HOWARD ARKLEY

Acquired from the artist through Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label on the reverse)
Private collection, Melbourne

Howard Arkley, Recent Works, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 15 June - 2 July 1983, cat. 3
Howard Arkley, Urban Paintings, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 1983

Ashley Crawford and Ray Edgar, Spray, The Work of Howard Arkley, Craftsman House, Sydney, rev. edn, 2001, p. 59, illus.

Good condition. Edges scuffed and dirty. Drip mark upper centre.
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Howard Arkley was a larger-than-life figure in Australian art.  With paintings held in all major Australian public collections, 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.  Arkley is now represented in most major art museums and was celebrated in a major retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2006.

Although Arkley is probably best-known for his brightly-coloured images of suburban houses and interiors, the images and treatments explored in post-punk monochromes such as Model, remained an inspiration and a resource for much of his later work.

As Crawford and Edgar have noted: 'In 1983 Arkley crashed through.  After 'Popism', and inspired by the success of Primitive, his work oscillated between figuration and abstraction... These diverse works, exhibited in Arkley's 1983 solo show at Tolarno Galleries, include distinctive motifs that the artist would develop over the rest of his career.'  Variant forms of the catcus 'doodle' and the leggy 'figure' appear in both Model and Zappo of the same year.  'Numerous mass cultural influences, such as television and popular magazines, provided ongoing stimulus, as did imagery from children.  What governs the work is an overriding concern with many Surrealist and Dada techniques: the exploration of automatic writing, drugs and found imagery.¹

Arkley always somehow managed to maintain his status as an edgy outsider; a member of no artistic group.  His consistent use of airbrushed acrylic spray paint made a deliberate distance from the canvas, but, at the same time, made his work instantly recognisable and uniquely his own.

1.  Ashley Crawford and Ray Edgar, Spray. The Work of Howard Arkley, Craftsman, Sydney, rev. edn. 2001, p. 58