ARTWORK PRESENTATION

Contemporary Art

14 August 2015

JOHN CRUTHERS rococo pop pty ltd CONTENTS

David Aspden 3

Brian Blanchower 7

Stephen Bush 11

William Delaeld Cook 15

Lesley Dumbrell 19

Dale Frank 23

Robert Jacks 27

Tim Johnson 31

Ildiko Kovaks 35

Richard Larter 39

William Mackinnon 43

Gareth Sansom 47

Imants Tillers 51

2 o” only one tone. This signalled the end o” the modernist peers managed to navigate this tricky divide but Aspden, DAVID painting project and led directly to conceptual art, where as a pure and instinctive painter, could not. the idea o” the art was more important than the artwork ASPDEN itsel” - indeed, there was often no artwork. Through the later 1980s Aspden struggled. In a more negative critical environment he found less support, and Born England 1935. Arrived Australia 1950. Died 2005. Painter. David Aspden did not proceed into conceptual art, commercial prospects for his work toughened. Leading recognising that it was pointless for him as a painter. galleries still wanted to show him, however, and in Sydney David Aspden’s father was a carpenter/pattern-maker and After experimenting with pouring and staining, he hit both Roslyn Oxley9 and Annandale Galleries had solo his grandfather a picture framer, so he was aware o” art upon a style that immediately clicked. It was based on the shows. But sales were few and Aspden sought other rep- from an early age. When he was 15 the family migrated to coloured stripes o” earlier paintings, but with their edges resentation - or did it himsel” with his wife Karen Coote. Australia, settling in Wollongong. Aspden left school that broken up into interlocking leaf-like shapes. E””ectively, Such moves meant he lacked the promotion a good dealer year to become an apprentice painter/sign-writer. Over the he re-introduced the biomorphic shapes o” earlier paint- provides, and a stable price structure. next 12 years he worked at this trade, building technical ings. While some purist critics derided his insertion o” skill and expertise in handling paint. the ‘natural world’ into an art practice that seemed to have In terms o” the work, it continued moving forward. In evolved past it, Aspden was unapologetic. the catalogue for the 1986 exhibition Surface for reflexion During this period Aspden adopted a rigorous program o” at the Art Gallery o£ NSW, curator Tony Bond described artistic self-education, beginning with plein air landscapes Once he’d xed on this style there was an outpouring o” the course oœ his work as a shift from “a rigorous formal- and progressing to abstraction. To generate interest he work. He was immediately successful, and in 1971 ism to rather more open congurations”. The latter part entered local art shows and in 1963 won two prizes at the represented Australia at the Sao Paulo Biennale, where his o” the shift is what Aspden achieved through this period. Wollongong Art Competition. This gave him the con- work was awarded a Gold Medal. Except for Brett His work loosened up and he began to enjoy the possibil- dence to embrace painting fulltime, and in 1964 he moved Whiteley’s International Prize at the 1961 Paris Biennale ities o” expressive gesture and mark-making. Oceanic and to Sydney and set up a studio in Paddington. of Young Painters and Sculptors, this was the only award Aboriginal art had an inuence here. He also used the jazz granted in a major international event to an Australian o” he always played in the studio as a prompt, aiming for the His rst exhibition in Sydney was at Watters Gallery Aspden’s generation. same spontaneity in his paintings as did Duke Ellington or in 1965. The works combined biomorphic shapes with Miles Davis in a solo. straight or vertical lines. The show was well reviewed and Through the 1970s, Aspden was one o” Australia’s leading Aspden continued his push into abstraction, abandoning contemporary artists. He was purchased by museums, In early 2002 Aspden was the subject o” a small survey natural forms for pure colour and geometry. His painting gained commissions for o¢ces and theatres, and was exhibition at the Orange Regional Art Gallery. David was inuenced by American post-painterly abstraction - chosen in major international touring exhibitions. The best Aspden - celebration of colour included signicant works the style that followed abstract expressionism. o” these, Ten Australians, was curated by Patrick from 1970 to 2002. It showed what a strong painter David McCaughey and included Fred Williams, Roger Kemp, had been through his career, regardless o” shifting fashion David Aspden was a pioneer o” this style in Australia. In John Firth-Smith and Sid Ball. or popularity. 1968, when the striking new National Gallery oœ Victoria building was opened, the rst exhibition was called The Aspden’s career was well on track into the early 1980s. At the time oœ his death in 2005, David had a show booked Field. It was a survey o” the best new Australian art in this He worked hard to keep his painting fresh - breaking up in Sydney. Rather than cancel, Karen decided to go ahead. style and included two paintings by Aspden. the forms, working on unprimed canvas or linen, varying It became a tribute exhibition, with long reviews by two the colours widely. But the early 1980s also signalled the leading critics, John McDonald (Sydney Morning Herald) Often called hard edge or colour eld painting, this birth o” postmodernism, and as a new generation arose and Sebastian Smee (The Australian). Both made similar became the dominant style in local art around 1966. Later Aspden’s generation and style came to be seen as passe, as points - that Aspden had stuck to his guns as a painter, had it became more minimal until, by 1970, many artists had everything the new guard wanted to overturn. Some oœ his painted what he wanted and had sustained a high level o” reached the monochrome - the canvas covered with paint 3 Grevillea 1976, acrylic on canvas, 158 x 376 cm, $65,000

quality and creativity over 40 years o” painting. Smee felt Sydney began to manage the estate, having successful solo David Aspden was a leading artist oœ his generation and he was the best abstract painter oœ his generation. Both felt exhibitions in 2010 and 2013. a major post-war abstract painter. While instrumental in he was seriously underrated, and McDonald hoped a state introducing new ideas to Australian art, he remained gallery would take up the challenge o” a retrospective. The two paintings below are from Aspden’s most creative independent o” schools and theories – he was a pure painter period. Grevillea 1976 is an example oœ his skill at small- and a gifted colourist. At its best his work is some o” the Shortly after, the Art Gallery o£ NSW committed to a scale mark-making and a pixelated e””ect as colours dance nest abstraction produced in Australia. survey o” Aspden’s work, which ran in 2011. It was based across the surface. Giant steps 3 1975, named after a jazz on eight paintings and 40 works on paper gifted from the standard by John Coltrane, shows Aspden returning to the Aspden estate. The accompanying catalogue was the rst harder edged shapes oœ his earlier paintings. museum publication on his work. At this time Utopia Art 4 Giant steps #3 1975, oil on canvas, 159 x 320 cm, $60,000

5 His earliest Australian works were texture paintings in in it as observer and recorder o” the elemental forces with BRIAN which he simulated the earth’s surface by adding sand to which all living things are charged. the paint. The sculptural works that followed included BLANCHFLOWER found objects and banners. In 1979 came a breakthrough. Blanchower is one o” the most accomplished painters When a geological oddity was uncovered in the working in Australia. He has been little a””ected by the Born 1939 Brighton, UK. Arrived Australia 1972. Painter. construction o” the Mitchell Freeway, Blanchower be- progressive movements o” the last 30 years - conceptual came obsessed with it. He named it Leedermeg - as it was art and post modernism - both o” which interposed various Brian Blanchower grew up on the Sussex Downs, an area found in Leederville - and conducted a ritual performance theoretical constraints between the artist and untrammeled noted for prehistoric sites such as eld patterns, monoliths on the spring solstice in which he poured honey over it. personal expression. His work is a reective and strongly and chalk drawings. Reminders o” earlier human cultures On one level the honey signied the life force, and on felt response to the place in which he lives, and to the big and o” the passing o” time in the natural world, these sites another paint and its transformative potential. questions o” western art and culture - who are we, where have inspired British artists as diverse as William Blake, do we come from, why are we here? What gives it power is John Constable, Paul Nash and Henry Moore. This ritual and others that followed served a complex the way his early contact with prehistoric art has led him function. They enabled the artist to connect with the to stress historical continuity rather than disjunction. Thus After completing art school in 1961, Blanchower and spirit o” the place and forge his own relationship with it, he was open to Aboriginal art and could use its lessons to an artist friend spent four months walking through this in a similar way as had the ancient peoples o” the Sussex enrich his own work. country. The sense oœ history embedded in the landscape Downs with their monoliths and chalk drawings. It also had an immediate e””ect on his painting, prompting him to had a liberating e””ect on his art. By 1982 he had begun His approach to landscape is equally spiritual. He is begin exploring questions o” man’s place in the universe. working on large unstretched supports made oœ hessian interested in what binds things together rather than what After more study, during which he discovered abstract sacks, sewn together and imprgnated with oil, acrylics, pig- separates them - the elemental forces o” energy and light. expressionist artists such as Mark Rothko, he travelled to ments and chalk, in a personal calligraphy o” primal marks Thus his work is all - encompassing and inclusive, the Western Australia in 1972 as an assisted migrant. that soon expanded to include dots, dashes and circles. He opposite to that type oœ landscape art based on the worked in groups, Tursiops then Nocturnes and nally the separation between interior and exterior worlds, subjective The Australia landscape was a revelation. As he wrote: Canopy series, started in 1984 and now comprising over and objective points o” view. For Blanchower, his work is

The language of painting per se, or at least my command of it, 100 large paintings. not about the gure in the landscape: in his art, the land- seemed inadequate to deal with…the increasingly strong feeling scape and the gure are one. of awe I had when confronted with that sky, or the gnarled skin Critic David Bromeld described the genesis o” the of the earth, or the power of the sea. I began to use any Canopy series as follows: Blanchower’s work is held in all Australian state galleries, the National Gallery o” Australia and many university materials to hand which seemed relevant - hence the local rocks The idea of the painting as a canopy was suggested by the art museums. He was the subject o” a mid career survey and sand, bitumen and hessian, the harpoon grenades and the experience of lying under a hessian canopy erected against in 1989-90 at the Art Gallery oœ WA, followed by an east honey. Strangely, colour, that wide range of largely unmixed the heat of the day during visits to Lake Moore. Light seeped coast tour. Survey exhibitions were also held at Curtin colour I had been using in London, began to seep away into the through the material day and night, in the way that paint was University in 1991 and 2004, and at the University o” earth and sky. I was left with a residue of black, brown, grey to soak into the hessian, jute and canvas of the various Canopies. Western Australia in 2011. and white. The more general metaphor of the sky as a canopy for the world only followed at a later date. Aboriginal art also made a strong impression. O” all the Particle city (Klangfarben) 1988 was painted simultaneously with the early Canopies. But unlike them it’s painted on Australian art he saw, only in Aboriginal rock paintings Bromeld continues that “the Canopy is still the form in canvas on a stretcher, which makes it much easier to install and land art did he recognise any fully realised concept o” which Blanchower chooses to embody his most elaborate and store. Klangfarbenmelodie (German for sound-colour wholeness - “a deeply moving expression o” the relation- work,” and the series is his major achievement. It is an -melody) is a musical technique that involves splitting a ship o” earth to sky, and oœ humankind to both.” ongoing portrait o” the universe, and oœ humankind’s place 6 musical line or melody between several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument, thereby adding colour and texture to the melodic line. It is sometimes compared to pointillism, a neo-impressionist painting technique.

