.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
"A real lovely brick house, with a roof of bright red tiles coming down very low over dark wooden verandas, and huge round rain-tanks, and a bit of grass and a big shed with double doors. Joy!" (D H Lawrence, Kangaroo, Cambridge, 2002, p. 80)
So wrote D H Lawrence on arriving at Wyewurk the house in Craig Street, Thirroul, in which he was to create his masterpiece, Kangaroo. The book was to occupy Lawrence for the duration of his stay in 1922 at the small seaside town near Wollongong, New South Wales. For Shead, the novel was to prove equally engrossing, inspiring the artist to create one of his most highly critically acclaimed and best-loved series of paintings, the D H Lawrence series.
Shead does not attempt to document or illustrate scenes from the book or Lawrence's life. The series is more reflective, offering a personal response to the author's experiences, which is moulded by Shead's strong aesthetic sense. "The artistic statement that Shead makes in the is one of provocative simplicity, wit and dramatic power. As with the novel, you are left with the feeling that you have encountered something significant and powerful. In both there is a strong narrative where, in a way, nothing much happens, but a lot of things should happen, and you spend years in your mind seeing them through to fruition." (S Grishin, Garry Shead and the Erotic Muse, Sydney, 2001, p.107).
The Visitor is a triumph of apparent simplicity; a triumvirate of characters enclosed by the white banisters of the verandah beside the sea. Nevertheless, the interplay of the protagonists reveals another more subtle layer within Shead's creation. The figure of Lawrence stands in the foreground, surrounded by the quintessentially Australian sulphur-crested cockatoo and kangaroo. Besuited and behatted, Lawrence's place in his home does not seem assured, in keeping with the English author and his wife's outsider status in the small Australian town. "The Kangaroo belongs to the place, and Lawrence throughout the novel refers to the 'continent of the Kangaroo' but the visitors remain strangers; they are the intruders who are spied upon until they leave." (Ibid, p.100)
Shead, like Arthur Boyd in his Half-Caste Bride paintings, and Sidney Nolan in the ed Kelly and Eliza Fraser series before him, has the rare ability to create works of art inspired by iconic literary and historical works, which create a new life of their own. Capturing the essence of Australian myth-making, The Visitor, as in the best works from Shead's D H Lawrence series work a new magic of their own in the imagination of the viewer.
So wrote D H Lawrence on arriving at Wyewurk the house in Craig Street, Thirroul, in which he was to create his masterpiece, Kangaroo. The book was to occupy Lawrence for the duration of his stay in 1922 at the small seaside town near Wollongong, New South Wales. For Shead, the novel was to prove equally engrossing, inspiring the artist to create one of his most highly critically acclaimed and best-loved series of paintings, the D H Lawrence series.
Shead does not attempt to document or illustrate scenes from the book or Lawrence's life. The series is more reflective, offering a personal response to the author's experiences, which is moulded by Shead's strong aesthetic sense. "The artistic statement that Shead makes in the is one of provocative simplicity, wit and dramatic power. As with the novel, you are left with the feeling that you have encountered something significant and powerful. In both there is a strong narrative where, in a way, nothing much happens, but a lot of things should happen, and you spend years in your mind seeing them through to fruition." (S Grishin, Garry Shead and the Erotic Muse, Sydney, 2001, p.107).
The Visitor is a triumph of apparent simplicity; a triumvirate of characters enclosed by the white banisters of the verandah beside the sea. Nevertheless, the interplay of the protagonists reveals another more subtle layer within Shead's creation. The figure of Lawrence stands in the foreground, surrounded by the quintessentially Australian sulphur-crested cockatoo and kangaroo. Besuited and behatted, Lawrence's place in his home does not seem assured, in keeping with the English author and his wife's outsider status in the small Australian town. "The Kangaroo belongs to the place, and Lawrence throughout the novel refers to the 'continent of the Kangaroo' but the visitors remain strangers; they are the intruders who are spied upon until they leave." (Ibid, p.100)
Shead, like Arthur Boyd in his Half-Caste Bride paintings, and Sidney Nolan in the ed Kelly and Eliza Fraser series before him, has the rare ability to create works of art inspired by iconic literary and historical works, which create a new life of their own. Capturing the essence of Australian myth-making, The Visitor, as in the best works from Shead's D H Lawrence series work a new magic of their own in the imagination of the viewer.