Paul Hoban

Born 1954, Cowra, New South Wales

Everything, yes, everything in a Paul Hoban "paint skin" is levelled to a surface of phenomenological and semiotic observation. Think of an ancient mapping of a central nervous system, a hide that records the origins of the world. Think palimpsest and pentimento. Hoban retrieves the raspy mumblings of shaman chants, once erased by eighteenth–century analysis, now muffled by vogue desires and noisy trash.

As the non–official '99 Samstag elder, Hoban reminds us of the visionary lineage of the "outsider" and the cultural nomad in "high" art – Beuys and Pollock – and, in so–called "low" art – Aboriginal symbolic life. Hoban may wish to route his Samstag Scholarship to Los Angeles, home to the plastic–bodied, sushi–loving, cha–cha mamma of pop culture and the Yaqui Indians. One can only imagine his sunny Yede, inspired by Yoruban religion, reworked with rollerblades, chopsticks and tortillas.

M.A. Greensteinfrom her Samstag catalogue essay, Back to the Future – From Wry to Rave
 
1999 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship
1999 Post Experience Program, Royal College of Art, London, UK 
1994 Master of Arts (Visual Arts), South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia, Adelaide 
1976 Diploma in Fine Art, South Australian School of Art, Adelaide