Zappo Head on Republic Tower (1999) [3/M]

Jetprint on vinyl, 7.8 x 6.6 metres
Visible Art Foundation collection, Melbourne

Developed with the artist’s agreement on the basis of Zappo Head 1987 [Bendigo], and displayed, as planned, as part of the Melbourne International Festival in October 1999, after Arkley’s death.

The illuminated eyes added another alien dimension to the stylized head (for further comments, see Carnival 175, and Spray, rev edn.).

Provenance

  • commissioned from the artist, 1999

Exhibited

  • Republic Tower, Melbourne, from 9 Oct.1999

Literature

  • Sunday Age (Melbourne), 10/10/99, with photo by Craig Sillitoe
  • Cilento 1999 (Melbourne Age report)
  • Spray (2001 ed.), 141-2 (inc.ill.: as ‘Zappo’)
  • Carnival 175 and Fig.6.26

Freeway Exit (1999)

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 175 x 135

The Buxton Collection, Melbourne

Like the other paintings in Arkley’s last solo show, at the Karyn Lovegrove Gallery in Los Angeles, this canvas glows with colour, as in the mauve-rose hues of the further columns, and the answering blues of sky and road. Thus it clearly contradicts the notion of Arkley’s late freeways (1994-99) as generally detached, analytical, even ‘cold’ and ‘alienating’ – a view first developed in Spray (1997), p.116, quoting remarks by the artist himself, and subsequently repeated and developed by several commentators. For my own critique of this line of argument, with further examples and references, see Carnival in Suburbia (2006), pp.45-46.

Both the present canvas and Supa Interior (1999), also first shown in Los Angeles in 1999, were acquired for the Buxton Collection in Melbourne in 2001, and both subsequently appeared in the Buxton exhibition at Heide (Nov.2001-Feb.2002). Unfortunately, the reproduction in the 2001 Heide catalogue, p.14, supposedly of this work, actually shows a different, gloomier freeway canvas whose provenance has yet to be verified, and this confusion was compounded in previous versions of the present catalogue. Many thanks to Geoffrey Smith of Smith & Singer for drawing my attention to this error, which is corrected here (revised entry, March 2024).

Provenance

  • P/C USA
  • Gould Galleries (acquired from the above)
  • Buxton Collection, 2001 (acquired from the above)

Exhibited

  • HA Lovegrove LA, 7/99
  • HA Gould 2/00, cat.10
  • Buxton Collection exhibition, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Nov.2001-Feb.2002
  • HA TarraWarra, 2015-16

Literature

  • Crawford, A Person Looks at a Work of Art… [Buxton Collection], Heide, 2001, pp.10-11 and 14 (reproduction: but see comments above)
  • Fitzpatrick & Lynn, Howard Arkley and Friends (2015), pp.140 (reproduction) and 144 (list of works)

The Freeway (1999)

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 150.3 x 366

Collection of Wood Marsh Architecture, Melbourne

Arkley’s culminating freeway, developed expansively from the photos he took a decade earlier.

As argued in Carnival, this glowing canvas – like several earlier examples, beginning with A Freeway Painting (Over Pass) 1994 – gives the lie to the idea of Arkley’s freeways as typically alienated and ‘cold’ (see e.g. Spray 116 and Preston 2002: 201).

In the 2015 TarraWarra exhibition catalogue, which included reproductions of various source images and preparatory drawings from the artist’s archive, Anthony Fitzpatrick developed the idea that this and other late freeway paintings reveal the persistence of formal and thematic concerns stretching back to Arkley’s 1970s work.

Chris McAuliffe, in his catalogue essay for the 2015 TarraWarra show, drew attention to parallels between this painting and German electronic band Kraftwerk’s 1974 song ‘Autobahn’.

Provenance

  • artist’s collection
  • recorded in present collection from c.2000

Exhibited

  • Heide, 12/99-3/00 (‘On the Road’): details as above
  • HA retrospective 2006-7 (shown in Melbourne & Brisbane); as ‘Freeway’, P/C, 205 x 330 cm
  • HA TarraWarra 12/15-2/16 (details as shown above)

Literature

  • Hemispheres [United Airlines magazine], May 1999, pp.66-67 (ill.)
  • Gott 1999 (‘On the Road’ exh.cat.), p.4 (ill.)
  • Crawford 2000 (Arkley obituary in Art & Australia #37.3), 376 (ill.)
  • Carnival 45ff. and Fig.1.31 (showing Arkley at work on this painting)
  • Fitzpatrick & Lynn, Howard Arkley and Friends (2015), pp.22-23 and 138-39 (Anthony Fitzpatrick), and 36 (Chris McAuliffe), as cited above

Photographs of Los Angeles Freeways (1999) [3/M]

Photographs/negatives
State Library Victoria, Howard Arkley archive: MS 14217/8/449-524

These photos, taken by the artist shortly before his death, were apparently intended to serve as source material for future freeway paintings.

