HOWARD ARKLEY Australian, 1951-1999

Tolarno Gallery, Melbourne, purchased by the present owner in March 2000 (copy of dated invoice accompanies the work)

Private collection

When Arkley first exhibited his first Psychedelic Head, in 'The Head Show' at Tolarno Galleries in 1990, he told Virginia Trioli that the paintings were 'about wearing masks and hiding identities. All of these works are self-portraits… Every image in the show is loaded up with ideas of the face in the mass media: the talking head on TV, the cover girl, the face of the month. And yet all these faces ever are is masks'. ¹ That first Psychedelic Head was arguably the most dramatic work in exhibition, alongside Computer Head, Plastic Portrait, Arabesque Face and others. In Second Psychedelic Head he returned to the hallucinogenic experience first distilled in Zappo (1983) and in the totemic Zappo Head that appeared and reappeared almost as an alter ego in his work over the years. ² Second Psychedelic Head also looks ahead to the bravura achievement of his portrait of Nick Cave, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, in which again the subject is presented as a mask of colour and hallucinogenic intensity.

Arkley always managed always to maintain his status as an edgy outsider; a member of no artistic group. His consistent use of airbrushed acrylic spray paint provides a deliberate distance from the canvas, but, at the same time, makes his work instantly recognizable and uniquely his own. With paintings held in all major Australian public collections of Australian art, he represented Australia at the 1999 Venice Biennale. When he died in July that year he had just had a sell-out exhibition in Los Angeles and seemed poised for international success. The current major retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Howard Arkley, which will show until 25 February 2007 before touring to state galleries in Sydney and Brisbane, conclusively recognises the artist’s pivotal place in twentieth-century Australian art.

1. The Age, 26 October 1990.
2. See Crawford, A. and Edgar, R., Spray: the Work of Howard Arkley, Craftsman House, Sydney, rev. edn 2001, pp. 61, 73, 99.