current exhibition
1 & 2: Installation views of 9 Shades of Whiteley
The Poetic Eye
Poetry, music and living on the edge
On view: 1 December 2007 – 31 August 2008
Whiteley was inspired by a number of artists, poets, musicians and writers throughout his life. This exhibition is centred on Whiteley's acclaimed self-portrait and mural painting of 1972-73, Alchemy. The title, Alchemy, derives from a Renaissance idea essentially connected with the potential of changing base metal lead into gold. For alchemists, it alluded to a profound metaphoric relationship between body and soul. Whiteley, like Flemish artist, Hieronymus Bosch and French poet and adventurer, Arthur Rimbaud, was fascinated by this philosophy. "The quest is the transmutation of Self", Whiteley noted.
While Bosch and Rimbaud were very strong references for Whiteley, musicians, writers and poets also had a significant influence on him. He could see a transformative process at work in their charismatic personas and the strength of their performance. The power of their ability to entrance mass audiences and cultivate adoration intrigued the artist.
Alchemy was inspired by a range of forces, from French symbolist poetry to Surrealism to the political events of the day. Whiteley allowed these to merge, fuse and clash in images where dreams seem to metamorphosise into juxtaposing battles on micro and macro scales. As Whiteley himself wrote in his accompanying exhibition catalogue, "most of the painting was first seen with the eyes closed in the pitch of night, awake."
Alchemy is Whiteley's personal response to his genetic and cultural makeup, a journey of the self and a work that Whiteley lived with in this studio. Created over an eleven month period from February 1972 to January 1973 at the Gasworks studio in Waverton, Sydney, this 18 panelled magnum opus began at one end of the studio and concluded at the other.
Works have been selected for this exhibition that reflect Whiteley's interest in the transformative power of art and, specifically, poetry. Rimbaud's own journey from poet to adventurer to myth impacted on an earlier generation of Australian artists including Sidney Nolan, whose first work shown in 1939 in Melbourne was a painting of Rimbaud. Nolan also visited Harar, Abyssinia, where Rimbaud once lived. The Rimbaud pages were a loose collection of visual notations on the poet by Whiteley. In an interview, Whiteley once said, "Rimbaud bred stars. The brilliant, extraordinary blaze, then fizzle and darkness. We're still doing it. He cleared the ground for that as a tradition…"*
Whiteley has explored a range of emotionally altered states such as desire, empathy, passion and joy that deliver powerful and highly charged expressions of transcendence. This exhibition attempts to share this extraordinary quest and vision.
`The fine art of painting which is the bastard of alchemy, always has been and always will be, a game. The rules of the game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe the centre of the meaning of existence.' Inscribed on a panel of Alchemy by Brett Whiteley.
* Brett Whiteley interviewed by Rudi Krausmann, Aspect magazine, summer issue 1975-76