EDUCATION RESOURCE AND TEACHER’S NOTES
Image: Patricia Piccinini Killing Time 2002 Digital C-Type Photograph, 103.5 x 184 cm Courtesy of the Artist, Tolarno Galleries and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
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Partnership between Gallery Services and the Sucrogen Townsville 400 Activity dates: Until 16 June As part of VRROOOM, children have the opportunity to Design Your Own Car which could be doing laps at the Sucrogen Townsville 400! At the drawing station within the exhibition, children are encouraged to draw their most imaginative car. Completed designs are to be handed to the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery reception desk by 2pm Sunday 16 June to be in the running to be one of 300 shortlisted designs printed as coloured decal stickers and exhibited at The Galleria (Riverway Arts Centre foyer) from 9 July until 4 August. A leading V8 Supercar driver will be judging the shortlisted decal designs and selecting one to display on his car during the Sucrogen Townsville 400!
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Image: Patricia Piccinini The stags 2008, Fibreglass, automotive paint, leather, steel, plastic, tyres, Two pieces: 177 x 183 x 102cm and 147 x 90 x 101cm; 196 x 224 x 167cm (installed variable). Purchased 2009 with funds from Estate of Lawrence F. King in memory of the late Mr and Mrs S.W. King through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation and the Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisition Fund. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Image: Patricia Piccinini Downpour 2002, Digital C-Type Photograph, 103.5cm H x 184cm W. Courtesy of the Artist, Tolarno Galleries and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Born in Sierra Leone, Africa in 1965, Melbourne-based artist Patricia Piccinini first arrived in Australia in 1972. In 1994-95 Piccinini developed the Mutant Genome Project, comprising a series of computergenerated photographs and new media installations exploring issues relating to genetic engineering and ‘consumer medicine’. This project was a turning point for Piccinini’s practice, setting it up to be delicately positioned between powerful aesthetics and compelling ethical concepts. Patricia Piccinini’s practice incorporates still and computer-generated images, interactive CD-ROMs, immersive videos, sculptural installations and film. Her work is recognisable around the world, and she has set herself apart from most of her contemporaries with her ability to pose questions and make observations about some of the most delicate and problematic ethical dilemmas of our time. This has been achieved with a great deal of sophistication by the use of highly resolved aesthetics and processes. Piccinini states “There are several questions that I always ask myself, and that are the base of my work: What is the definition of ‘natural’ and the definition of ‘artificial’, and how do those definitions change over time?” Piccinini is represented in Vrrooom with The Stags, a sculptural work of personified motorised scooters which pose questions about technological advancements, and a series of three large scale photographs.
In her article School Boy Doodles?, published in The Guardian UK on Monday 26 October 2009, Germaine Greer wrote of Ben Quilty’s art practice, “Ben Quilty was born a year after the Holden LJ Torana was built. The car was his darling, his ticket to ride, his way out of wherever... The car, a white 1972 Holden LJ Torana, was in no way a triumph of design, but it had become an icon in its own right. The Holden, though by then almost entirely made in Japan, was Australia’s car; and the Torana was Holden’s raciest model, built for speed and boy racers. What was more, [Quilty’s] pictures were wonderful, painted in what seemed to be a few strokes with a brush loaded with neat paint straight from the tube – blazing whites, midnight purples, throbbing golds. The unmistakeable contours of the Torana leapt from the canvas. Some might have argued that it was just too easy to paint a model that never moved, that artist Ben Quilty was merely engaged in a grown-up form of schoolboy doodling. Others realised that that was exactly the point: the male human’s obsessive, unending love affair with his car.” Quilty is at the forefront of contemporary art in Australia; his thick, impasto paintings are arresting and iconic. This ability landed him the 2011 Archibald Prize, for a portrait of Margaret Olley, which in turn led to an invitation by the Australian War Memorial to be an Official War Artist in Afganistan. The artist’s Torana has been an enduring inspiration for his paintings, and four such works are exhibited as part of Vrrooom. The paintings celebrate car culture and the affinity man can feel with ‘his machine’. However, Quilty is not reckless in his adoration and championing of car culture; his more recent Crash paintings provide a cautionary tale demonstrating the dangers of pushing one’s car too far..