Blanchower’s use o” it involves the deployment o” di””er- ent types o” painterly marks – dots, vertical and horizontal dashes, circles and squiggles – to parallel a composer’s use o” di””erent instruments and sounds, making a bustling but also lyrical painting. The yellow ground layer is very powerful, and in the esh the painting does “sing”.

The second work, Canopy XXXI (Binary system) 1992, shows the rapid shift in Blanchower’s work through the 1990s towards a monochrome abstraction, which has been his approach for the last 20 years. While the mark-mak- ing has largely disappeared, the heavily impastoed paint surface and deep, rich colours still create strong painterly qualities that engage the viewer.

Blanchower is little known nationally, but remains an extremely ne painter whose work o””ers a distinctly di””erent view o” Australia. Now 75, he is overdue a retrospective, which I expect in the next three or four years at the Art Gallery oœ WA. This should lift his national prole and convince a new generation o” the strength and insight oœ his painting.

Particle city (Klangfarben) 1988, oils and sand on acrylic gesso, linen/jute canvas, 221.3 x 244 cm, $65,000 TBC

7 Canopy XXXI (Binary system) 1992, acrylic with powdered pumice on jute, two panels, 210 x 388 cm overall, $80,000 TBC

8 Bush is inuenced by 19th century painting traditions, in The single-perspective focus o” works up to this point STEPHEN particular European Romantic and American landscape was subsequently discarded by Bush in the mid-2000s in painters. The landscape presents a eld for exploring favour o” a distorted, fragmented pictorial space which BUSH paint’s expressive qualities. Works speak to an interest in allows for parallel readings. Multiple landscapes inhabit American regionalism, with ongoing themes including the later works, in the form o” natural, manmade and Born 1958. Lives and works in Melbourne. Painter. exploration and the individual surveying nature. Bush cosmic environments. These scenes often dissolve into foregrounds these historic inuences, adopting a ‘retro’ a gestural abstraction that suggests a physicality to the Born in 1958, Stephen Bush studied at the Royal style to explore how history, and painting, is read and painting process (turning the tables on Bush’s inclusion o” Melbourne Institute oœ Technology in the 1970s. He has interpreted. He is often compared with American painter his own body as subject in earlier works). exhibited regularly since his rst solo exhibition in 1984. Mark Tansey, whose seminal work The innocent eye test 1981 He has always painted in a representational style, despite in the collection o” the Metropolitan Museum o” Art in The title o” Hold up the ladder to the glory land 2008 is taken it moving in and out o£ fashion, but his approach, more New York features a group o” gentlemen inviting a cow to from lyrics o” a Christian country and western song, but expansive than pure guration, increasingly incorporates examine a painting o” a fellow beast. the scene is less than heavenly. The waterwheel in the abstract elements. Bush’s masterful and unafraid use o” centre o” the image suggests a purgatorial cycle rather than colour moves between monochrome and full palette in a In the 1990s, the composition o£ Bush’s paintings, with an ascent. The wheel’s form is echoed by a cosmic whirl single canvas. their theatrical representations and spatial illusions, made o” paint that draws the viewer into the painting’s visceral reference to museum dioramas. The 1990s also saw him surface. Two barren trees sit above a River Styx-like Bush explores the possibilities o” the medium whilst exploring the iconography o” pop art through underworld o” stalactites and stalagmites that all but recognising its limitations. In his early work he often used brightly-coloured still lives (as well as Babar). Both o” obscure a cabin set among snow-capped mountains. The his own likeness when constructing narratives, literally these approaches reveal an interest in the ordinary and a painting portrays a number o” readings o” the universe, performing the act o” painting. Here he was starting to desire to bring new meaning to cultural symbols. but rather than privileging any, instead foregrounds the explore its narrative, as well as deceptive possibilities. cyclical nature oœ life’s questions and a swirling vortex o” 2003 saw the solo museum show Blackwood Skyline: work in uncertainty. Bush’s rst solo institutional exhibition, Claiming: An progress #5 at The Ian Potter Museum o” Art, the Installation of Paintings, began in 1991 at the Australian University o£ Melbourne. This included works from the Centre o” Contemporary Art, Melbourne and moved to 1980s to early 2000s, from staged historical scenes the Contemporary Art Centre o” South Australia before featuring multiple self-portraits from the early 1990s, touring to The Aldrich Museum o” Contemporary Art, through to a series o” paintings depicting wheelie bins a Connecticut. decade later.

Despite this earlier local and international recognition, Col du Gablier 2003 (right) was painted at a point where Bush rst came to prominence through the series The lure the artist shifted into allowing the medium to control the of Paris 1992 – ongoing, a suite o” paintings depicting the message, rather than the art historical references o” earlier cartoon character Babar the Elephant exploring rocky land works. Similarly to Dale Frank and Gareth Sansom, the and seascapes. The series was interpreted in the context properties o” the material play a signicant role in direct- o” Australia’s postcolonial discourse (Babar travels from ing the image. In Col du Gablier, paint itsel” is presented as Africa to Paris and is ‘civilised’; he subsequently returns a monument, an inert material with the potential to trans- to Africa to ‘enlighten’ fellow elephants). However these form. The lurid globules o” paint, fresh from the tube, are works, like much o£ Bush’s oeuvre, comment on history the equivalent o” a blank canvas. This is a painting about more broadly. the act o” painting, the anxiety o” taking a rst step. Col du Gablier 2003, oil on linen, 201 x 244 cm 9 Similarly in Eddie Cole the David Brown guru 2012, the organic meets the manmade, and Bush employs character- istic elements o” circularity. A child manoeuvres a wheel- barrow up a rocky landscape in the direction o” a piece o” agricultural equipment, which appears to be sending its rotating belts into the portal o” an ornate oating frame nearby. The goat in the centre should be the element the most at home in the composition, however as it turns its head to meet the gaze o” the viewer it seems unsettling.

In 2014 a major survey exhibition Steenhu”el took place at The Ian Potter Museum o” Art, the University o” Melbourne. This exhibition included Col du Gablier and many other signicant works from across Bush’s practice.

Bush rst exhibited in the United States in 1986 in the group exhibition Voyage of Discovery in Dallas, Texas. Bush’s rst institutional solo exhibition, Claiming: An Installation of Paintings toured to The Aldrich Museum o” Contemporary Art, Connecticut in 1991. He subsequently held solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Santa Fe. High-prole American art collector John L. Stewart rst became aware o£ Bush in the 1980s and developed a close friendship with the artist, supporting him throughout his career with regular purchases, promoting Bush overseas, and helping to organize the aforementioned exhibitions. Overseas collectors or curators do not often champion Australian artists in this way, and Bush made the most o” the opportunity. In 2013 Stewart consigned eight works by Bush to auction in Australia, as part o” an ongoing rationalization oœ his large art holdings.

Bush is represented by Sutton Gallery in Melbourne, and his work is held in major Australian public Hold up the ladder to the glory land 2008, oil and enamel on linen, 198 x 244 cm, $50,000 collections and many signicant corporate collections. Bush continues to delve into history to create original, contemporary works that examine the notion o” truth in painting while straddling both guration and abstraction.

