John Brack, The Battle, 1981-83National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
(Source)
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There is currently an excellent John Brack retrospective on at the National Gallery of Victoria Australia which I saw a few weekends ago. The Brack paintings most people (myself included) would be familiar with would be his images of 1950s Melbourne - sullen-faced drone-like workers trudging along the street in Collins St. 5pm or the ironic domestic take of The New House. My favourite picture of the entire exhibition was The Playground which was an eagle-eyed veiw of a school yard, showing the different games and cliques that occur in primary school using stick-like child figures. I found it amazing the way Brack managed to convey the sight, sounds, and feelings within the scene - it was as if I could hear the skipping chants and the screams and see who were best friends and who were the outcasts.
Anyway, I was not able to find The Playground online so I instead chose this later work, The Battle. Brack's later works substituted pens and dolls for people, and this painting accurately represents the Battle of Waterloo as conducted by different coloured pencils and pens. The blue French troops attack the red English while the brown Prussians attack on the flank. Looking at it from up close, it is quite interesting to see the meticulous depiction of military actions as carried out by inanimate objects. Seeing the fallen pencils as troops while the battle rages on over them, the chaos where the troop parties meet...it's incredible!
If you're in Melbourne anytime before August or Adelaide between October and January, I highly recommend going to see the exhibition.
Anyway, I was not able to find The Playground online so I instead chose this later work, The Battle. Brack's later works substituted pens and dolls for people, and this painting accurately represents the Battle of Waterloo as conducted by different coloured pencils and pens. The blue French troops attack the red English while the brown Prussians attack on the flank. Looking at it from up close, it is quite interesting to see the meticulous depiction of military actions as carried out by inanimate objects. Seeing the fallen pencils as troops while the battle rages on over them, the chaos where the troop parties meet...it's incredible!
If you're in Melbourne anytime before August or Adelaide between October and January, I highly recommend going to see the exhibition.
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