For the man with the clean cut look
Exhibition dates: July 2009
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Playful, contemplative, part personal map, part painted holiday snaps, these works on wooden panels, some of them found on the side of the road, form Dean Manning’s second solo exhibition at the Damien Minton Gallery after a success in 2008.
In between, he’s been leading the life of a modern troubadour, exploring the world making music and drawing inspiration for his art. Many of the paintings here are split panels depicting the places Dean’s travels have taken him to. It’s an enviable amalgam. There’s Tatvan in eastern Turkey, San Sebastian in the Basque country of Spain, Los Angeles, the Greek island of Leipsi. And closer to home, Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and the central western New South Wales towns of Parkes and Forbes are featured. Emblems of these places sit side-by-side with depictions of their characters, or more accurately the artist imagining himself as them, as is evidenced by humorous oddities such as a Parkes Elvis with Dean’s big beard. Each of these panels begins a story. A Forbes shearer and a Salvation Army Shop. A donkey and the artist as Poseidon on Leipsi. A lumberjack and a beautiful Tasmanian Tiger on Cradle Mountain. A whirling dervish and a train in Eastern Turkey.
It’s tempting to place Dean’s art in the tradition of the naïve, yet the level of conceptual play resists this. In one of several multi-paneled works, he plays with the similarities between bushranger Ben Hall and grunge eminence Kurt Cobain. It’s a comparison that doesn’t try to prove any points, rather it generates playful ideas over a pop cultural gap of more than 120 years. Both men were counter-cultural heroes of their time, both died at the age of 27, both by the gun.
Forbes where Dean rented out a farmhouse studio in 2009 features in a couple of other works. “Bail up ya Bastards” depicts Hall, a former Forbes local during a stage-coach stick-up while another shows the Forbes camel races, on an arid track, held at Easter every year. Two other larger panel works show a more international bent. ‘Croque Madame Croque Monsieur’ mimics a French bistro menu, while ‘Fan Language’ is a chart of the romantic semaphore lexicon created by a woman’s use of a fan.
The stories Dean’s paintings generate are suggestive, never didactic and with their beards and beautifully figured beasties, this is warm whimsical, savvy and generous art.
ED WRIGHT