10 Eddie Cole the David Brown guru 2012, oil on linen, 198.5 x 234 cm, $48,000 11 elsewhere. Being based in London allowed him to explore paintings evoked the particular qualities o” Australian glare WILLIAM the art scenes o” other European cities. In 1972 he was and shadow, and reected the artist’s longing for place. included in the exhibition Relativerend Realisme at the Van DELAFIELD COOK Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland, and Palais des Beaux In 1983 Delaeld Cook’s work was included in the exhi- Arts, Brussels. From 1973-73 he undertook a Berlin bition Recent Australian Painting – A Survey: 1970-1983 at Born Melbourne, 1936. Lived and worked in Melbourne and residency at the invitation o” the prestigious DAAD the Art Gallery o” SA, and in 1987 he was honoured with London. Died 2015. program, leading to a solo exhibition at the Akademie der two solo survey exhibitions, Selected Works 1958-87 at the Kunste, Berlin in 1974. Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Born in Melbourne, William Delaeld Cook under- and Mid-career Survey at the Art Gallery o£ NSW. The took studies in Secondary Teaching and attended the In the mid-1970s Delaeld Cook turned his hand to paint- same year his work was part o” the ANZ Bicentennial Art Royal Melbourne Institute oœ Technology in the early ing haystacks, inspired by the photography o£ Henry Fox Commissions which toured nationally. In 1997 his work 1950s. During this time he was inspired by the Parisian Talbot (not the paintings o£ Monet as some presumed). was included in the exhibition The Real Thing at Heide avant-garde and painted abstract compositions accordingly. Unlike Monet’s atmospheric compositions, Delaeld Museum o£ Modern Art, Melbourne. This period saw him In 1958 he visited Europe and was exposed to a much Cook’s haystacks were sharply lit and nely detailed, with exhibiting less prolically but gaining recognition in wider variety o” painting styles. He relocated to London each individual blade oœ hay painstakingly rendered. museum shows. that same year, and for the next decade his own style evolved hesitantly, showing the inuence o£ Pop Art From 1975-77 he returned to Australia for a residency at Hillside 1 2004-11 and Hillside 2 2004 reect in their titles among other styles. the University o£ Melbourne. This included the rst Delaeld Cook’s deadpan approach to his subject matter survey exhibition oœ his work which, following its showing (every haystack in his series depicting that subject was The denitive moment in Delaeld Cook’s artistic devel- in Melbourne, toured to the Art Gallery o£ NSW, titled A haystack). Both are splendid and very di””erent opment came in the early 1960s when, in an e””ort to hone Newcastle Region Art Gallery at the Art Gallery o” SA. examples o” the artist’s ability to capture the unique his skills, he began to make detailed drawings o£ furniture 1977 also saw the artist included in the important group qualities o” Australian sunlight. Hillside 1 was begun in in his family home. The resulting black and white draw- exhibition Illusion and Reality which toured to all state 2004, however Delaeld Cook revisited it in 2011, rework- ings, made with charcoal and conte crayon, helped him to galleries after opening at the National Gallery o” Australia. ing the image and slightly reducing the size o” the canvas. discover his artistic identity. From that point he became a realist. His paintings, though not photo- or hyper-realist, Delaeld Cook’s teaching years gave him a solid under- It has been said that Delaeld Cook’s paintings speak o” are carefully considered and artfully produced standing o” art history which he used to inform a series both magnitude and quietude, and this is certainly the transcriptions o” the subject. They investigate timelessness o” postmodern works depicting museum interiors, and in case with these two works. The seeming innocuousness o” and the dynamism o” the natural world. 1981 he received the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery o” the landscape scenes is o””set by the expansive canvases. NSW for a painting featuring three portraits by Ingres The lack o” any human trace places us in the work. The From the early 1960s until the early 1970s Delaeld Cook hanging in the Louvre. 1981 also saw him acknowledged shadows cast by the trees in each painting, long and short made his living lecturing at art schools in Britain, includ- by his inclusion in the exhibition Aspects of New Realism: respectively, make us feel as though we are standing under ing 12 years at the Maidstone School o” Art, Kent. In 1961 1981 which began at the National Gallery oœ Victoria and the sun at the same moment and can feel the direction o” he was included in the exhibition Young Contemporaries at toured nationally. its rays. The lack o” any landmarks in the foreground o” the Royal British Society o” Artists, London, and in 1963 each work invites us to approach these hills, climb them, Australian Painting and Sculpture in Europe today, at New While realist painters such as American Richard Estes and and discover what is on the other side. His use o” acrylic Metropole Arts Centre in Folkestone and Frankfurt. Australian Je””rey Smart looked to the urban landscape, paint allows for such precise rendering and also evokes Delaeld Cook maintained an interest in the rural, and in a dryness in the landscape that oils could not. Delaeld Delaeld Cook held his rst solo exhibition in 1967 at the early 1980s, he began painting the Australian land- Cook has captured the essence o” what it is to experience Leveson Street Gallery, Melbourne, and subsequently scape, rendering hills and rocky outcrops. These landscape the Australian landscape by paying homage to it. held regular solo exhibitions in Australia and occasionally 12 Hillside 1 2004-11, acrylic on linen, 162 x 380 cm, $380,000

By the last decade oœ his life the artist was spending part At the time oœ his death in early 2015 Delaeld Cook’s For me they are not just ‘landscape’, they are part of my life. If o” every year back in his home country, with his works practice had spanned ve decades. He is widely I’m painting Australia … I’m painting, among other things, my reecting the time spent observing the landscape. How- acknowledged as a painter whose dedication to the thoughts, my childhood, my sense of place, where I belong. ever Delaeld Cook painted the works themselves back in Australian landscape has led to new perceptions o” the London, meaning that he was able to distil the essential land. Despite all the years living in Britain, his Delaeld Cook’s work is held in all major Australian public nature o” what he had absorbed. In 2011 a nal survey ex- commitment to the landscape oœ his home country never collections and many signicant corporate collections hibition oœ his works was held at the Gippsland Regional wavered. Deborah Hart, author o£ Delaeld Cook’s mon- across Australia, the UK, USA and Europe. Art Gallery and TarraWarra Museum o” Art. ograph, referred to Australia as the “spiritual home” o” the artist, and he agreed:

13 Hillside 2 2004, acrylic on linen, 162 x 346 cm, private collection, Hong Kong

14 In 1975 Dumbrell’s involvement with the Australian o” the building from its inception. The scale and context LESLEY women’s art movement saw her co-found the Women’s Art o” a wall-to-wall carpet required a shift in thinking for the Register. Her subsequent inclusion in exhibitions such artist, and her work with the Australian Tapestry DUMBRELL as A Room of One’s Own at the Ewing and George Paton Workshop helped her prepare for the experience. Galleries in 1975 and her membership o£ feminist journal Born 1941. Lives and works in Victoria, Australia and Bangkok, Lip from 1979-80 are further examples oœ her activity in The 1980s also saw Dumbrell exhibit in New York and Thailand. Painter this arena. London with contemporaries Robert Jacks and John Firth-Smith, as well as travelling to Italy and France. Born in 1941 in Melbourne, Lesley Dumbrell studied at Dumbrell’s ‘system paintings’ and works on paper o” the During this period she was increasingly recognised for her the Royal Melbourne Institute oœ Technology in the late late 1970s involved the overlaying o” grid systems, creating watercolours on paper as well as her paintings, through 1950s and early 1960s. Her style formed over a period random and patterned lines, and saw her developing her inclusion in major museum exhibitions. dominated by hard edge and colour eld painting, own visual vocabulary. In 1977 she undertook a residency exploring optical e””ects, colour and precise shapes. She at Monash University, Melbourne that led to the survey In 1990 Dumbrell moved to Bangkok and by the middle o” was particularly inuenced by Optical (Op) Art, especially exhibition Paintings and Studies 1966-77. She was includ- that decade her work had changed direction again, that o£ Bridget Riley and Jesus Rafael Soto, in whose work ed in an exhibition o” recent acquisitions at the National returning to linear grid systems and spatial optical illusion, Dumbrell discovered new modes o” perception. Gallery o” Australia the following year. partly in response to the vibrant intensity oœ her surrounds. This and her subsequent visits to Thailand Dumbrell takes colour as her starting point, selecting hues In 1980 Dumbrell moved to Richmond and through that exerted a major inuence on her work, as she experienced for their emotional and physical resonances. Lines are decade lived and worked in a warehouse studio. She taught the colours and avours o£ Bangkok. overlaid in complex arrangements, causing the com- part-time before moving to full-time painting, making the position to advance and recede in space. This creates a most o” a buoyant economy and art market. Her linear In 1999 Dumbrell was honoured with a solo exhibition, dynamic experience where the paintings icker and glint paintings o” the early 1980s were intuitive and inuenced Shades of Light: Lesley Dumbrell 1971–1999 at the Ian Potter as the viewer moves. by natural elements. The change o” personal circumstances Museum o” Art at the University o£ Melbourne. By the was reected in a playful use o” colour, and experimen- early 2000s the grid systems in her works had started Geometric abstraction was traditionally male-dominated tation with spatial composition. She was included in to become more complex and fragmented. In 2002 she in the 1960s, and despite advancing along a similar route to the iconic Australian Perspecta 1981 exhibition at the Art returned to Australia to build a home in the Strath- the prevailing style o” the day Dumbrell was not included Gallery o£ NSW. bogie Ranges in rural Victoria. The Australian bush had a in the seminal 1968 exhibition The Field. The inaugural profound impact on her work, the grid was replaced with show at the National Gallery oœ Victoria’s new premises After an exhibition in New York in 1981 Dumbrell increasingly random systems as the landscape and atmos- included 39 artists, only three o” whom were women. returned to Australia invigorated. She began to explore phere were absorbed. jagged, interlocking shapes sitting in an imagined spatial Despite this oversight Dumbrell is recognised as a plane. This style returned intermittently throughout the By the end o” that decade there was an organic inuence pioneer o” the 1970s Australian women’s art movement. In decade, and appeared in several tapestries she completed in her paintings, reected in shimmering linear arrange- Janine Burke’s book Field of Vision Dumbrell said: “I am at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in 1981. The result- ments and the palette. Columbine 2008 features an earthy a woman who paints, not a painter who happens to be a ing pieces are in the collections o” the National Gallery o” brown background, which is criss-crossed with a dazzling woman. Therefore my work must contain some expression Australia and the National Australia Bank. arrangement oœ lines in orange, yellow and green. The o” my sexuality, intuition and intellect.” After her rst solo variety o” colours used to create the lines adds a depth and exhibition in 1969, she began exhibiting in commercial In 1982 Dumbrell was commissioned to design the carpet dynamism to the work and keeps the eye moving across, in galleries across Australia, and in 1974 was included in the for the lobby in the Prime Minister’s suite in New and out. group exhibition Moravian International ’74 at Moravian Parliament House. Art was planned to be an integral part College, Pennsylvania. 15 Russet 2007, oil on linen, 163 x 284 cm, $24,300

