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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  06 Jun 2017 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  14
• Lot Description:
  Tim Storrier
  (born 1949)
  Will (Arm), 1984
  acrylic and rope on canvas
  180 x 305 cm
  titled, signed and dated lower right: WILL (Will/ Arm) / Storrier / 10 12 84
• Provenance:
  Australian & European Pictures, Goodmans Auctioneers, Sydney, 13 May 2002, lot 141; Christopher Day Fine Art, Sydney; Private collection, Sydney (purchased from the above, June 2002)
• Exhibited:
  Ticket to Egypt, 1985: Tim Storrier, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, January to February 1986, cat. not. 7
• References:
  Christopher Leonard and Linda van Nunen, Ticket to Egypt, 1985: Tim Storrier, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1986, (unpaginated), (incorrectly catalogued as 180 x 350 cm); Catherine Lumby, Tim Storrier: the art of the outsider, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2000, p. 51, illustrated pp. 106-7; Jenny Zimmer and Ken McGregor, Tim Storrier: moments, in response to memories and ideas of mortality, Macmillan Art Publishing, 2009, p. 307 (illustrated), (incorrectly catalogued as 180 x 350 cm)
• Notes:
  It would be difficult to identify a nation more pre-occupied with fire than Australia. The pre-settler Indigenous population used controlled, cool burns, to temper the wild bush, as or as a tool to smoke-out kangaroos taking refuge in the thick bush. This hunting strategy is best illustrated in Jospeh Lycett’s watercolour, Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt for Kangaroos, c. 1820 (National Library of Australia, Canberra). The visual history of uncontrolled bushfires in Australia, from early settler days to contemporary artists, was put on a display in a recent exhibition at Tarrawarra Museum and Art Gallery. Conspicuously absent from the show was the work of Tim Storrier. Though when we view the work of Storrier, we quickly realise that his fascination, and resulting body oeuvre, focuses more on the nature of fire as a metaphorical device, its transformative power and the symbolic ritual of the element, than how it unfolds naturally in the environment. In this sense, there is perhaps no other artist who has investigated the physical and metaphysical essence of burning imagery than Tim Storrier. In 1983, just a year before the present work was painted, Storrier had his first one-man show in London, with Fischer Fine Art. It was a sell-out. The critics also received the show as a triumphant success. Bryan Robertson, in his introduction to the London catalogue, noted how, ‘his assemblages record the ghost of work and endeavour and the touching fragility of a man’s belongings that accompany him into remote stretches of land and sustain him in his efforts to decipher its mysteries’. They ‘harmoniously reflect or echo’, he continued, ‘in odd ways the working material, old rags and implements of the artist.’1 In May 1984, Sir Garrick Agnew OBE, then Chairman of the Australian Bank, commissioned Storrier to undertake a year-long project to produce some twenty-seven works. It was this body of work that saw the genesis of the burning arm motif, also commonly titled as Will – a leitmotif that would persevere in his oeuvre for over a decade. Many have commented on the nature of this burning limb and hypothesised its meaning. Christopher Leonard, who accompanied Storrier on his 1984 trip to Egypt, saw the present work to ‘represent movement and at the same time the collapse of power.’2 Five years on, Janet Hawley, saw the smouldering arm as ‘symbolising Storrier’s personal pyre of an old torrid love, anger, hurts, resentments, and old lifestyle habits.’3 Ashley Crawford sees the blazing fists as ‘no more than props necessary to allow the vivisector a subject upon which to create a palimpsest of ideas and emotions.’4 Storrier would probably not argue against any of those readings, or any other interpretations viewers draw from his imagery. A painting of a burning arm may not be immediately thought of as an attractive image to create, but this is precisely the challenge he continuously places upon himself. ‘That’s the problem an artist has’, he says, ‘making an appalling subject palatable. How many crucifixions have been painted that look absolutely beautiful, yet it is the cruellest acts a man can do.’5 In Storrier’s hands, the burning arm is a beautiful meeting between flesh and fire, life and death – made exquisitely beautiful. Petrit Abazi 1 Bryan Robertson, Tim Storrier, Fischer Fine Art Limited, London, 1983, (un-paginated); 2 Christopher Leonard and Linda van Nunen, Ticket to Egypt, 1985: Tim Storrier, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1986, (unpaginated),; 3 Janet Hawley, ‘Playing with fire: Tim Storrier in the flesh, Good Weekend (The Age), 24 June 1989, p. 14; 4 Ashley Crawford, Line of Fire: works on paper by Tim Storrier, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2003, p. 83; 5 Tim Storrier, cited in Janet Hawley, ‘Playing with fire: Tim Storrier in the flesh, Good Weekend (The Age), 24 June 1989, p. 18
• Estimate:
  A$100,000 - 150,000
• 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.