The practice of celebrated Australian contemporary artist Jasper Knight focuses on the industrialised and urban landscape, and cites artists such as Howard Arkley among his influences. In bold, vividly-coloured paint, he transforms relics of industry into technicolour icons. Co-opting found debris alongside painterly techniques, Knight asserts the objects of industrialisation as portals into the past, worthy of artistic investigation.
Knight's portrait of Jeffrey Smart alludes to an exploration of the relationship between material and subject, and a nod to shared artistic focus on industrialisation and urban landscapes. Like most of Knight's works, the usage of large blocks of colour that drip and spill over the brightly coloured and shiny surfaces offer an illusion of movement, juxtaposed with the sitter's ongoing examination of stillness and disquietude in his own works. Knight has drawn Smart's presence as an artist with a shared interest in industrialised urbanity out of his recognisable, highly structured aesthetic and into a looser, more organic exploration of same.
The portrait was exhibited in Jasper Knight: The ten year storm at Australian Galleries, Sydney 26 May – 14 June 2015.
Gift of Ross Steele AM 2021. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Jasper Knight/Copyright Agency, 2022
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