Breaktime at the Critical Studies Dept.: from the series 'La Buena Vida' Installation Image

"My paintings hang banner-like on Cockatoo Island. The imagery in the paintings is taken from different sources: from cartoons magazines and broadsheets like Judge, Puck, the Boston Globe and Life dating from the period during the Philippine-American war 1899-1902; satirical comics like MAD, Komiks, Hiwaga, Sex to Sexty; American and European modernist paintings; and Jeepney art. These combine to give each painting the feeling of a billboard announcing a macabre celebration. While being aware of using imagery that is heavily loaded, I want to use each image without giving it a permanent value. This lack of meaning adds up, as none of the imagery I employ can be read with any certainty."

The paintings of Manuel Ocampo are not stories, nor do the webs of images and symbols that he weaves together point to a specific thing. Rather, the meaning implied by the signs and visual vocabularies employed by the artist is accumulative, presented to audiences in a way that remains deliberately opaque. The artist says this method of presentation is emblematic of the way he works, from a position of uncertainty that ensures his paintings remain open to a spectrum of interpretations. Within this, Ocampo and his work are able to retain a degree of autonomy, away from any pre-conceived assumptions and desires of those who look at his work within arenas of contemporary art.