Ian Milliss

My work is an A1 sized digital print, the third work in a series of homages to constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin. Although initially seen as a hero of the Russian Revolution he was later declared to be An Enemy of the People for failing to conform to Stalinist cultural dictates. Nonetheless, unlike many other artists and writers, he did survive by retreating into flower and still life paintings The apparently conservative nature of the painting were a protective camouflage designed to draw as little attention to himself as possible while expressing his dissent in ambiguous moody images.
My work is a re-enactment of one of his still lifes, easily read as a symbolic portrayal of the Revolution betrayed, especially as its strong diagonal composition echoes the angled structure of his iconic Monument to the Third International, done only twenty years earlier. It is my monument to the fact that real cultural activism will always find a form, a lesson we may all need to understand in a coming age of right wing extremism in the rapidly collapsing western world.