Image: Ben Quilty, Torana No. 8 2007, Oil on linen, 170 x 160cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Jan Murphy Gallery
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Image: Ben Quilty, Torana Nelson Street [detail] 2004, Oil on canvas, 50.6 x 30.8 cm. Ipswich Art Gallery Collection, 2005
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Image: Ben Morieson, still from Burnout 2004 - Overhead, video, 11 minutes. Courtesy of the Artist
Having organised a ‘street meets art’ festival in Melbourne in 2001 to produce the work, Ben Moriseon’s Burnout - featuring eight drivers performing burnouts, doughnuts, corkscrews and line-work across a 70m x 30m tarmac - was subsequently hailed as the ‘World’s Largest Abstract Drawing Using Tyremarks’ in the 2002 Guinness Book of World Records. In her Supercharged: the car in contemproary culture catalogue essay We Make the Cars, and the Cars Make Us, Vanessa McRae describes Morieson’s video work;
“A car performs choreographed manoeuvres under instructions from the artist for an enthusiastic audience. It is filmed from above, from a camera suspended from a cherrypicker. From this godly vantage point we can appreciate burnouts and doughnuts as drawing and the ability of the driver to control what is essentially out of control. For Morieson, the car becomes like the long-haired brush of the Zen calligrapher.” Both a production designer and artistic director, Morieson has experience working on a host of iconic Australian films and television shows, including The Castle, Rabbit Proof Fence, Frontline, Summer Heights High and Underbelly. He studied a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art and Sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) from 1986 to 1988, and has previously been employed as a part-time lecturer in Film and Television Production Design at RMIT Screen. As an artist, Morieson has exhibited in galleries throughout Australia and in Germany, Switzerland, England and China. He has also completed an Australia Council residency in Barcelona, Spain, where he made videos using radio controlled cars.
Michael Zavros is one of Australia’s most significant younger realist painters. He is fascinated by beauty and his subjects include leaping and falling horses, men in suits, high fashion, classical mythology and French neoclassical architecture. Michael Zavros was born in 1974 and graduated from Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, in 1996. Zavros has held solo exhibitions at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; Wollongong City Gallery, NSW, and many others. His work is held in many public and corporate collections such as the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; Artbank; and Gold Coast City Art Gallery. Image: Michael Zavros Mint, Nutmeg, Tobasco, Wheat, Lavender, Rose water, Tangerine, Licquorice, Gentian 1999, Oil on board, 45 x 45cm each. Ipswich Art Gallery Collection. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program by the artist, 2011
Testament to his reputation as an artist of refined skill Zavros won the 2010 Doug Moran Prize, and the 2005 Robert Jacks Drawing Prize, among others. His paintings of hubcaps highlight the beauty and simplicity of form of common objects.
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Vrrooom includes two sculptures by nationally recognised Victorian sculptor Eamon O’Toole, a self-confessed “revhead, artist and dirt bike rider.” His passion for motorsports is only matched by his enjoyment of the arts, and the two meet as O’Toole pays homage to his favourite and iconic motorbikes, cars, and motorsport heroes through his sculptures.
Image: Eamon O’Toole Sidchrome tool cabinet 2006, plastic, enamel and aluminium leaf, 141 x 89 x 31 cm. Ipswich Art Gallery Collection. A cquired through the Ipswich Arts Foundation, 2006
The works are full-scale replicas handcrafted from plastic, aluminium and paint. However, the artist wants them to look handmade - heightened images of the pursuits and skills of his country childhood. ‘’It’s important to have the artist’s touch in them,’’ O’Toole says.
Discussing his early progress as a sports-mad art student, and the intent of his sculptures, O’Toole stated, ‘’I always thought art should be about what you like. Other people in high school art classes did things like classical nudes but I just couldn’t go down that path.’’ ‘’[My high school teacher] thought cars and bikes were boys’ stuff, and that I could have been a bit artier. But how they’re made is what’s interesting for me.’’ O’Toole’s status as a leading contemporary artist was recently recognised with a 25 year retrospective exhibition Revhead: The Motorsport Art of Eamon O’Toole at Ipswich Art Gallery, which included sculptures of Ayrton Senna’s McLaren Formula One car and a ute.
