bevan honey

gone to dot

2 February - 10 March 2018

ARTIST TALK:
3pm SATURDAY 3 FEBRUARY

 

It is with great pleasure that we present an exhibition of new work by significant local artist, Bevan Honey.

For the last 30 years Bevan Honey's art practice has covered various traditional aspects of art making, from two dimensional painting and printmaking to sculptural forms. However his materials have often challenged the norm, with the resulting artworks hard to classify. In the past he has utilised found objects, automotive paint, and architectural wood veneer. He describes the large-scale works in this exhibition as 'drawings', but he uses paint on unstretched canvas pinned to the wall, which gives the resulting works an uncertain edge, are they drawings or paintings? There is an ongoing tension between his ideas and how to express them as objects, whilst quietly refusing to submit to the norm of traditional art presentation.

Thematically, he has chosen to utilise his immediate environment; the social and political climate of Perth, and his interests; and in doing so has possibly inadvertently described what it is to live in Western Australia, to be a male in this Western society with its obsession with cars, sheds and houses; to be a suburban dweller, and to be an artist with these experiences - rebelling against the mundane lack of creativity in our house and land packages, yet part of it. Suburban architecture, car wrecks, car panels, and burnouts have all been referenced by Honey in the past. Both powerful and banal, these repetitious iconic subjects build an abstract concept of a local identity.

But to say that was all his work was about would be simplistic. His exploration of the 'line', its potential, its importance in art, in architecture, in building, drawing, and how you can physically create lines, has also been an ongoing thread in his art practice. Indeed, in many ways his art practice revolves around drawing and the 'line'. [Here I'm indebted to Philip Goldswain's essay, "Spatialising the Line: The Architecture of Bevan Honey", Gracious Living PICA exhibition catalogue, 2010]. Honey also has the ability to reveal the 'residual' aspirations, or former potential, of aging urban objects.

In this exhibition of new drawings he continues these explorations, looking at what we value, how this changes over time, and how to express it. The large-scale drawings in Gone to dot depict objects that are loosely connected by urban notions of leisure and luxury. A surf lifesaving watchtower, a snow-making machine, a public amenity block at Rottnest Island, a caravan and a modernist house in Canberra hang dripping in the centre of large canvases. Here again, Honey's infatuation with the line is evident in the illustrative properties that the artworks possess. Yet the dripping run lines of paint pulls the viewer's attention back to the materiality of the process. The literal passing of time during the creative process, along with referencing objects from the past, imbued with nostalgia, are skilfully combined in these drawings.

The title of the exhibition, Gone to dot, implicates these objects as now having a trading value worth zero. Honey notes that, "These are objects associated with leisure and humble indulgences; they are not grandiose but in some ways they are symbolic of luxury. The objects have been extracted from their representative context or environment, and instead are anchored only by the process of their construction as images. Correspondingly each object bears evidence of its use, and a consequential depreciation or revaluation through its consumption."

Bevan Honey's work is held in numerous state and national collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank, various Council, City, University and Hospital collections as well as private collections nationally and internationally. His public art commissions include the upcoming Scarborough Beach Entry Statement.

 

bevan honey artwork
viscount
graphite, oil on primed canvas
164 x 210cm
2017
$8,800 sold
bevan honey artwork
civic
graphite, oil, acrylic on primed canvas
195 x 209cm
2017
$8,800
trevor richards artwork
SPF
graphite, oil, conte on primed canvas
195 x 209cm
2017
$8,800
bevan honey artwork
gents [rotto]
graphite + oil on primed canvas
170 x 209cm
2017
$8,800
trevor richards artwork
triumph
graphite, oil on primed canvas
178 x 210cm
2017
$8,800
bevan honey artwork
kingman
graphite, oil, litho crayon on primed canvas
200 x 210cm
2018
$8,800 sold
trevor richards artwork
CEO
graphite, litho crayon on primed canvas
187 x 210cm
2018
$8,800
bevan honey artwork
blower
graphite, oil, litho crayon on primed canvas
181 x 210cm
2018
$8,800