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Lot #29 - Imants Tillers

  • Auction House:
    Mossgreen
  • Sale Name:
    Important Art
  • Sale Date:
    20 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm
  • Lot #:
    29
  • Lot Description:
    Imants Tillers
    (born 1950)
    Monaro Index II, 2000
    acrylic and gouache on sixteen canvasboards
    102 x 142cm
  • References:
    Graham Coulter-Smith, The Postmodern Art of Imants Tillers: appropriation en abyme, 1971-2001, p. 198 (illustrated)
  • Notes:
    ‘From the late 1990s through to 2006 Tillers has been working on his Nature speaks series. Drawing upon a recurring poetic analogy of symbolist poets and artists, the title suggests that nature has its own voice or language. Rather than imposing our will on nature, the idea suggests a dissolution of the self or ego by intuitively responding to a language beyond our own. Echoing the thoughts of Stéphane Mallarmé, the process suggests a negation of the self as well as a corresponding romantic leap of faith into a poetic realm of being. The Nature speaks series comprises over 100 sixteen-panel works. It is like a microcosm of the canvasboard system or, as Graham Coulter-Smith has suggested, like a system within a system, akin to Russian dolls that fit one into the other. Within this subset of the larger pattern there are multiple variations, as well as certain constants. In the series a sense of locality is at times suggested by the web and scatter of text references and place names. In reciprocal patterns or constellations of ideas and images the series evokes the open landscape, fine mists floating high in snowy mountains, the parched cracked earth of the outback moving from afar into the viewer’s consciousness. The series moves from expanse into the realm of the intimate garden, where a transplanted European lily blooms outside the studio window, evoking Philipp Otto Runge. A feeling for nature is there in the luminosity of the work: in warm tonalities of summer and cool hues of wintry days, in the afterglow from intangible rays of the sun, transmuted to the sensuality of paint applied layer upon layer to the canvasboards on the studio table. In Nature speaks we feel the space of the landscape. This awareness of space affects our sense of time. It impacts upon the length of time it takes to travel from place to place; it slows us down and makes more space for reflection. In the series Tillers responds to nature from diverse perspectives. Reflecting on connections with landscape, he could not overlook the power of much contemporary Aboriginal art. While Nature speaks VI 1999 recalls paintings by Emily Kam Ngwarrey, works such as Nature speaks: AD 2002 were the result of collaborations with Michael Jagamara Nelson (discussed in the following chapter). In these works space is seen from above. In contrast to repeated references to the horizon, the alternative inscription appears in a number of works: ‘There is no horizon’.’ Deborah Hart, ‘Nature speaks: when locality prevails’, in Imants Tillers: one world many visions, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2006, p. 69
  • Estimate:
    A$16,000 - 22,000
  • 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.



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