Whoppers
Exhibition dates: Wed 14 Nov – Sat 1 Dec
View the artworks
“Paul Worstead is a philosophical anarchist and a pretty good painter…” -- Stephen Cummings.
Paul Worstead grew up in the northern beach suburbs of Sydney and started designing posters and magazines whilst an art student at the National Art School, East Sydney, in the early seventies.
He further developed his poster technique being the arts and crafts officer at the community centre at inner city Chippendale called The Settlement. His posters and album designs for bands like Mental As Anything and The Sports were acknowledged at a survey show in 2005 at the Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney.
Paul is probably best known as one of the first artists engaged by the clothing brand, Mambo. Paul’s fabric and poster designs can now be found in the permanent collections of the Powerhouse Museum and the National Gallery of Australia. In the year 2000 he was selected by the Sydney Olympics for a poster design which depicted flying thongs.
During all this time he has maintained his own art practice and exhibited regularly at the bookshop, Gleebooks. In recent years he was selected in the Archibald Prize for his self portrait as a rabbit and in 2006 was a finalist in the Sulman Prize.
Musician Stephen Cummings writes, “Paul is a painter like few others; he has a pungent and unique sensibility. For Paul painting is not an end in itself, but rather his way of opening up to the world. Paul is hardcore, he has never binged on consumerism; I don’t think he has bought any new clothes since 1977. This is what makes him so annoying and simultaneously so great to hang around with and also partly explains why his art is important.”
This is his second solo exhibition at the Damien Minton Gallery. Next year in 2008 a major survey of his oeuvre will be curated by Reg Lynch at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery.
