Peter Thomas’ artistic reportage circumvents words—using the raw aesthetics of male on male violence Thomas’ makes visible the inhumanity and absurdity of inflicting damage to others’ bodies.

Peter Thomas recently found himself parked in his car at 3am on Kings Street in Melbourne, waiting for the drunken brawls endemic to the area, famous for its nightlife and adult entertainment. Sitting there he contemplates the physical aggression he witnesses and is at once disturbed and enamoured.

The new series of charcoal drawings on view in Night Club have been described by Helen Hughes, Research Curator at Monash University Museum of Art, as similar to those made by an official war artist, deployed to document a battle in another country. Recalling Weegee, images in Night Club such as Embrace I (2016) find tangled bodies from within the black of night.

The drawings aren’t the first of Thomas’ to explore violence. A previous body of paintings including Makeshift Memorial (2015) depicted the sites of violent crimes since past, like the random killing of Joshua Hardy outside a McDonald’s in 2014.