archives
1 & 2: Installation views of 9 shades of Whiteley
Aspects & insights: regional tour
Touring schedule:
Gold Coast City Art Gallery: 7 July – 13 August 1996
Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville: 23 August – 29 September 1996
Cairns Regional Gallery: 5 October – 10 November 1996
Brett Whiteley Studio: 23 November – 19 January 1997
Orange Regional Gallery: 31 January – 16 March 1997
Aspects and insights has been specially curated to tour regional galleries, as a satellite exhibition of the Brett Whiteley retrospective. A number of fine works unable to be used in the touring component of the retrospective have become available now and it seemed appropriate that regional audiences should also have the opportunity to see something of the remarkable vision of this extraordinary artist.
Born in 1939 in Sydney, Whiteley grew up next to the harbour that would inspire some of his finest works. Educated at boarding schools in Bathurst NSW, he left in 1956 at the age of 17 and began working for an advertising agency in Sydney. That year he also met his future wife Wendy Julius and began to paint and sell his work.
Largely self-taught, Whiteley’s early influences were a fusion of his interests in Russell Drysdale’s sunburnt landscapes, which he pursued on painting trips to old gold mining towns like Sofala and Hill End in central NSW, and the international tendency towards abstraction that he studied in reproductions of painters such as Arshile Gorky and William Scott..
In October 1959, Russell Drysdale awarded the young artist the Italian Travelling Scholarship, which enabled Whiteley to experience first-hand the masterpieces of European art, as well as the latest ideas in modern painting to be found in London, his base for the next seven years.
Soon after his arrival there, Whiteley gained international recognition when the Tate Gallery purchased his Untitled red painting from an exhibition of Recent Australian Painting held at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1961.
Over his controversial career of some four decades, he was an artist of extremes, savouring both the clash and reconciliation of opposites: heaven and hell, good and evil, East and West. His energy was phenomenal, with a vast output of paintings, drawings and sculpture, which reflected above all his love of the landscape and the figure, as well those heroes of art and literature who touched his deepest emotions.
The abrupt end to his career at the age of 53 in 1992, when he died in Thirroul on the south coast of NSW, added a legendary dimension to his persona.