They were first discussed (with a reproduction of a typical example) in Gregory 2000. For further comments and reproductions, see Spray (rev.edn), and Carnival, as cited below. In the Arkley show at TarraWarra (Dec.2015-Feb.2016), a sequence of these photographs was exhibited, and the example shown here (SLV MS 14217/8/470) was reproduced in the catalogue.

Gregory (2022) goes into further detail about the hints some of these photographs may contain regarding future freeway compositions planned by Arkley, comparing other working drawings and source material in the artist’s archive.

Provenance

  • artist’s collection
  • Howard Arkley archive (acquired by SLV 2011)

Exhibited

  • HA TarraWarra 12/15-2/16 (a selection of photos)

Literature

  • Gregory 2000:29-30 (illustrating another example)
  • Spray (2001 ed.), pp.144-5 (reproducing two other examples)
  • Carnival 46 and Fig.1.30 (another example)
  • Fitzpatrick & Lynn (2015), pp.22 and 141 (ill.)
  • Gregory, “Mining the Howard Arkley Archive” (2022), pp.19-20, reproducing two other examples

Homezone (1999) [3/M]

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas and wood, and carpet; 210 x 300 x 100 overall

Private collection, Melbourne

A sophisticated reprise of Arkley’s early furniture installations, incorporating an array of the artist’s mature approaches to decoration, including elegant and extensive stencilling and ‘moiré’ patterning.

For extended analysis of this major late work, submitted to the Clemenger Award in April 1999, see Carnival 78-79, and the other  references listed below.

Provenance

  • artist’s collection
  • P/C Melb.

Exhibited

  • Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, MOMA at Heide, 4/99
  • HA retrospective 2006-7 (shown at all 3 venues)
  • HA at Melbourne Art Fair (Kalli Rolfe) 2/24
  • HA 1301SW, Sydney, Feb.-March 2025

Literature

  • Delany & Smith 1999 (Clemenger 1999 exh.cat.), pp.7-8 (editors) and 11 (Jenepher Duncan)
  • Spray (2001 ed.), 139-41 (inc. ill.)
  • Carnival 78-9 and Fig.2.29 (double page colour)

Console (1999) [3/M]

Synthetic polymer paint on wood and canvas, 61 x 100 x 19

Private collection, Melbourne

This variant of the ‘consoles’ shown in ‘Sampling’ (Tolarno 1998) remained in Arkley’s collection at his death. Later, it was exhibited together with the 4th, ‘spare’ canvas made to accompany it.

Provenance

  • artist’s collection
  • P/C Melb.

Exhibited

  • HA Yellamundie, Sydney, 12/23-3/24 (ill.)
  • HA 1301SW, Sydney, Feb.-March 2025

Literature

  • Carnival Fig.2.25

‘Howard Arkley: The Home Show’, Venice Biennale, June-Nov.1999

‘Howard Arkley: The Home Show’ (48th Venice Biennale, Australian Pavilion), 13 June-7 November 1999

[photos: promotional banners on the canal side of the Australian Pavilion; elements of Outside-Inside-Out and Fabricated Rooms as shown in Venice; view of the opening section of the Venice installation, with Mosaic Entrance 1994 to the right [source: archive slides])

This exhibition, Australia’s official presentation at the 1999 Biennale, generated widespread attention, even before Arkley’s sudden death – barely a month after the show opened. All the works included had already been seen previously, although four new panels were added to the original 1997 form of Fabricated Rooms.

In conception and design, the show was the culmination of Arkley’s suburban enterprise, fulfilling a long-standing ambition to transform an entire exhibition into a stylized simulacrum of an Australian suburb – an idea already clearly signalled in his planning notes in 1986.[1]

On the entrance level of Philip Cox’s 1988 Australian pavilion, nine of Arkley’s house exteriors (including six of the ‘Pointillist Suburb’ series of 1994) were arranged to form a ‘Residential Subdivision’.

