Metafisica Australe presents a new body of work by leading Australian artist Imants Tillers and attempts to find common ground between contemporary Western Desert painting and the metaphysical paintings of the 20th Century Italian master, Giorgio de Chirico.
It continues the premise of the exhibition Dreaming: Aboriginal Australia art meets de Chirico curated by Ian McLean and Erica Izett at the Carlo Bilotti Museum in Rome last year, in which 7 works by Tillers (from 1986 to 2014) formed a kind of bridge between the 20 works Giorgio de Chirico, which are on permanent display in the museum and the exhibition of Western Desert paintings from the Sordello Missana Collection from Antibes, France.
Imants Tillers has exhibited widely since the late 1960s, and has represented Australia at important international exhibitions, such as the Sao Paulo Bienal in 1975, Documenta 7 in 1982, and the 42nd Venice Biennale in 1986. Major solo surveys of Tillers’ work include Imants Tillers: works 1978 – 1988 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1988); Imants Tillers: 19301, at the National Art Gallery, Wellington (1989); Diaspora, National Art Museum, Riga, Latvia (1993); Diaspora in Context at the Pori Art Museum, Pori (1995); Towards Infinity: Works by Imants Tillers, Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO) in Monterrey, Mexico (1999); Imants Tillers: one world many visions, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2006); The Long Poem, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth (2009) and Dreamings: Aboriginal Australia art meets de Chirico, Carlo Bilotti Museum, Rome (2014).
Image: On the Pathos of Truth, acrylic, gouache on 24 canvas boards, 150 x 142.5 cm
