Imants Tillers Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Imants Tillers Art Value Price Guide

Nov. 13, 2024
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) The Year Two Thousand 1998 woodcut and linocut, ed. T/P 76 x 56.5cm (sheet); 98 x 77cm (frame)
Est: $700 - $900
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) The Year Two Thousand 1998 woodcut and linocut, ed. T/P signed and dated lower right: Imants Tillers 1998 editioned lower left 76 x 56.5cm (sheet); 98 x 77cm (frame) PROVENANCE: Viridian press, Victoria Private collection, Victoria OTHER NOTES: © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2024
Leonard Joel
Aug. 28, 2024
IMANTS TILLERS, ORNAMENTAL DESPAIR, 1989
Est: $50,000 - $70,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 ORNAMENTAL DESPAIR, 1989 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 54 canvas boards 227.0 x 229.0 cm (overall) each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 19918 - 19971 PROVENANCE Deutscher Brunswick Street, Melbourne Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Imants Tillers: Poem of Ecstasy, Deutscher Brunswick Street, Melbourne, 28 February – 24 March 1990, cat. 4 (illus. exhibition catalogue) LITERATURE Curnow, W., Imants Tillers and the ‘Book of Power’, Craftsman House, G+B Arts International, Sydney, 1998, pl. 12, pp. 37 (illus.), 161, 169 ESSAY Over the last five decades, Imants Tillers has consistently investigated issues of cultural identity and displacement and concerns about origins and originality, rightly establishing his reputation as one of Australia’s foremost postmodern artists. Forging his international career in the 1970s and into the 80s, Tillers was included in the XIII Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil in 1975, in Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany in 1982, and in exhibitions at PS1, New York and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC (both 1984); culminating in his representation of Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1986, at the age of thirty-five. At the heart of Tillers’ intriguing oeuvre is a conceptual, practical and material framework that he developed in the 1980s. Known as The Book of Power,1 this system sees the artist work on small canvas boards that are numbered, stacked and then hung in order in grids; their individual contents coming together in large-scale installations of complex imagery drawn from a variety of visual sources. While none of the appropriated imagery within an Imants Tillers painting is the artist’s ‘own’, his work remains immediately recognisable as ‘a Tillers’, with the found imagery within his work creating new possibilities and ideas through their careful juxtaposition. Importantly, Tillers’ transcription of the art of others is never exact – like the act of reproduction, it too is open to slippage and change. As curator Deborah Hart has noted, Tillers ‘… cherishes the fact that “the self”, like art and life itself, is continuously open to interpretation—mutable, never fully understandable and always in a state of becoming.’2 Iconic New Zealand artist Colin McCahon has long been a subject of interest (and use) for Tillers, and McCahon’s distinctive and instantly identifiable handwriting and quotation from the Book of Ecclesiastes fills the composition of Ornamental Despair, 1989.3 McCahon’s existential fascination with identity, faith and doubt, and the human condition clearly resonates with Tillers, just as the opening line from Ecclesiastes echoes his own conceptual practice and interest in the figure of the artist as a conduit for ideas: ‘There is a constant tension between the search for meaning, the desire for transcendence and a pervasive, immovable scepticism. It is this aspect of McCahon that I find most interesting and most relevant to our condition today.’4 True to form, however, this is not a conversation between Tillers and McCahon alone. Tillers interrupts McCahon’s incantation in Ornamental Despair with a brown column-like form, introducing both colour and light (and a possible source of revelation or redemption?) into McCahon’s previously monochromatic work. This totemic form is in turn overlaid by an almost whimsical play of architectural ornament, drawn from the work of American abstractionist Philip Taaffe.5 Taaffe, like Tillers, is known for his use of found imagery (in Taaffe’s case, found abstraction) and for his creative reinvention and reworking of the history of art. In this knowing combination of McCahon, Taaffe and Tillers in Ornamental Despair, images and intentions coalesce across time and space, coming together in new ways that reflect Tillers’ ongoing quest to investigate the complexities and potential meaning of our existence through his art. 1. The idea for the Book of Power was inspired by French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, whose free verse poem of 1897, Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard (A throw of the dice will never abolish chance), with its unusual typographic layout, is said to have anticipated concrete poetry. 2. Hart, D., Imants Tillers: One World Many Visions, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2006, p. 3 3. This is drawn from McCahon’s painting Is there anything of which one can say look this is new?, 1982, Bank of New Zealand Collection, Colin McCahon Online Catalogue, see: https://www.mccahon.co.nz/cm001300 4. Curnow, W., Imants Tillers and the ‘Book of Power’, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, p. 146, cited in Hart, op. cit., p. 33 5. I am grateful to Mary Eagle for this connection. See Eagle, M., “Imants Tillers” in Imants Tillers: Poem of Ecstasy, Deutscher Brunswick Street, Melbourne, 1990, p. 5 KELLY GELLATLY © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2024
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 27, 2024
Imants Tillers, (b. 1950) *, Preparation for a Journey Into the Unknown I, 1996, synthetic polymer paint, oil stick and gouache on 54 canvas-boards (43448-43501), 229 x 229 cm overall
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
† Imants Tillers (b. 1950) * Preparation for a Journey Into the Unknown I, 1996 synthetic polymer paint, oil stick and gouache on 54 canvas-boards (43448-43501) each panel numerically stamped
Shapiro Auctioneers
Aug. 27, 2024
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Parihaka Triptych, 1987
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Parihaka Triptych, 1987 oilstick, gouache and synthetic polymer paint on canvasboard; 66 panels, each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso 76.0 x 196.0cm (29 15/16 x 77 3/16in).
