its Brides

Depicts a scale model of a drone above an intricate background of CIA documents related to surveillance, architectural models, scientific formulae and the Twin Towers. The Royal Australian Air force has used drones in Afghanistan since 2009, when it first started to deploy the Israeli built 'Heron' drone, a twin-hulled surveillance drone the size of a small aircraft. The drones, although unarmed, are used to assist in pin-pointing targets for incoming air strikes. Richard Goodwin (1953- ) has worked for over 30 years as an artist and architect with his practice focussing on the intersection between technology, public and private space, art, the body and architecture. His works combine a personal language of science and technology and are motivated by a despair at humanity effected by a hostile and dehumanised social and technological context. This work makes reference to Picasso's painting 'Guernica' (1937), created in response to the Spanish Civil War, and Marcel Duchamp's 'The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors (Even)' (1915-23) which consisted of an assemblage of geometric shapes, large mechanic objects and planes of cracked glass commenting on the blurring of machinery and humanity. While the drone in this work has the simplicity of a boy's model, it also alludes to the extremities of technological reach in modern warfare, where the human element is almost completely absent and not restricted to geography or ground troops. The Twin Towers are a harbinger of the contemporary conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan in which Australians have been involved.