DICK FRIZZELL
THE DANCE OF THE HOOLIGANS
PART 1: LORNE ST THE DANCE OF THE HOOLIGANS. The painting. This monstrous production (2,500 x 7,200mm) is a sort of scrapbook painting. A vast repository of all the ideas and images that I've accumulated over the last 50 years or so that never found a conceptual or aesthetic home in any previous context. The plan - such as it was - was to build the largest canvas my painting wall could contain and then glue or paint all this alarmingly diverse material on it at random - and see what happened. What happened was that all sorts of interesting and insistent organising principles kept intruding into the process which made me aware - more than ever - that we have to be constantly alert to the often inhibiting guidelines we erect around ourselves for moral and intellectual support.
There was a lot of liberating going on with this dance.
PART 2: KITCHENER ST It's been a big twelve months. We moved back to Auckland after nine years of bucolic splendour in Hawkes Bay. And I turned seventy. One of these events prompted an enormous upheaval of several storage systems and the other a reflective rummage through the subsequently exposed archive. A lot of highly excitable ‘unpacking’...everything new again...unexpected juxtapositions in the reshuffle!
I was struck by how much great material I had accumulated over the years... and how much stuff had never been 'dealt to'...the notebooks and lists of orphaned ideas...and I decided that now might be an appropriate time to somehow gather it all together. It seemed to me that there must be some reason that I'd dragged this stuff around with me for so long and if I DID deal to it I might find out what that reason was!
As the vast piles of hitherto unexploited resource material got glued or painted onto the ‘narratively camouflaged’ and alarmingly disparate Hooligan canvases (‘Part 1’, a dispensing of indispensable bumph) the ‘lost paintings’ emerging into the sunlight from the rear of the storage racks also seemed to be calling out for some sort of attention. So I talked Gary and John into letting me take over the Kitchener Street gallery as well and we put ‘Part 2’ together. A mini retrospective of a sort I suppose. It’s been fun...a major unbundling... and something has definitely emerged from it all...I obviously like buckets!
IMAGE TITLES: The Physics of Immortality, 2013 acrylic and collage on canvas 1000 x 1000 mm
Comes Ready To Assemble, 2013 acrylic and collage on canvas 1200 x 1450 mm
Look At Them As Though You Were There, 2013 oil on linen 1800 x 2200 mm
The Dance of the Hooligans, 2013 oil, acrylic and collage on canvas 4 panels, each panel 2500 x 1800 mm overall dimensions 2500 x 7200 mm
PART 2: Bucket Drying Out, 1986 oil on board 600 x 500 mm
The Laughing River, 2003 oil, acrylic and collage on canvas 500 x 500 mm
I Can See For Miles And Miles, 2003 oil, acrylic and collage on canvas 500 x 500 mm
Produce, 2003 oil, acrylic and collage on canvas 500 x 500 mm
If It’s Oak It’s Oke Doak, 2003 oil, acrylic and collage on canvas 500 x 500 mm
Harbour scene, 2001 oil on linen 900 x 900 mm
Hartland, 2001 oil on linen 750 x 750 mm
One and a Half Bricks (diptych), 1998 oil on linen 800 x 1200 mm Mallet, 1996 oil on linen 350 x 500 mm
Gnome, Rabbit, Sheepskull, 2000 oil on linen 550 x 650 mm
Shine (diptych), 1998 oil on linen 605 x 1210 mm
Cubist Study, 1971 oil on canvas 750 x 750 mm
Omega Tiki, 2010 oil on canvas 650 x 500 mm
Hammer Song, 2000 mixed media 580 x 580 mm
Science is the One True Knowledge, 2001 oil on linen 550 x 550 mm
Circular See-Saw, 1996 oil and collage on canvas 350 x 300 mm
Untitled, 1995 oil on linen 530 x 430 mm
Chain Reaction, 1992 mixed media 250 x 185 mm Black Constructivist Stump, 1996 oil on wood 595 x 590 mm
Boxing Study, 2007 oil on linen 505 x 505 mm Diving Boy, 2008 oil on linen 550 x 550 mm
I Refute It Thus, 1999 oil on linen 700 x 750 mm
COME AND JOIN THE DANCE LORNE ST and KITCHENER ST: 2 - 26 October 2013
GOW LANGSFORD GALLERY
26 LORNE ST / CNR KITCHENER ST & WELLESLEY ST AUCKLAND NZ PO BOX 5461 T: +64 9 303 4290 WWW.GOWLANGSFORDGALLERY.CO.NZ