For biographical and background information see Acc. no. 1995.241 'Additional information'. This painting combines several of the themes central to the work of Luke Roberts, who is one of the most nationally prominent Queensland artists. Roberts respects the popular culture and folklore of regional Australia, while often seeming to parody it. He is also deeply immersed in Roman Catholicism and other forms of religion and spiritualism, despite the fact that the raucousness of his art frequently implies an anti-clerical attitude. Kitsch, the occult and the supernatural are all aspects of his work, largely because they go beyond the proper standards and conventions of our culture. As an artist striving to redefine the boundaries of art, he feels the need to break the boundaries of convention and what is considered good taste. The lurid tropical sunset sky in this painting is characteristic of previous landscape paintings by Roberts. He admits to admiring the exaggerated religiosity of sunsets in earlier art, and on the issue of such colours being kitsch comments: 'I don't think one could ever be as kitsch as nature'.(1) A multi-coloured sky at dusk silhouetting a palm tree is one of the quintessential touristic icons, and Roberts plays up to the much promoted notion of Queensland as tropical paradise. From this starting point, however, conventions in the painting start to go awry. Tourist literature would not show a palm tree with one of its fronds dead and dangling, the patches of green in the sky introduce a discordant note and off at the right-hand edge of the picture (as though accidentally captured by a candid photographer) is a flying saucer. The visual pun between a flying saucer and a cardinal's hat becomes an illuminating symbol of this artist's serious interest in seeking the truth in what many people would consider the ridiculous. By conflating a sign of traditional religious authority with an article of crackpot belief, Roberts indicates that there are some things which cannot be rationally explained, and celebrates the idea of the mystical. His image of a flying saucer is based on a photograph purporting to show a spacecraft. This appeared in a book documenting reports of such sightings over a 40-year period,(2) illustrating a thesis that the planet Earth is actually a sort of space station being utilised by beings from another world. This text also suggested that Christ was an alien sent to reverse the damage being done to the planet by the current occupants. These bizarre propositions appeal to Roberts because they closely parallel the various dogmas of his alter-ego Pope Alice of Mu, in the guise of whom Roberts frequently performs. (Mu is a mythical Pacific continent, said to have sunk many millennia ago, and occasionally mentioned in alternative versions of history.) Pope Alice is also an alien, much given to making pronouncements about world civilization as though she had personally created it. Everything Luke Roberts produces is essentially humorous, parodic, witty, but he is nevertheless committed to investigating the possibility of accepted wisdom being wrong. He comments that 'humour conveys things most precisely and most quickly... more directly, more immediately'.(3) He is aware of the wise fool figures in European and other traditions, who are mad enough to speak the truth. By exploring this paradox in a tropical setting Roberts adds an entertaining element of social observation. The assumption that Queensland has a higher percentage of eccentric ideologies than most places is something he relishes. Essay by Timothy Morrell, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, Aug. 1999. 1. Conversation with Timothy Morrell, 29 July 1999. 2. Good, Timothy. 'Alien Base: Earth encounters with extra terrestrials'. Century, 1998. 3. Conversation with Timothy Morrell, 29 July 1999.