Bonhams
May. 21, 2024
Imant Tillers, (b. 1950), Faraway 1, 2000, oil on canvas board, 213 x 76 cm
Est: $15,000 - $25,000
Imant Tillers (b. 1950) Faraway 1, 2000 oil on canvas board 18 panels
Shapiro Auctioneers
Apr. 24, 2024
IMANTS TILLERS, OUTBACK: P, 2008
Est: $50,000 - $70,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 OUTBACK: P, 2008 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 54 canvas boards 227.5 x 213.0 cm overall each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 083448 – 083501 PROVENANCE Bett Gallery, Hobart (number BG498) Private collection, Brisbane, acquired from the above in 2009 EXHIBITED Clouds on a Distant Horizon, Bett Gallery, Hobart, 11 March – 21 April 2009 ESSAY With a large tiled grid of 54 shimmering painted canvas boards, Imants Tillers’ Outback: P, 2008 presents an open landscape, its deep red earth dotted with spindly trees and overlaid with a scatter of text references and place names. The underlying landscape of radiant ochre hues, although not explicitly named, is of the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, specifically a view painted by Fred Williams in 1965 in a similarly large composition currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia: Upwey Landscape, 1965 – 66. Tillers’ ‘Outback’ paintings comprise a subset of works within the artist’s appropriationist practice. Together they form a kind of historiography of western landscape art in Australia, from Glover to Gascoigne, interrogating how the continent has been mythologised in art and language. Landscape is a dominant theme in Tillers’ later oeuvre, particularly since moving to the arid countryside of the Monaro region in 1998. His landscape paintings are ‘meditations about landscape’, viewed through the prism of Western art history, often looking back to whom he considers to have been ‘the last credible landscape artist: Fred Williams.’1 The Outback works, starting in 2003, are an offshoot of the series ‘Nature Speaks’ (1998 - present) within the artist’s vast anthology of his canvas board works, numbered consecutively since 1981 and collectively titled The Book of Power. As an interpretation of a historical painted landscape, Tillers’ work speaks to the idea of flux and transience, of different perspectives that have coloured previous attempts to capture the essence of the Australian landscape. A postmodern artist par excellence, Tillers’ longstanding artistic practice has been founded on its devices: appropriation, grid-based enlargement and reproduction and application of text and stencilled overlay on the painted surface. Layering, repetition and variation are central tenets of his practice. Outback: P, like each of the paintings in the larger ‘Nature Speaks’ series (comprising of 159 paintings in 2009) includes the words of the artist’s ‘Mallarméan mantra’,2 taken from a Symbolist poem of free verse and radical typography by Stéphane Mallarmé, Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard from 1897: ‘a throw of the dice will never abolish chance’ in blue stencilled text. Joining these words is a cascading list of placenames, providing a tangible sense of locality with words which the artist describes as ‘readymade poetry.’3. This list runs vertically down the centre the painting, listing locations from north to south, from Yirrkala and Faraway Bay in the Northern Territory on the top edge of the painting, to Bendigo in Victoria at the bottom. By also including words from David Horton’s map of Aboriginal language groups: Arrernte/Amangu/Kurrenji, Tillers signifies his acknowledgement of the underlying sovereignty of First Nations people. Included in an exhibition in Hobart in 2009, titled ‘Clouds on distant horizon’, alongside several paintings from the ‘Nature Speaks’ series, Outback: P is a translation of Fred Williams’ distillation of the landscape into a flat and increasingly minimal painterly vocabulary. Tillers has transcribed Fred Williams’ gestures into graphic stencilled silhouettes obscured under a textural pattern of fragmented metallic lettering. Although Tillers has retained the high horizon of Williams’ original painting and through his own artistic techniques augmented its compressed depth of field and glowing layers of red-ochre and golden brown, the finished work bears little resemblance to Upwey Landscape. Instead it joins Tillers’ grand conceptual project. Like its siblings, this perceptive painting solicits deep reflection on how the painted landscape informs our collective conception of the physical landscape and forges our national identity. 1. Imants Tillers, 9 April 2012, see: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2012/29209 (accessed March 2024) 2. Tillers, I., ‘When Locality Prevails’, Heat, No. 8, 2004, p. 115 3. ibid. LUCIE REEVES-SMITH © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency 2024
