GARETH SANSOM
Jekyll and Ply
14 April – 13 May 2023

STATION | MELBOURNE

Gareth Sansom is one of Australia’s most highly regarded painters; a leading figure of the Australian twentieth-century avant-garde, and has been showing regularly since the 1950s. Typical of Sansom’s oeuvre, the works in Jekyll and Ply swell with energy and humour and resist definition.

Much like the literary figures Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, there is a noticeable contrast between Sansom’s paintings and plywood works. In his oil paintings he experiments with techniques carefully honed over 60 years of practice, while the plywood works incorporate collage, photographic material, pen and found items, to explore sexuality, religion and death. Elements of the expansive works on linen are restrained, ordered and mathematical: we see neat squares and fields of flat colour inclined on architectural lines, while in his works on plywood we witness Sansom’s artistic defiance and his estrangement with social expectations. Rich texture, bold colour, fragments of text and shocking images are collaged in similarly geometric patterns, all with the central theme of questioning what it is to be human.

Sansom’s interest in popular culture, cinematic and art history, fetishism and music permeate the works. This body of work is an unfiltered hymn to Sansom’s love of montage, beautiful mark-marking and surprising colouration, adding to his already staggering oeuvre.

 

Installation Views

Artworks

Gareth Sansom
Looking for GOD in abstract art 2022
oil and enamel on linen
183.0 × 244.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
The Scream 2022
oil and enamel on linen
183.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
Clown 2 2022
oil enamel acrylic and wood on linen
183.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
Abstract painting with figure with stick 2022
oiled enamel on linen
152.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
Talisman 2022
oil and enamel on linen
122.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
THE 2022
oil and enamel on linen
122.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
The Rains of Ranchipur 2022
oil and enamel on linen
152.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
H G Wells' War of the Worlds 2022
oil and enamel on linen
122.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
5 yellow rectangles 2022
oil and enamel on linen
122.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
Abstraction 2022
oil and enamel on linen
152.0 × 122.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
As you like it 2022
mixed media on plywood
80.0 × 60.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
DADA 2022
mixed media on plywood
80.0 × 60.0 cm

Gareth Sansom
Clown 2022
mixed media on plywood
80.0 × 60.0 cm