Michael Vale | Morning Came and Morning Went | 3 - 27 February 2022

MICHAEL VALE Morning Came and Morning Went 3 - 27 February 2022

© Martin Browne Contemporary © All images copyright Michael Vale This catalogue is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

COMPILER: Masha Jayasiri PHOTOGRAPHER: Jenni Carter and Lauren Dunn ARTIST PROFILE: Zan Wimberley COLOUR SEPARATIONS: Spitting Image, Sydney Front Cover Image: The Cuckoo, 2021, oil on linen, 152 x 122 cm Back Cover Image: said the joker to the thief, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 102 cm

MARTIN BROWNE CONTEMPORARY 15 HAMPDEN STREET PADDINGTON NSW 2021 TEL: 02 9331 7997 FAX: 02 9331 7050 info@martinbrownecontemporary.com www.martinbrownecontemporary.com GALLERY HOURS: TUESDAY - SUNDAY 10:30AM - 6PM

morning came and morning went When I was ten years old I was given a book entitled “Drawing and Painting for Young People” which featured a painting that would influence me for the rest of my life. James Ensor’s The Dangerous Cooks depicted a restaurant where monocled human heads (including the artist’s) were served on plates by starchy-looking waiters. This encounter was a seismic moment for me and at once I knew what I wanted to do when I ‘grew up’.

It is from Ensor that I have pursued the dark metaphors of animated skeletons and bizarre costumes. What appealed so strongly to me was the use of black humour, or the absurd, interwoven with a kind of benign ghoulishness. I still find this mixture intoxicating and have now come to describe it as “Gothic Absurdism”. My youthful taste for the absurd was, inevitably, drawn to Surrealism and also the dizzying word-pictures of early Bob Dylan songs.

Through this gateway I found the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and his theory of compulsive imagery, or the ability of images to find their own momentum and thus create their own spiralling associations, independent of any authorial direction or planning.

Over time I have collected an assortment of elements – skulls, tall hats, lightbulbs, mushrooms, mummies, eyeballs, binoculars, pipes, speech-bubbles, etc. – that I use as compositional devices, allowing any narrative triggers to freely associate. On a technical level, it is composition that fascinates me – the way a tangle of elements can lead the eye into a kind of visual ping-pong, that (ideally) never falls off the edge! My hope is that the paintings in this exhibition will entertain the eye, provoke unanswerable questions and continue to offer visual mise-en-scenes well beyond the first look.

LIST OF WORKS Mr. Moonlight, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 107 cm The Spinning Wheel, 2021, oil on linen, 122 x 152 cm Little Green Lights, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 102 cm morning came and morning went, 2021, oil on linen, 137 x 107 cm Lazarus, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 107 cm The Cuckoo, 2021, oil on linen, 152 x 122 cm Easey Street, 2021, oil on linen, 122 x 86 cm The Cul-de-Sac, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 107 cm said the joker to the thief, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 102 cm Rain, 2021, oil on linen, 122 x 102 cm Pegleg’s Ghost, 2021, oil on linen, 152 x 122 cm

Mr. Moonlight, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 107 cm

The Spinning Wheel, 2021, oil on linen, 122 x 152 cm

Little Green Lights, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 102 cm

morning came and morning went, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 107 cm

Lazarus, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 107 cm

The Cuckoo, 2021, oil on linen, 152 x 122 cm

Easey Street, 2021, oil on linen, 122 x 86 cm

The Cul-de-Sac, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 107 cm

said the joker to the thief, 2021, oil on linen, 138 x 102 cm

Rain, 2021, oil on linen, 122 x 102 cm

Pegleg’s Ghost, 2021, oil on linen, 152 x 122 cm

MICHAEL VALE SOLO EXHIBITIONS

AWARDS

2022 morning came and morning went, Martin Browne Contemporary 2020 A Clown in the Moon, James Makin Gallery 2020 The Guests, Despard Gallery, Hobart 2019 Time Traveller, Despard Gallery, Hobart 2016 The Transit of Mercury, Anna Pappas Gallery 2013 The Conquest of Space, Five Walls Projects 2012 Lamplike - Trocadero, Artspace 2011 Untitled (green), Screenspace

2021 Co-winner of The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize 2018 Hutchins Art Prize, Hobart 2017 Bayside Art Prize, Melbourne 2006 Best Film on Art, Asolo Artfilm Festival, Italy

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

COLLECTIONS

2021 The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Online 2021 Don’t say I never warned you, when your train gets lost, Kingston Arts Centre 2020 Group Show, Martin Browne Contemporary 2020 Salon des Refusés, S H Ervin Gallery, Sydney 2019 The Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery 2019 Word of Mouth, Venice pop up show, Grau Projekt 2019 Archibald Prize, AGNSW 2018 Beyond Reason, QUT, Queensland 2018 Gothic Beauty, Bendigo Art Gallery 2018 Art Athina, Athens, Greece 2018 Dark (Other) Times, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart Dark MOFO 2017 Romancing the Skull, Art Gallery of Ballarat 2016 Slippery Stories, Durden & Ray, Los Angeles 2016 Museum of Doubt, Despard Gallery, Hobart 2016 Authenticity?, Incinerator Gallery, Melbourne 2016 Dada Here & Now, San Francisco International Arts Festival 2015 The Umbelliferous Portraits, Rubicon ARI with Nicholas Ives 2014 Salon des Refusés, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 2013 Archibald Prize, AGNSW 2012 Archibald Prize, AGNSW 2011 The Innocents, Westspace with Donna McRae

Artbank Bayside Collection City of Port Phillip Deakin University Hutchins Collection Monash University Doug Moran Collection RMIT Private Collections in Australia, Greece and Italy