Sean McElroy
ANNVS BANANVS
September 29th – December 31st 2023
Tops at Madison Avenue Park
151 Madison Avenue (viewable on Maggie H. Isabel St)
Memphis, TN 30103
On view 24 hours a day
Annvs Bananvs is a trompe-l’oeil mural painted on the wall of the Tops Madison
Avenue space. In deference to tradition, it was painted in a Perylene Green verdaccio
with an overpainting of steaks in red iron oxide. The mural will be visible 24 hours a
day until December 31st 2023.
The Cavendish is the most commercially popular banana cultivar. The seeds of the Cavendish are sterile. It cannot reproduce without human intervention. Perylene green-black is a hydrocarbon-based dye that doesn’t doesn’t register on infrared sensors. It is used as the colorant for B-2 Stealth Bombers.
Traditionally, the underpainting for frescoes was done in verdaccio, an earthy green mixture of ochre and mars black.
In 2023 The French Bulldog surpassed the Labrador Retriever as the most popular breed in America after a 30 year stint at the top.
Red iron oxide is an ancient pigment found in prehistoric cave paintings across the world.
Thin glazes of red iron oxide were used to create luminous flesh tones in Renaissance frescoes.
It is impossible to make a good smoothie or a vegan dessert without a banana. The banana is
not an agricultural product of the United States.
In order to ensure the continued supply of bananas and the holdings of the major fruit companies, the United States government assisted in the overthrow of democratically elected governments throughout the 20th Century.
The B-2 Stealth Bomber was developed by Northrop Grumman under contract with the
Defense Department in the waning years of the cold war. Its runaway budget and
diminished relevance to a post-Soviet world order made the project subject to scrutiny and
political consternation until military spending again became uncontroversial after September 11th.
The B-2 has flown missions over Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The B-2 cannot be flown in the rain.
The egg-and-dart motif is thought to have originally represented the opium poppy and its leaves.
Years of selective breeding have made French Bulldogs suffer from breathing and skeletal problems. They are unable to procreate without human intervention. They must be inseminated manually and delivered by c-section.
The popularity of the French Bulldog and its reproductive difficulties have made them expensive. Lady Gaga’s French Bulldogs were stolen last year and her dog walker was shot in the chest.
The bananas must be grafted and grown and transported by ship and truck and car from the
plantation to the kitchen. The oil flows out of the sand into the combustion engines. The
cows are grown and cut up, pan-seared and salted. The French bulldog looks back at you and
automatically smiles as you walk it to the coffee shop.
I had a dream that Capital is a divine and terrible knife cutting through the softness of the world.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Sean McElroy studied Classics at Brown University and Painting at the University of Washington. He uses sculpture, painting and performance to explore the mythic landscape of what might be recorded in History as the Final Years of Great Abundance.