Lot 83: ROBERT MACPHERSON (B. 1937)

ROYCO each inscribed with panel number; further panel 1 is inscribed '10 panels', panel 2 is inscribed 'install in line 3" Space', panel 7 is inscribed 'FEB 14 '77', panel 8 is inscribed 'FEB 14 '77', panel 9 is inscribed '"ROYCO" 1' and panel 10 is inscribed 'FEB 14 '77', all (on the reverse) oil on stretched canvas 31 x 31 cm each panel 10 PROVENANCE Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1978 LITERATURE P Cripps, Robert MacPherson, Brisbane, 1985, cat. pp. 5-6 EXHIBITION Brisbane, Ray Hughes Gallery, 1978 NOTES Robert MacPherson Royco 1977, acts as logical closure on a sequence of investigations into mark-making, Action painting, scale of the brush and artist's reach. The year is important for MacPherson, for in 1977 he took up a Visual Arts Board grant to visit New York, yet we suspect as always, local factors held equal sway in the conception of these works. One of MacPherson's first jobs in Brisbane was as a ship painter.It was here that the artist saw the effect created by paint waste flowing and dripping over large areas, and from this perhaps, MacPherson augmented ideas that underpin important serial works. Completed in groupings known as Sarah's Merles 1976, Swanboro 1976-7, Smithfield 1977 and Royco 1977, many of these are now in permanent public collections, united by his uses of incident as total image and subject matter rather than as an interesting by-product. For Sarah's Merles 1976, which hang vertically in six units, the top panel in each series was painted with a heavily loaded brush with the result that excess paint splashed and dripped down over the raw canvas units below.1 The group thus becomes a reflection of the whole process. Through swanboro 1976-7 the theme of modernist reduction is extended in horizontal sets until we see in Royco 1977 - named after the brand of house painting brush MacPherson used for the work - a conclusive statement on the concept and process. Over the course of working on ten panels the artist has systematically exhausted a fully loaded brush until cleaned out. 1. see Cripps Op Cit pp 5-6 We are grateful to Simon Wright for this catalogue entry.