'Imants Tillers: The Mosman Years' has been reviewed by John McDonald in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Imants Tillers: The Mosman Years looks at the works produced from 1981-89, when the artist and his family lived on Sydney's North Shore. Tillers started to experiment with small, store-bought canvas boards that could be laid side-by-side, like tiles, to create wall-sized compositions.
The survey exhibition continues until Sunday 4 Feb at Mosman Art Gallery
Photo: Jacquie Manning
Today marks the opening of 'IMANTS TILLERS: THE MOSMAN YEARS' curated by Kelly McDonald at the Mosman Art Gallery in Sydney.
The exhibition explores the pivotal moment in the 1980s when Tillers began creating large-scale canvasboard paintings while living in a small Federation duplex in Mosman. IMANTS TILLERS: THE MOSMAN YEARS features 25 works from the last four decades, and will include the first canvasboard work Tillers ever created in 1981.
Imants Tillers, View, 1989, oilstick, gouache, synthetic polymer paint on 72 canvasboards, nos. 21007–21078 228.6 x 304.8 cm Private collection
Congratulations to Imants Tillers who has been awarded the University of Sydney's 2023 Alumni Award for Cultural Contribution. Awarded to alumni who have achieved excellence in the arts, culture or creative sectors, it recognises those whose efforts have promoted the understanding and values of cultural diversity.
Though he was studying architecture, Tillers was drawn to the arts and the culture around the newly-formed Tin Sheds galleries. The style he developed in this period has made him one of Australia's most recognisable post-modern artists.
Tillers recent exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery ‘After De Chirico’ explored a relationship which transcends the usual definitions of homage and influence. Maintaining an intimacy with the work of Giorgio de Chirico over five decades, Tillers interest in de Chirico is spurred on not only by the early so-called ‘metaphysical’ paintings that made him legendary amongst the early Surrealist artists, but also the once-controversial, much reviled ‘late’ paintings.
IMANTS TILLERS’ selected essays ‘Credo’ is reviewed by Brooke Boland in the newest issue of ARTIST PROFILE:
‘The recycling, mosaic-like, pieced together nature of Tillers’s practice is similar to the pieced together feeling of his new collection of essays, ‘Credo’, 2023, published by Giramondo Publishing. “Everything exists to end up in a book,” he quotes the French poet Mallarme in this essay “Journey to Nowhere,” 2018. Tillers’s various essays and contributions to journals including Art & Text, Art and Australia, and Heat, among others, art no exception.” – Brooke Boland on ‘Credo’ in Artists Profile
Pick up a copy of Credo when visiting Tillers’ new exhibition AFTER DE CHIRICO at ARC ONE Gallery.
SPECIAL CINEMA EVENT
Please join Art Atlas for an exclusive screening of the feature-length documentary 'Thrown into the World', directed by Antra Cilinska of Juris Podnieks Studio , which offers unique insight into Tilers’ creative proces and cross-cultural identity.
See the documentary at Kino Cinemas in the CBD, before heading across to ARC ONE to view Tillers' current exhibition 'After de Chirico'. Bookings essential (see below for details)
DATE: Wednesday 31st May
TIME: 10am for a 10.30am start
VENUE: Kino Cinema , 45 Collins St, Melbourne BOOKING: Places are strictly limited. Please book via this link to reserve your ticket: htps:/www.trybooking.com/CIFUU
OPENING THIS AFTERNOON
IMANTS TILLERS: AFTER DE CHIRICO opens at ARC ONE Gallery today, Saturday 27 May, 3-5pm.
In a relationship that transcends the usual definitions of homage and influence, Imants Tillers has maintained an intimacy with the work of Giorgio de Chirico over five decades.
Please join us for an artists talk with Ian McLean and Clare Fuery-Jones on Tillers, de Chirico and the nature of influence and homage in his work.
Imants Tillers has a fascinating work comprised of 189 Polaroid images that is now on display at 'Photography and the Performative' exhibition at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney curated by Katrina Liberiou.
'If I close my eyes' (2021) is a conceptual work comprises Polaroids made between 1980 and 1982. Tillers documented those he encountered, asking his sitters to close their eyes. Interspersed with these portraits are landscape scenes depicting the view from his flat overlooking Sirius Cove.
IMANTS TILLERS, [details from:] If I close my eyes, 2021, 189 Polaroids 1980–1982, nos. 112966–113161, 10.7 x 8.9 cm (each); 75 x 239 cm (overall). Collection: University of Sydney
BENDIGO WRITERS FESTIVAL
Today and tomorrow (5-6 May 2023), IMANTS TILLERS is speaking at two events at the Bendigo Writers Festival.
Catch Tillers with art historian Ian McLean on the topic of 'Art and Influence', today at 1PM.
Tomorrow at 3PM, Tillers will join botanist Tim Entwisle and festival director Rosemary Sorensen as they discuss the significance of 'Influence and Inspiration' in their careers.
Imants Tillers' ‘Credo’ was reviewed by Sasha Grishin in The Canberra Times and Miriam Cosic in The Saturday Paper last Sat 18 Feb.
NEW RELEASE
A collection of Imants Tillers' writing, 'Credo: Selected Essays', has just been published by Giramondo Press:
"These essays express an aesthetic credo which has larger implications for both literature and art created out of the experience of migration . . . What he calls ‘the revolt of the margins’ is evident in the provocative nature of his writing too, in its wit and irony and intelligence."
Perfect Christmas gift for the art lover in your life. Available now in stores and on Giramondo Publishing’s website.
IMANTS TILLERS, Millers Point Morning, 2022, Synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 9 canvas boards.
