Patience on a Monument

This painting may be considered a companion piece to Siopis’s earlier work Melancholia, in that both are in the traditions of classical HISTORY PAINTING and still-life oil painting. 

Patience on a Monument, which combines the thick IMPASTO of oil paint with a collage of torn-up history books, is an excellent example of an allegorical and satirical work in which the central figure is depicted as sitting on a decayed monument of the debris of history.

The idea of history as accumulation and decay became a major theme for the artist in the 1990s, as she moved from the macro-historical concerns of this painting to a much more personalised and idiosyncratic approach. 

Artwork courtesy of William Humphrey's Art Gallery.