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23 page catalogue with essay by Glenn Barkley for the 2015 exhibition 20th October - 7th November 2015 at Watters Gallery, Sydney. Published by Watters Gallery, Sydney.
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KEN WHISSON Paintings and Drawings
Opposite: 2. Farmhouse and Waterholes
3/3/81 & 10/4/81oil on linen 100 x 65.7cm
Ken WhissonPaintings and Drawings
An exhibition from
20 October to 7 November 2015
109 Riley Street, East Sydney NSW 2010 Ph: (02) 9331 2556 www.wattersgallery.com [email protected] and sat: 10am - 5pm; wed thurs fri 10am - 7pm
Watters Gallery
Front Cover: 1. Table Top and Landscape
2/1/81oil on linen 67 x 119.5cm
Opening: 6 - 8 pm Wednesday 21 October 2015
4 5
3. Automobiles, Pedestrians and Drivers 25/5/15wax crayon on paper 34.1 x 50
4. Green Fujiama and Bark Hut 2015oil on linen 92 x 76.5cm
6 7
5. Motor Cars and Drivers 127/2/15 & 12/3/15wax crayons, Indian ink on paper 34.7 x 49cm
6. Houses and Automobiles No.328, 29, 30/7/14 & 1/8/14 oil on canvas 121 x 111cm
8 9
7. Automobiles, Humans and Animals11/4/15 wax crayons on paper 30.8 x 50cm
8. For the Bright and Beautiful Moment of Porto Alegre16/7/1980 & 21/2/2001oil on linen 90 x 119cm
10 11
9. Australia with Automobiles and Typical Types9/4/15 & 15/4/15 wax crayon on paper 29.7 x 50cm
10. Two Motor Cars15/3/93 & 23/5/93 & 28/7/93 oil on linen 66 x 90cm
12 13
11. What is the Question?14/3/15wax crayon on paper37.3 x 52cm
12. Aerialists, Yellow Horse and Magician2003oil on linen 110 x 120cm
14 15
I have been thinking a lot lately about the act of making
and the impulses that drive someone towards it. A lot
of it has come from looking at the artworks of so-called
‘primitive’ or pre-historic human kind and their amazing
propensity to write on walls, form clay and scratch
images into rock, bone and tusk.
They aren’t much different from us, each with the
physical wants and desires and no less a need to
surround themselves with things full of magic and
meaning with which to comprehend the world.
Equally fascinating is the history of the discovery and
reception of this material. The French scholar and cleric
Henri Brueil believed that such pre-historic drawing
pertained to magic and ritual.
Beginning in 1900s he traced many of the cave
drawings superimposing his own belief system onto
them, which for a long time led to their misreading.
I think about the impulses of both the making and
understanding of art when I think of the work of Ken
Whisson. There is something ‘Breuil-like’ about the
mark making in Whisson’s work, especially in his
drawings and their subject matter – animals like horses
and bulls are the forerunners of the domesticated farm
animals he would know as a child in Lilydale and whose
memory still informs his work.
Now in his 70th decade of painting and drawing, we,
as both viewer and believers in Whisson’s endeavours,
are constantly looking for clues in the work that will tell
us something about him, and equally about ourselves.
I’ve had the great fortune to study Whisson’s work
from back to front (but not in the same way the many
avid and ferocious collectors of Whisson’s work may
be able to) and there is a lot to learn from a physical
analysis of them as objects. They have been turned
this way and that, constructed in short campaigns not
unlike photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive
moment’, but spread out over 5 or 10 years.
Sometimes we feel a little like Brueil trying to place our
own sense of order around the artist’s work – this is a
cup, no it’s a book, no it’s a vagina, no it’s a car; this is a
boat, it’s a hat, it’s a table.
Themes persist – travel, encounter, landscape, the still
life – but all are being elastically shaped, pulled and
morphed into and endless series of nuanced forms.
The palimpsest of the work morphs into the biography
of the artist, the mythology no least, something, I think,
Ken has studiously tried to avoid. tWhisson has worked
for the last 40 years in self-imposed ‘exile’ of a sort
in the Italian city of Perugia. Perugia is encircled by a
series of walls each going back further than the last to a
subterranean city. Each layer brings us a step closer to
the people who may have founded the city, and the city,
as metaphor for the subconscious, is palpable.
Now he has returned to live again in Australia and
I wonder: will he carry around this ancient city and
traversed landscape in the same way he has carried an
Australian one in his head for so long? Will he unwrap
these visions of a remembered place in the same way
an artist of the past may have held a bone against a
flickering light?
Glenn Barkley 2015
16 17
13. Five Humans and Animal 24/12/14 & 7/1/15 graphite on paper 36.3 x 50cm
14. Four Humans and Animal 24/12/14 & 7/1/15 wax crayons, Indian ink on paper 29.7 x 44.7cm
18 19
15. Sunlight and Light Rain16/315 Indian ink on paper 37 x 52cm
16. A Windy Wet Day in Sydney 14/12/2014 wax crayon and Indian ink on paper 35.5 x 50cm
20 21
17. Large Bird and Young Girl 12/2/15 wax crayon, Indian ink on paper 22.6 x 37.6cm
18. Fairly Human Post Abstract 23/4/15 & 31/5/15wax crayon on paper 30 x 50cm
22 23
Exhibition catalogue Watters Gallery, Sydney 20 October - 7 November 2015 © Artist, Ken Whisson Photographer: Michel Brouet This catalogue is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted by the Copyright Act no part may be reproduced by any other process without written permission.
19. Good Vibes1st stage 25/2/15 completed 3/3/15wax crayon on paper 35.1 x 47cm
Back cover:20. Contemporary Face 2: Papa Bergoglio
6/3/15wax crayon on paper 24 x 33cm