BIO
Memento. Murray Walkers Academy of the Found Object
Sir John Soanes Museum in Lincolns Inn Fields, London WC2, is a favourite destination for Murray Walker on his frequent travels overseas. Built in the period 1808-24 and by an Act of Parliament bequeathed to the British nation on Soanes death in 1837 the museum is a treasury of books, classical antiques (both intact and in fragments) and works of art arranged in mind boggling quantity and beauty as it was in Soanes lifetime when it was an Academy of Architecture a place of study for Soanes Royal Academy students.
Hopetoun Place, Fitzroy North, Walkers studio is an Academy of the Found Object, reminiscent of Soanes Museum in its diversity of fascinating exhibits. Walkers collections are a work-in-progress devolving from common found objects which have passed their use-by date, having been flattened, ripped, sawn or otherwise mutilated and cast off - to most eyes of seeming little value to anyone except an artist with Walkers maverick eye.
Painter, sculptor, printmaker, curator*, cultural anthropologist, Murray Walker has been making art from contemporary material culture since his groundbreaking exhibition of nineteenth century Australian material culture held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1978, Colonial crafts of Victoria. Early settlement to 1921. Following a tour of New South Wales in 1980 researching for his book called Making Do, it struck him on meeting and talking to people who had hard working lives that they made do with simple possessions. He realised that honest materials could be made into art. Since this revelation, he has been as Jenny Zimmer so aptly put it, the Rag and Bone Man of Australian art. True to form the last time the artist knocked at my door he was carrying a rough piece of plywood dabbed with glue. He pointed out the figure in the landscape formed by the glue marks. An inveterate collector, he can be found out in the fields, in the bush, on the beach or walking the city streets picking up what he recognises as his primary working materials - sticks, bones, stones, bits of stump, fence palings, old slates, cracked and chipped crockery, bent pots and pans, metal handles and unimaginable detritus for his collages and assemblages. Of course he is aware of the great masters of assemblage like Picasso, Schwitters, Ernst, and Dubuffet, who used cardboard, metal, cut and pasted news cuttings and photographs for wall pieces, but also made castings in bronze directly from found materials for sculpture. Although there is a superficial similarity to the work of these artists, Murray Walker uses his found objects in a more direct and honest way. He says that probably half his output comprises elements that are used in their original form as found (kitchenalia is a particular favourite). His recent wood works from the walls and floor of the studio of heads and figures however are graced by oil paint in pink, blue, yellow, black and red, especially irregular flat oval shaped fragments which are ideal for his series of Faces in the street or elongated strips of paling fence which are preferred for totemic ancestral imagery reminiscent of an East Sepik Haus Tambaran from Papua New Guinea.
Like Sir John Soanes brilliant illusionism in the way he created the lighting of his collection using natural light, oil burners and candles, way before the invention of electricity, Murray Walkers brilliance lies in creating a sense of illusionism in his art, the way a found object, a memento, becomes something else, transformed by the artists eye and hand. As he told the late Gary Catalano in 1997, I want to create something from my own experience, which for me is Australia. Im very much a person who works from observation and experience, from what I sense and feel whether its rural life and bushwalking or cafes and dives. Im not a person who seizes style from a book.
Memento is the seventh selection of work derived from the found object since 1983. It follows Anthropaedia. A survey exhibition 1993-95 (Meridian Gallery 1995) and The river, the port, the journey (ACCA 1990) objects found at the Port of Melbourne. Also included is Walkers summation of fifty years of painting, the monumental oil Entry of Christ into Golgotha 2001, last exhibited in Pilgrims progress part 2 (William Mora Galleries 2001). The artist sees this work as a variation on James Ensors The Entry of Christ into Brussels 1888 and which Sasha Grishin interprets as a cross section of humankind shown clad in masks to reveal its true identity. Ensors The Entry of Christ into Brussels was kept by the artist until his death in 1949. There the similarity ends. Entry of Christ into Golgotha has remained on Walkers studio walls, an inspiration for work which follows. Now in his maturity and continuing to seek new ways of creativity he reflected to Gary Catalano in 1997: I never really wanted to grow up. Ive always been something of a Peter Pan, but in the last ten years Ive found that Ive had to grow up. I found that the world of adults isnt as harsh as I thought it to be. I have had a lot of enjoyment of everything these days.