Deutscher and Hackett
Mar. 19, 2024
IMANTS TILLERS (BORN 1950), Location Unknown 1993
Est: $100 - $300
IMANTS TILLERS (BORN 1950) Location Unknown 1993 screenprint signed, dated, titled and editioned on margin: Imants Tillers 1993 / "Location Unknown" / P/P 57.5 x 77cm © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2024
Gibson's
Nov. 20, 2023
Imants Tillers (b.1950) Kunst=Kapital
Est: $300 - $500
screenprint on paper, signed l.r.c. 'Imants Tillers'
Shapiro Auctioneers
Nov. 08, 2023
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Counting (0 through 9) II 1987 oilstick, synthetic polymer paint on 9 canvasboards 114.3 x 76.2cm
Est: $5,000 - $5,500
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Counting (0 through 9) II 1987 oilstick, synthetic polymer paint on 9 canvasboards nos. 11631-11639 Unframed 114.3 x 76.2cm PROVENANCE: (Descending) HSBC Bank Australia Limited Deutscher~Menzies, Classics of Australian Art and 19th & 20th Century Fine Australian and International Art, Melbourne, 21/08/2000, Lot No. 113 EXHIBITIONS: Looking at Seeing and Reading, curated by Ian Burn, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, 1-31 July 1993; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 31 March - 30 April 1994; Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, 19 May - 25 June 1994. LITERATURE: W. Curnow, Imants Tillers and the Book of Power, Craftsman House, fig.31, p.131 N. Waterlow (ed), Looking at Seeing and Reading, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts, Sydney, 1993 Generously donated by HSBC Bank Australia Limited OTHER NOTES: Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Leonard Joel
Oct. 24, 2023
§ IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Nature Speaks: EJ 2013 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvasboards 101 x 142cm
Est: $8,000 - $10,000
§ IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Nature Speaks: EJ 2013 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvasboards 101 x 142cm PROVENANCE: Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane Private collection, Brisbane EXHIBITIONS: Metafisica Australe: Imants Tillers, Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane, 21 October - 14 November 2015 "Metafisica Australe presents a body of work which attempts to find common ground between contemporary Western Desert painting and the metaphysical paintings of the 20th Century Italian master, Giorgio de Chirico." (excerpt, exhibition statement) OTHER NOTES: © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2023
Leonard Joel
Sep. 10, 2023
Imant Tillers 1950- Kunstt=Kapital
Est: $100 - $150
Imant Tillers 1950- Kunstt=Kapital colour screenprint, signed lower right 'Imants Tillers' measures 37cm H x 57cm W including frame
Lugosi Auctioneers & Valuers
Jul. 09, 2023
TILLERS Imants Alfred (b.1950), 'Kunst = Kapital', S/Print, 27x29.5cm (sight) 38x51cm irreg. (sheet)
Est: $100 - $200
TILLERS, Imants Alfred (b.1950) 'Kunst = Kapital' Signed in pencil lower right (obscured by mount). S/Print 27x29.5cm (sight) 38x51cm irreg. (sheet)
Davidson Auctions
Apr. 30, 2023
IMANTS TILLERS (BORN 1950), Nature Speaks 2000
Est: $12,000 - $15,000
IMANTS TILLERS (BORN 1950) Nature Speaks 2000 sixteen oil on canvas boards signed and dated verso: Imants Tillers 2 May 2000 101 x 142cm © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2023
Gibson's
Apr. 20, 2023
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital 1991 screenprint, ed. P/P
Est: $300 - $400
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital 1991 screenprint, ed. P/P signed and editioned lower right: Imants Tillers PP titled within plate 38.5 x 57cm (sheet) OTHER NOTES: PLEASE NOTE THIS WORK IS UNFRAMED.
Leonard Joel
Apr. 20, 2023
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Location Unknown 1993 screenprint, ed. P/P
Est: $200 - $400
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Location Unknown 1993 screenprint, ed. P/P signed and dated lower right: Imants Tillers 1993 titled lower centre editioned lower left 57 x 77cm (sheet) OTHER NOTES: PLEASE NOTE THIS WORK IS UNFRAMED.
