A borderline psychedelic, kaleidoscopic environment awaits you at this major solo exhibition by one of Australia's foremost contemporary artists, Dale Frank, presented across two floors at The National Art School gallery in Darlinghurst.
Growers and Showers (free to visit until June 1, 2024) is filled with bold colours, glossy abstract paintings, and highly experimental assemblages that play with unexpected surfaces like shattered glass, mirror, foam, human hair, CDs and foil ducting. (If you have an aversion to creepy clowns, proceed with caution.) Coloured lights, incense, and soundtrack personally picked by the artist himself (it’s Foreigner’s 1997 debut album, on rotation) further alter the atmosphere of the space, creating an immersive viewer experience that tests the boundaries of abstraction.
Presenting 45 large-scale paintings, sculptures and installations created over the past decade – including nine never-before-exhibited works – this significant survey exhibition delves into Frank’s enduring commitment to experimentation and ongoing investigation into the potentiality of painting, alongside his multidisciplinary approach. Speaking with Katraina Cashman, Senior Curator of NAS Galleries, she explains that the artist's use of pop culture references and unconventional materials serve to challenge and stimulate the viewer's senses, eliciting a physical response that lingers long after the encounter.
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“If you think about him coming up through the 1970s and 1980s, at that period in time, painting was dead, right? Conceptual art was to be pushed… Dale says of himself, ‘I'm a survivor’. He has survived various trends and various periods, and so his real interest is in showing people what he's capable of. He would be thinking about undoing what he's done before, that sense of the idea of destroying your art, destroying what you've made in order to re-learn,” says Cashman.
And that's a great idea for young people to take hold. That it’s not just a singular path, a bit like anybody's career path these days, people don't have a linear career path – people have portfolio careers, a bit of this, bit of that – but as an artist, finding your own language, and being able to undo that language and start again like that takes a bit of bravery, and putting yourself out there.
You know, in Australia we’re very much about the tall poppy syndrome as well. He's had a level of commercial success that a lot of other people would be envious of. But the fact is, in this environment, a non-commercial public gallery, you can push the boundaries, and that's what we're interested in.”
The NAS Gallery is not just for students, and this exhibition (one of five major annual exhibitions) is a particularly colourful example of its role as a leading centre for visual art in the Asia-Pacific. Wander past the convict-cut sandstone walls that border NAS, on the grounds of the old Darlinghurst Gaol, and you’ll find the gallery housed in a former cell block in the heart of the campus.
You could cover Growers and Showers in an hour or two, and while you’re in the neighbourhood you might as well double up with a visit to Qtopia Sydney (Darlo’s newly established LGBTQIA+ history museum in the old cop shop). You can also fuel up with coffee and cafe bites between exhibitions on campus at NAS ArtBar & Kitchen, and finish up with a sundowner around the corner at Darlo Bar (unless the night takes you down to Oxford Street’s best gay bars).
Dale Frank: Growers and Showers is accompanied by a 60-page artist-designed catalogue, including essays by Wes Hill, Associate Professor in Art History, and Visual Culture at Southern Cross University, and Elspeth Pitt, Senior Curator Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia.
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