Art & Australia Award & Exhibition 2012-2014
Dec 12, 2013 - Jan 27, 2014
Art & Australia Collection 2003-2013 exhibition, featuring Patrick Francis paintings, opens tonight at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre! — at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Art-Australia/108958570405
https://www.facebook.com/hazelhurstregional?ref=stream&viewer_id=0
Art & Australia Collection 2003-2013 exhibition, featuring Patrick Francis paintings, opens tonight at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre! — at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Art-Australia/108958570405
https://www.facebook.com/hazelhurstregional?ref=stream&viewer_id=0
In the second half of 2012, Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria hosted the exhibition 'Napoleon: Revolution to Empire'. This was a large and comprehensive show drawing on works of painting, sculpture, the fine and decorative arts, in order to examine the influence that Napoleon had on the French nation. From the images on display it became immediately obvious that every surface became a potential blank canvas for the fashioning of an image in homage to Napoleon.
Cut to Melbourne in 2012 and you would have witnessed Napoleon’s images dominating the streetscape of Melbourne and its suburbs, in newspaper advertisements, on trams and trains, and on television in an extensive advertising campaign. The image chosen to so blanket the waking lives of the good citizens of Melbourne was that painting: Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul, crossing the Alps at Great St Bernard Pass, 20 May 1800, 1803; a figure – seated high up on his rearing stallion, eyes fixed in some reverie of triumph, hand pointing to the heavens – of an inspirational leader who had been invested by the artist with a mythomaniac quality.
The divine rights of kings sat comfortably with the persona of this mere mortal. The historical facts are far removed from this work of political propaganda: first, Napoleon refused to pose for David; second, Napoleon demanded the painting be a representation of his character and not his physical appearance; third, Napoleon is quoted as saying that he wanted his genius to live in the painting. And the pictorial dynamic is rather punctured when it became known that Napoleon crossed over the Alps led on a donkey. This is the backstory to the painting Not titled (Napoleon), 2012, by Patrick Francis, a young Melbourne artist whose studio is in the Arts Project Australia studios in Northcote's High Street in Melbourne.
Francis is a prolific painter who finds his primary source material in the visual culture of his city and in the art history of western civilisation. A huge range of images attracts his attention and from this basis he is ready to focus and delve into the essence, to the bedrock, of these images. Francis has been drawn especially to the work of Michelangelo, Goya, Raphael, Munch and Gorky, and has a true gift for finding in the paintings of these artists the essential humanity of the subjects as well as showing the attitude and point of view that is often hidden or masked in the pictorial plays of the artist.
On this occasion, he reduces the bombast of David's original work to find the humanity in the subject. Gone are the fine military costume, the decorations, the swirling fabric; gone are the romantic trappings of mountain pass and the tumult of wind and cold. These are replaced with a uniform that has been sourced from a costume box: mere rags to cover the naked flesh. And that original heroic gesture of defiance becomes an awkward prosaic gesture, a gesture drawn from the world of Don Quixote – the once rearing steed now a plodding nag, nay it could almost be a donkey. The blocks of colour that are Francis’ painting-signature work wonderfully here. There is an emphasis on a melting fragility where the negative space carries the composition. The gesture is thus nearer to ending than becoming, and the whole picture is close to reducing the grandest of paintings, the pompous and megalomaniacal subject to a jest of Shakespearean proportion: the fool astride a donkey.
Francis shows that we are but actors on a stage desperately seeking significance in the gesture of a pointed finger. This wonderful painting speaks to all men of all ages about the fragility of human flesh and the ridiculous nature of all actions.
http://www.artaustralia.com/article.asp?issue_id=216&article_id=442http://www.artaustralia.com/newsviews.asp?news_id=105
http://www.artaustralia.com/contents.asp?issue_id=216
Cut to Melbourne in 2012 and you would have witnessed Napoleon’s images dominating the streetscape of Melbourne and its suburbs, in newspaper advertisements, on trams and trains, and on television in an extensive advertising campaign. The image chosen to so blanket the waking lives of the good citizens of Melbourne was that painting: Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul, crossing the Alps at Great St Bernard Pass, 20 May 1800, 1803; a figure – seated high up on his rearing stallion, eyes fixed in some reverie of triumph, hand pointing to the heavens – of an inspirational leader who had been invested by the artist with a mythomaniac quality.
