JOHN BUCKLEY GALLERY : Gareth Sansom

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New Paintings
20 June - 7 July 2007

Media Release by John Buckley

Sansom and the post-punk intellect by Ashley Crawford

1. Samson Agonistes 2007	2. Academic 2007	3. Boat 2007	4. Bugs 2006	5. Crusoe 2006	6. Divining rod 2006
7. Dr Fu Manchu's Death by Gyro 2007	8. Duckless 2007	9. Fish story (La Chinoise) 2006	10. Head + Landscape 2006	11. Landscape 2006	12. Man's best friend 2007
13. Mask 2006	14. My mother's house 2006	15. Painting 101 2007	16. Parrot head 2007	17. Restraining mask 2007	18. Ship of fools (Hello sailor!) 2007
19. Siren 2006	20. Talisman 2006	21. The end 2007	22. The ring with dancing feet 2006	23. The Seventh Seal 2007	24. Twin peaks, and Santa too 2006
25. Vagina 2007	26. Wired 2006	27. Zen 2007
28. Installation	29. Installation	30. Installation	31. Installation	32. Installation	33. Installation

In Gareth Sansom’s eagerly awaited first major showing since the University of Melbourne’s Potter Museum of Art survey in 2005, he revisits and reinvents some of the themes which have anchored his art for over 45 years – including gender exploration and disguise, juxtapositions of style and art history references – all charged by his signature personal, iconography.

More specifically, in this exhibition, Sansom investigates and plays with the underground, internet-based cult fetish of masking and transformation into rubber dolls via latex body parts; John Milton’s poem Samson Agonistes; Sax Rohmer’s Doctor Fu Manchu; Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (a film Sansom first saw at the old Savoy cinema in 1962 with Robert Jacks and George Baldessin); Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise and the 1494 satirical sighting of ‘Ship of Fools’ in Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff.

In 2006, Sansom moved into a large new studio in Sorrento – the largest he has ever occupied – and many of the paintings in this exhibition have been painted in this new daylight-filled space. This has been somewhat of a revelation to him as much of his past work has been executed at night under artificial light in a cramped inner-city studio. Paradoxically, perhaps, the last four paintings – and the largest works in this exhibition – were painted back in Melbourne, mostly at night, in his original studio.

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In his 68th year, Sansom shows no sign of slowing down and his now widely-acknowledged reputation as one of the most original and exciting painters of his generation continues to grow apace. He is to be included in a major exhibition, Focus on Australian Art to be curated by John Stringer for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in September; he is a finalist in the Arthur Guy Memorial Prize in the Bendigo Art Gallery in June and he will also participate in Eye to I at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery in August. Major works have recently been acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery.

This will be Sansom’s seventh exhibition with John Buckley since 2000.

John Buckley
2007