KEN WHISSON Paintings and Drawings

Opposite: 2. Farmhouse and Waterholes

3/3/81 & 10/4/81oil on linen 100 x 65.7cm

Ken WhissonPaintings and Drawings

An exhibition from

20 October to 7 November 2015

109 Riley Street, East Sydney NSW 2010 Ph: (02) 9331 2556 www.wattersgallery.com info@wattersgallery.comtues and sat: 10am - 5pm; wed thurs fri 10am - 7pm

Watters Gallery

Front Cover: 1. Table Top and Landscape

2/1/81oil on linen 67 x 119.5cm

Opening: 6 - 8 pm Wednesday 21 October 2015

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3. Automobiles, Pedestrians and Drivers 25/5/15wax crayon on paper 34.1 x 50

4. Green Fujiama and Bark Hut 2015oil on linen 92 x 76.5cm

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5. Motor Cars and Drivers 127/2/15 & 12/3/15wax crayons, Indian ink on paper 34.7 x 49cm

6. Houses and Automobiles No.328, 29, 30/7/14 & 1/8/14 oil on canvas 121 x 111cm

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7. Automobiles, Humans and Animals11/4/15 wax crayons on paper 30.8 x 50cm

8. For the Bright and Beautiful Moment of Porto Alegre16/7/1980 & 21/2/2001oil on linen 90 x 119cm

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9. Australia with Automobiles and Typical Types9/4/15 & 15/4/15 wax crayon on paper 29.7 x 50cm

10. Two Motor Cars15/3/93 & 23/5/93 & 28/7/93 oil on linen 66 x 90cm

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11. What is the Question?14/3/15wax crayon on paper37.3 x 52cm

12. Aerialists, Yellow Horse and Magician2003oil on linen 110 x 120cm

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I have been thinking a lot lately about the act of making

and the impulses that drive someone towards it. A lot

of it has come from looking at the artworks of so-called

‘primitive’ or pre-historic human kind and their amazing

propensity to write on walls, form clay and scratch

images into rock, bone and tusk.

They aren’t much different from us, each with the

physical wants and desires and no less a need to

surround themselves with things full of magic and

meaning with which to comprehend the world.

Equally fascinating is the history of the discovery and

reception of this material. The French scholar and cleric

Henri Brueil believed that such pre-historic drawing

pertained to magic and ritual.

Beginning in 1900s he traced many of the cave

drawings superimposing his own belief system onto

them, which for a long time led to their misreading.

I think about the impulses of both the making and

understanding of art when I think of the work of Ken

Whisson. There is something ‘Breuil-like’ about the

mark making in Whisson’s work, especially in his

drawings and their subject matter – animals like horses

and bulls are the forerunners of the domesticated farm

animals he would know as a child in Lilydale and whose

memory still informs his work.

Now in his 70th decade of painting and drawing, we,

as both viewer and believers in Whisson’s endeavours,

are constantly looking for clues in the work that will tell

us something about him, and equally about ourselves.

I’ve had the great fortune to study Whisson’s work

from back to front (but not in the same way the many

avid and ferocious collectors of Whisson’s work may

be able to) and there is a lot to learn from a physical

analysis of them as objects. They have been turned

this way and that, constructed in short campaigns not

unlike photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive

moment’, but spread out over 5 or 10 years.

Sometimes we feel a little like Brueil trying to place our

own sense of order around the artist’s work – this is a

cup, no it’s a book, no it’s a vagina, no it’s a car; this is a

boat, it’s a hat, it’s a table.

Themes persist – travel, encounter, landscape, the still

life – but all are being elastically shaped, pulled and

morphed into and endless series of nuanced forms.

The palimpsest of the work morphs into the biography

of the artist, the mythology no least, something, I think,

Ken has studiously tried to avoid. tWhisson has worked

for the last 40 years in self-imposed ‘exile’ of a sort

in the Italian city of Perugia. Perugia is encircled by a

series of walls each going back further than the last to a

subterranean city. Each layer brings us a step closer to

the people who may have founded the city, and the city,

as metaphor for the subconscious, is palpable.

Now he has returned to live again in Australia and

I wonder: will he carry around this ancient city and

traversed landscape in the same way he has carried an

Australian one in his head for so long? Will he unwrap

these visions of a remembered place in the same way

an artist of the past may have held a bone against a

flickering light?

Glenn Barkley 2015

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13. Five Humans and Animal 24/12/14 & 7/1/15 graphite on paper 36.3 x 50cm

14. Four Humans and Animal 24/12/14 & 7/1/15 wax crayons, Indian ink on paper 29.7 x 44.7cm

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15. Sunlight and Light Rain16/315 Indian ink on paper 37 x 52cm

16. A Windy Wet Day in Sydney 14/12/2014 wax crayon and Indian ink on paper 35.5 x 50cm

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17. Large Bird and Young Girl 12/2/15 wax crayon, Indian ink on paper 22.6 x 37.6cm

18. Fairly Human Post Abstract 23/4/15 & 31/5/15wax crayon on paper 30 x 50cm

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Exhibition catalogue Watters Gallery, Sydney 20 October - 7 November 2015 © Artist, Ken Whisson Photographer: Michel Brouet This catalogue is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted by the Copyright Act no part may be reproduced by any other process without written permission.

19. Good Vibes1st stage 25/2/15 completed 3/3/15wax crayon on paper 35.1 x 47cm

Back cover:20. Contemporary Face 2: Papa Bergoglio

6/3/15wax crayon on paper 24 x 33cm