Mark Ogge's dreamlike paintings evoke childhood memories both dark and magical. Ogge, who also painted the façade for the Melbourne Festival's famous Spiegeltent in 2001 and 2002, has long been fascinated with the iconography and imagery of the circus and fairground.

Mark says of his work:

"....A central theme of the work is the dichotomy between enchantment and disillusionment. The transition between the childhood experience of the fairground as a wonderland of lights, colours, movements, and adventure, to the adult realisation of a more ambivalent reality, the cheap stuffed toys, tired old rides and stalls, junk food, and hard bitten showies. These works aim to convey something of both these ways of seeing.

...The circus tents and their landscapes are inviting, with all their associations of mystery and excitement from childhood, but the absence of people and the sombre atmosphere suggests a loneliness. The tents allude to the self and the landscapes that contain them are the interior mood or feeling."