Phillip George is attempting to heal ethnic tensions within Sydney’s beach culture with a range of Islam-inspired surfboards. The Australian artist embellished thirty ‘Inshalla’ (God willing) surfboards with motifs taken from Islamic art for his recently opened Borderlands exhibition. The project was seven years in the making, gathering steam after the 2005 Cronulla beach Lebanese race riots. George traveled throughout Australia and the Middle East for inspiration, noting the importance of sport to Australia’s developing cultural identity:
We are so culturally insignificant in the world that we rely on sport to booster our national pride.
I have actually transposed a lot of my photographic images – the work of the tiles and shots of the mosque – on to a surfboard so that they become a lot more acceptable or easy to digest for an Australian audience.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
well halal… fingers crossed they’re only digestible for Aussie audiences!
December 9th, 2008 at 4:30 am
too bad it’s against islamic law to let a woman in anything other then a burqa ride one of these boards..
December 10th, 2008 at 12:41 am