Leonard Joel
Mar. 21, 2023
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) The Enigma of Arrival VII 1997 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 54 canvasboards, no's. 52180–52233
Est: $25,000 - $35,000
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) The Enigma of Arrival VII 1997 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 54 canvasboards, no's. 52180–52233 25 x 35cm (each); 227.5 x 212.5cm (overall) PROVENANCE: Corporate collection, Melbourne LITERATURE: Hart, D., Imants Tillers: One World Many Visions, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2006 The work of Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) was such an inspiration to Tillers. "Tillers first became aware of Runges's works in 1996 when he travelled to Amsterdam to participate in a group show, The World Over/Under Capricorn at the Stedelijk Museum. On show at the same time, in the Van Gogh Museum was an exhibition of the work of Runge, which included the drawing Cherubim. Tillers was struck by the modernity of this early nineteenth century image, by its insistent multiplicity and re-conception of nature. He first painted a couple of small works that included one or two cherubic heads, followed by a series, titled The Enigma of Arrival." OTHER NOTES: RELATED WORKS: Imants Tillers, The Enigma of Arrival XIII, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on canvasboards, 228.5 x 213.5cm (overall), Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Imants Tillers, Monaro 1998, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 288 canvasboards, 305 x 853cm (overall), The Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Leonard Joel
Oct. 25, 2022
§ IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Nature Speaks: EJ 2013 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvasboards
Est: $9,000 - $14,000
§ IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Nature Speaks: EJ 2013 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvasboards 101 x 142cm PROVENANCE: Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane Private collection, Brisbane EXHIBITIONS: Metafisica Australe: Imants Tillers, Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane, 21 October - 14 November 2015 "Metafisica Australe presents a body of work which attempts to find common ground between contemporary Western Desert painting and the metaphysical paintings of the 20th Century Italian master, Giorgio de Chirico." (excerpt, exhibition statement) OTHER NOTES: © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency 2022
Leonard Joel
Oct. 25, 2022
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Thou Majestic: B 2009 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 25 canvasboards
Est: $12,000 - $16,000
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Thou Majestic: B 2009 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 25 canvasboards 127 x 178cm PROVENANCE: Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane Private collection, Brisbane EXHIBITIONS: Value Added Landscapes: Imants Tillers, Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane, 27 May - 20 June 2009 OTHER NOTES: © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency 2022
Leonard Joel
Oct. 13, 2022
Imants Tillers, Australia (b.1950), Kunst-Kapital, Silkscreen
Est: $300 - $500
Imants Tillers Australia, (b.1950) Kunst-Kapital Silkscreen Signed lower right
Theodore Bruce Auctioneers & Valuers
Oct. 04, 2022
IMANTS TILLERS, ATELIER XI, 2002
Est: $12,000 - $16,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 ATELIER XI, 2002 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 18 canvas boards 151.5 x 106.0 cm 154.4 x 109.0 cm (frame) each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 72698 – 72715 PROVENANCE Chapman Gallery, Canberra Private collection, Canberra, acquired in May 2006 EXHIBITED Imants Tillers, Chapman Gallery, Canberra, October - November 2002 This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency 2021
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 23, 2022
Imants Tillers (born 1950) The Overflow II, 2001
Est: $40,000 - $60,000
Imants Tillers (born 1950) The Overflow II, 2001 synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 54 canvasboards, nos. 67467–67520 227.5 x 213.0cm (89 9/16 x 83 7/8in). For further information on this lot please visit the Bonhams website
Bonhams
May. 11, 2022
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Untitled (It was 8pm. Just imagine. The painting sees you, but you do not see it.)
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Untitled (It was 8pm. Just imagine. The painting sees you, but you do not see it.) synthetic polymer paint on nine canvasboards each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: '39677-39685' 114.0 x 76.0cm (44 7/8 x 29 15/16in). For further information on this lot please visit the Bonhams website
Bonhams
May. 11, 2022
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Begin, 2008
Est: $1,500 - $2,500
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Begin, 2008 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on two canvas boards each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 81750 - 81751 25.5 x 17.5cm (10 1/16 x 6 7/8in). For further information on this lot please visit the Bonhams website
Bonhams
May. 09, 2022
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Nature Speaks: K 2006 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvasboards, no's. 77740–77755
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Nature Speaks: K 2006 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvasboards, no's. 77740–77755 101 x 141.5cm (overall) PROVENANCE: Sherman Galleries, Sydney Private collection, Victoria EXHIBITIONS: Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, The Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 22 August – 22 October 2006 LITERATURE: Thomas, S., Imants Tillers: The Unpromised Land, Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2006 (exhibition catalogue) OTHER NOTES: RELATED WORKS: The Unpromised Land 2006, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 168 canvasboards, no's. 77128–77295, 279.4 x 533.4cm Terra Negata 2005, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 288 canvasboards, no's. 72142—72429, 304.8 x 853.4cm © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency 2022