On the lower level beyond, the viewer was presented with the monumentalised domestic interior imagery of six panels from Outside-Inside-Out, and Fabricated Rooms, now treated expansively on 17 canvases with a total width of almost 20 metres.[2]

During the previous decade, Arkley had appropriated and parodied numerous real estate and home decorating titles and phrases, both in the titles of individual works (‘Superb + Solid’, and so on), and whole shows (notably ‘Mix ’n Match’, 1992). The title of his Venice exhibition (also used again for his 1999 Los Angeles show) may have been an explicit reference to a popular Australian TV series from the early 1990s – also called ‘The Home Show’ – hosted by Maggie Tabberer and Richard Zachariah, a local celebrity couple of the day, and subsequently issued as a book.[3] In their own 1990s version of the type of home decorating advice given in the previous era by Frances Joslin Gold and many others (see now Gold’s Instant Decorator), they provided tips on everything from colour selection to gardening. So, far from simply trading in outmoded paradigms – a simplistic view still held by some analysts of Arkley’s suburban project – he was engaging with an approach widespread in the 1990s, and still today, in lifestyle TV programs, decorator magazines and books.[4] The key issue, as always, remains the tone of Arkley’s approach to this material.

***

The Venice Arkley catalogue includes substantial essays by US/English critic Marco Livingstone, and Tim Morrell, the show’s curator. Livingstone situated Arkley’s art in relation to the work of David Hockney, James Rosenquist and other British and American Pop artists, and also observed that Arkley’s suburban theme, while identifiably Australian, had global resonance. Morrell, curator of Australian art at the Queensland Art Gallery, located Arkley’s work within the wider tradition of Australian culture, including landscape painting.[5] Arkley himself spoke engagingly on these themes in various media interviews conducted in Venice (for details, refer Bibliography under 1999, also including significant mention of Arkley in reviews of the Biennale: e.g. Vetrocq 1999, pp.89-90).

International recognition of his work soared as a result of the show. Some commentators noted familiar parallels (Patrick Caulfield, Roy Lichtenstein, etc.), but many were also impressed by the vivid energy and Antipodean character of the work. By general consensus, the show was one of the highlights of the 1999 Biennale.

Works shown were as follows (in the sequence listed in the catalogue):

Fabricated Rooms (1997-99) (1999 version: 17 panels)

Outside-Inside-Out 1995: 6 panels (dated 1996 in the Venice catalogue)

Light and Bright (1994)

Mosaic Entrance 1994

Indoors-Outdoors 1994

Houseomorphics (1996)

Floriated Residence (1994)

Spray Veneer 1994

Actual Fractual (1994)

Theatrical Facade (1996) [Canberra]

[1] Visual Diary D 17 (1985), quoted and discussed in Carnival 118; the exhibition of the original version of Fabricated Rooms, together with the ‘Sampling’ series, Tolarno 11/98, hints at the final Venice variant.

[2] The exhibition (commissioned for the Australia Council by Ron Radford, later appointed director of the National Gallery of Australia, and designed and managed by Global Art Projects) is given detailed attention in the new chapter added to the revised edition of Spray in 2001 (pp.130-33).

[3] See Maggie Tabberer and Richard Zachariah, The Home Show: a Practical Guide to Creating, Decorating, Maintaining and Changing Your Home – and Loving It! Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1991. This practical guide contains various passages uncannily reminiscent of Arkley’s own aesthetic, for instance in the discussion of ‘eclectic’ patterning as hard to pull off successfully (p.67).

[4] Arkley’s suburban and domestic source material was by no means restricted to 1950s and 60s magazines, as is sometimes suggested; he also owned various 1990s magazines and books on the topic.

[5] See Livingstone & Morrell (1999); Livingstone, who had previously published several major studies of Pop, including Pop Art: a Continuing History, New York: Abrams, 1990, and Allen Jones: Sheer Magic, London: Thames & Hudson, 1979 (both in Arkley’s library), later wrote the entry on Arkley for Grove Art online (2001).

