Megaworld Adventure 7 Million AD is based on a future utopia, including John the Baptist arriving home from work on a space boat. The work also has a personal touch based on diving for Paua (abalone) with my late father as a teenager. Also mixed in with memories of diving in the great Barrier reef in 1987 when I also stayed on Fitzroy Island. There are hints from Atlantis gone right, an underwater craft from the 60s TV series voyage to the bottom of the sea, interdimensional stargates and an angelic elect mammoth grader!”

The main central figure in Phenomenon on Planet Perfect represents the woman of the apocalypse, pregnant and standing on the moon illuminated by the sun, she is a vision of John who wrote the Book of Revelation. I made her a snow wolf in a futuristic snow setting as I was really into painting snow paintings at that time! This subject has been painted by several artists throughout history. 

Also the three figures viewing the vision, or a real phenomenon, are from a 70s sci-fi TV series, maybe Space 1999 or similar, this ties in with the Gerry Anderson captain Scarlett car in the snow, which now symbolizes Christ the king as a lion. These are programs that I watched as a child and I enjoy manipulating the characters into a more biblical context in order to explore a wider use of symbolism, both for myself and the viewer. I also like how 60s/70s sci-fi films had a great sense of utopia as this was a pretty optimistic time for the west, post war boom, unregulated capitalism hadn't started to dominate, and wealth was more evenly distributed etc...  I also love the imagination of the creators of these programs from that time, was the start of more elaborate special effects along with the invention of colour television. I love how they envisioned the future, classic spaceships and futuristic vehicles, space exploration, aliens etc... the technology had lots of large buttons and elaborate control panels with make for an awesome visual spectacle for an artist to appropriate. These are all great heavenly symbols as the symbol of advanced technology utilized for the benefit of human kind, representing deep and knowledgeable spiritual insight that they are obtaining and that they already have. The 3 female figures are interesting as they have their backs to the viewer of the painting, I've never done this before so it was something really different for me to do, in some ways I think it may have put people off from buying it and if that's true, then it makes me like it even more. By not being aware of our gaze on them we get the feeling that they are so absorbed by what they are seeing we are hopefully even more drawn into what they are looking at. There is a faint pink hue throughout which is the colour of the glass of the spaceship that they are looking through. I have painted myself in the picture in futuristic attire next to the car, again symbolizing spiritual insight. 

– Matt Hunt