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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  04 Apr 2023 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  24
• Lot Description:
  Garry Shead
  (born 1942)
  The Queen of Spades, 1995
  oil on board
  74.0 x 89.0cm (29 1/8 x 35 1/16in).
  titled, signed and dated lower right: 'Queen of Spades Shead 95'
• Provenance:
  Solander Gallery, Canberra; Private collection Sydney
• Notes:
  Executed between 1995 and 1998, Garry Shead's, Royal Suite, presents images of Queen Elizabeth II's 1954 visit to Australia with nostalgic fondness and simultaneous modern criticism. The Queen visited Australia when Shead was twelve years old. During this time there were strong sentiments of nationalism, with an estimated seventy percent of the population going to see Her Majesty on the two-month tour. Importantly, the memory stayed in the artist's young memory. As he recalls, "I remember seeing her and feeling the eye contact as she passed. I also remember dreaming about her (sometimes sexual dreams)...There was something unearthly and untouchable in her beauty.... She passed like an incarnate spirit'.1 In Queen of Spades, 1995 Shead paints the protagonist of his childhood memories and dreams, voluptuous and ethereal in her semi sheer white gown, and regal with her gloves, sash and crown. However, despite the trappings of her royal office, she appears overcome, barely able to hold onto the shovel, propped up by the King, fixing her crown. Her dishevelled state suggests her struggle in the Australian desert. Shead's use of contrasting colour and brush stroke also brings the Monarch out of his memory and into the criticism of the late nineties. Her fair skin and white gown starkly contrast against the deep oranges of the desert and blues of the sky, alluding to an estrangement to the sunburnt country. The fluctuations between romanticism and disconnectedness refer to a shift in time and subsequent power dynamics for both the artist himself and Australia more broadly. Whilst the work and the series may be interpreted as part of the republican discourse, its post-colonial critique of British occupation, and reconciliation with our Indigenous people, it also expresses Australians "yearning to believe in myths and fairy tales".2. As Sasha Grishin states the works in the Royal Suite can be "interpreted as a historical recreation of a royal visit in 1954 as seen through the distorting mirrors of memory and the eyes of a young boy...they can also be interpreted as an allegory, an expression of a naïve belief in a white goddess...perhaps on the simplest level, the series is about a quest for beauty and a lost innocence, a quest for a new holy grail."3. Azura Nichols. 1. Garry Shead, taped interview with the author, Canberra, 16 March 1996, cited in S. Grishin, Garry Shead - Encounters with Royalty, Craftsman House, Sydney 1998, p. 28; 2. Sasha Grishin, 'Garry Shead: Gentle Lyricsim', Art Collector, issue 40 Apr-Jun, 2007; 3. Sasha Grishin, , Garry Shead - Encounters with Royalty, Craftsman House, Sydney 1998, p. 27
• Estimate:
  A$40,000 - 60,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.