Made in conversation with Proto, Guy Simpson's Banana offers a light-hearted play on the banana peel's comedic implications. On the occasion of the launch of his modular, two-piece sculpture, Guy presents three abstracted paintings, a composition in acrylic and graphite titled Andy's Banana (2022), and an oversized peel of the titular fruit.

Pursuing divergent themes, Guy's drawings and sculptures consider (respectively) imaginary spaces populated by the works of local artists and cartoon-like visual jokes. Both appear as theatrical propositions; his drawings empty sets for encounters, his sculptures props for comedic scenes. More recently, the artist has turned his attention to painting, and finds in the medium more oblique encounters with humour. His works on canvas take the form of 1:1 scale impressions of architectural incidents: a light switch, a broken blind, the sensor of a burglar alarm. The line work is spare, the paintings composed largely of emptiness. “What,” asks Guy (as relayed by Sean O’Toole), “is the least I can do to represent this door or parquet floor or plug? How do I do that?” In pursuing such distillation of form, the artist hopes, he might distil “small truths from within the giant-ness of changing life.”

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Proto is the store at A4 Arts Foundation. A place for practitioners to imagine into and propose creative work, Proto plays with the premise of the museum shop.