Michael Doherty: Moondyne Racing the Sun 2014
oil on canvas
20 cm h x 30 cm w
Image Courtesy of the artist
Hearsay
is a great exhibition at the Wanneroo Cultural Centre about twenty-nine
kilometers north of Perth. During the nineteen seventies and eighties I
remember driving through this area when it was dotted with market gardens run
by Slavic, Italian and Vietnamese peoples along with a growing suburbia and
intermittent areas of picturesque bush by the lakes. This exhibition takes the
campfire stories from the local Wanneroo community and has turned them into a
rollicking good exhibition.
One example of a family barbeque story goes back to my
Melbourne Auntie’s car breaking down at the Wanneroo Lion Park with a car full
of kids on a very hot day and she was too frightened to wind down the windows, is
a true story still often recalled with stress to her!
There are many very good artworks within this Hearsay
exhibition which are integrated with
memorable period objects on loan from the museum nearby recording events that
happened historically within the area of Wanneroo.
As a kid Wanneroo seemed far away from the city
and a long trip to get to this outer suburb town. Rebecca Dagnall’s Digital
Print entitled There is unrest
in the forest there is trouble in the trees # reflects
in some ways how the mind can alter what is actually out there. While more
often than not it’s just bush with a few kangaroos loitering around for food,
it’s a good artwork precisely because Dagnall’s image resonates with a kind of
omnipresent menace of something unseen, swathing through the trees; as kids we
used to think this invisible thing amongst the darkened trees was the Bogeyman
which had a real and terrifying presence for us.
Another particularly likeable artwork is Claire
Davenhall’s Moon Boots with large heavy nails smashed
into them, fixing them firmly in place; this artwork alludes to the convict escape artist Moondyne Joe,
also known as Joseph Bolitho Johns. Moondyne was a robber and thief of
minor scale but his efforts kept landing him prison and he kept escaping. In
this artwork Davenhall has created an amusing ironic piece in that despite all
the Prison authorities’ best efforts, he kept escaping custody and, in the last
attempt, he did so in just in his boots.
If Davenhall leaves us with Moondyne's escape. Michael
Doherty brings him very much to life in a smallish but savvy oil painting
titled Moondyne Racing the Sun 2014 depicted with his fellow gang members in the
distance almost as if they are about to go on a criminal jaunt around Perth or,
alternatively, are they police trackers? Doherty’s painting reflects the harsh
Australia light on a hot unending bush with its associated sands cooking the
local plain between the coast and the hills in Perth. Doherty captures
Moondyne’s criminal Alpha male personality well in paint and it fits into this
well curated Hearsay exhibition succinctly.
Other fascinating artworks are by Anne Louis
Richardson, Ron Nyisztor and Christophe Canato which also merit closer
analysis but instead do come and have a look at Hearsay in the Wanneroo Gallery as it
is well worth the trip.
Link to Gallery
