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The Laverty Collection: Contemporary Australian Art

Lot 114

Ken Whisson
(born 1927)
Abstract Landscape with Green Figure with Yellow and Black Chooks, 1984

24 March 2013, 14:00 AEDT

Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art

Sold for AU$36,600 inc. premium

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Ken Whisson (born 1927)

Abstract Landscape with Green Figure with Yellow and Black Chooks, 1984
signed, dated and inscribed 'Ken Whisson / 5/2/84 - 20/6/84 / Abstract Landscape with Green Figure and Yellow and Black Chooks' verso
oil on canvas
100 x 119cm (39 3/8 x 46 7/8in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from 312 Lennox Street Gallery, Melbourne in November 1986

EXHIBITED:
Ken Whisson, 312 Lennox Street Gallery, Melbourne, 21 October - 22 November 1986, cat. no. 12
Ken Whisson Paintings 1957-1985, Broken Hill City Art Gallery touring exhibition: Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Broken Hill City Art Gallery, Broken Hill; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Power Gallery ofContemporary Art, Sydney; Wollongong City Art Gallery, Wollongong, February 1987 - April 1988, cat. no. 32

LITERATURE:
Ken Whisson Paintings 1947 - 1999, Niagara Publishing, Melbourne, 2001, cat. no. 43, p.59 (illus.)

Abstract Landscape with Green Figure with Yellow and Black Chook (1984) could be described as being in a classic later Whisson 'style'where the white ground of the canvas itself becomes an important part of the composition.

Importantly memory, a retreat into the artist past, provides a rich vein of motif and meaning as exemplified by the works titles which could reveal aspect of Whisson'sboyhood growing up in rural Lilydale. The chooks of the works title are clearly seen up in the upper right corner but we can also see other forms beginning to coalesce and then dissolve – snatches of misremembered details like an open book, the front half of horse or right in the centre an abstract collection of shapes that recalls early landscape or again flags a much used symbol in the artist work.

Glenn Barkley

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