David Bromfield once characterised the circumstances within which Western Australian artists work as a “dual exile”. On the one hand artists working Western Australia are often overlooked by local audiences, and on the other hand they are also isolated from the things that are happening elsewhere in the world. Clearly the internet has changed some aspects of this situation since Bromfield was writing in 1987. However, there is little doubt that this dual exile has created some very interesting Western Australian artists. A number of Western Australian artists I interviewed in 2011 and 2012 spoke about the concept of “doing it anyway” – despite the isolation, despite the absence of a market, despite the lack of audience and cultural acceptance – as something that created distinctive practices in Western Australia.
Peter Davidson is a product of the “dual exile” experienced by Western Australian artists and an exemplar of the concept of “doing it anyway”. His latest show, Still Life and Super Kitsch at Earlywork in South Fremantle is a welcome reminder of the resourcefulness that exile and isolation can produce. Davidson is a West Australian artist who resides in Japan, and has done so for more than a decade. Looking at this exhibition, one cannot help but think about how exile and isolation have played leading roles in these works.
In his gallery notes, Davidson talks about the practical circumstances that contextualise these works. Drawing and painting studies of ink bottles and oil pastel sticks in his apartment so that he can continue to work into the night. Making miniature clay models to draw, because of the difficulty in securing life models. Making works that feature and celebrate that which is to hand and that which is accessible to an Australian in Japan, but without cultural appropriation or pastiche. Davidson does it anyway, and continues to deliver distinctive and exquisitely crafted works that are deceptively simple.
The “Super Kitsch” of the show’s title is best seen in the Gold Plate Series – eat your fruit and veggies everyday. One cannot help but see Japan in these playful pieces that celebrate the artificial and the commodified, but are also beautifully luscious oil paintings proudly wearing their lineage from Western traditions of art. There is the carefully observed play of light on the subject, the attention to surface and materials – but then there is also the coloured plate of the sushi train, the gloss of lacquer, and the uniform geometry. Theses works are “packaged” with a sensibility that nods to Pop art, but it is more likely drawn from an ancient culture for whom presentation is all important.
All of the works in the exhibition are “Still Life”. They revel in the observation of what Davidson refers to as the public surfaces of objects, and the considered transposition of that observation through sensation and sensibility and materials to create an image. The resulting works are shrines that celebrate this creative process, making no apologies for their singular and humble subject matter, or for revealing the pictorial scaffolding upon which they are constructed. The Ink Bottles and Oil Pastel Sticks are compositions where space, time, colour and form are carefully arranged, but hover between abstraction and figuration, between image and material object.
Perhaps the most interesting works in the show are the Amorphous Shapes Maquettes. These works exist as a dialogue between tiny clay models that have been made to be drawn, and the drawings of the clay models – referencing the centuries old academic practice of drawing from antique statuary, but subverting it. The sculptures are new, exist without reference or reverence for the ideal of beauty as revealed in the human form, and have no intrinsic value – and yet the drawings, dutifully delivered and beautifully observed, accept and celebrate these objects as subjects for study. Many of the drawings carry an ironic commentary by the artist on the referential gaze, and the amorphous sculptures tease the viewer with forms in which we cannot help but try to see something recognisable.
I am writing this at a moment when there is little remaining opportunity to see the exhibition at Earlywork (exhibition dates 19-29 July). But Still Life and Super Kitsch is a compelling exhibition with much to offer to people who wish to see, enjoy and collect, interesting, well-made and affordable works, and to those of us who can learn from the resilience and resourcefulness of a senior Western Australian artist who continues to be industrious in relative isolation.