IMANTS TILLERS painted ‘Millers Point Morning’ (2022) for the exhibition ‘Captivate: 100 Years of the National School’, which is currently on display at NAS Gallery. Imants completed two ‘Summer Schools’ at East Sydney Tech / National Art School when he was 16 and 17 years old. This nine panel painting quotes the work ‘Millers Point, Morning’ 1952 by John Passmore who was an influential painting teacher at ESTC in the late 1950s.
Welcome to ARC ONE at SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY
From today will be showing a selection of major artworks from some of Australia's most significant contemporary practitioners, including PAT BRASSINGTON, LYNDELL BROWN / CHARLES GREEN, PETER DAVERINGTON, MURRAY FREDERICKS, JANET LAURENCE, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, DANI MARTI, JULIE RRAP, IMANTS TILLERS, GUAN WEI, CATHERINE WOO, and JOHN YOUNG. We are also proud to be presenting, for the first time, the work of internationally acclaimed artist DESMOND LAZARO.
Our booth is showcasing brand new artworks, alongside some of the most iconic works from ARC ONE Gallery, in celebration of these artists and their significant contribution to contemporary art in this country.
Four years ago this month 'Imants Tillers: Journey to Nowhere' opened at the Latvian National Museum of Art. Celebrating the outstanding carer of IMANTS TILLERS. The retrospective presented 64 artworks spanning 50 years of practice, with an opening address given by Rupert Myer.
"The images that Imants creates for us are clearly not just for our visual appreciation...They are puzzles to be figured, maps to be decoded. The placement of words and expressions requires a high level of viewer participation. We linger on a phrase. Its position on the canvas matters. Its adjacency with another phrase or a graphic is a clue." - Rupert Myer.
IMANTS TILLERS, Mount Analogue, 1985, oil and synthetic polymer paint, 279 x 571 cm.
IMANTS TILLERS’s momentous, postmodern icon ‘Mount Analogue’ (1985), in The National Gallery of Australia’s new collection display.
Pictured here with its forebear, Eugene von Guérard’s majestic landscape ‘North-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko’ (1863).
Imants Tillers and Kumantye (M.N.) Jagamara, The Call from Papunya, 2018, 202.2 × 283.5 cm. Tate, London
We are thrilled to announce that ‘The Call from Papunya’ (2018) has been acquired by Tate, London. The painting is one of 16 collaborative works completed by Kumantye (M.N.) Jagamara and IMANTS TILLERS over the past two decades. This is the second work by Imants to be acquired, following the acquisition of ‘Kangaroo Blank’ (1988) in 2018, and the first work by Jagamara to be acquired by Tate.
The central element in ‘The Call from Papunya’ is Possum Love Story – a tale of forbidden love which has been told for thousands of years in Jagamara’s Warlpiri tradition. It is one of the five stories depicted in his iconic painting ‘Five Dreamings’ (1984).
Imants has expanded the central image with line-work referencing both the Papunya artist Kenny Williams and the Italian Metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. Fragments of philosophy and poetry have also been incorporated.
The painting’s title refers to Jagamara’s habit of calling Brisbane daily (and occasionally Cooma) on the public telephone at Papunya general store, to chat about his work, enquire about projects, update his needs for shopping or simply to give a weather report.
Congratulations to IMANTS TILLERS who is a finalist in the Wynne Prize 2020! His work Prayer for rain will be on view at the AGNSW from 26 September.
Read Imants’ poignant artist statement below:
“A flower meadow is an unusual subject for an Australian landscape – we are more familiar with the harsh realities of fire, drought and flood. Yet such gentle, quiet and fecund places exist on our continent – notably in the subalpine areas of NSW, Victoria and Tasmania. And indeed proximity to the summer meadows of the Kosciusko National Park was one of the reasons I moved with my family to Cooma, 25 years ago. But here the meadow of daisies is also a metaphor for the self. So we pray: ‘MINE THOU LORD OF LIFE,
SEND MY ROOTS RAIN’.”
Imants Tilers, Prayer for rain, 2020, synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 54 canvas boards, 227 x 212 cm
Art Collector recently visited ARC ONE Director Fran Clark to see what's in our gallery stockroom.
Hear what she has to say about some key works that are currently available here.
“The key thrill of an artwork’s power is if the work makes me ask questions, questions about wanting to know why and what the connections are”, she says, invoking the diverse references in IMANTS TILLERS’ work Stillness Speaks.
Imants Tillers, On the Pathos of the Truth, 2015, acrylic, gouache on 24 canvas boards, No 96513 - 96536, 150 x 142.5 cm
IMANTS TILLERS is featured in the current issue of Vault Art Magazine.
In the article Louise Martin-Chew writes about the artist's cumulative project, the Book of Power, and ARC ONE co-director, Fran Clark, notes that, “Every painting is like a page, all paintings are numbered and part of certain chapters. He goes in and out of these chapters. Everything is connected."
On Tuesday 6 August at 6pm, The University of Melbourne will host the Melbourne premiere of Thrown Into the World, directed by Antra Cilinska.
This feature-length documentary offers unique insight into IMANTS TILLERS’ creative process and cross-cultural identity. The screening will be followed by a half hour discussion with Imants Tillers, chaired by Ian Mclean.
The film will screen at Federation Hall on the university’s Southbank campus. Places are filling up fast, so register your attendance today!
This Sunday 21 July at 4pm, Cinema Nova is screening It All Started With A Stale Sandwich, followed by a Q&A with its director and special guests.
The film is an insightful documentary celebrating the 50-year history of Kaldor Public Art Projects, from acclaimed film-maker Samantha Lang. Imants Tillers is one of the artists featured in the film. In it he reflects on his 1984 group show at P.S.1 Gallery in New York, An Australian Accent, as well as assisting Christo & Jeanne-Claude with their mammoth project wrapping Little Bay in 1969.