1999

Arkley painting Nick Cave 1999

(photo: Arkley at work on Nick Cave [archive photo taken by Alison Burton])

The final months of Arkley’s life, as various commentators have pointed out, were a blur of activity, marked by major success, and then – just at the height of his international fame – his sudden death from a drug overdose, less than a week after returning from the United States. Wise after the event, one might think his life had spiralled completely out of control, but he had been making detailed plans for future projects while he was overseas, and had good reason to feel fulfilled and optimistic as he approached his 50th year.[1]

Early in 1999, Arkley was working flat out on a series of significant works:

  • the commissioned portrait of musician Nick Cave for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra (the finished work was featured on the cover of the April 1999 issue of Art Monthly Australia)
  • completion of the four new panels to be added to Fabricated Rooms for its Venice installation
  • the set of eight new canvases for his show in Los Angeles in July/August
  • and various other projects, including plans for a large mural version of his Zappo Head for Melbourne’s Republic Tower (subsequently exhibited, as planned, in October 1999).

In April, he submitted a new furniture installation to the 1999 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award (won by John Nixon). Arkley’s piece, Homezone (1999) [3/M], like many of his other late works, possesses both confidence and elegance; the work echoes his earlier furniture pieces, but now with considerably more style and sophistication. As Jenepher Duncan put it, in the essay she wrote for the Clemenger catalogue, Arkley ‘has turned the “kitsch impulse” of his work into a personal creative aesthetic’ – an insightful remark that could serve as a summary of his entire career. [2]

Media coverage gathered momentum ahead of the Biennale. Arkley featured in several profiles, including in-flight magazine articles for Qantas and United Airlines.[3] Arkley and Alison Burton arrived in Venice late in May, ahead of the official opening of the Biennale on 12 June. His show, backed by clever marketing by Global Art Projects, was a significant success, and his work attracted substantial attention: see now separate entry on the exhibition. He threw himself enthusiastically into the heavy schedule of media appearances, which included a notable encounter with British Prime Minister’s wife Cherie Blair, recorded for British TV (see now Wyzenbeek 2000). He also met visiting family members, friends and colleagues in Venice, and enjoyed the experience, apart from the heat.[4]

(photo: Arkley with Alison Burton and Corbett Lyon at the Australian Pavilion, Venice, June 1999 [photo: GAP])

While still in Venice (15 June), Arkley received an email, via the Australian Pavilion, from Leo Schofield, Director of the Sydney Festival planned for January 2000, asking whether he would be willing to participate in a plan to illuminate the Sydney Opera House ‘in a manner similar to that used in your Home Show pictures’. Apparently, Arkley was enthusiastic, and the idea was still being mentioned in the press after his death, although it failed to materialise.[5]

After Venice, Arkley and Burton travelled briefly in Italy, and then went to London, where they met colleague Tony Clark, who recalls Arkley’s excited response to visits to historic houses, and enthusiastic comments on plans he was hatching for future decorative projects (quoted in Spray [2001]:142). The two artists had actually been involved for several years in a collaborative project (unfortunately, unfinished), along similar lines: see now Carnival 140-41. While in London, Arkley also met Nick Cave about a future album cover project (Preston 2002: 226-7), and was photographed in a series by Robert Whitaker: for an example of one of these ‘Whitographs’, see Spray [2001]: 146.

Arkley and Burton then toured Ireland, making a pilgrimage to see the Book of Kells in Dublin, and generally unwinding after the frenetic activity of the previous few months. In England and Ireland, they collected source material, and Arkley continued to plan new works. Among the material he collected in England, for example, was a Sunday newspaper supplement on home improvement, including a diagrammatic representation of a renovated terrace house.[6] In Ireland, he and Burton both collected books on traditional Irish decoration and patterning.

Then it was off to Los Angeles, for the final engagement of the tour – Arkley’s first solo commercial show overseas, at expatriate Australian Karyn Lovegrove’s gallery. The show opened on 9 July, and was both a critical and commercial success: see now exhibition entry. In LA, Arkley and Burton were chauffeured around by younger Australian painter Callum Morton, who recalls with amused affection Arkley’s sorties in search of new freeway source material (see Spray [2001]: 5); cf.Photographs of Los Angeles Freeways (1999) [3/M]. Morton also drove the couple to Nevada, where they were married in a classic kitsch Las Vegas chapel, just before flying back to Australia.