Russet 2007 employs a simpler palette but its composition or mechanical assistance. She also paints on paper using the 2015 exhibition After 65, the Legacy of Op at Latrobe Re- is no less complex. The overlay o” white lines on crimson a similar technique, sometimes as stand alone works and gional Gallery, Victoria. She has been described by Rachel sometimes meet in starbursts which combine to create the sometimes as studies for larger paintings. Kent, Senior Curator at the Museum o” Contemporary impression o” constellations. The eye endlessly discovers Art, Sydney as “one o” Australia’s leading exponents o” di””erent shapes amongst the delicately rendered divisions. Dumbrell’s work is held in most major Australian public abstraction”. collections as well as signicant corporate collections. In While Dumbrell’s style has evolved, her commitment recent times she continues to explore the contrast between to technique has been unwavering. The realisation o” country and city life as she divides her time between each painting is a long process, beginning with detailed Thailand and rural Victoria. The belated institutional preparatory drawings before marking up the canvas with recognition oœ her signicance in the development o” pencil. Works are all painted by hand, without masking Australian abstraction has continued with her inclusion in 16 Columbine 2008, oil on linen , 172 x 229 cm, $24,300

17 hypnotic colour scheme would come to identify many o” The late 1990s saw Frank explore a harder edge to his DALE his subsequent works. abstract compositions, with gurative forms creeping back into the works. In 2000 he was honoured with the FRANK In 1988, after 10 years abroad, Frank returned to Australia. survey exhibition Ecstasy – 20 Years of Painting, at the By this time the gurative, symbolic elements in the work MCA Sydney. A solo show also took place that year at the Born 1959. Lives and works in Singleton, NSW. Painter. were abandoned in favour o” collaged elements and found Art Gallery o£ NSW. Nonetheless his attacks on the art objects. The painted surface began to incorporate world continued, with titles like Art critics make great fat Born in 1959, Dale Frank began painting and drawing striations, cracks, drips and smears. chicks between flannelette sheets 2001 and The artist’s four seriously at the age o” 14, and in 1975, at age 16, he was testicles on the barbecue of life 2001 ensuring his already receiving accolades including rst prize in the Red In moving home Frank hoped to encourage reputation as an art world ‘bad boy’ persisted. Cross Art Prize, judged by John Olsen, and being short- similar critical debates locally to those he had experienced listed for the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery o£ NSW. overseas. He was included in the 8th Biennale of Sydney By the mid 2000s Frank had begun working with varnish This was the beginning o” a high-prole career that has in 1990, indicating increasing recognition. However his in a similar manner to his earlier poured resin style. This seen his abstract, psychologically-driven paintings return home inspired a new aggression in the work that now denes his visual vocabulary, although recently canvas exhibited all over the world. never dissipated. This was partly inspired by his being supports have given way to more experimental materials described as an enfant terrible, a description that persisted such as mirrors and perspex. While Frank continues to Frank held his rst solo show in 1979 and subsequently over the years. He abandoned the compositions oœ his make attractive, saleable paintings he still lampoons the art left his home in rural Singleton to pursue what he saw earlier works in favour o” a loss o£ form – at one stage he world by incorporating devices such as incongruous gold as a professional artist’s career in Europe and the United even took to their surfaces with a blowtorch. Some works frames that he sometimes partially burns. States. Like other artists at the time, Frank felt hemmed incorporated pages torn from art magazines, with titles in by the parochialism o” the local art scene and wanted to such as The critic’s bladder (Portrait of Paul Foss) 1992 These two paintings are strong examples o£ Frank’s recent make a mark on the broader world. making his opinions clear. practice. Only after did it occurred to him that she was the bitch that wrote the nasty article on her blog 2014 incorporates Over the next 10 years he earned extensive recognition, Frank had produced works on paper prolically since 1980, a dark palette which reects the dark thoughts behind the holding 64 solo exhibitions in cities all over Europe as well and 1993 saw a retrospective oœ his drawings tour to the title. Frank’s virtuosic handling o” the varnish creates deep as the USA, Britain and Asia. He was seen by European Perth Institute o” Contemporary Art, Monash University voids as well as areas revealing expanses o” sky blue. The and American curators o” the 1980s as part o” a new global Museum o” Art and Wollongong City Gallery. 1994 saw a paint has been coaxed into striations that appear almost art movement – the Trans-avant-garde – and as a result solo exhibition at the Art Gallery o£ NSW Project Space geological. As a painting it encapsulates the ups and downs was included in numerous exhibitions with international gallery. o” psychological reection. artists. At the same time in Australia Frank’s work was in- cluded in exhibitions examining the postmodern condition, By the mid 1990s, Frank’s work became more corporeal. In contrast, Peering over the Liverpool Plains from a including the curated by William 4th Biennale of Sydney He began working with resin, pouring it across the surface Cessna Cherokee 2012-13 boasts a more celebratory palette. Wright in 1982 and, a year later, the iconic Australian o” the works and rotating the canvas while the resin set. Splashes o” sunny yellow, crimson and teal surround a Perspecta 1983 at the Art Gallery o£ NSW. These paintings became like living organisms, with the psychedelic riot o” marbled black and white. The centre o” material pooling onto the oor, bursting from or moving the composition is a black swirl which sucks the viewer in Frank’s work o” this time was a psychological investigation underneath the paint skin. These e””ects referenced Frank’s before spitting them out again into the lighter surrounds. into a complex inner world. Symbolist motifs such as the interest in biology and the human body’s inner workings, The title suggests an aerial view that encourages the search eye appeared within dark landscapes and seascapes that and eventually he began using the human body to impact for geographic elements in the work. morphed into hallucinatory abstraction through striated the surface o” the paintings – hiring studio assistants to painting e””ects. These works used a palette oœ black, acid imprint the works with physical actions. green, yellow, ultramarine blue and red. This darkly 18 Frank believes contemporary painting must hold its own amongst other media. As such he approaches it as a con- ceptual practice, grounded in the loaded historical con- text o” painting. In the statement accompanying his 2014 exhibition Toby Jugs at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, he wrote: The medium-specific approach to painting is still possible in artistic practice…. All it has lost is its status as self-evident. Since painting is realized today within the horizon of conceptual practice, it must be grounded in a context that is no longer its own. That means, on the one hand, that an appeal to the specifics of the medium as its sole justification is no longer possible. Painting can no longer just be painting. Today it is also necessarily a form of conceptual art, and as such it must be judged, and hold its own, in relation to conceptual practices in other media. But this also means that painting can take strength precisely from the fact that by way of an immanent intimate dialogue with its own history and conditions as a medium it arrives at a strategic self-justification within a broader wider world. Forcing painting potentially into a more enthralling, adventurous and critically engaging approach than any other media.

This commitment to push the boundaries oœ his chosen medium is why Frank remains relevant to contemporary painting, and why museums continue to collect his work. Represented by leading galleries Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Frank has also shown recently in Singapore, Hong Kong and Auckland.

Frank’s work is held in many signicant collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Only after did it occurred to him that she was the bitch that wrote the nasty article on her blog 2014, York, Zurich Kunsthaus, Switzerland, Exxon Corporation varnish on canvas, 214 x 274 cm, $78,000 Collection, New York, Trans-Art Collection, Milan, Italy, National Gallery o” Australia, Canberra, National Gallery oœ Victoria, Melbourne, Museum o” Contemporary Art, Sydney, Art Gallery o£ NSW, Sydney and the National Gallery o£ New Zealand.

