The Thirty-Thousand Graces: Duncan Hose

There is a lot of lamenting lately of the human as a spoiling or spoiled species: a parasite, a pathogen. Our apocalypse is beautifully cast with villains: tyrants and other petty monstrosities in the form of human beings. This exhibition of pictures celebrates what is beautiful in the human, by following the ancient Greeks and their personification of intellectual through sensual pleasure in the figures of beauty, grace and charm. The Three Graces are here multiplied to thirty thousand, tending to an overwhelming number, a multiplication of the human sublime is transmitted through a look, a gesture, a phrase, an attitude. The earth loves her children: accomplished human beings are still possibly ‘the paragon of animals.’ Duncan Hose’s graphic presences are complexes of charisma, from the Greek charis: the gift freely given, the favour of grace.

Duncan Hose is a poet and visual artist living in Nipaluna.

Image: ‘Snake Grace’, ink on paper