Warwick Reeder
June 2008
*Note
In 1983-84, the artist was commissioned as guest curator by the Museum of Victoria for The Great Exhibition of Victoria celebrating 150 years of settlement in Victoria. The exhibition consisted of collectibles, ephemera and live performances. Some 10,000 items of memorabilia was loaned by members of the Victorian public.
Further reading
Lesley van der Sluys, Anthropaedia, in Murray Walker. Anthropaedia. A survey exhibition 1983-95, Meridian Gallery 15 March - 7 April 1995
Sara Kelly, The river, the port, the journey, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 13 July-12 August 1990
Gary Catalano, Building a picture. Interviews with Australian artists, McGraw-Hill, Sydney, 1997
Betty Churcher, Part shaman, part bricoleur in Murray Walker: a survey, paintings, works on paper, decorated ceramics, assemblages, University Gallery, University of Melbourne, Parkville, 1983 (Exhibition held 15 September-28 October 1983)
Murray Walker, Colonial crafts of Victoria. Early settlement to 1921, Crafts Council of Victoria, Melbourne, 1978
Collections
Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, USA
The Guidhall, London, UK
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Philip Morris Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Lending Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
South Australian Art Gallery, Adelaide
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart
Artbank, Sydney
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Australian National University, Canberra
University of Melbourne, Melbourne
Institute of Education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
Monash University, Melbourne
University of Tasmania, Hobart
University of Western Australia, Perth
Macquarie University Union, Sydney
Griffith University, Brisbane
Queensland University of Technology Museum, Brisbane
Torrens College of Advanced Education, Adelaide
Curtin University of Technology, Perth
Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne
Queensland College of Art, Brisbane
North Brisbane College of Advanced Education, Brisbane
Kelvin Grove College of Advanced Education, Brisbane
Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne
Ivanhoe Grammar School, Melbourne
La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
Ararat Regional Gallery, Victoria
The Gary Catalano Collection, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Victoria
Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria
Warnambool Art Gallery, Victoria
Shepparton Art Gallery, Victoria
McClelland Gallery, Victoria
La Trobe Regional Gallery, Victoria
Selected Bibliography
Roger Butler, Printed Images, Images by Australian artists 1885-1955, National Gallery of Australia , Canberra 2007
Sue Walkers, Artists Tapestries From Australia 1976-2005, the Beagle Press SydneyPilgrims Progress Part 2, ex cat, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, 2001 (with writing by Sasha Grishin and Kelly Gellatly)
Threads of Dissent: Medieval and Contemporary Tapestries, ex cat, Isabella Gardener Museum, Boston, USA, 2000
Catalano, Gary, Building a Picture: Interviews with Australian Artists, McGraw Hill 1997
Grishin, Sasha, Australian Printmaking in the 1990s: Artist Printmakers 1990-1995, Craftsman House, Sydney
Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Artists woven by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, ex cat, Australian Galleries, Sydney 1997
Scarlett, Ken, Sculpture Walk, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, 1996
Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Woven Colour: The Art of Tapestry, ex cat, SIA College of the Arts, Singapore, 1996
Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Synergy: An Exhibition of Contemporary Australian Tapestries, ex cat, touring exhibition, 1996
Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Interweave: Tapestry, A Collaborative Art, ex cat, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 1995
Exhibitions
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2008 Memento, Assemblages Sculpture and Painting, Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne
2005 Light and Dark, the Glen Logie Suite, Monotypes, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne
2003 Works from the studio, Assemblages Sculpture and Painting 1980- Penny School Gallery, Maldon
2001 Pilgrims Progress Part 2, Paintings William Mora Galleries, Melbourne
Street People, Monotypes, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne
2000 Pilgrims Progress, Paintings, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne
1995 Anthropaedia: Assemblage and Sculpture, A survey Exhibition 1983-95, Meridian Gallery, Melbourne
1992 On the Streets and Lanes of Fitzroy and Richmond, Monotypes, Powell Street Graphics, Melbourne
1991 Ebb and flow, Assemblage and Sculpture, Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong
Rituals and Relics- Ancestor Worship, assemblage and sculpture, Powell Street Gallery Melbourne
1990 The River, the Port, The Journey, Collage and Assemblage and Sculpture, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
1987 Collage and Assemblage sculpture, Powell Street Gallery Melbourne
1985 Rubberstamp Monoprints, Powell Street Graphics Melbourne
1984 Collage and Assemblage Sculpture, Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
1983 A Survey 1961-1983, Paintings, Works on Paper, Decorated Ceramics and Assemblage Sculpture, University
Gallery, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
1982 Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
1975 Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane
Abraxas Gallery, Canberra
Pinacotheca , Melbourne
1974 Chapman Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
1973 Desborough Galleries, Perth
Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane
1972 Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
Gallery One-eleven, Brisbane
1971 Gallery One-eleven, Brisbane
Powell street Gallery, Melbourne
1970 Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
1967 Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane
The Australian Sculpture Gallery, Canberra
1966 Leveson Gallery, Melbourne
1962 Argus Gallery, Melbourne
TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
1989-90 The Collage Show (with John Peart), Powell Street Graphics, Melbourne, then touring to Shepparton, Geelong and
McClelland Art Galleries
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2008 Social Realism, Adam Galleries, Melbourne
