Rajko Radovanovic: Last Line of Defense
July 12 - August 8

This body of work is derived from a series of Site Specific Interventions undertaken as a direct response to the tragic
environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which began on April 20th 2010 with the explosion and fire on the drilling
rig Deepwater Horizon. Its purpose was to examine questions of responsibility and abuse concerning the protection of
natural environments that have been substantially endangered through human exploitation.

To this end, a number of conceptual lines of defense have been erected to explore the effectiveness and/or limitations
of traditional mechanisms of such protection in the face of politically supported global corporate greed. These primary
actions were intentionally ephermal with the life span of each individual intervention – ranging from minutes to days –
being dependant on the natural fragility of the environment and the force of the elements. The flags were used with
basic components that comprise this rare ecosystem: sand, water and reeds.

Re-presented in a gallery context, the resultant images seek to address wider questions concerning individual/
collective responsibility. Their repetitive usage creates a long line of flags reminding us that we are, after all, that Last
Line of Defense.




Last line of defense #1, Bayou Rigolettes, Lafitte, LA June 09, 2010




Last Line of Defense #2, Grand Isle, Jefferson Parish, LA, June 15, 2010




Last line of defense #3, Venice, Plaquemines Parish, LA June 18, 2010






Precondition, 2008, mural, 80' x 160' , Corner of Marigny and N. Villere St., New Orleans.

New Altars of Temple of Happiness #57, 2008, mixed media, 29’ x 3’9’’

The Good Children Gallery, New Orleans

The statement on the right-hand panel appears against a background of newspaper columns referring to the
fact that our modern political establishments, by influencing public opinion through the media, create the notion
of ‘other’; the modern word for enemy. It is through this concept of ‘difference’ that they seek to provide a moral
justification for harming fellow human beings.

The left-hand panel is an informal snapshot of officers from the Yugoslavian People’s Army posing for the artist’s
father during the 1970s. Their faces are painted red – the conventional colour of power and war – and their
features are obliterated by black crosses. In some parts of the former Yugoslavia, illiterate peasants would record
the deaths of their émigré relatives by drawing crosses over their faces on the family photograph.

The JNA – the Yugoslavian People’s Army – no longer exist. During the 1990s they were employed in the enforcement
of new political definitions of to what constituted ‘other’. Supported by propaganda, disseminated by academics and
the media, it become morally justifiable for politicians to send soldiers to attack the very people they had originally
sworn to protect.

Native Clod, 2007, three C prints, 3’3’’ x 3’.3’’’ each

Multimedia Centre, Pula, Croatia

Documentation of an on-going project tracing the artist’s personal experience of identity. This series of land-art
interventions was initiated in the village of Brdo in Croatia in 1976 during an artists’ colony event and was prefaced with
the artist’s statement: “I maintain that every patch of Earth or any other planet on which you tread is your "Native Clod.”
The digging of earth has been re-enacted in London, UK (1986) and Ravnica, Croatia (2006). These interventions
document specific places with which the artist felt an affinity - an instinctive sense of connection. ‘Native Clod’ continues
to confirm artist’s belief that neither the concept of ‘home’ nor that of ‘belonging’ can be dictated by the physical place of
birth or by contemporary concepts of ‘nationality’. The notion of self identity is a spiritual choice rather than a political ‘given’.
The use of physical soil – a fundamental symbol of modern nationalism – disproves the currently widespread acceptance
of ‘blood and land’ as a valid context of ‘selfhood’.

“Nationality exists in the minds of men…its only conceivable habitat…Outside men’s minds there can be no nationality,
because nationality is a manner of looking at oneself not as an entity as such…and the only human discipline that can
describe and analyse it is psychology…”

G. J. Renier, The Criterion of Dutch Nationhood: An inaugural Lecture at University College, London, 4 June 1945.

Lord Rodey’s Head, 2006, C print 50’’ x 30’’. Commercial Too Gallery, London, UK.



We are alive, everything else is luxury, 1995, installation. Holden Gallery, Manchester, UK,

A series of compact, low, brick-built forms reminiscent of the foundations of homes or churches. Each ‘building’ is filled to
the brim with golden wheat-grain symbolising wealth and the security of plenty that comes from the land. On this symbol of
fruitfulness are laid black memorial plaques with red and golden text, naming the towns and villages destroyed by the war in
Croatia and Bosnia. Bracketing each name are words employed by the world’s Media and Political Spokespeople in the
justification and rationalisation of this destruction. Meaningless and contradictory, they serve to distance, separate and ‘justify’
the realities of war. Yet, re-contextualise in this memorial, these ‘sound-bites’ reinforce the confusion and unreality of modern
conflict throughout the world where words have replaced action in the voice of peace.




1990, 2’ x 2’, mixed media


From the series, New Altars of the Temple of Happiness, oil on canvas, 2’ 2’’ x 1’ 10’’, 1986.


I am standing behind my work, silkscreen print, 28’’ x 22’’, 1978/2008.