Colin Lanceley
Integral to twentieth century Australian courts is an exhibition space specifically allocated for a special series of small changing exhibitions. Each focuses on a significant work or works in the Gallery�s Australian collection, and presents to the public the curator�s comprehensive evaluation and the results of recent research.
The Australian Collection Focus Series is generously sponsored by ABN AMRO Rothschild, and this exhibition is the eighth in the series.
The 2001 series will be launched with a focus on two spectacular �junk gems�, The Dry Salvages 1963-64 and Gemini 1964, by Colin Lanceley, a major contemporary Australian artist and member of the now legendary Annandale Imitation Realists.
Visitors to the Gallery will be familiar with Colin Lanceley�s painterly-sculptural assemblages from the 1980�s and 90�s, but less well-known are the extraordinary junk assemblages from the 1960�s. These exceptional works combine the larrikin assemblage qualities and quasi-pop imagery of the Imitation Realists with Lanceley�s sculptural concerns. Both represent Lanceley�s transition from a �sculptor� creating poetry from fragments of the junk and detritus of contemporary society � often collected from inner-city lanes and alleyways - to an artist whose overriding sensibility was that of a painter.
The Dry Salvages is a creation made of beads, trinkets, dolls, photographs and countless other little found objects arranged across the entire shallow reaches of the picture plane, unified throughout by red paint.
Gemini is a great winged assemblage made largely from found wooden pattern parts, put together with fragments of an organ and turned furniture legs. The whole has the feeling of a carved sculpture � yet the sinewy curves and rounded lines can be related to the fluid arabesque of painterly form.
The Dry Salvages and Gemini were first exhibited together at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1964, and have not been seen together since. Here, for the first time in 36 years, these two award-winning works will be reunited for public showing.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a video featuring Colin Lanceley speaking about Gemini and The Dry Salvages, and an illustrated room brochure.
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