19 Peering over the Liverpool Plains from a Cessna Cherokee 2012-2013, varnish on canvas, 214 x 274 cm, $78,000 20 was a hard act to follow. It also reected the Melbourne In 1980 Jacks moved to Sydney to lecture at Sydney ROBERT public’s lack o” appreciation o” minimalist abstraction at College o” the Arts. He was included in Australian the time. Perspecta 1981 at the Art Gallery o£ NSW, and paintings JACKS o” this time show a break from the grids and formality o” In 1968 Jacks was included in the seminal abstract painting prior work. The 1980s was a strong period for Australian Born Melbourne, 1943. Lived and worked in Australia and North exhibition The Field at the National Gallery oœ Victoria. art and Jacks responded condently. Works like Kentish fire America. Died 2014. The same year, just shy oœ his 25th birthday and at a time and heavy boots 1982 contain almost no right angles, and when his work was starting to be recognised in were the largest works he had produced to date. Using Robert Jacks was born in 1943. As a child his family lived Australia, he went overseas. Rather than the typical a palette knife rather than a brush to apply subtle col- on-site at the Burnley Parks and Gardens in Melbourne, Australian trajectory o” moving to London, he and his wife our combinations, he built up layers progressively, then where he had his rst experience o” drawing, sketching travelled to North America. This self-proclaimed scraped them back to create a textured e””ect. Kentish fire plants in the garden with his father. The family attended apprenticeship, in which he immersed himsel” in and heavy boots is an early example o” the style that became ower and garden shows, and their orderly rows o£ owers minimalism and abstraction, continued until his return to typical oœ his practice over the next decade. later inuenced his interest in the grid. Australia ten years later. In 1983 Jacks returned to Melbourne, where he was in From 1958 Jacks attended Prahran Technical College. He His rst stop was Toronto to collect his American visa, residence and subsequently lecturer in painting at Prahran began to explore abstraction, inuenced by the work o” which signalled a distinct second phase oœ his practice. College until 1988. Having been one o” the few Picasso, Braque and Miro, as well as pop culture including Embracing minimalism, he remained anchored in the Australian artists to experience New York during the record covers, advertising and cinema. In 1961 he began a perceptual rather than the conceptual, despite the prevail- heyday o” minimalism and conceptualism, his inuence, Diploma o” Art in sculpture at Royal Melbourne Institute ing trend towards the dematerialisation o” the art object. friendship and mentoring o” younger generations o” artists oœ Technology (RMIT), quickly transferring to paint- was pronounced, continuing beyond his teaching years. ing and printmaking. He met painter Fred Williams, 16 Jacks spent the next decade in New York, where he met Sol years his senior, who became his mentor and took him on LeWitt, Donald Judd and other art world luminaries. This In the early 1990s Jacks moved with his family to rural painting excursions. Along with his peers including Lesley experience makes him unique in the history and develop- Victoria, where the expansive garden o” their property Dumbrell (also in this presentation), he moved from the ment o” Australian art. One oœ his rst shows was facilitat- became an on-going project, reecting his early years in expressionist painting style o” the time, typied by Arthur ed by LeWitt, who selected the Australian to inaugurate Burnley Parks and Gardens. This time also saw a major Boyd, towards a new and pared-back form o” abstraction. a new international exhibition program at the New York exhibition oœ his works on paper at the Ian Potter Gallery, Cultural Centre in 1971. The exhibition consisted o” which brought him to the attention to a new generation. Jacks began exhibiting in 1962. His rst solo exhibition, in modular works, which Jacks had been working on since By the mid-1990s he had again abandoned the palette 1966 at Gallery A, Melbourne, was received with critical 1968. knife for the brush and his works featured at areas o” acclaim. It explored abstraction through painting, colour, with the guitar - recalling Picasso and Braque - a sculpture, drawing and printmaking, with congurations o” Jacks’ return to Australia in 1978 coincided with a shift recurring motif. angular and curved forms in varied palettes, and Brancusi away from grids and modular forms that had been the inuenced bird-like elements. focus oœ his American work. A residency at the University Jacks revisited the urban in the mid-2000s in the series o£ Melbourne resulted in the 1978 exhibition Works in The city sleeps. The works reected inuences ranging from In 1967 Jacks held his second solo exhibition at South Yarra Progress. This formed a bridge between two distinct Mondrian to Australian modernist Ralph Balson, as well as Gallery. It consisted o” minimal and rened paintings, periods in his artistic development, combining the pixel structures referencing the digital age. They are featuring arcs and squares at the centre, grounded in freedom oœ his mid-1960s work with the discipline o” the undeniably urban, encapsulating simultaneously the expanses o” colour. The dramatic change between his rst process-oriented American years. aerial and pedestrian views o” a cityscape, the blinking and second exhibition was not well received – the rst tra¢c lights and jostling skyscrapers. While the work is 21 Kentish fire and heavy boots 1982, oil and wax on canvas, 197 x 296.5 cm, Art Gallery o£ New South Wales landscape in orientation, its composition is dynamically exhibition conrmed his signicance in Australian art to put his new works into context with early ones, always vertical. history. His work is held in many local public collections asking questions about the nature o” art and o” painting. as well as international collections including the British While he remained true to minimalist abstraction through- Jacks passed away during the development o” the retro- Museum and the Museum o£ Modern Art, New York. out his working life, he felt free to experiment within spective exhibition Order and variation, held at the With a career spanning ve decades, Jacks proved himsel” these frontiers, which meant his work developed and National Gallery oœ Victoria in 2014. Widely praised, this a formidable painter. As his practice evolved he continued evolved in reference to the art o” the times. 22 The city sleeps 2006, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 183 x 305 cm, TarraWarra Museum o” Art, Melbourne

23 They exhibited the works, lectured and wrote on the art, dotting was hotly debated in the 1980s, but his e””orts to TIM and promoted the movement. understand the work o” other cultures and establish pro- tocols to use it in his own art have become exemplary in JOHNSON Aboriginal painting had a profound e””ect on Johnson’s cross cultural practice. He’s now seen as a pioneering voice own art. His earliest works from 1979-80 featured arguing for cultural pluralism in Australian art and culture. Born Sydney 1947. Painter, lmmaker, printmaker. Aboriginals in the desert. Based on magazine images, they He is represented in the National Gallery o” Australia, all were often painted in gridded space, showing the ongoing state galleries and many university museums. In 2008 he Tim Johnson began painting in high school. Later he inuence o” conceptual ideas. In 1980 he began photo- was the subject o” a survey exhibition at the Art Gallery studied architecture, philosophy and political science, and graphing artists with their paintings, and then painting a o£ NSW and the ²ueensland Art Gallery. He has also by the time he began exhibiting his works were strongly version o” the photograph. In this way he included their shown widely overseas, both commercially and in museum conceptual. Through artist-run gallery Inhibodress, he was paintings in his own work - always with the permission exhibitions and biennales. a pioneer o” conceptual art in Sydney in the late 1960s, o” the artists, as iconography in Aboriginal art is tied to producing installations, performances and lms. dreamings owned by people. Only the owner or those The painting Yantra 2008 is in one o” Johnson’s standard authorised by the owner are allowed to paint these images formats – ve panels producing on overall work measuring Around 1973, while most oœ his colleagues continued with and stories. 182 x 306 cm. The work focuses on Buddhist principles: non object-based work, Johnson returned to painting. Yantra is the Sanskrit word for instrument or machine…. One However, it was painting informed both by conceptual art In 1983 Johnson began using dots, although ironically they and his growing interest in Asian cultures. The works from usage popular in the west is as symbols or geometric figures. were rst used in appropriations o” Chinese cave paintings Traditionally such symbols are used in Eastern mysticism to this period frequently used Buddhist imagery to explore – for example Zhu Haogu’s Yuan Dynasty wall painting issues o” spirituality. He also became interested in Aborig- balance the mind or focus it on spiritual concepts. The act of Maitreya Paradise. His subsequent work used a range o” wearing, depicting, enacting and/or concentrating on a yantra inal art and in 1980, after a dream, he travelled to Papunya dotting techniques to explore ideas oœ landscape and spirit- to make contact with the Aboriginal artists whose works is held to have spiritual or astrological or magical benefits in the uality. Rather than copying Aboriginal art however, he Tantric traditions of the Indian religions. he admired. combined its imagery with elements from other cultures - Tibetan, Chinese and Native American - to draw attention So Yantra contains the depiction o” a yantra, while the Papunya, a dusty out-camp north o” Alice Springs, had to their similar land philosophies. been the birthplace o” contemporary Aboriginal painting painting itsel£ functions as a yantra, “an object or instru- in 1971, when teacher Geo”£ Bardon gave acrylic paints ment to balance the mind or focus it on spiritual concepts”. Collaboration has also been a feature o” Johnson’s practice. Aesthetically the work is modeled on Nepalese scroll to a group o” elders and suggested they paint their tribal In the 1980s he worked with Aboriginal artists, asking designs on small boards. The resulting works had been a paintings with thangkas (decorative borders) surrounding them to paint the dreaming design while he added the a central eld o” spiritual symbols from di””erent cultures. revelation, and this style o” ‘dot painting’ soon became the dots. Later he worked with Native American and Asian most acclaimed Australian art internationally. Yantra was included in an exhibition at the Wellington artists. His collaborations were the subject o” a 1993 City Gallery, New Zealand, which toured to the Tel Aviv exhibition at Monash University called Tim Johnson: Museum o” Art in Israel. When Johnson arrived, Papunya was home to many across cultures. As this exhibition showed, for Johnson art senior artists. He befriended them and his life and art is a democratic, utopian practice in which many cultural was intimately involved with their art and culture for the Crop circles 2015 was included in Johnson’s recent strands come together, enriching each other and breaking exhibition Open Source at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. next decade. By spending time with them, he observed down boundaries o” culture and race. their working methods and came to understand their The term ‘open source’ describes a computer program that involves others in its production and use. For Johnson work’s deep spirituality - including its potential to allow Through its unique mix o” conceptualism, cross cultural non-indigenous people to grasp the Aboriginal view o” the this means his three collaborators on the exhibition, and inuences and collaboration, Tim Johnson’s art has been extends to the possible meanings o” the work. It includes interconnectedness o” ‘country’ and the human spirit. Tim central to the development o” Australian art. His use o” and his wife Vivien became early collectors o£ Papunya art. many images o” UFOs, to acknowledge that 24 Yantra 2008, acrylic on canvas, ve panels, 182 x 306 cm overall, $30,000 spirituality can overlap with the idea o” extraterrestrial As part oœ his idealistic approach to art, Johnson keeps his and Juan Davila. But there is no doubt history will judge life. The central motifs in each panel are recorded crop prices low. He prefers to have his paintings in people’s him as their equal in quality and importance. He is a circles, although the fourth panel is a more humorous homes, rather than in storage. This also suits his practice central gure in contemporary Australian art o” the last reference – the icon o” the classic 1980s computer game as a prolic artist. As a result o” this strategy, Johnson’s three decades. Space Invaders. prices are much lower than peers such as Imants Tillers 25 Crop circles 2015, acrylic on canvas, ve panels, 182 x 306 cm overall, $30,000

