The wayfarer’s touch: Mystery, majesty and the mighty pelican
Tim Storrier is an outlier in Australian art whose work is mysterious and enigmatic … and then there are his pelicans.
Anyone visiting the current Tim Storrier exhibition at Philip Bacon Galleries should be warned. You will fall in love with his pelicans.
There’s the baby sculpture, Emperor of the Abrolhos maquette, in stainless steel. Then there’s the big daddy, also in stainless steel, Emperor of the Abrolhos, along with an edition of 30 prints, Emperor of the Abrolhos.
This new pelican strand of his work is a surprise and, one might say, a delight. Mind you, beyond the pelicans there is his main body of work and that continues and has continued unabated for decades.
At 76, Storrier is still producing some of the most magnificent and mysterious paintings in Australian art. His burning logs in otherworldly landscapes beyond the Black Stump are meticulous and could be metaphysical, but the artist isn’t too keen to explain them away.
This show is called The Approach of Summer, but exactly what he means by that I’m not sure, even after a discussion with him by phone from his stately home at Bowral in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Unless it’s just named because it is spring.
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Meanwhile, our conversation veers into shared interests – poetry, the genius of Barry Humphries ( a close friend of Storrier) and even the works of W. Somerset Maugham. He confesses that his enigmatic wayfarer character, seen as the Speed Dauber and The Dauber (rushing) in this show, could be a character from a Maugham story, dated as that may be.
The character is an everyman … or should that be an everyperson? Storrier is opposed to political correctness and cancel culture, so let’s leave it at everyman.
A version of this character won him the Archibald Prize for The histrionic wayfarer (after Bosch) and people may still be scratching their heads wondering what it means. But as Sasha Grishin, an emeritus professor at Australian National University and a well-regarded chronicler of art notes, people may have to continue scratching their heads.
“Storrier appears to enjoy the sense of enigmatic symbolism where all that is included within a composition seems to be pregnant with meaning, but that meaning is never completely elucidated,” Grishin writes in a catalogue essay accompanying the current Brisbane show.
“After all, an artwork involves its own language and no matter how tantalising the desire to verbalise and explain what we see, some of its power resides in the objects ability to bypass the verbal level and speak directly to the beholder through visual imagery …”
So it is with the works of Storrier … the burning logs against the vast horizons capped by blue skies punctuated by white clouds. There are enigmatic works featuring a deck chair and domestic detritus scattered beyond, the impossibly romantic and awe-inspiring night sky in Over the Night Road, featuring a shooting star or comet cutting through the heavens. All this and some pelicans too.
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He has worked his whole life perfecting masterpieces but the pelican is the first thing I mention, which makes Storrier reflect. “All this and then you do something like a pelican …” His voice trails off.
The Abrolhos in the titles of his pelicans references a group of remote islands off Western Australia, chosen because he was looking for “a pretentious title”.
His pelicans are quite extraordinary and they’re sure to be a big hit. He softens about that as we continue our chat.
“Pelicans are incredible and they have an extraordinary dignity,” Storrier says. “And once they get airborne, they’re very effective aerodynamically. I put the pelican on a suitcase because the bird is about to go off somewhere. You spend 50 years trying to perfect something and all of a sudden …”
Storrier says he is slowing down a bit but he also appears to be at the height of his powers
Pelicans. Go figure. It does demonstrate the fact that Storrier can still surprise and delight us, despite his studied gruffness. His work is so sustained and his mastery of aesthetics so refined and yet there is still a sense of freedom within the discipline of his work. And discipline is the operative word, because his art requires complete dedication in the old master sense. Daily dedication, year in year out, producing works of such detail and beauty.
Storrier says he is slowing down a bit but he also appears to be at the height of his powers. He was something of a wunderkind as a youngster, winning the Sulman Prize at the age of 19 and following that with a lifetime of utter dedication to his art. He has won more prizes along the way including, two years after his Archibald win in 2012, the Packing Room Prize for his depiction of his friend Barry Humphries alter ego Sir Les Patterson. What a scream that was, a work of satirical genius that went against the grain of what is acceptable in Australian art.
Storrier doesn’t worry about things like that, though. He is possibly out of step with mainstream art and he intends to continue marching to the tune of his own drum. Possibly flanked by a phalanx of pelicans.
Meanwhile, downstairs at the gallery you can enjoy an equally aesthetic experience with the work of Peter Boggs – timeless, still interiors.
In a little accompanying essay, Paolo Bolpagni writes that Boggs is “a painter of silence” in the vein of Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi. In the frenzy of today’s world, the interiors of Peter Boggs are “an antidote to the search for authenticity and the poetry hidden in small things, in the quotidian, in the fragments of the ordinary”.
Tim Storrier – The Approach of Summer and Peter Boggs continue on show at Philip Bacon Galleries, Fortitude Valley, until October 11.