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• Auction House:
  Deutscher and Hackett
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian and International Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Aug 2012 ~ 7pm
• Lot #:
  16
• Lot Description:
  Rick Amor
  (born 1948)
  Visitor By The Southern Seas, 2000
  oil on linen
  97.0 x 130.0 cm
  signed and dated lower right: RICK AMOR ‘00; titled and dated verso: VISITOR BY THE / SOUTHERN SEAS / AUG 00 / SEP
• Provenance:
  Niagara Galleries, Melbourne; Wesfarmers Art Collection, Perth (label attached verso)
• Exhibited:
  Rick Amor, The Holmes à Court Gallery, Perth, 30 August – 9 September 2001
• Notes:
  The sea has been an integral force in the paintings of Rick Amor since the 1980s when it began to emerge as both a metaphor for man’s insignificance in the face of nature and as conduit of childhood memory and the past. The monumental The Rock and the Sea (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) painted in 1990 began his series of works which feature the solitary figure on a pier or by the sea engulfed by a colossal looming rock form before them. Amor was drawn again to the subject in the early 90s with The Wave 1999 (private collection) and The Visitor 1999 (private collection). In the Wesfarmers example, Visitor by the Southern Seas 2000 the same solitary figure of a man stands in the foreground, blustered by the winds and gazing at the extraordinary rocky outcrop before him as though it is a sacred oracle. Amor explains the significance of the sea in his art in the following terms, ‘My first sensory experiences must have been on the beach. My whole childhood was spent in the sea and playing in the coastal scrub on the foreshore... I dream about this natal littoral constantly and regard my artistic breakthrough in the eighties as having been inspired by the memories and fear of the sea... I dream about my childhood in the dark tonality of my painting. The sky is always lowering into the sea, the beach is deserted and something awful has happened or is about to happen.’1 Certainly a sense of foreboding resides Amor’s landscapes, particularly in the paintings of the sea. He creates untold drama through the ethereal depiction of weather and atmospheric conditions in the approach of dark clouds or churning seas. As Gavin Fry points out, ‘Amor’s compositions are both cinematic and theatrical; artificial, created worlds into which we are invited, never quite knowing what it is we are about to share.’2 1. Amor quoted in Fry, G., Rick Amor, The Beagle Press, Melbourne, 2008, p. 130 2. Fry, op. cit., p. 99 LARA NICHOLLS
• 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.