26 Aboriginal artists with whom she worked, including with rollers on large sheets o” plywood: the works in this ILDIKO collaborations. While many non-indigenous and urban presentation are from that period. There is a blunt physi- Aboriginal artists have appropriated Aboriginal painterly cality to this mode o” painting which, rather than consider- KOVACS devices, Kovacs was one o” the rst non-indigenous artists ing the beauty o” oil paint, is about Kovacs’ trademark line to be inspired in their approach to painting and the motifs activating large areas. These works come into their own Born 1962, Sydney, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney. Painter. in Aboriginal art, whilst developing a unique visual when viewed from a few metres distance – this is when the language. This was a result oœ being invited by Ninuku physical gestures o” the artist can be appreciated. As such Mid career painter Ildiko Kovacs had long been interested Arts into an active collaboration with local artists. they are ideal for a foyer setting. in Aboriginal art, and in 1995 the sale o” two large paint- ings gave her the opportunity to leave Sydney for Austral- Ildiko Kovacs was born in Sydney in 1962. She trained A recent commission gave Kovacs condence working ia’s west coast, where she could explore Indigenous prac- at St George College and the National Art School from large-scale, and she continues to work at these dimensions. tice further. After living in Perth she moved to Broome for 1978 to 1980 and has held regular solo exhibitions since the She is a rare example o” an artist who handles scale con- ten months, returning again in 2003. During these visits late 1980s. While her work has undergone several distinct dently, activating the board through her hand-movements. she experienced ancient rock art and absorbed the visual shifts, an intuitive painting process has always led it. In this sense her practice is still connected to abstract languages o” contemporary artists o” the Kimberley expressionism, however the roller’s sweeping gestures also through exhibitions at Waringarri Artists in Kununurra Kovacs’ works o” the late 1980s and early 1990s reected recall the Yam Dreaming works o” noted Aboriginal artist and Short Street Gallery in Broome. Kovacs also visited an interest in abstract expressionism. This “youthful explo- Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Aboriginal art centres in remote communities, where she ration into the unknown,” as she put it, gradually gave way met and observed a number o” artists, including the late to voids created by over-painting and washes as Kovacs, In flight 2015 is a dense composition in which streaks o” Paddy Bedford. Observing Bedford’s intuitive working spurred on by shifts in her personal life, reworked the ultramarine blue pop amongst an otherwise subdued, mode prompted a shift in Kovacs’ practice, her subsequent surfaces in an attempt to return to fundamental questions organic palette o” cream, charcoal and ochre. Lines snake works incorporating more accidents and irregularities o” painting and nd clarity. Around 1993 the greyness o” around the canvas and come to an abrupt end, keeping the while maintaining a strength and simplicity in their these voids gave way to lighter colours, reecting a more eye moving in and out o” the painting’s depths o£ eld. composition and palette. positive emotional life. The random shapes in these works Because o” the intuitive way she paints, there are times began to form lines and a breakthrough occurred in the when Kovacs’ pieces can become overworked. However at In 2008 Kovaks fullled a long-held ambition to visit 1995 work Slow roam where, for the rst time, the lines their best, as these examples demonstrate, they succeed to Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency at Fitzroy Crossing. had joined up – “it was a dance,” said Kovacs. The artist spectacular e””ect. There she worked alongside senior artists Warkatu Cory found that the physicality o” this line demanded a large Surprise, Daisy Andrews and Jukuja Dolly Snell, assisting, format, and worked on very large canvases for a time. In 2011 Kovacs was the subject o” a survey show, Down the observing and occasionally collaborating. The residency line 1980-2010 at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts resulted in a shift in Kovacs’ work and also impacted the Kovacs has described her treatment o” the line “like Centre in Sydney. As is often the case with women artists, practices o” the local artists, particular Cory Surprise, sculpting in space…. Arabesque rhythmic forms that had this institutional recognition had taken several decades. whose use o” colour expanded dramatically. The changes the illusion oœ being three-dimensional”. Kovacs sees the Momentum subsequently built, and in 2015 Kovacs was in Kovacs’ work were subtler but no less important. She line as a metaphor for her nature and continues to use it, awarded the Bulgari Art Award through the Art Gallery had absorbed the Indigenous artists’ intuitive approach to however her approach evolves as overfamiliarity sets in. o£ NSW. An acquisitive award to a signicant painting by painting and her own work took on a new immediacy as a “When you get to know something so well you become too a mid-career Australian artist, the prize includes $50,000 result. self-conscious, it loses its honesty.” This led to the most for acquisition o” the painting and a $30,000 residency in recent shift, the use o” rollers. Paint rollers create unique Italy, making it one o” the most valuable art awards in As well as the Fitzroy Crossing residency, a 2011 stint at marks, which Kovacs says allow her to see her work with Australia. Onda 2015 was acquired by the Gallery as a Ninuku Arts in the APY Lands in northern South fresh eyes. Since 2008 she has worked almost exclusively result. Its title means wave in Italian - Kovacs can hear the Australia led to new bodies o” work by Kovacs and the 27 In flight 2015, oil on plywood, 180 x 365 cm, $75,000

ocean from her studio. The roller’s marks bring to mind in the collection o” the World Bank in Washington DC. work a warmth, integrity and ow that rewards continued tide-lines, and the work has a marine-inspired palette, She is recognised as one o” Australia’s most accomplished looking. striking a virtuosic balance between dark and light. mid career abstractionists. She has developed a distinct vocabulary due to a commitment to the integrity oœ her Kovacs’ works are held in Australian public and corpo- work. Her organic, process-driven mode o” working on the rate collections. Her prole extends overseas, with work oor, inspired by indigenous Australian painters, gives her 28 Onda 2015, oil on plywood, 180 x 365 cm, Art Gallery o£ NSW

29 His work had an immediate impact, although exactly Later, when their ve children were raised and Pat Larter RICHARD what local artists and critics made o” it is questionable. again began to make art in her own right, she followed her His gurative painting was understood as pop art, and in husband’s approach. Beside luxuriant abstract paintings LARTER retrospect it is the purest and most original local variant studded with glass jewels and sprinkled with glitter, she o” the movement. But his abstraction was widely derid- painted nude male models in comically sexual poses. No- Born London, UK, 1929. Arrived Australia 1962. Died 2014. Painter, ed as amateurish in the face o” the prevailing New York one accused her o” sexual license or depravity, as they did printmaker, lmmaker. school abstract expressionism. Interestingly, Larter’s pure Richard in the 1960s. Could this be sexism at work? abstracts now appear to be among the most innovative Richard Larter grew up in wartime London, beginning his abstract painting made here in the 1960s, while his mix o” By the mid 1980s Larter had emerged as a major mid art studies at St Martins School o” Art, London in 1945. gurative elements (often nudes) and abstraction in the career artist. In addition to painting he made prints, and On graduation he travelled widely through North Africa, same works is unique. over several years made a series o” super 8 lms. Collected studying Islamic art and architecture, especially its use o” by all state art museums and the National Gallery o” colour and pattern. Returning to London he studied at Through the 1960s Larter worked on large sheets o” Australia, he was regarded by senior curators such as Toynbee Hall, and later at Shoreditch Teachers Training masonite, applying the paint with hypodermic syringes, an Daniel Thomas and Ron Radford as one o” Australia’s College. From the late 1950s he taught art in secondary approach he called ‘drawing in paint’. By 1970 he began to nest living artists. schools while painting at night and after hours, a pattern work on canvas, still with acrylic paint, but using brushes that was to continue after his migration to Australia, with and scaling up to produce large banner-like paintings fea- In 1982, after moving to Yass in the southern highlands o” wife Pat, in 1962. turing gures from politics, history and the movies, mixed NSW, Larter focused more on abstraction. He also became with anonymous girlie magazine-style nudes. Although the interested in the landscape itself, producing several series Larter’s English studies happened concurrently with the resulting works could appear like a jumble o” images, there o” multi-panel works inspired by the countryside around rise o” pop art in the UK from 1954. While his early work was generally a very clear reading signalled by the title – Yass, painted in di””erent seasons and lights. He also shows no obvious inuence from pop’s rst practitioners Sex is tatty dudes (say it quickly), Systematic vulgar disconti- painted series o” the roo” tops o” outer suburban Canberra, such as Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake and Allen Jones, nuities (on his cut ‘n paste style) and Black Friday in Penrith and a bushre that tore through the area in 2006 – there is a common interest in imagery from everyday (on the sacking o” prime minister Gough Whitlam). although unless you knew these were the subjects, you’d sources, especially from mass media such as newspapers, simply read them as abstract paintings. comics, movies, advertising brochures and girlie This was the period o” the Vietnam War and the coun- magazines. Larter has stuck to this subject matter through ter-culture movement, and Larter was jubilantly onside In order to produce the kind o£ ickering colours and his career, mixing it with a potent abstraction that is with their concerns – he was pacist, anti-USA and sense oœ light he wanted in his abstract paintings, Larter equally bright and garish, derived in part from Islamic art pro-sexual freedom. He believed sexuality should be began to experiment with the use o” rollers. He quickly and its interest in pattern. celebrated not censored, and was determined to explore became adept with them and was able to produce large the open expression o” sexuality in his work. To this end paintings whose surfaces ickered and danced. At the Once in Australia, Pat Larter set out to nd a gallery to he painted an ongoing series o” nudes using his wife Pat as same time he explored ideas from mathematics and physics show her husband’s work. Having no success, she was model, encouraging her to explore di””erent poses - many to better understand the movements o” particles. Around encouraged to enter Larter’s work into local art prizes. It sending up girlie magazine cliches - and regarding her as 1983 he became interested in epicycloidal shifts – the idea worked, and at the Royal Easter Show in 1963 his entry an equal participant in the works. Rather than deriding his o” circles turning within circles - which he explored in the was noted by young curator Daniel Thomas, from the Art work as sexist, early feminists – brought up with the sexual Epicycloidal series. Gallery o£ NSW, in his art column in the Sunday Telegraph. freedom o” the Sydney Push – praised Larter’s depiction Things moved quickly from that point, and in 1965 Larter o” women as sexually empowering. Big wheels keep on turning #1, #2, #3 1984 is one oœ his major had his rst solo exhibition at Watters Gallery, where he statements in this genre. Each panel is built around three remained for almost 50 years. spinning, humming orbs that cut through the canvas on 30 Big wheels keep on turning #1, 2, 3 1984, acrylic on canvas, 3 panels, 178 x 420 cm overall, $54,000

the diagonal, from upper left to lower right. Above and ve decades o” practice. In the Art Gallery o£ NSW’s 2014 animates all his work and is arguably his central subject is below them areas o” pattern and colour jostle and vibrate, exhibition Pop to Popism, an international survey o” pop strongly present in this work. And in the right location, their tessellated surfaces a feast for the eye. art, Larter was represented with works from the 1960s that Big wheels keep on turning would hum with energy and joy. showed him as a key local proponent o” pop art. In 2002 Richard Larter was the subject o” a retrospective, Stripperama, at the Heide Museum o£ Modern Art, Mel- Within this presentation Larter is somewhat o” an outsid- bourne. Six year later he was accorded a larger retrospec- er, as he was in mainstream Australian art. He’s not a pure tive at the National Gallery o” Australia, which provided abstract painter like David Aspden, Robert Jacks, Brian proo” that his work remained fresh and inventive through Blanchower or Ildiko Kovacs. But the life force that 31 Big wheels keep on turning #2 1984, acrylic on canvas, 178 x 133 cm overall (detail)

