Ken Whisson book launch at the Art Gallery of New South Wales library

Join Denise Mimmocchi, Senior Curator, Australian Art and author Quentin Sprague in the AGNSW Library for the launch of Ken Whisson: Painting & Drawing, a monograph. The event will be introduced by Tony Oates, Interim Director, ANU Drill Hall Gallery.

Richly illustrated with over 300 plates, and drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, the book charts a seven-decade course through Whisson’s unwaveringly idiosyncratic practice. It covers his early years in Melbourne, his long residence in the Italian city of Perugia, and his return to Australia in 2014. The picture that emerges is of an artist driven by the vagaries of memory and an enduring belief in creative intuition: a combination that resulted in one of the most original bodies of work in Australian art.

In addition to notable works by Ken Whisson in the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection, the AGNSW’s research library holds significant archival content on the artist.

Authored by Quentin Sprague and designed by Small Tasks, Ken Whisson: Painting & Drawing is co-published by Drill Hall Gallery Publishing and The Miegunyah Press.

I have a distinct impression when working that the painting takes place at the point where the brush touches the canvas … Our rational and conscious mind looks on and even criticises what is happening, but in the moment of creation at its fullest, one’s own eyes and mind — one’s own self looking on — are caught totally by surprise.
— Ken Whisson, 1994

Background image: Ken Whisson, Vivid recollections of Australia no. 1. Flying out of Sydney (detail), 1979. Pen and ink, pencil on paper, 50 × 70 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales collection, purchased 1982 © Estate of Ken Whisson