Image: Eamon O’Toole Dick Johnson’s Racing Helmet 2012 Hand moulded plastic, enamel paint, aluminium lead and textas, 25.5 x 33cm Ipswich Art Gallery Collection. Commissioned by the Ipswich City Council, 2012
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Image: Phil Gordon Les 2003, Stoneware and enamel, 19 x 23 x 45cm. Ipswich Art Gallery Collection, 2003 Phil Gordon Stock Car 2003, Stoneware and enamel, 13 x 21 x 45cm. Ipswich Art Gallery Collection, 2003
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Phil Gordon’s ceramic cars are playful and engaging - both Les and Stock Car are brutish looking machines that look straight from an episode of Wallace and Gromit. Gordon’s influences are varied; he graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1983 before becoming a member of and exhibiting with the Chameleon Artist co-operative in Hobart in 1984. Gordon moved to Queensland in 1985, and from 1986 to 1990 he worked in Fashion and Screenprinting, designing and printing, and building props and silly cycles for the hugely popular Expo 88, which is widely recognised as Brisbane’s ‘coming of age’. Phil then spent 5 years as creative advisor and food stalls co-ordinator of Woodford Folk Festival, and has worked on construction, design and concept development for the Shoe Theatre for a number of years. His ongoing interest in and engagement with cars was explored in his 2002 Doggett Street Gallery exhibition Road Works.
Margaret Dodd was born in Berri, South Australia, in 1941. She was part of the ‘funk’ ceramic movement that originated in Davis, California, during the 1960s. Her work centres on the car as a twentieth century Australian icon; a theme that she has developed through ceramic and sculpture into video, film and installation. Her work has been collected by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra as well as the state galleries of Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales. She lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia. Discussing Garage Deity, Dodds stated, “It was made thinking about kiln gods, and the relation between preColumbian ceramics and those 1950’s car designs with Indian names like Pontiac.” On the topic of the ceramic works she has produced in Australia after returning from Davis, California, she stated, “My best ceramic pieces in Australia have been the iconic (now) Holden cars of the 40’s and fifties, especially the ones I made for a film, This Woman is Not a Car, which were a Holden Bride, one with hair curlers, and so on. I still do ceramic sculpture, as well as video and film projects.”
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Image: Margaret Dodd Garage Deity 1992, Earthenware, 23.8 x 20.6 x 27.8cm Ipswich Art Gallery Collection. Acquired through the Ipswich Arts Foundation, 2009
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Born in Brisbane in 1964 and living in Grafton, New South Wales, Moore has been holding solo exhibitions since 1988. His work, which is primarily painting but also sculptural, is held in high regard, with numerous pieces in important collections such as those of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Moore has completed numerous significant commissions throughout his career, but he is perhaps best known for contributing many of the works used by Mambo Graphics in their surfwear ranges and other graphics since 1989.
Image: Robert Moore GTS 1999, Moulded inflatable plastic with etching ink detail, 300 x 250 x 600 cm. Ipswich Art Gallery Collection. Commissioned with the assistance of a State Government Project Grant from Arts Queensland, 1998-1999. Acquired with funds donated by Ross Llewellyn Holden through the Ipswich Arts Foundation, 1999
In 2001 the artist’s work was seen in a series of giant flags flown in the forecourt of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in a project shared between Mambo and the Country Women’s Association of Victoria. Also in 2001, Moore constructed the work GTS; a massive, six metre long inflatable plastic representation of a Monaro. The work was completed during a residency at the RAAF Base Amberley and was commissioned by Global Arts Link (Ipswich Art Gallery) as part of the RAAF’s eighty year anniversary celebrations. The final work was included in the exhibition Octane: Celebrating 80 Years of the Royal Australian Air Force, Ipswich Art Gallery.
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Many will recall Finn’s mural from the popular 2011 Xstrata Children’s Exhibition Zookini (artist pictured painting the work below). Finn has been involved in many facets of commercial art. The last 20 years has been spent running her own business, including producing promotional and production banners, displays and sets, murals, folk art, signs, children’s art and various private commissions. Finn’s practice has also included transforming the children’s ward at the Townsville General Hospital with floor to ceiling murals.
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Based in Prospect, Adelaide, Ann Newmarch is a nationally acclaimed, senior artist, with over 20 solo exhibitions and 100 group shows. Her work is represented in many major national and international collections. Ann worked as an art lecturer for 32 years at the South Australian School of Art. She is widely acknowledged for her contribution to art education, experimental printmaking and the Australian Community Art movement. She is the recipient of numerous awards and in 1998 was awarded the Order of Australia for services to art. A longstanding feminist and social activist, Newmarch has worked around themes drawn from her own personal experiences as well as social issues and work on community and collaborative projects. Her work is wide ranging and she doesn’t hold to a prescriptive ‘signature’ style.
Image: Ann Newmarch 200 Years: Willy Willy 1988, Colour screenprint, 58.1 x 47.2cm. Gift of the Australian Bicentennial Authority and the National Gallery of Australia 1988. City of Townsville Art Collection.
