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Lot 218

Noel McKenna
(born 1956)
Fall from Change Table, 1993

24 March 2013, 14:00 AEDT
Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art

Sold for AU$4,636 inc. premium

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Noel McKenna (born 1956)

Fall from Change Table, 1993
signed and dated 'N. McKenna 93' lower right; signed and inscribed 'Fall from Change Table / N. McKenna 93' verso
oil on wood
36 x 41.5cm (14 3/16 x 16 5/16in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, June 1998

EXHIBITED:
Somewhere in the City: Noel McKenna, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane, 8 September - 6 November 2005

LITERATURE:
Somewhere in the City: Noel McKenna, exh. cat., Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane, 2005, p.27, p.18 (illus.)


Fall from Changes Table (1993) seems an unusual painting in McKenna's oeuvre. But like much of his work it comes from the anecdotal spun to become something more akin to a short story.

There are two emphases in the work. The first is the calendar with the number 29, a numeral with some symbolic importance in McKenna's life – he was
married on the 29th November when he was 29, it is the number of a bus he often catches. The second is the fall itself which came from a conversation McKenna
had with a maternity nurse friend who mentioned her anxiety about dropping a newborn baby.

As the artist has succinctly put it – 'accidents happen in hospitals'.1

Glenn Barkley

1 Phone conversation with the author 10/1/2013

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