2007 The Convent Garden Big Draw London, UK.
Australian Collage and Assemblage. John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne
Australian Drawing (Part Two). John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne
Recent Acquisitions: Charles Sturt University Art Collection
2006 Grampians Bush Fire Journey, Mark Schaller, Murray Walker, Peter Walsh. Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham, Wagga Wagga, NSW
Prologue to Fireworks - (After the Wildfires in the Grampians (Gariwerd). Recent work by Mark Schaller, Murray Walker and Peter Walsh. Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat.
Beasties- A print portfolio exchange featuring the prints of 23 contemporary Australian artists. Port Jackson Press Print Room, Melbourne.
2006 Contemporary Australian Sculpture, John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne
2005-07 Moist; Australian watercolours, National Gallery of Australia, Travelling exhibition; Canberra, Alice Springs, Townsville, Mornington Peninsular Gallery, Victoria, and Mount Gambier South Australia.
2001 Heidelberg to Heide: Creating an Australian Landscape 1850-1950, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
Five Painters, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne
2000 The Opening Show 2000, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne
New Acqusitions-Part1, Reed Galleries, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
Threads of Dissent: Six Medieval and six Contemporary Tapestries, Isabella Gardner Museum, Boston, USA
Unveiling the QUIT Art collection, inaugural exhibition at the new Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane
Decorated and Sculptural Ceramics, Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong
1999-2000 On The road-The Car in Australian Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
1999 Impressions, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne
1997 Tapestries designed by contemporary Australian and British Artists, woven by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Australian Galleries, Sydney
1996 Woven Colour: the Art of Tapestry, Victorian Tapestry Workshop, SIA College of the Arts, Singapore
Sculpture Walk, Royal Botanical Gardens, Melbourne
Synergy: Australian contemporary Tapestries, Victorian Tapestry
Workshop, New Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, India
1995 The Amcor Paper Awards, Westpac Gallery, Melbourne
The Stuff of Dreams: Masterworks from the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Australian High commission, London
Interweave: Tapestry-A Collaborative Art, Victorian
Tapestry Workshop, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne
1992-3 Dame Edna Regrets She Is Unable To Attend: Humour and Satire in Contemporary Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art at Heide
Melbourne, then touring state and regional galleries throughout Australia
1992 Victorian Tapestry Workshop Exhibition Collection, Chicago International New Art Forms Exposition, Chicago, USA
1991-5 Interpretations: The Woven Language of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop Exhibition Collection, Ian Potter Gallery, University of Melbourne, then touring to Krefeld Textile Museum, Germany; Australian Embassy, Paris.
Contemporary Australian Tapestry, Victorian Tapestry Workshop,
Australian high commission, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur
1991 Monotypes (John Walker, Murray Walker, Jan Senbergs and John Peart), Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
Small Sculptures, Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
Backyards and Beyond-The Australian Backyard, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
1990 The Great Craft Tour, Westpac Gallery, Melbourne, then touring Victorian regional galleries 1990-1993
1989 Prints and Australia: Pre-Settlement to Present, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Free-style: Recent Australian Drawings, National Gallery of Australia, Melbourne
1988-9 Australian Decorative Arts 1788-1988, National Gallery of Victoria, Canberra
1987 Personal Views- Smaller Sculptures, Westpac Gallery, Melbourne
1986 Painters Prints: Mitchelton Print Exhibition, Benalla and Shepparton Regional Galleries, then touring regional galleries in Victoria and NSW
1985 Australian and New Zealand Artists books, Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand
1984 Painters Sculptures, ACCA, Melbourne
1983-4 Australian Decorative Arts: The Past Ten Years, National Gallery of Australia at Melville Hall, Australian National University, Canberra
1983 Figures and Faces Drawn from Life, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne
Inclusion in group shows 1983-1957 available on request