Stuart Black
Pale & Confused
Griffin Head Hotel Lounge Room
Season closed


It has already been said of Black's work that he's got a wonderful thing for visual imagery and I happily affirm this to be so. It's been ages since I've laughed so hard from the impact of a funny sentence doubled in power by outrageously fabulist pictures popping into my mind.

When Black describes his presence cross-legged on a beach as looking like an albino frog - that's a hard image to loose!

Mr Black is indeed pale and confused but in a quietly aware way that disguises his extremely bright, very wicked, very in your face wit. As he sips a beer or two he seems so quietly unassuming until the stories start coming out and the images... what a lovely thought it was to ponder on - the average wage being the Bill Gates wealth level, thus leaving David Beckham below the poverty line! Even more shocking to contemplate; the joys of wine involving asbestos, guns, asthma inhalers plus alcohol and as for Sting and tantric sex... I won't spoil it!

Black takes on the down side of ordinary life and its infuriating issues and turns them into something all it once shocking, amazing, impossible and fantastic... but remains wonderfully ever perplexed, pale and confused.

David O'Brien