Dungeons and dragons, anyone?

BY MITAL PAREKH

In his 2014 work Slow crawl into infinity, Roy Ananda had famously recreated the iconic text of the opening credits of the Star Wars films, “(A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…”) into a sculpture of text standing on stilts.

The amazing piece had brought much joy then not only to fans of the science fiction franchise but to others as well.

The clever homage to an instance of popular culture, quite the signature style of this Adelaide artist, is seen again this year in the Adelaide Biennial Of Australian Art titled Divided Worlds. This time round, Ananda draws inspiration from a favourite childhood tabletop game Dungeons And Dragons, and turns it into a real life sculpture.

Titled Thin walls between dimensions, it elicits much awe from visitors to the Art Gallery of South Australia where it is displayed.

“My contribution to Divided Worlds is the latest in my series of monuments to pop-culture fandom, in this instance centering on the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons,” Ananda tells Indian Link “The work has been specifically conceived as the first encounter as viewers descend the stairs to the basement level of the Art Gallery of South Australia. For me, that journey has always called to mind the great mythological descents into the underworld: Orpheus attempting to rescue Eurydice from Hades, Dante’s exploration of the Inferno, and, as a lifelong Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast, the subterranean journeys into the lairs of evil wizards and long abandoned dwarven mines that are the settings for the game.”

The basis of the sculpture is an underground maze described in the game which has been transposed onto fortyeight, 1.2 metre square medium density fibreboard panels which incrementally unfold across the cavernous space at the base of the gallery stairs.

“The particular map I have utilised was included in the game’s introductory boxed set during the late 1970s and early 1980s and represents a notional space that has been traversed in the imaginations of literally tens of millions of people. As such, the work also considers how ‘real’ this imaginary space has since become, and how a sculptural extrapolation on it might bridge the gap between make-believe and a tangibly material outcome.”

Roy’s parents bought him his first Dungeons and Dragons rules set when he was ten years old.

“I have no doubt that a childhood and early adolescence spent devising and inhabiting imaginary spaces (castles, dungeons, forests etc.) laid important groundwork for my later sculptural endeavours,” Ananda reveals.

There’s no doubt that the rich media world that children enjoy, whether from TV or movies or from music and video games, has a profound influence on their views of themselves and the world around them.

Head of Drawing at Adelaide Central School Of Art, Roy’s work frequently draws inspiration from various aspects of popular culture such as films, literature, comics and games rooted in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres.

Besides the Star Wars-based piece shown at the Samstag Museum of Art in 2014, his body of work also pays homage to Warner Brothers cartoons and the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.

The Adelaide Biennial is on until 4 June