Leonard Joel
Aug. 03, 2021
IMANTS TILLERS , THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND,1998
Est: $600 - $800
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND,1998 (from the SYDNEY 2000 OLYMPIC FINE ART COLLECTION PORTFOLIO) colour woodcut and linocut on Fabriano 290m gsm paper 76.9 x 57.0 cm (image/sheet) edition: 32/99 signed, dated, inscribed and numbered below image PROVENANCE Gene and Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney CONDITION This colour lithograph is in excellent, stable and original condition. The work is offered unframed. Image courtesy IMAAC
Deutscher and Hackett
Apr. 21, 2021
IMANTS TILLERS, THE WALK IN DARKNESS, 1990
Est: $18,000 - $26,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 THE WALK IN DARKNESS, 1990 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 24 canvas boards 152.5 x 152.5 cm overall each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 29979 – 30002 PROVENANCE Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne Private collection, Hobart Goodmans Auctioneers, Sydney, 23 October 2000, lot 168 Private collection Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 2 September 2003, lot 62 (as ‘Dievturi’) Paul Sutherland, Sydney Estate of the above, Sydney EXHIBITED Australian Art, Colonial to Contemporary, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, May – June 1995, cat. 114 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) LITERATURE Curnow, W., Imants Tillers and the ‘Book of Power’, Craftsman House, G+B Arts International, Sydney, 1998, p. 137 © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2021
Deutscher and Hackett
Apr. 21, 2021
IMANTS TILLERS, WATERFALL VARIATION II, 2012
Est: $45,000 - $65,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 WATERFALL VARIATION II, 2012 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 32 canvas boards 201.5 x 141.5 cm overall each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 091406 – 091437 PROVENANCE Company collection, Melbourne, acquired from directly from the artist EXHIBITED The Fleeting Self, Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, 18 June – 20 July 2013 ESSAY In 2014, Barry Pearce, emeritus curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, selected one hundred paintings from its collection for his publication 100 Moments in Australian Painting, through which he traced the artworks instrumental in the formation of an enduring image of the Australian continent. Amongst these paintings was Eugene von Guérard’s 1862 masterpiece, Waterfall, Strath Creek. Although modest in scale, it encapsulated the Romantic sense of awe and scientific exactitude that propelled the Austrian artist to the status of one of Australia’s greatest colonial painters. Waterfall, Strath Creek became a touchstone of Australian landscape painting for contemporary artists during the 1970s and 1980s, its dynamic composition reprised several times in a chain of appropriation that culminated with Imants Tillers’ Wynne prize-winning painting, Waterfall (After Williams), 2011 and associated major works based on this theme, including Waterfall Variation I and Waterfall Variation II. Tillers explained that these paintings could be more aptly described as ‘meditations on landscape’ in the wake of the revolution of Aboriginal landscape painting.1 As it was for von Guérard, the physical landscape is for Tillers a stimulus for Kantian self-reflection, a subjective assessment of man’s place in the environment, although this is conveyed without the colonial artist’s diminutive Rückenfigur explorers in the foreground. Key to Tillers’ work is the idea that the landscape is a constructed space, the product of a highly mediated conception of nature. A postmodern artist par excellence, Tillers’ longstanding artistic practice has been founded on its devices: appropriation, grid-based enlargement and reproduction and application of text and stencilled overlay on the painted surface. The subject of Waterfall Variation II is in fact, thrice removed from the original subject, a 50 metre valley through which flows the Strath Creek waterfall, in the thickly timbered country of Victoria’s Mount Disappointment. Von Guérard visited this site in January of 1862, as did Fred Williams in 1970 when he painted Free copy of Eugene Von Guerard’s Waterfall Strath Creek, now held in the National Gallery of Australia.2 Tillers did not go so far, choosing instead to appropriate Fred Williams’ gouache plein-air study, translating its painterly gestures into graphic, stencilled silhouette in a mosaic over thirty-two separate canvas boards. Further obscured under layers of text, the final image of Waterfall Variation II bears little resemblance to von Guérard’s original detailed naturalist painting. Physically, Strath Creek Falls has borne many climactic and environmental changes, from extensive timber logging in the 1880s, to the decades-long droughts and cataclysmic bushfires of more recent memory. We are clearly yet to master this unknown landscape. Over a hundred years after von Guérard, contemporary artist William Delafield Cook sat at the same spot in the bottom of the valley, looking up towards its V-shaped ravine. Having admired von Guérard’s topographical accuracy, he set out to record the scene with his own signature photographic realism. The resulting vast painting of a parched and bleached summer landscape won the Wynne prize in 1980 and was acquired for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ collection the following year.3 As an interpretation of an interpretation, Tillers’ work speaks to the idea of flux and transience, with the waterfall a metaphor for an everchanging landscape. Its spectacular scale provided a perfect template to illustrate the grand theatre of nature and our attempts to dominate it, becoming for Tillers an archetypal image through which to illustrate the changing attitudes towards landscape painting in Australia. 1. The artist, 9 April 2012 [https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2012/29209/] 2. Fred Williams, Untitled, [Free copy of Eugene Von Guerard's Waterfall, Strath Creek, 1862], 1970, gouache, 60.2 x 79.4 cm (sheet), in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 3.William Delafield Cook, A waterfall (Strath Creek), 1980 – 1, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 198.2 x 156.2 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney LUCIE REEVES-SMITH © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2021
