Acrylic on stretched canvas, ready to hang.

Signed on the back.

This artwork comes with an external frame

From the series: Compositions From Failure.

To play a video game is to fail constantly. A game over screen is a constant reminder of your defeat. As a queer man, Danny Jarratt is in a constant state of failure under heteronormative capitalism. He is a biological failure because he won't have children. And an economic failure because he won't create generational wealth.

To escape these negative emotions, he plays video games. Informed by a history of queer resistance, Jarratt argues that playing a video game is a form of queer resistance. When players start to play Panel De Pon, a 1990s video game series, they disengage from hegemonic narratives and stop being productive or social. In a world of pixelated blocks, patterns and stress, heteronormativity softens. So the only thing that matters is making patterns and keeping the screen clear of obstructions.

FELTspace presents paintings that use puzzle video game compositions taken from game over screens. This work aims to appropriate a tense fleeting digital moment of failure and present it as a colourful physical artwork, suggesting a new way to succeed—something he has been doing my entire queer life.

Framed in Tasmanian Oak by James Dodd.