Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Bushfire Relief Art Auction Fundraiser, National Art School, Sydney, 12 February 2020
The Gene & Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney

'I was burning angry. I had been angry for a while. Then the dust storm came. It was on the 23rd September 2009. The outside was dusty-grey-yellow. It was hard to breathe. I have never seen anything like that in my life. Not a cyclone storm. It was rather quiet and beautiful. The whole air was sepia and nostalgic. I thought – the time has come. I've got a go. When I die - right before my own death, I may feel the same way. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. I grabbed the camera, and wrapped it up with gladwrap, and carried tripod. It appeared to me that the both storm and I were responding one another in the natural forces. Then the energy of the storm even made me more powerful – burning angry – a big fire, but the colour of sepia and nostalgia. I just breathed in, and reproduced the energy of the time. I just felt and existed. Insanity Magnet was born during the dust storm around lunchtime, 23rd Sep 2009, at New Farm Park, Brisbane. I did not know how and where to place my growing grey anger, which was totally overpowering and overtaking my identity. I was no longer Hiromi Tango. I was possessed and haunted. No one could touch it. No one could heal it – except the dust storm ... and we conceived the creature of Insanity Magnet.'

Hiromi Tango, 2009