The divine rights of kings sat comfortably with the persona of this mere mortal. The historical facts are far removed from this work of political propaganda: first, Napoleon refused to pose for David; second, Napoleon demanded the painting be a representation of his character and not his physical appearance; third, Napoleon is quoted as saying that he wanted his genius to live in the painting. And the pictorial dynamic is rather punctured when it became known that Napoleon crossed over the Alps led on a donkey. This is the backstory to the painting Not titled (Napoleon), 2012, by Patrick Francis, a young Melbourne artist whose studio is in the Arts Project Australia studios in Northcote's High Street in Melbourne.
Francis is a prolific painter who finds his primary source material in the visual culture of his city and in the art history of western civilisation. A huge range of images attracts his attention and from this basis he is ready to focus and delve into the essence, to the bedrock, of these images. Francis has been drawn especially to the work of Michelangelo, Goya, Raphael, Munch and Gorky, and has a true gift for finding in the paintings of these artists the essential humanity of the subjects as well as showing the attitude and point of view that is often hidden or masked in the pictorial plays of the artist.
On this occasion, he reduces the bombast of David's original work to find the humanity in the subject. Gone are the fine military costume, the decorations, the swirling fabric; gone are the romantic trappings of mountain pass and the tumult of wind and cold. These are replaced with a uniform that has been sourced from a costume box: mere rags to cover the naked flesh. And that original heroic gesture of defiance becomes an awkward prosaic gesture, a gesture drawn from the world of Don Quixote – the once rearing steed now a plodding nag, nay it could almost be a donkey. The blocks of colour that are Francis’ painting-signature work wonderfully here. There is an emphasis on a melting fragility where the negative space carries the composition. The gesture is thus nearer to ending than becoming, and the whole picture is close to reducing the grandest of paintings, the pompous and megalomaniacal subject to a jest of Shakespearean proportion: the fool astride a donkey.
Francis shows that we are but actors on a stage desperately seeking significance in the gesture of a pointed finger. This wonderful painting speaks to all men of all ages about the fragility of human flesh and the ridiculous nature of all actions.
http://www.artaustralia.com/article.asp?issue_id=216&article_id=442http://www.artaustralia.com/newsviews.asp?news_id=105
http://www.artaustralia.com/contents.asp?issue_id=216
Arts Project Australia - Feb eNews 06/02/13
http://artsproject.etools.com.au/February2013.html
Patrick Francis’ wonderful work is currently on display in Art & Australia collection 2003-2013 at Newcastle Art Gallery till 17 Feb 2013. The exhibition will tour nationally in 2013-2014.
Patrick Francis - Ned Kelly 2011, acrylic on paper, 50 x 50 cm
Exhibition Touring nationally in 2013 – 2014
New South Wales : Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre
15 December 2013 – 27 January 2014
Dubbo Regional Gallery : 8 March – 4 May 2014
Victoria, Gippsland Art Gallery : 17 May – 13 July 2014
Art Gallery of Ballarat : 16 August – 28 September 2014
Queensland, Ipswich Art Gallery : 1 November – 21 December 2014
http://artsproject.etools.com.au/February2013.html
Patrick Francis’ wonderful work is currently on display in Art & Australia collection 2003-2013 at Newcastle Art Gallery till 17 Feb 2013. The exhibition will tour nationally in 2013-2014.
Patrick Francis - Ned Kelly 2011, acrylic on paper, 50 x 50 cm
Exhibition Touring nationally in 2013 – 2014
New South Wales : Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre
15 December 2013 – 27 January 2014
Dubbo Regional Gallery : 8 March – 4 May 2014
Victoria, Gippsland Art Gallery : 17 May – 13 July 2014
Art Gallery of Ballarat : 16 August – 28 September 2014
Queensland, Ipswich Art Gallery : 1 November – 21 December 2014
See books for sale at :
|
See artwork for sale at :
|