Deutscher and Hackett
Mar. 21, 2021
Imants Tillers (born 1950) The Sacred Fish, 2016
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
Imants Tillers (born 1950) The Sacred Fish, 2016 synthetic polymer paint on 24 canvasboards, each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: '96567 - 96590' 152.0 x 142.0 cm (59 13/16 x 55 7/8in). For further information on this lot please visit the Bonhams website
Bonhams
Dec. 17, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Sentinel 1997 colour lithograph 16/50
Est: $220 - $420
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Sentinel 1997 colour lithograph 16/50 102 x 67.5cm (sheet size)
Leonard Joel
Dec. 10, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Sentinel 1997 colour lithograph 16/50
Est: $300 - $500
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Sentinel 1997 colour lithograph 16/50 102 x 67.5cm (sheet size)
Leonard Joel
Nov. 19, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 Sanctuary I 2003
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 Sanctuary I 2003 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on canvas board (54) 225.0 x 210.0 cm (overall) each panel numbered sequentially in stencil verso: 072932 - 072985
Menzies
Nov. 11, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS, OUTBACK: C, 2005
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 OUTBACK: C, 2005 synthetic polymer paint on 54 canvas boards 228.0 x 213.0 cm overall each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 76222 – 76275 PROVENANCE Sherman Galleries, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2005 EXHIBITED Imants Tillers: Land Beyond Goodbye, Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 20 October – 12 November 2005, cat. 9 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) Spring 2019, Annette Larkin Fine Art, Sydney, 4 September – 12 October 2019 ESSAY Imants Tillers’ Outback paintings comprise a specific chapter in the vast anthology of his canvas-board works, numbered consecutively since 1981, and titled The Book of Power. This series, embarked upon in June 2003, refers to what the artists calls ’the spiritual heart of Australia’1 and forms a kind of historiography of the Western artistic interpretation of the landscape, reprising well-known works from Glover to Gascoigne. Key to Tillers’ work is the idea that the landscape is a constructed space and one haunted by the spirit of the place, the genius loci, for the first Australians and their colonisers. A postmodern artist par excellence, Tillers’ longstanding artistic practice has been founded on its devices: appropriation, grid-based reproduction and application of text, and stenciled overlay on the painted surface. The canvas boards have become a system through which Tillers can compartmentalise and study the Australian landscape in art, creating a continuous dialogue between the artistic object, the subject and the audience. In the vast scale of Outback:C, Tillers has appropriated Rosalie Gascoigne’s iconic retro-reflective street sign assemblage, painstakingly reconstructing the segmented panels of her work, Conundrum, 1989-90, held in the collection of the University of Melbourne. Outback:C addresses succinctly Tillers’ key themes of diaspora and post-colonial identity. In blue writing, on the uppermost layer of superimposed text, Tillers has copied out the words ‘A throw of the dice will never change history’. Read in conjunction with the adjacent cascading list of place names from north to south of the continent – Kununurra to Bendigo – this aphorism alludes to the underlying truths of belonging and sovereignty over the land. The artist describes his use of place names in these works as a kind of ’ready-made poetry’. In addressing the historical issue of misappropriated land, Tillers’ reprisal of road signs through the prism of Gascoigne’s works, is fitting. Both artists arrange sliced and spliced lettering into grids on to a backing support. Rosalie Gascoigne was herself a post-modernist, working with industrial readymades from the 1980s, using plywood road signs with retroreflective film in grid-like assemblages. The words in Gascoigne’s works sometimes remained intact, arranged into cryptic haikus of syllables – here the composite nature of language mirrors the cumulative experience of the Australian landscape, the checkered history of political oppression and subjugation. Tillers, as a first generation Australian, feels endowed with a special insight into post-colonial cross-cultural identity, which he places foremost in his practice. An influential practitioner and advocate of conceptual art and post-modern discourse in Australia, Tillers’ interrogates the ways in which we interact with the landscape, and addresses the unique perspectives which have coloured each previous artistic attempt to capture its essence. With an overarching systematic approach, Tiller’s oeuvre is remarkably cohesive and each separate work is in constant dialogue with its siblings, constructed of over one hundred thousand individual canvas boards. Two-time winner of the Wynne Prize for landscape painting, Imants Tillers’ artistic discourse is commanding, an impressive string of accolades further confirming the importance of his contribution to the landscape of contemporary art in Australia. 1. Artist’s statement, Land Beyond Goodbye, exhibition catalogue, Sherman Galleries, 30 August 2005 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH
Deutscher and Hackett
Sep. 01, 2020
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Monaro Index II, 2000
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
