7/29/2019 Preview Imants Tillers

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140 Tillers has been portraying the Australian

landscape, an iconic image o much

importance to our national identity in his

paintings. Tillers has developed a unique

and iconic style o art that merges landscape

painting with the written word. He overlays

his painting with text by way o exploring

and discussing the conceptual drive behind

a piece o art, which allows him to engage

in a dual mode o communication – the

visual and the written word – to reinorce his

message.

 This most recent body o work on exhibition

at Jan Manton Art, Brisbane, continues in

this vein. Capricornia is a suite o works

inspired and inuenced by recent trips

he has made to North Queensland. The

paintings are reminiscent o the desolate,

 Australian desert and have overtones o 

Indigenous painting aesthetics. The earthy,

background colours o some pictures are

marked with lines that elude to the wind

ripples o a sand dune. Other images, like

‘Thou Majestic’, are composed in two parts

– a vast amount o earth in the oreground

with seemingly endless sky sitting above it.

Each o these paintings eatures word, all o 

which represent the names o long orgotten

ghost towns and mining communities o 

rural Queensland.

By remembering these orgotten or

abandoned places, Tillers comments

on the raw history o colonial Australia.

He intersperses the townships with their

Capricornia is the latest exhibition o new

work by Imants Tillers, an Australian artist

o great acclaim who’s dedicated his career

to producing work that has questioned

and challenged our national identity and

our place within the world. In 1986 he was

selected to represent Australia at the Venice

Biennale, which urther propelled his ideas

onto the global stage. The son o Latvian

immigrants, Tillers used his work – on a

very personal level – to explore Australia

and grappled with the perceived distance

rom Europe, the United Kingdom and the

 Americas.

 Tillers embraced and celebrated this

distance by orging an innovate mode o 

making his art. He painted original images

but, in a post-modern sense, he also

brought together and appropriated images

by well known artists as well as those by

lesser known artists. He linked the places

that were perceived to be separate rom

one another through the voices o his peers,

giving a voice to Australian art and those

artists on the sidelines o the international art

world stage.

His work has constantly, and continues

to, make enquiries o who we are in

a national context. With an immigrant

background, Tillers work has been steeped

in a sel discovery and understanding. The

process o art making has allowed him to

explore concepts o identity, place, race

and displacement. For over orty years,

ImantsillersPreview Owen Craven

01

Indigenous place names, pointing to the

waste white Australia has let and the broken

and dark histories their settlement has

cause. The body o work and exhibition,

in addition to his travels to the land, was

inspired by the Xavier Herbert’s novel o the

same name as this exhibition. Like the novel,

this exhibition is a thought provoking and

conronting tale o race relations in colonial

 Australia. The works are compassionate

oerings to the frst people o this land,

acknoledging their place, their identy, their

role important role in Australia’s history.

Imant Tillers is represented by Jan Manton Art, Brisbane

www.janmantonart.com

EXHIBITION

25 Feb to 24 Mar 2012

Jan Manton Art, Brisbane

01  Nature Speasks, 2012

02  Capricornia, 2012

03  Tou Majestic, 2012

Imagescourtesythe artistand Jan Manton Art, Brisbane