HARRY HAY 

BEYOND PUBLIC SCRUTINY 

29 March - 12 April 

2025

All paintings are sequels. But some paintings are more sequel than others. I was very tempted to call this show, Dirty Postcards II. Another part of me wanted to call it, Dirty Postcards: Beyond Public Scrutiny. Perhaps I played it safe, although by sequel logic, the safer option would be to have Dirty Postcards, my previous show and progenitor to this one, mentioned in there somewhere. Sequels are after all, typically a risk averse enterprise.

Sequels, typically speaking, also tend to be worse than the original. The things that were so new and exciting about the first one, are reduced to tropes in the second. So, maybe I made the right call. Best to not draw attention to the earlier work. But I’m still not satisfied. If I can’t call it a sequel, what then do I call it?

Painters love to work in series. Bodies of works are described as a Continuation. An Ongoing Investigation. If that’s the case, an investigation into these pictures will yield very few answers. The characters who occupy these dark, interior spaces are clearly up to something, but what that is, is anyone’s guess. They are good at covering their tracks. They stick to the shadows and they never say anything over the phone.

Dirty Postcards was a conspiracy theory committed to large sheets of watercolour paper. Beyond Public Scrutiny is the conspiracy itself. Whilst Dirty Postcards, with its reporters and cameras and flashing white lights was something of an exposé, albeit heavily redacted, Beyond Public Scrutiny is the orchestrated cover-up. Move on folks. Show’s Over. Nothing to see here.

Appendix

Events concerning the release of Exorcist II are recounted gleefully by the late William Friedkin. A preview screening of the highly-anticipated sequel to Friedkin and William Peter Blatty’s seminal Horror, was held by Warner Brothers in Pasadena, to turn-away crowds. Friedkin has it, that the Warner Bros. executives arrived in a convoy of limousines. They got out of the limos, and told the drivers to head down the road to McDonalds until the film had ended, expecting to be about two hours. The executives filed in and made their way to the back of the packed theatre. About ten minutes in, a guy down the front stood up, turned to the audience and bellowed,“The people who made this piece of shit, are in this room!”

Before they knew it, the executives were fleeing the cinema for their lives, only to realise there were no cars. They had dispatched their only means of escape to McDonalds.

The People Who Made This Piece of Shit Are in this Room, also came into consideration as a potential title forthis exhibition.