Imants Tillers (born 1950) Monaro Index II, 2000 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvasboards 102.0 x 142.0cm (40 3/16 x 55 7/8in). For further information on this lot please visit the Bonhams website
Bonhams
Aug. 04, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS , PRECINCT (VU II), 1994
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 PRECINCT (VU II), 1994 synthetic polymer paint, gouache, and oilstick on 10 canvas boards 114.5 x 76.0 cm (overall) each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 41687 – 41696 PROVENANCE Gene and Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney This work is located at our Sydney Gallery © Imants Tillers/Copyright Agency, 2020
Deutscher and Hackett
Jul. 15, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS , WATERFALL (AFTER WILLIAMS), 2011
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 WATERFALL (AFTER WILLIAMS), 2011 synthetic polymer paint on 32 canvas boards 203.0 x 142.0 cm (overall) each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 89282 – 89313 PROVENANCE Private collection, New South Wales EXHIBITED The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 31 Mar – 12 June 2012 and touring (Winner, Wynne Prize) Imants Tillers The Fleeting Self, ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne, 18 June – 20 July 2013 LITERATURE Allen, C., ‘Oh no, not you again – The Archibald, Sulman and Wynne prizes’, The Australian, Sydney, 21 April 2012 Mendelssohn, J., ‘Times change but the art establishment rolls on’, The Conversation, 2 April 2013 [https://theconversation.com/times-change-but-the-art-establishment-rolls-on-13058] (illus.) RELATED WORK Eugene von Guérard, Waterfall, Strath Creek, 1862, oil on canvas, 83.2 x 65.7 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Fred Williams, Untitled, [Free copy of Eugene Von Guerard's Waterfall, Strath Creek, 1862], 1970, gouache on paper, 60.2 x 37.4 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Imants Tillers, Untitled (Deaf), 1989, synthetic polymer paint on 48 canvas boards, 213 x 165 cm, in the collection of TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria, gift of Eva Besen and Marc Besen AO ESSAY Eugene von Guérard’s 1862 masterpiece, Waterfall, Strath Creek, although modest in scale, encapsulates the Romantic sense of awe and scientific exactitude that would propel the Austrian artist to the status of one of Australia’s greatest colonial painters. Waterfall, Strath Creek at the Art Gallery of New South Wales became a touchstone of Australian landscape painting for contemporary artists. During the 1970s and 1980s, its dynamic composition was reprised several times in a chain of appropriation that would ultimately culminate with Imants Tillers’ magnificent, Wynne prize-winning painting: Waterfall (After Williams), 2011. Speaking of his work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2012, Tillers explained that the painting could be more aptly described as a ‘meditation on landscape’ in the wake of the revolution of aboriginal landscape painting.1 Key to Tillers’ work is the idea that the landscape is a constructed space, the product of a highly mediated conception of nature. A postmodern artist par excellence, Tillers longstanding artistic practice has been founded on its devices: appropriation, grid-based enlargement and reproduction and application of text and stencilled overlay on the painted surface. Waterfall (After Williams) is, in fact, thrice removed from the original subject, the 50m valley through which flows the Strath Creek waterfall, in the thickly timbered country of Victoria’s Mount Disappointment. Von Guérard visited this site in January of 1862, as did Fred Williams in 1970 when he painted Free copy of Eugene Von Guerard’s Waterfall Strath Creek, now held in the National Gallery of Australia. Tillers did not go so far, choosing instead to appropriate Fred William’s gouache plein-air study, translating its painterly gestures into graphic, stencilled silhouettes. Further obscured under layers of text, the final image of Waterfall (After Williams) bears little resemblance to von Guérard’s original detailed naturalist painting. As an interpretation of an interpretation, Tillers’ work speaks to the idea of flux and transience, with the waterfall a metaphor for an everchanging landscape. Over a hundred years after von Guérard, contemporary artist William Delafield Cook sat at the same spot in the bottom of the valley, looking up towards its V-shaped ravine, recording the scene with his own signature photographic realism. The resulting vast painting of a parched and bleached summer landscape won the Wynne prize in 1980 and was acquired for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ collection the following year.2 Fred Williams also returned to this subject in oil paint to attempt to capture the spectacular scale of the falls. Continuing this chain of dialogue between the landscape and his artistic forefathers, in 1989 Imants Tillers painted Untitled (Deaf), which was a closer reprisal of von Guérard’s Waterfall, Strath Creek, overlaid with a decorative arabesque appropriated from American artist Philipp Taaffe’s Now and Then, 1988. Executed in vertically oriented canvas boards, Untitled (Deaf) initiated Tillers’ own part in this decades-long discussion of the mediated nature of Australian landscape painting. In this last iteration, of 2012, alongside the stanzas of an Indian sutra, ‘the fleeting self / like a dream/ like a vision’ over the canvas boards appear phrases that invite historical accountability and invite a re-assessment of the genre: ‘who we were/ all this / reality works in overt mystery / abolish / will never.’ 1. The artist, 9 April 2012 [https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2012/29209/] 2. William Delafield Cook, A waterfall (Strath Creek), 1980 – 1, synthetic polymer paint on canvas,198.2 x 156.2 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. LUCIE REEVES-SMITH
Deutscher and Hackett
Jul. 02, 2020
Imants Tillers - 'Location unknown' 57 x 77cm …
Est: $40 - $60
Imants Tillers - 'Location unknown' 57 x 77cm
Lawsons
Jun. 25, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P
Est: $260 - $360
