Suburban suite

Howard Arkley (1951 – 1999) is an enigmatic figure in contemporary Australian art. He was one of the most celebrated artists of his time, even representing his country at the Venice Biennale; yet his name isn’t all that well-known in the wider community.

In a celebration of a life cut short, the Queensland Art Gallery in conjunction with the National Gallery of Victoria presents a major retrospective charting the evolution of Arkley's work from the early 1970s to his final major works from the Venice Biennale in 1999.

Arkley is often thought of as the foremost painter of Australian suburbia. His signature houses and domestic interiors belied deeper artistic concerns. His images were produced with an distinct eye to interests in abstraction, patterning and the relationship between two and three dimensions. Arkley's paintings, sculptures and installations played around with the distinction between abstraction and representation.

In terms of his social commentary, Arkley’s works questioned whether it is the great Australian dreams of home ownership was entirely realistic – and of course, during his lifetime, it became increasingly less realistic for many. Arkley's specific visual style involved exploring the relationship between the real and the model, between utility and decoration, and between the elevated and the commonplace. Arkley's pieces feature houses, furniture, decorative schemes and optically turbulent patterns, which draw on both his interests in architecture and his social concerns.

The retrospective examines the influences that inspired Arkley – punk music, the club scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, fashion, feminism and masculinity, and the volatile art world itself. The show surveys Arkley's work through his early-career abstract pieces, through the development of figuration and iconography; and the tension between representational and abstracted images of the landscape, the home and suburbia that fuelled his imagination and lines of sight.

For almost 30 years, Howard Arkley produced some of the most idiosyncratic and iconoclastic art in Australia. Using a range of techniques from the commercial airbrush to conventional artists' tools, Arkley's work attracted and balanced critical and commercial success, professional and popular appeal. This retrospective of Howard Arkley's work celebrates his singular contribution to 20th century Australian art.

David Edwards

Send us your feedback on this article or anything else in The Blurb

Advertise with us | About us |Our privacy policy

Howard Arkley

Venue:
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Dates:
6 July – 16 September 2007

Cost: Free

Subscribe
to our monthly e-newsletter