***

On July 19, Arkley and Burton returned to Melbourne, and only three days later Arkley died suddenly in his Oakleigh studio from a heroin overdose. Press coverage was intense, most of it shocked and sympathetic, although some reports tut-tutted about substance abuse, notably Susan McCulloch-Uehlin’s story in the Australian (24-25 July), which appeared only days after Arkley’s death, together with a previously prepared magazine profile on the artist, illustrated with unsympathetic photographs of him looking bleary-eyed, taken during his frantic preparations prior to leaving Australia for Venice.[7]

The artist’s funeral was held at the Monash University chapel on 30 July, under the melancholy gaze of Icon Head (1990). Several significant obituaries were published, in the Melbourne Age (Chris McAuliffe, Ashley Crawford), Bulletin (Ashley Crawford), Artlink (Tim Morrell, who curated the Venice Biennale show), Like (Robyn McKenzie), and, in 2000, Art & Australia (Ashley Crawford again): see Bibliography for details.

During the remainder of the year, Arkley’s works gradually returned from their various overseas venues, and the reality of his death began to set in. In October, as previously arranged, Zappo Head on Republic Tower (1999) [3/M] was exhibited as part of the Visual Arts program for the 1999 Melbourne International Festival. The launch, the first public event involving the artist’s work since the funeral, was a poignant affair for all involved.

At the end of the year, The Freeway (1999) was included in the Heide exhibition ‘On the Road – the Car in Australian Art’ (see Gott & Gellatly 1999). The first stirrings of art market activity also occurred, with several works offered by the major auction houses, notably Spot the Difference (Slow) 1983, sold by Sotheby’s in Melbourne (22-23 Nov.1999), in a portent of what would happen in 2000. This painting had appeared previously at auction with Sotheby’s in 1994, with an estimate of $6-8,000; in 1999, it was estimated at $15-18,000, and sold for $18,000 plus buyer’s premium.

1999 Exhibitions[8]

‘Funk-de-Siecle: out of this century’, MOMA at Heide, 6 Feb.-5 April 1999 (cur.Murray White for 1999 Woolmark Melb.Fashion Festival)

‘The Persistence of Pop’, Monash Uni.Gallery (works from the collection), 22 Feb.-24 April 1999: [9] (works from the Monash collection)

‘John Nixon: Collaborative Works’, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melb., 19 March-30 April

‘The Fabric of Labour’, Victorian Trades Hall 125th anniversary art exhibition & auction, 26 March 1999 [auction on 31 March]

Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, MOMA at Heide, April-May 1999

 

‘Howard Arkley: The Home Show’, Venice Biennale, June-Nov.1999

– refer linked entry for full details

 

‘Howard Arkley: Home Show’, Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles, July- Aug.1999

– refer linked entry for full details

 

‘Howard Arkley: Drive-by Art at Republic Tower’, 299 Queen Street, from 9 October 1999 [installation photos and clippings in Arkley archive]

‘On the Road – the car in Australian art’, MOMA at Heide, 11 Dec.1999-19 March 2000 (curated by Ted Gott & Kelly Gellatly)

[1] For detailed comments on the last phase of Arkley’s life, see Spray (rev.ed., 2001), 130ff. (the new ‘Epilogue’ added to the revised edition of the book); Preston 2002: 217ff.; and Carnival 182ff.
[2] Delany & Smith 1999: 10; for further remarks on Homezone, see the editors’ introduction, pp.7-8.
[3] See Moore 1999 and Steele 1999; this project also involved Sherman Galleries director William Wright, who had arranged to pursue the idea with Arkley after his return from Venice (email correspondence with Amanda Henry, Sherman Galleries, Nov.2008).
[4] For further details, see Spray [2001]:131ff. and Preston 2002: 217ff.
[5] Raymond Gill, Age, 28/7/99
[6] Sunday Times (U.K.), 27 June 1999, pp.7-10 (clipping in Arkley’s files for 1999).
[7] See 1999 bibliography, esp.McCulloch-Uehlin (twice); see also Auty 1999, a short tribute also written for the same issue of the Australian, by the newspaper’s art critic.
[8] There was also a plan for Arkley to exhibit with Sherman Galleries (with whom he had been in discussions about resuming regular exhibitions in Sydney) at Art Chicago, Navy Pier, April-May1999, with Imants Tillers  (see invitation in MUMA files, noted Sept.2002), but this did not eventuate due to HA’s Venice commitments, according to email correspondence with Amanda Henry, Sherman Galleries, Nov.2008.
[9] ‘Persistence of Pop’ reviews (clippings on file unless noted): Jeff Makin, Herald Sun 29/3/99, p.96 (describing Arkley as the ‘bard of the banal’!)