Deutscher and Hackett

'The artist explained later that the May 1979 Tolarno exhibition had its genesis in his delighted recognition of the diverse patterns of Australian suburban fly-wire doors, following his recent return from overseas, stimulated in turn by his fascination with the Art Nouveau and Art Deco architecture he saw in Paris in 1977. Indeed, the 1979 show, and a second exhibition at Sydney's Coventry Gallery in March 1980, both took the form of a sequence of tall door-shaped canvases (interspersed with several square or 'double door' format works), each based on a particular decorative pattern or motif.

The loose parameters of the project were made plain in the second, Sydney show. There, the title Deco was used for a different painting altogether, first shown at Tolarno (as Arrows - Crosses), an Op Art influenced work involving repeated red and blue sprayed elements floating against a backdrop of arrows and crosses in a fine, black outline. In Sydney, the bright yellow picture originally shown at Tolarno as Deco was simply re-named Bodgie - Widgie (and later the artist inscribed this work on the reverse with yet another variant tile: Bodgie). Repetition, both of decorative elements and titles, was obviously central to Arkley's working method here. Pattern, by definition, involves the theoretically infinite repetition of small decorative forms and motifs - and he exploited this quality to the full, challenging the viewer by treating his canvases like decorative fabrics or wallpaper. 'Art by the metre', he joked later to Richard Brown.'¹

1. Gregory, J., Carnival in Suburbia, The Art of Howard Arkley, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2006, pp. 57-59