“I tried doing the cryptic as well, but it made no
porcelain urinal. Andrew resented the reams of
sense.” More appealing was Time magazine, also
twaddle devoted to that single image. His alter
floating in the mess, in particular the art pieces by
screen was a form of artistic payback.
Robert Hughes. “I remember he wrote about
Velazquez, the Spanish painter, his precision, his
control of light. I still have that article somewhere.”
To meet the brief, the puzzle needed to seem almost
solvable, but not quite, he explained. A false
promise, with a message hidden somewhere in the
After the barge, after Europe, after a bash at guitar-
matrix too: Knowledge Is Power – Ignorance Is
making, art became Andrew’s calling. At 28 he won
Bliss.
a place studying art at RMIT (Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology). There he revelled in the
sculpture of Henry Moore and Herbert Ferber,
though couldn’t abide the wanky French thinkers.
“Everyone at college was quoting them – Barthes
and Derrida and Lacan – but nobody was reading
them with any understanding.” The density revived
those opaque sentences he once skimmed on an
ocean barge. Maybe the two ideas could be spliced
– the double-talk of two media. So it was, for his
Instead of constructing a grid from scratch I sifted
my backlist to find the right stumper. Was that OK?
Perfect, said Andrew. To retrofit a found object was
very post-modern apparently.
One crossword jumped out. According to solvers’
feedback, it was tough. FEEDBACK in fact was the
first answer, which appealed to the artist in Andrew.
The word murmured that constant hunger for peer
acknowledgment.
final Honours project, Andrew Gangioti built a
As for the message, the clue tally fell into our
cryptic crossword.
hands. Several tweaks down the track, altering
Or a retable to be precise. A what? An altar screen
is the simplest way to put it, a triptych structure that
often serves as a frame for icons behind the
wording and creating new initials, we crafted an
acrostic to read Knowledge Is Power – Happily
Ignorant.
communion table. Though in Andrew’s case, the
The final piece came up a treat. Picture a trifold of
icon was a crossword.
vaulted window sashes with wooden panels instead
$???????????????????????????????%?e????????)??????????????????????????????????????)?????????????????????????q ?????????????t???)????????q ?????????????????t)!???????????????????5??????????????)????????????????????????Q???????????e?)???????????????????????????????????????()?????????A?????????????????????????????????)????????????????????????????????????)?????Q????????????????????????????????????)??????????????????????????????????????)?????????????M??????????????????????????)???????)???????????????????e??????$??????????????)???????????????????????????5????????????????((0