Howard Arkley (1951-1999) was an Australian artist, born in Melbourne.

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Artist: Howard Arkley

Venue: the art gallery of NSW

Exhibition dates: 10 March- 6 May 2007

Howard Arkley (1951-1999) was an Australian artist, born in .

Howard Arkley is an enigmatic figure in contemporary Australian art. He was one of the most celebrated artists of his time, even representing his country at the Venice Biennale; yet his name isn’t all that well-known in the wider community.

The Howard Arkley Exhibition presents a major retrospective charting the evolution of Arkley's work from the early 1970s to his final major works from the Venice Biennale in 1999.

Arkley is often thought of as the foremost painter of Australian suburbia. His signature houses and domestic interiors contradicted deeper artistic concerns. His images were produced with a distinct eye to interests in abstraction, patterning and the relationship between two and three dimensions. Arkley's paintings, sculptures and installations played around with the distinction between abstraction and representation.

In terms of his social commentary, Arkley’s works questioned whether it is the great Australian dreams of home ownership were entirely realistic – during his lifetime; it became increasingly less realistic for many. Arkley's specific visual style involved exploring the relationship between the real and the model, between utility and decoration, and between the elevated and the commonplace. Arkley's pieces feature houses, furniture, decorative schemes and optically turbulent patterns, which draw on both his interests in architecture and his social concerns.

The retrospective examines the influences that inspired Arkley – punk music, the club scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, fashion, feminism and masculinity, and the volatile art world itself. The show surveys Arkley's work through his early-career abstract pieces, through the development of figuration and iconography; and the tension between representational and abstracted images of the landscape, the home and suburbia that fuelled his imagination and lines of sight.

For almost 30 years, Howard Arkley produced some of the most idiosyncratic and iconoclastic art in Australia. Using a range of techniques from the commercial airbrush to conventional artists' tools, Arkley's work attracted and balanced critical and commercial success, professional and popular appeal. This retrospective of Howard Arkley's work celebrates his singular contribution to 20th century Australian art.

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My Response- impressions, feelings and understanding:

When entering the area where Howard Arkley’s works were displayed, I felt I was in a children’s playground or a children’s tv show. The bright and vibrant colours made me feel this way. My surroundings felt fake…like I was in a 2D/3D cartoon and his artworks were the background and the only thing that was moving or real, were the people in the exhibition. When I walked to another artwork it felt like I was entering a new scene. I felt happy but uncomfortable at the same time because the environment was unfamiliar to me but it was welcoming because of the composition of the furniture and the open doors from the artworks. I really enjoyed Arkley’s works however it was really repetitive, which did not keep my interest for long. However, the patterns on some of the artworks I discovered really caught my attention. (such as the patterns on the walls and couch below) I was fascinated by the use of airbrush used to create the artworks. It was a new media that I have explored whilst at the exhibition.

 

Arkley’s works are displayed on large canvases hung up on walls. In some of his artworks, the canvases are placed using three sides of the wall of a room, so that the canvases are connected and the images link. By displaying his works like this, Arkley creates a room with his series of art canvases. His works provides a kind of electricity, always equivocating between line and blur, the graphic mark with fuzz. In other artworks, furniture are placed alongside the canvas, creating a three dimensional area.

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Artist: Tezuka

Venue: Art Gallery of NSW

Exhibition dates: 23 Feb- 29 Apr

Tezuka Osamu is acknowledged as an artistic master, and is revered as the figurehead of the manga and anime industries in Japan. In the West he is best known for Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion which were serialised internationally for television in the 1960s.

Manga is the Japanese word for comics and print cartoons. Manga is respected both as an art form and as a form of popular literature. Manga has a huge global following and has had a major influence on international comics and animation.

Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989) drew ...

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