The work 200 years: Willy Willy was acquired into the City of Townsville Art Collection as part of The Bicentennial Folio: prints by twenty-five Australian artists 1988. The work “talks about the inroads of white technology into the Australian landscape, cutting across Aboriginal culture and legends. In my As the Serpent Struggles series, I use the symbols of the car, the snake, the tyre-tread scar, with suggestions of an Aboriginal approach to painting without co-opting of style. I use various systems of representation to talk about the juxtaposition of black and white cultures.” “The snake, feared by white culture, represents the Great Rainbow Serpent, creator of life and landforms in the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. The car, the truck, has been the vehicle for removal of many Aboriginals from their ancestral lands; depositing them hundreds of miles away...so it has also become the only way to return. The desert landscape is hostile to us and we view it from the artificial boundaries of cars.”
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very thin sheet of metal that is usually made by hammering or rolling a piece of metal. Foils are most easily made with malleable metals, such as aluminium, copper, tin, and gold.
1. preservation or restoration from loss, damage, or neglect. 2. the protection, preservation, management, or restoration of wildlife and of natural resources such as forests, soil, and water. 3. the maintenance of a physical quantity, such as energy or mass, during a physical or chemical change.
clay of a porous body which is waterproofed by a covering glaze and is fired to around 1100oC. The low temperature vastly expands the range of glaze colours available. The clay can be any colour.
low temperature glaze that is applied on top of an already fired higher temperature glaze for decoration, also called on-glaze decoration. Enamels are usually re-fired to temperatures in the range of about 700oC to 800oC.
1. the circumstances or conditions that surround one; surroundings. 2. the totality of circumstances surrounding an organism or group of organisms, especially: a. the combination of external physical conditions that affect and influence the growth, development, and survival of organisms. b. the complex of social and cultural conditions affecting the nature of an individual or community.
is a fibre reinforced polymer; made of a plastic matrix reinforced by fine fibres of glass.
an object that can be inflated with a gas, usually with air, but hydrogen, helium and nitrogen are also used.
a self-propelled wheeled conveyance, such as a car or truck, that does not run on rails.
any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.
is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the dried oil paint film.
any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids that are moldable. Plastics are typically organic polymers of high molecular mass, but they often contain other substances.
or Rainbow Snake is a common deity, often a creator god, in the mythology and a common motif in the art of Aboriginal Australia. It is named for the obvious identification between the colours of a rainbow and the shape of a snake.
is a method of creating an image on paper, fabric or some other object by pressing ink through a screen with areas blocked off by a stencil.
is clay that when fired to maturity becomes a sturdy, chip resistant material.
1. the application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives. 2. the scientific method and material used to achieve a commercial or industrial objective. 3. electronic or digital products and systems considered as a group.
to go from one place to another, as on a trip; journey.
is a colour print from a colour negative. The term “Type C� is generally used to distinguish from R or Reversal prints or direct positive prints from transparencies (colour positives). Type C prints can also be made digitally.
is an electronic medium for the recording, copying and broadcasting of moving visual images.
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A Free Activity Booklet targeted at primary students designed in response to this exhibition with reference to the Department of Education and Training, Queensland Visual Art Syllabus, is available at the Gallery. The exhibition also incorporates conent targeted specifically at secondary students, such as the numerous interactive elements, and questions prompting analytical discussion related to individual artworks.
Free guided tours are available upon request, and for further information about education and public programs provided by the Gallery contact: Nic Horton Ι (07) 4727 9011 Ι nicholas.horton@townsville.qld.gov.au
We would appreciate your feedback in response to the Gallery’s education program. To assist, a feedback form is available from the Gallery or online at: www.townsville.qld.gov.au
Through Gallery Services, Townsville City Council owns and operates two premier regional galleries, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in the city’s CBD, and Pinnacles Gallery located within the Riverway Arts Centre in Thuringowa Central.
Perc Tucker Regional Gallery is located in one of Townsville’s finest heritage buildings, on the corner of Denham and Flinders Streets, in the city centre. The Gallery has a ground floor and first floor level with seven exhibition spaces. On display are works by north Queensland artists as well as national and international touring exhibitions. Guided group exhibition tours are available upon request and prior bookings are essential. For further information about programs, membership, venue hire, or to place a booking, please contact Perc Tucker Regional Gallery: +61 (7) 4727 9011 ptrg@townsville.qld.gov.au www.townsville.qld.gov.au Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm Saturday - Sunday 10am - 2pm Closed Public Holidays, Free Admission
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