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Lot Essay
While Australia has always been an urban nation and most of us live in the suburbs, Australian art has almost exclusively made the landscape its subject. There are remarkably few images of cities, and almost none of the suburbs to be seen in art museums. Howard Arkley's paintings of suburban interiors and the houses from which they come, as well as a few cityscapes, are unique in the history of Australian art.
Like all of Arkley's paintings these works are derived from his daily experience of his surroundings. Working in his 'doodle pads' in cafes, pubs and trams, he jotted down his observations of the world around him and later considered their possibilities as large-scale paintings. From the early 1980s onwards they become his major preoccupation. At first they are simple compositions, his signature air-brush line in black on lounge-room wallpapers, and full-frontal depictions of houses. Later they become more complex, the interiors taking on an extraordinary life of their own, sometimes in collaboration with fellow artist Juan Davila, and the house portraits, cityscapes among them, take on an abstract quality.
Howard Arkley's paintings of suburban houses were inspired by and often directly copied from the line drawings that real estate agents employed to advertise their better properties in newspapers. There were artists, often students, who made a living or put themselves through art school, making these drawings.
In 'Bungalow Home' Arkley depicts a very ordinary Californian bungalow style house dating from between the wars and from a middle-class Melbourne suburb such as Bentleigh or Oakleigh. It has no pretensions to style. There are whole suburbs of them in every large city in Australia. With their porches, verandahs, modern kitchens, internal bathrooms and lavatories they represented a better living standard for thousands of Australians. Many were built as homes for Returned Soldiers.
In the simplicity of the advertising drawings, Arkley saw an honesty on which he could improve. Boring black and white became bright, fluorescent and improbably colour. In Bungalow Home, what would have been cream and brown becomes the awkward combination of magenta, pink, yellow and brown, in a bright green bug-free garden with a cloudless blue sky. There is seldom a suggestion of an occupant in these fairytale houses. All is perfect, as the real estate agent would wish it to be. However, they still remain ordinary houses in suburban Melbourne, subject matter for similar celebration by Barry Humphries.
We are greateful to John McPhee for this catalogue entry
Like all of Arkley's paintings these works are derived from his daily experience of his surroundings. Working in his 'doodle pads' in cafes, pubs and trams, he jotted down his observations of the world around him and later considered their possibilities as large-scale paintings. From the early 1980s onwards they become his major preoccupation. At first they are simple compositions, his signature air-brush line in black on lounge-room wallpapers, and full-frontal depictions of houses. Later they become more complex, the interiors taking on an extraordinary life of their own, sometimes in collaboration with fellow artist Juan Davila, and the house portraits, cityscapes among them, take on an abstract quality.
Howard Arkley's paintings of suburban houses were inspired by and often directly copied from the line drawings that real estate agents employed to advertise their better properties in newspapers. There were artists, often students, who made a living or put themselves through art school, making these drawings.
In 'Bungalow Home' Arkley depicts a very ordinary Californian bungalow style house dating from between the wars and from a middle-class Melbourne suburb such as Bentleigh or Oakleigh. It has no pretensions to style. There are whole suburbs of them in every large city in Australia. With their porches, verandahs, modern kitchens, internal bathrooms and lavatories they represented a better living standard for thousands of Australians. Many were built as homes for Returned Soldiers.
In the simplicity of the advertising drawings, Arkley saw an honesty on which he could improve. Boring black and white became bright, fluorescent and improbably colour. In Bungalow Home, what would have been cream and brown becomes the awkward combination of magenta, pink, yellow and brown, in a bright green bug-free garden with a cloudless blue sky. There is seldom a suggestion of an occupant in these fairytale houses. All is perfect, as the real estate agent would wish it to be. However, they still remain ordinary houses in suburban Melbourne, subject matter for similar celebration by Barry Humphries.
We are greateful to John McPhee for this catalogue entry