32 In 2009 Mackinnon began an association with Aboriginal the most renowned living gurative painters. In the last WILLIAM art and artists, through a residency at Mangkaja Arts, decade he has also become one o” the highest priced, with Fitzroy Crossing. In 2010 he worked as a eld o¢cer for works selling up to $US12 million at auction. Born in MACKINNON Papunya Tula Artists, travelling fortnightly out from Alice Scotland, Doig moved with his parents to Trinidad and Springs to the company’s painting centres at Papunya, later Canada. After art school in the UK he moved back Born 1978, Melbourne. Lives and works in Melbourne. Painter. Kintore and Kiwikurra to catalogue and collect new work. to Trinidad. His work is based on photographs - found or On these trips he was exposed to the reality oœ life in taken himsel” - used to create paintings o” deep unease. William Mackinnon was born in Melbourne, the son o” remote Aboriginal communities, but also to Aboriginal Mackinnon uses the same approach and certainly seeks a artist Katherine Hattam and the grandson o” noted artists and their work. His paintings o” the period, show- similar unease. He also has something o£ Doig’s great fa- obstetrician, art collector and painter Hal Hattam. His ing an unvarnished view oœ life in the communities, were cility with paint. Interestingly, both Doig and Mackinnon grandfather painted with Fred Williams, Charles Black- among the best art made by non-indigenous artists about studied at the Chelsea School o” Art and Design. man and John Perceval, and was one o” the young Fred contemporary Aboriginal life. Williams’ rst serious collectors in the late 1950s, Mackinnon’s main commercial gallery has been the assembling a superb collection in the family holiday home Being a eld o¢cer for PTA involved a lot o” driving, and Melbourne based Utopian Slumps, a cutting edge venue at Shoreham on the Mornington Peninsula. Mackinnon driving - especially at night on remote roads - has been a established by talented young gallerist Melissa Loughnan spent much oœ his childhood in this environment, in what consistent thread in Mackinnon’s work. A 2010 exhibition in 2007. Mackinnon’s breakthrough exhibition o” pano- was an idyllic time for him. was called Paintings conceived while driving. Experiencing ramic Shoreham landscapes was held there in 2013. the world through his headlights has produced some Unfortunately Loughnan recently closed the gallery to With painting in his blood, it is not surprising Mackinnon memorable images. Speaking about a work in this genre take a management position at Anna Schwartz Gallery had his rst exhibition at age 19, at George Paton Gallery, called Landscape as self portrait, Mackinnon has said: in Melbourne. Mackinnon made the choice to remain University o£ Melbourne. His initial degree was a unrepresented in his home town, choosing Jan Murphy Bachelor o” Arts, but he moved to formally study paint- At the time I made these paintings I was going through a diªcult and uncertain time. These are very subjective views. I in Brisbane (dealer for Ben ²uilty) and Hugo Michell ing at one point and later gained a post-graduate diploma in Adelaide to represent him. Hugo Michell shows some from the Chelsea School o” Art and Design, London, and want to draw attention (to the fact that) that it is a landscape seen from a mind. Looking through the filter of their mind. strong younger artists such as Richard Lewer and Tony a Masters oœ Visual Arts from the Victorian College o” the Garifalakis, plus mid career painters like Ildiko Kovacs. Arts. That’s why I have emphasised the windscreen. And the rear vision mirror. The lights in the reflection are humanized, lonely, Over the past ve years Mackinnon has also shown fragile. There is a person there too, but I have created a symbol commercially in Washington twice, at Art Stage Singapore Mackinnon’s CV is a fascinating read, with several obvious and at Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London. clues to the technical quality and emotional tone oœ his which merges the person with the car. work. From 2002 he worked as a studio assistant to well In 2013, along with his mother and his grandfather, established artists, rstly the accomplished but intense In these works and in the landscapes o” the Shoreham coast seen through a foreground screen o” pine trees, there Mackinnon was included in the exhibition Landscape of print-maker Kim Westacott, and from 2004-06 the leading longing: Shoreham 1950-2012, which looked at three painter Tim Maguire. The latter job involved living in is a sense o” the sel” under siege that reects Mackinnon’s continuing struggle with depression – the ‘black dog’, as he generations oœ his family’s artistic involvement with the London and France where Maguire was based. Maguire is landscape around Shoreham. Mackinnon has also been an extremely talented painter whose works are renowned calls it. They are interior views that suggest the viewpoint through which the artist sees the world – a dark night lit included in some signicant exhibitions and prizes such as for their technical mastery and use o” innovative painterly the 2015 Basil Sellars Award. He is not yet in a state techniques. While assisting Maguire, Mackinnon only by headlights, or a sunny beach glimpsed through the sombre black trunks o” pine trees. gallery collection, but Artbank, often the rst institution undertook internships at the Donald Judd Foundation, to buy young artist, has purchased his work. It is also in Marfa, Texas, and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, the collections o£ Melbourne University and Gri¢th Venice. A strong artistic inuence on Mackinnon’s work has been the art o£ Peter Doig. Born in 1959, Doig is one o” University, and Macquarie Bank. 33 Shoreham, Autumn 2013, oil on synthetic linen, 2 panels, 180 x 360 cm overall, $25,000, SOLD

Shoreham Autumn 2014 is one o£ four large panoramas Like the four Shoreham paintings, Moonlight 2014 is a his generation. He works condently on a large scale and depicting the beach o£ Mackinnon’s childhood in each large diptych. Unlike them, it is a nocturne – a night has shown the ability to apply his natural gifts as a painter season. In each the view is very similar – we are not yet at painting – focusing on Mackinnon’s other frequently to his personal experiences to create images charged with the beach; it is viewed in the distance, through a screen o” painted subject, driving at night. It is almost hallucinogen- emotion and unease. trees whose trunks are very black viewed against the bright ic in its strange, obsessive patterning and fractured almost sky. It is almost as i£ Mackinnon is looking at his child- disjointed perspective. hood through the screen oœ his more recent experiences. It is beautifully painted and the kind o” work for which I With more than 15 years o” exhibiting behind him, think he will become known. Mackinnon is one o” the most promising young painters o” 34 Moonlight 2014, acrylic, oil and automorive enamel on synthetic linen, 2 panels, 180 x 360 cm overall, $25,000, SOLD

