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Details
- Date
- 1988
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint, gouache, oilstick on 162 canvas boards Nos. 17188-17349
- Dimensions
- 251.0 x 639.0 cm overall installed
- Credit
- Gift of the artist 2006
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 92.2006.a-fffffff
- Copyright
- © Imants Tillers
- Artist information
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Imants Tillers
Works in the collection
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About
Imants Tillers’ art explores the ways in which ideas and images migrate between cultures and across time. Since the 1980s, his paintings have been executed on small canvas boards which he numbers sequentially and which he regards as individual elements in an ever-expanding system. He often uses text and imagery borrowed from the work of other artists and writers, creating new amalgams of personal, literary and art historical references.
'Counting: one, two, three' cites three artists whose works have been recurring subjects in Tillers’ art. The numerals are taken from 'Koru, 1, 2, 3' 1965 by Aotearoa New Zealand modernist painter Colin McCahon, whose work, in turn, appropriated motifs from Māori art and design. The dramatic landscape that provides a backdrop to these stylised numerals is based on a painting by Austrian artist Eugene von Guerard, which depicts Whakatipu Waimāori/Lake Wakatipu in the manner of a romantic European landscape. The signature in the lower right appears to be that of the Italian forerunner of surrealism, Giorgio de Chirico. For Tillers, the work of de Chirico invokes a metaphysical realm where time doesn’t exist.
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Audio
Counting: one, two, three - Imants Tillers 2:36
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
19301, National Art Gallery, Wellington, Wellington, 25 Feb 1989–09 Apr 1989
19301, Bess Cutler Gallery, New York, , 1989–1989
19301, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand, 13 May 1989–11 Jun 1989
Towards Infinity: works by Imants Tillers, Museo de arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Mexico, 24 Sep 1999–01 Jan 2000
Landmarks, Blue Mountains City Art Gallery, Katoomba, 21 Jan 2017–19 Mar 2017
Landmarks, Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth, 09 Jun 2017–13 Aug 2017
Landmarks, Murray Art Museum Albury, Albury, 29 Sep 2017–26 Nov 2017
20th-Century galleries, lower level 1 (rehang), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Aug 2022–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 6 publications
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Anthony Bond OAM (Curator), Landmarks, Katoomba, 2017, 18-9 (colour illus.), 21.
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Graham Coulter-Smith, The Postmodern Art of Imants Tillers: Appropriation 'en abyme', 1971-2002, London, 2002, 173-174, 173 (illus.).
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Wystan Curnow, Imants Tillers and the 'Book of Power', Singapore, 1998, 96 (colour illus.).
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William Dart (Editor), Art New Zealand, 'Imants Tillers in Wellington', Jenny Harper & Imants Tillers interview, pg. 52-55, Auckland, Winter 1989, 52 (illus.).
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Jenny Harper, Imants Tillers: 19301, 1989.
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Charles Merewether, Towards Infinity: works by Imants Tillers, Mexico, 1999, 51 (colour illus.).
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