DESTINY DEACON

The Fish out of water series takes off from Deacon’s 1995/2004 picture Last laughs in which three young women crammed into one frame and dressed for partying laugh their heads off (or are they all laughing?). This new trio of bored mermaids, fish out of water in separate frames, find different ways to amuse themselves solo - a smart phone, a pack of cards and two cocktails and a hose. The mermaids are Savanna Kruger, the daughter of one of the party girls in Last Laughs, and two of Deacon’s nieces, sisters Sofii Belling (Little Miss Wonder, 1995, Moomba Princess, 2004), and Inyaka Saunders (the 2001 video Forced into images, Princess Security, 2009)

Grandstanding, Escape, Smile and Dolly Lips are all populated by dolls, some of which have been posing for Deacon as long as the mermaids. Grandstanding pulls figures from previous of her pictures. The blind and hooded streaker has run out of Escape from the whacking spoon (2007) and onto a sports oval around the corner from Deacon’s house, the basketballer from Going for a goal (2009) is now playing footy with its own head and the spectator on the boundary has left her washing line in Hanging out two (2003) to adopt a new pose with the same intense gaze in the same frock at the edge of the game.

Escape might show two naughty boys climbing a fence or it may refer to recent more disturbing and newsworthy events. Smile adds to the vocabulary of emojis and Dolly Lips extracts some unexpected expressions from the dolls along the back of Deacon’s couch showing that even fixed expressions can have quite a lot to say.