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P signed and editioned below image 38.5 x 57cm (sheet size) PROVENANCE: The Larry Rawling Collection
Leonard Joel
May. 24, 2020
TILLERS Imants Alfred (b.1950), 'Kunst = Kapital', S/Print, 36x55cm
Est: $100 - $200
TILLERS, Imants Alfred (b.1950) 'Kunst = Kapital' Signed in pencil lower right. S/Print 36x55cm
Davidson Auctions
May. 05, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Four Books 2002 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on canvas boards (54)
Est: $25,000 - $30,000
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Four Books 2002 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on canvas boards (54) 229.5 x 216cm PROVENANCE: With Arc One Gallery, Melbourne OTHER NOTES: Born in Australia to Latvian refugees, Imants Tillers grew up in Australia as part of the great post-war European diaspora. His family experienced displacement in a new foreign land, removed from their cultural history. Since the 1970's, Tillers has explored this isolation and displacement through his artwork, critiquing 20th century Australian art as well as the Western world in the process. Tillers, therefore, is an extremely significant figure in discussions of postmodernism and appropriation in Australian art. His works, most often landscapes, are comprised of numerous individual canvas boards that, when placed together, form a progressive visual poetry. Tillers appropriates imagery and phrases related to notions of identity and place and brings them together in an often confusing and disjointed manner - much like the experiences of the artist and his family. The result is a convergence of ideas with multiple references that are drawn from art, history, literature, politics, society and his own personal history. His works instigate an important dialogue that was as relevant in the 1950s as it is today. Painted in blue around the edge of Tillers' works are words by the pioneering poet Stéphane Mallarmé, whom Tillers has cited in almost every work he has made since the late 1990s: 'a throw of the dice will never abolish chance'. It refers to chance happenings but also to Mallarmé's experimentations with typography in visual presentation. For Tillers, his artworks are as much word poems as paintings. Olivia Fuller, Head of Art
Leonard Joel
Apr. 30, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P
Est: $300 - $500
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P signed and editioned below image 38.5 x 57cm (sheet size) PROVENANCE: The Larry Rawling Collection
Leonard Joel
Apr. 23, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P
Est: $380 - $480
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P signed and editioned below image 38.5 x 57cm (sheet size) PROVENANCE: The Larry Rawling Collection
Leonard Joel
Apr. 08, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P
Est: $400 - $600
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Kunst = Kapital screenprint P/P signed and editioned below image 38.5 x 57cm (sheet size) PROVENANCE: The Larry Rawling Collection
Leonard Joel
Apr. 08, 2020
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Location UnkNown 1993 screenprint P/P
Est: $400 - $600
IMANTS TILLERS (born 1950) Location UnkNown 1993 screenprint P/P editioned, titled, signed and dated 57 x 77cm (sheet size) PROVENANCE: The Larry Rawling Collection
Leonard Joel
Nov. 27, 2019
IMANTS TILLERS, born 1950, BETWEEN ECHO AND HOPE, 2002, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 24 canvas boards
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 BETWEEN ECHO AND HOPE, 2002 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 24 canvas boards SIGNED: each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 71662 – 71685 DIMENSIONS: 151.0 x 142.0 cm (overall) PROVENANCE: Greenaway Gallery, Adelaide Private collection, Adelaide EXHIBITED: Imants Tillers, Greenaway Gallery, Adelaide, 19 June – 14 July 2002
Deutscher and Hackett
Nov. 26, 2019
Imants Tillers (b. 1950)
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
Solitude, 2003 oil on canvas boards
Shapiro Auctioneers
Sep. 24, 2019
IMANTS TILLERS, NATURE SPEAKS: BZ, 2010
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 NATURE SPEAKS: BZ, 2010 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvas boards SIGNED: each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 85573 - 85588 DIMENSIONS: 100.0 x 141.5 cm overall PROVENANCE: ARC One Gallery, Melbourne pARTners Art Collective, Melbourne, acquired from the above in October 2010 EXHIBITED: The Blossoming World, ARC One Gallery, Melbourne, 19 October - 13 November 2010
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2019
IMANTS TILLERS, born 1950, DIEVTURI, 1990 , charcoal, synthetic polymer paint, gesso on 48 canvas boards
Est: $6,000 - $8,000
IMANTS TILLERS, born 1950, DIEVTURI, 1990 , charcoal, synthetic polymer paint, gesso on 48 canvas boards SIGNED: each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 30272 – 30319 DIMENSIONS: 75.0 x 145.0 cm overall PROVENANCE: Private collection, Minneapolis, USA Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 22 November 1998, lot 325 (as ‘Faith’) Private collection, Melbourne Mossgreen, Melbourne, 16 November 2010, lot 60 (as ‘Diuturi’) Private collection, Melbourne LITERATURE: Curnow, W., Imants Tillers and the ‘Book of Power’, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, pl. 30 (illus.), pp. 127, 128, 136 RELATED WORK: Faith, 1988, oil stick, gouache, synthetic polymer paint on 48 canvas boards, in the collection of the National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2019
IMANTS TILLERS , born 1950 , NATURE SPEAKS: BZ, 2010 , synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvas boards
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
IMANTS TILLERS , born 1950 , NATURE SPEAKS: BZ, 2010 , synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 16 canvas boards SIGNED: each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 85573 – 85588 DIMENSIONS: 100.0 x 141.5 cm overall PROVENANCE: ARC One Gallery, Melbourne pARTners Art Collective, Melbourne, acquired from the above in October 2010 EXHIBITED: The Blossoming World, ARC One Gallery, Melbourne, 19 October – 13 November 2010
Deutscher and Hackett