Big Mouth: The Amazon Speaks

Big Mouth is about modern Amazonia. It is also about the intense and frequently fetishistic and myth-ridden coverage which Amazonia has received in recent years.<P>University of London lecturer Stephen Nugent first went to Amazonia in 1975 and has returned many times since. His interest is in the real Amazonia, not the unspoiled nature preserve of first world poseurs nor the bottomless well of natural resources dreamt of by urban Brazilians. It's a place where people live trapped between a neo-colonial present and a post-colonial future where only high-minded outsiders know what is best for them.<P>In Big Mouth, Amazonia is visually represented not by photographs, but through the gaze of Humphrey Ocean who, fragilely armed with nib, pen and pad, pursued his distinctive agenda. Ocean lives in London and is a painter with portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, and the London and Royal Library, Windsor Castle.