Beam entered the new millennium with the body of work entitled The Whale of Our Being, in this work "Beam examines the calamitous moral fallout from what he perceives as a profound spiritual absence in contemporary society, symbolized by a great whale of primordial proportions". Featuring large photo emulsion works on canvas, constructions, large scale paper works, and ceramics. "Compared to earlier work, The Whale of Our Being exhibits a positively baroque complexity, a dizzying assortment of references, sometimes printed in overly saturated, fluorescent colour. Mystery, for instance, is pink-Day-Glo-coloured pink. The colour in Summa ranges from Day-Glo yellow-green to orange; the images from Einstein and the Hubble Telescope, and astronaut, and Sitting Bull to and image of the First Nations, and more besides." His imagery had become vast and all inclusive, in The Whale of Our Being "He re-examines the media construction of violence and infamy and the public fascination with celebrity". Said Beam at a panel discussion for the Beyond History exhibition in 1989, "If an artist has a legitimate premise, there is nothing which isn't within their field of enquiry".
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Famous quotes containing the word whale:
“In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)