HOWARD ARKLEY

Howard Arkley always managed 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 recognisable and uniquely his own.  Represented in all important Australia public collections, he was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria in 2006.

Painted in the year of the artist's Venice Biennale exhibition, of his first solo show in the United States and of his tragic, untimely death, Untitled is painted not with the bold, black, graphic outlines of his 'classic' style, but with a subtler silver grey armature. First explored in The Freeway, 1999, 'the various greys (warm, cool, metallic) used in his later works play a complex and varied role, serving not only to flatten but also to unify the surface of his canvases.' ¹ In the present work, the grey lines perform just such a role, softening the wild discrepancy of the painting's lolly psychedelic green, yellow and pink.

Arkley's suburban house pictures are often described as celebratory or perhaps ironic, but they also have an unsettling quality. Chris McAuliffe has noted that 'the blurring effect, coupled with intense, sometimes fluorescent colour, results in visually disturbing, unstable images.' ² This is certainly the case with the present work, where the combination of spray blur and paper texture gives the entire picture a pebble dash surface when viewed close up, and where the crystalline perspective of roof, guttering, window blind and paving is in constant tension with the advancing and receding planes of wall colour. The hallucinogenic, nightmarish quality is underscored by the profile of the hedge at the right, which seems to reach towards the door like some monstrous Mickey Mouse.

1. Gregory, J., Carnival in Suburbia: The Art of Howard Arkley, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2006
2. McAuliffe, C., Art and Suburbia, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1996, p. 106