Bert Ernie is a wild man. He has done many wild things. This is a painting of a scene from ‘back in the day’.
Bert’s early abstract paintings were often quite small and done in a relatively short period of time. He would spend an hour or two and wait for the paint to dry. The next day a little more work. Often something of this size would have only taken about ten hours to paint.
He often tried to use forms to indicate movement. Bert has taken this approach with his paintings of the last few years to a whole other level. The paintings he does today are significantly more complex and visually interesting.
Dimensions: 20x27cm
Painted: 2008
Materials: Acrylic on MDF board
Private collection
The story behind Dangerous dancers
This particular painting shows a hardcore punk gig at the Prince of Wales Hotel in St Kilda circa 1986. The band – Arm The Insane stand on a stage belting out some of the loudest, fastest, most distorted music you are ever likely to hear. The singer is shouting anarchist-themed lyrics, and the crowd loves it.
The band isn’t the focus here though, in the centre of the image is the mosh pit. There are a hundred or so men, and a few women, who are thrashing and stomping about wildly, their arms and legs are going in all different directions, slamming their bodies into one another. There are skinheads, punks, metal-heads and an array of all kinds of weirdos going hell for leather in what to some might seem like a sort of restrained all-in brawl. Every minute or so a member of the audience climbs up onto the stage and turns to take a flying leap to land on top of the mosh pit’s frenzied dancers.
The wildness of this scene was something to behold. It had such a tremendous impact on a young Bert Ernie that more than twenty years after it happened he set about creating an abstract expressionist work of art to communicate a sense of being there amongst it all.