Ken whisson paintings and drawings 2015

KEN WHISSON

Paintings and Drawings

Ken Whisson Paintings and Drawings

An exhibition from 20 October to 7 November 2015 Front Cover: 1. Table Top and Landscape 2/1/81 oil on linen 67 x 119.5cm

Opposite: 2. Farmhouse and Waterholes 3/3/81 & 10/4/81 oil on linen 100 x 65.7cm

Opening: 6 - 8 pm Wednesday 21 October 2015 Watters Gallery

109 Riley Street, East Sydney NSW 2010 Ph: (02) 9331 2556 www.wattersgallery.com info@wattersgallery.com tues and sat: 10am - 5pm; wed thurs fri 10am - 7pm

3. Automobiles, Pedestrians and Drivers 25/5/15 wax crayon on paper 34.1 x 50 4

4. Green Fujiama and Bark Hut 2015 oil on linen 92 x 76.5cm 5

5. Motor Cars and Drivers 1 27/2/15 & 12/3/15 wax crayons, Indian ink on paper 34.7 x 49cm

6. Houses and Automobiles No.3 28, 29, 30/7/14 & 1/8/14 oil on canvas 121 x 111cm 6

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7. Automobiles, Humans and Animals 11/4/15 wax crayons on paper 30.8 x 50cm

8. For the Bright and Beautiful Moment of Porto Alegre 16/7/1980 & 21/2/2001 oil on linen 90 x 119cm 8

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9. Australia with Automobiles and Typical Types 9/4/15 & 15/4/15 wax crayon on paper 29.7 x 50cm

10. Two Motor Cars 15/3/93 & 23/5/93 & 28/7/93 oil on linen 66 x 90cm 10

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11. What is the Question?

14/3/15 wax crayon on paper 37.3 x 52cm

12. Aerialists, Yellow Horse and Magician 2003 oil on linen 110 x 120cm 12

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I have been thinking a lot lately about the act of making

them, which for a long time led to their misreading.

be able to) and there is a lot to learn from a physical

in the Italian city of Perugia. Perugia is encircled by a

and the impulses that drive someone towards it. A lot

I think about the impulses of both the making and

analysis of them as objects. They have been turned

series of walls each going back further than the last to a

of it has come from looking at the artworks of so-called

understanding of art when I think of the work of Ken

this way and that, constructed in short campaigns not

subterranean city. Each layer brings us a step closer to

‘primitive’ or pre-historic human kind and their amazing

Whisson. There is something ‘Breuil-like’ about the

unlike photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive

the people who may have founded the city, and the city,

propensity to write on walls, form clay and scratch

mark making in Whisson’s work, especially in his

moment’, but spread out over 5 or 10 years.

as metaphor for the subconscious, is palpable.

images into rock, bone and tusk.

drawings and their subject matter – animals like horses

Sometimes we feel a little like Brueil trying to place our

Now he has returned to live again in Australia and

They aren’t much different from us, each with the

and bulls are the forerunners of the domesticated farm

own sense of order around the artist’s work – this is a

I wonder: will he carry around this ancient city and

cup, no it’s a book, no it’s a vagina, no it’s a car; this is a

traversed landscape in the same way he has carried an

boat, it’s a hat, it’s a table.

Australian one in his head for so long? Will he unwrap

Themes persist – travel, encounter, landscape, the still

these visions of a remembered place in the same way

physical wants and desires and no less a need to surround themselves with things full of magic and

memory still informs his work.

meaning with which to comprehend the world.

Now in his 70th decade of painting and drawing, we,

Equally fascinating is the history of the discovery and

as both viewer and believers in Whisson’s endeavours,

reception of this material. The French scholar and cleric

are constantly looking for clues in the work that will tell

Henri Brueil believed that such pre-historic drawing

us something about him, and equally about ourselves.

pertained to magic and ritual.

I’ve had the great fortune to study Whisson’s work

Beginning in 1900s he traced many of the cave

from back to front (but not in the same way the many

drawings superimposing his own belief system onto

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animals he would know as a child in Lilydale and whose

avid and ferocious collectors of Whisson’s work may

life – but all are being elastically shaped, pulled and

an artist of the past may have held a bone against a

morphed into and endless series of nuanced forms.

flickering light?

The palimpsest of the work morphs into the biography

Glenn Barkley 2015

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

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13. Five Humans and Animal  24/12/14 & 7/1/15 graphite on paper 36.3 x 50cm 16

14. Four Humans and Animal  24/12/14 & 7/1/15 wax crayons, Indian ink on paper 29.7 x 44.7cm 17

15. Sunlight and Light Rain 16/315 Indian ink on paper 37 x 52cm 18

16. A Windy Wet Day in Sydney  14/12/2014 wax crayon and Indian ink on paper 35.5 x 50cm 19

17. Large Bird and Young Girl 12/2/15 wax crayon, Indian ink on paper 22.6 x 37.6cm 20

18. Fairly Human Post Abstract 23/4/15 & 31/5/15 wax crayon on paper 30 x 50cm 21

19. Good Vibes 1st stage 25/2/15 completed 3/3/15 wax crayon on paper 35.1 x 47cm 22

Exhibition catalogue Watters Gallery, Sydney 20 October - 7 November 2015 Š 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.

Back cover: 20. Contemporary Face 2: Papa Bergoglio 6/3/15 wax crayon on paper 24 x 33cm 23