35 The other was the exhibition o” comedian Barry University o£ Melbourne. Sansom’s paintings took on GARETH Humphries at the Victorian Arts Society. Humphries’ complex formal structures, with a frenzied, gra¢tied acerbic works, including the notorious Pus in boots, encour- aesthetic reminiscent o” art world bad-boy Jean-Michel SANSOM aged Sansom to exhibit his own work. Cynical overtones Basquiat. borrowed from popular culture have pervaded Sansom’s Born 1939. Lives in Melbourne and Sorrento. Painter. work ever since, from Robert Crumb to Ren & Stimpy. In 1986 he was appointed Dean o” the VCA School o” Art, a role he would occupy until 1991. Sansom’s longstanding Gareth Sansom was born in Melbourne in 1939. As a child, Sansom was aware o” well-known Australian painter teaching career continues to inuence his work, with he obsessively copied the works o£ Picasso and other 20th Arthur Boyd, and invited the relatively senior artist to recent painting titles including Academic and PhD. century painters. This approach can still be seen in his open his rst exhibition, at Rickman Gallery. Boyd had Sansom is respected by artists and maintains a strong paintings, which have always featured vignettes o” di””er- never heard o” Sansom, but he obliged and in fact connection to the emerging and anti-establishment art ent styles. The seminal moment came in 1954 when his purchased one work, which was signicant encouragement scenes, rather than lapsing into introspection as might be high school art teacher entered a group o” students’ works to the young artist. Sansom has exhibited prolically and expected by an artist oœ his generation. in the Sun Youth Art Show in Melbourne, but did not consistently since, with over 40 solo exhibitions through- select Sansom’s. The deant 15 year-old entered privately out the following decades. In 1989 Sansom undertook a residency in New Delhi, and won. completing one work per day over six months. These The distorted guration o£ Picasso and Frances Bacon had delicate watercolours, di””erent from Sansom’s frenzied Sansom trained as a primary school teacher and began a huge impact on Sansom, as did the war wounds sustained paintings, were exhibited at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in teaching in 1959, the same year he began a part-time art by his own father who lost his right arm and sustained 1990 and Ian Potter Museum o” Art, University o” course at the Royal Melbourne Institute oœ Technology, scarring shrapnel wounds in World War I. These inuenc- Melbourne in 1991, before being shown at the Indian and had his rst solo exhibition. Sansom always consid- es led Sansom’s work into the realm o” the grotesque, an Triennial in New Delhi, where Sansom represented ered these early studies would lead to a tertiary teaching approach that left him and other gurative painters feeling Australia. position rather than a career as an artist. He later went ostracised in the 1960s due to the impact o” abstract on to become Head o£ Painting, and later Dean, o” the expressionism coming from the United States and taking Sansom was recognised in 2005 with the survey exhibition Victorian College o” the Arts School o” Art. This academic hold in Australia. Welcome to my mind – A study of selected works 1964-2005 at grounding has inltrated Sansom’s work in the form o” the Ian Potter Museum o” Art. Since the 2000s his paint- references to artists and art history, from the medieval to In the 1970s Sansom photographed himsel” in a series o” ings have continued to incorporate a diverse vocabulary o” the modern to the contemporary. However it also provided disguises, notably as female Hollywood lm noir icons. visual references, relying less on overtly collaged imagery an establishment against which to rebel, and as a result, These formed part o” collaged mixed media works that as Sansom draws from his extensive experience o” many high, low and pop culture references sit side-by-side in were exhibited at Warehouse Gallery, Melbourne in 1975 painting techniques. Sansom’s paintings. and 1977. While the images o” Sansom dressed as women attracted the most notoriety, he also depicted himsel” as a Sansom will be honoured with a third retrospective in 2017 At age 19 prior to his own rst solo exhibition Gareth pilot, cricketer and wrestler, and has stated that the series at the National Gallery oœ Victoria. His work has been Sansom had visited only two exhibitions. One was was about disguise and identity more generally – a collected by the Metropolitan Museum o” Art, New York, Leonard French, best known for the stained glass distorted guration o” a di””erent kind. as well as being held in every signicant public collection atrium o” the National Gallery oœ Victoria. French’s work in Australia, and many notable private collections. introduced the young artist to painting with house paint In 1978 Sansom was recognised with a survey from 1964- or enamel rather than traditional oil on canvas. Sansom 1978 at RMIT. The 1980s saw Sansom undertake several These two paintings, The SPLIT and Pius IX, while for- continues to use enamel paint today. residencies, the rst in 1982 at the Stedelijk Museum, mally and conceptually di””erent, are both ne examples Amsterdam. In 1985 he was Artist in Residence at the o” Sansom’s attention to his paintings’ ultimate visual 36 success. The SPLIT contains more breathing space than many o” Sansom’s works, the white background punctuated by a green landscape. The title refers to the splitting o” the painting down the centre, which appears to be two proles facing in opposite directions. It speaks to split person- alities or an examination o” the artist’s mind. Sansom’s virtuosic use o” paint is evident, as is the inuence o” pop and digital culture through the appearance o” cartoon characters and at rectangles hovering in a landscape.

It was during the reign o” Pius IX, from 1846-78, the longest reign o” a Pope in o¢ce, that Papal Infallibility was decreed, and in this denser work the subject is almost hidden in a sea o” swirling, scrambled paint. The painting’s elements refer to colour-eld paintings, gra¢ti and hard-edged abstraction. Like the artist’s best paintings, this work sits between abstraction and guration, chaos and order, tradition and rule breaking.

Sansom has consistently produced quality work across his ve-decade career to almost uniform critical acclaim. Despite this and being represented by major commercial galleries, he has always maintained his position as one o” the great outsiders o” contemporary Australian art. It is perhaps his refusal to settle into a ‘signature’ market- friendly style like many oœ his contemporaries that makes him resistant to the establishment. But this is also why his work continues to look so fresh, as Sansom taps into current personal and political narratives and pushes his practice, and paint, further.

The SPLIT 2014, oil and enamel on linen, 213 x 274 cm, $75,000

37 Pius IX 2014, oil and enamel on linen, 213 x 274 cm, $75,000

38 in art, chance rules and creativity is a matter o” random By 1984 Tillers was becoming known outside Australia. He IMANTS connection. had solo shows in New York, London and Zurich, and in 1986 was chosen to represent Australia at the Venice TILLERS Similar conceptual work followed, concerned with the role Biennale. This exhibition represented a highpoint for o” mechanical reproduction in the making and reception o” Tillers. It was widely reviewed in the US and Europe and Born Sydney 1950. Painter. artworks. By 1980 Tillers had developed a complex theory established Tillers as a major practitioner o” post based on this idea, and on a sense oœ his own double modernist appropriation. For a period after Venice, he was Imants Tillers studied architecture at Sydney University, isolation as a migrant artist (his parents came from Latvia) Australia’s best-known artist internationally. winning the University Medal in 1972. But his involve- in the most isolated country in the world. He believed ment with contemporary art had begun earlier, in 1969, that Australia, as a distant provincial culture, depended His work has continued in the same style, although his when he assisted the European artist Christo to wrap a for much o” its inspiration on imports from more domi- source material has expanded to include an extended section o” the coastline at Little Bay in woven cotton. nant cultures. These imports included images, ideas and homage to New Zealand artist Colin McCahon (consid- Financed by patron and collector John Kaldor, this was styles o” art. In the past these had come almost exclu- ered the most important artist o” Australasia), and to the Australia’s most controversial conceptual art event and sively through mechanical reproductions o” artworks, the folk art oœ his native Latvia. The latter he used in a group prompted heated debate. distortions and imperfections o” which had been faithfully oœ billboard sized paintings called the Diaspora series. copied into their work by Australian artists. His interest in the systems and processes behind art soon In the 1990s he had solo exhibitions o” new work at led Tillers to the work o£ French artist Marcel Duchamp. Tillers’ challenge was how to move from this theoretical museums in Finland, Latvia and New Zealand, and in Duchamp, a key gures in 20th century art, is generally position: his answer was to acknowledge it by conning his 1998 he was the subject o” a book, Imants Tillers and the regarded as the father o” conceptual art. He began paint- work to images o” other artworks reproduced in art books, ‘Book of power’, by New Zealand writer Wyston Curnow. ing in an impressionist style, but quickly moved through magazines and other sources. These he gridded up from In 1999 he had a major mid-career survey at Mexico’s cubism and futurism to three dimensional works which the reproductions and remade on series o” small canvas- Monterey Museum o” Contemporary Art, curated by began his systematic investigation into the nature o” art board panels, o” the type used by amateur artists. The Charles Merewether, an Australian curator from the Getty and the role o” chance in its making. In 1913 he introduced small panels were then assembled on the wall into large- Museum. This was followed in 2006 by an extensive sur- the concept o” the ‘readymade’ - everyday objects includ- scale composite paintings. As well as direct quotation, vey exhibition at the National Gallery o” Australia, and a ed in an exhibition with little or no alteration. His most he combined images within works to create a dialogue smaller survey at the University oœ WA in 2009. famous examples were Bicycle-wheel (a bicycle wheel on a between them. In this way his work fed images o” the wooden stool) and Fountain (a urinal). In 1920, he caused a dominant culture back into it, via the mediating inuence On the mountain 2013 was the central painting in Tillers’ sensation at the rst Dada exhibition by drawing a o” Australia’s position as a marginal culture. June 2015 solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. The moustache on a print o” the Mona Lisa. These objects were image is an appropriation o” an iconic Australian colonial art, said Duchamp, because the artist said they were art. Tillers’ work o” the early 1980s coincided with the rise o” painting by Swiss émigré artist Eugene von Guerard, o” post modernism. Much oœ his practice was central to post the snow-covered summit o£ Mt Kosciuszko. Tillers used What attracted Tillers was Duchamp’s playful deconstruc- modernism - appropriation, deconstruction and a belie” the same work in his 1986 painting Mt Analogue, for his tion o” art to its fundamental components. Tillers’ own that originality for its own sake was less important than Venice Biennale entry. Revisiting the work 27 years later, training as an architect had made him aware o” interior to analyse the way images worked to create meaning. He Tillers almost obscures the original painting with dense structure, and his earliest works were installations o” became a leader o” the movement and by 1983, in large overlays o” two texts – poetry by a New Zealand writer buildings and other structures. In 1974-75 he produced composite works such as The great metaphysical interior and and printed text from a Rosalie Gascoigne assemblage Conversations with the bride, a series o” 112 laminated Sense of place he dealt with major themes o” Australian art made o” wooden soft drink boxes with the brand name gouaches mounted on separate tripods and consisting - ironically through imagery from Latvian folk art, New Schweppes stencilled onto them in black on yellow. The o£ four di””erent and unrelated images from art history, York post modernism and western desert Aboriginal art. shifting texts act like a kind o” visual stutter, interrupting including one by Duchamp. The work made it clear that, 39 On the Mountain 2013, acrylic, gouache on 108 canvas boards, 226 × 424.5 cm, $165,000 SOLD a simple view o” the landscape and suggesting the multiple it is too large for your foyer. However, I’ve discussed the In terms o” Australian contemporary art o” the last 30-40 interpretations with which it has been over-written. foyer with Tillers, and he has expressed interest in taking years, Imants Tillers is a blue chip artist. He was the on the job as a commission, using a smaller harbour paint- founding father o” Australian post modernism and his The third painting, Hymn to Sydney is a commission Tillers ing by Arthur Streeton, which would result in a work that work stands as an ongoing investigation o” Australia’s place has just completed for the head o¢ce o” a bank in Martin would t your foyer. The second painting, Mossman Bay, as a postcolonial culture at the periphery o” the world. It Place, Sydney. Based on a panoramic painting o” Sydney could be similar to a possible commission. This is a very is strongly represented in all Australian museums, and Harbour by Australian impressionist Arthur Streeton, it tempting o””er, providing the opportunity to commission a overseas museums in the US, Japan, Spain, Finland, represents a new direction for Tillers. At over nine metres, unique work. Mexico, Latvia and New Zealand. 40 Hymn to Sydney 2014, commissioned work, Martin Place, Sydney

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