Deutscher and Hackett

‘People ask me – “Why paint birds?”, and I look at them dumbfounded. I’ve got no answer to it except that they’re the most beautiful creatures and I can’t think of a nicer theme – celebrative, heraldic theme – than birds.’1
 
Sculpture was an integral part of Brett Whiteley’s sprawling, diverse practice and he first introduced sculpture into his exhibitions in 1964 and 1965 with the intention of making a direct correlation between his work in two and three dimensions.² Across the course of his career, sculptural elements burst from the picture plane, and three-dimensional form was explored through the addition of real-life objects to his paintings (including branches, nests, eggs and taxidermised animals), in his collaborations in ceramics, and through stand-alone sculptural works. So important was the role of sculpture to Whiteley in his exhibitions that he would often borrow back privately owned works for inclusion, adamant that the exhibition would be less without them. As Kathie Sutherland has revealed, Whiteley was not averse to writing ‘begging’ letters to a work’s owner pronouncing that the exhibition in question would be a ‘flop’ without the inclusion of the artist’s chosen sculptural centrepiece.³
 
A version of Whiteley’s Wren, 1988, was first shown in the solo exhibition Brett Whiteley: ‘Birds’, recent paintings, drawings, sculpture and one screenprint, held at the artist’s Surry Hills studio in July 1988. True to Whiteley’s prodigious talent and ability to turn his hand to any material, this landmark show featured major works in all media, including the artist’s highly acclaimed bronze ‘Bird Sculptures’ of 1983 – 88, of which Wren is part. Presented during the year of his separation from his wife and muse Wendy Whiteley, the focus on birds in this exhibition also represented ‘a yearning at once for domestic stability and personal freedom.’⁴ Indeed, just as landscape provided Whiteley with ‘a means of escape, an unencumbered absorption into a painless, floating world’⁵, so too these ornithological creatures embodied a declaration of love and limitless joy – with the symbolism of birds and eggs having fascinated the artist from childhood, as his sister Fran Hopkirk has observed.
 
Despite the weight of the bronze in which it is cast, Wren immediately captures the quirky hoppity movements of this beautiful small bird. Driven by the desire to convey personality rather than precisely replicate the animal’s physiology, Whiteley has abstracted the wren’s characteristic round form, streamlining its body, head and beak into a continuous line, as if the bird is caught mid-action, possibly capturing some food. This is a creature that the artist both knows well and has observed closely, its jaunty erect tail making it immediately identifiable as a wren, while its spindly legs convey a sense of both the bird’s fragility and its need of our protection and care.
 
1. Brett Whiteley, cited in Featherstone, D., Difficult Pleasure: A Film about Brett Whiteley, Film Finance Corporation Australia Limited, 1989
2. Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, vol. 7, p. 5
3. ibid.
4. Grishin, S., Baldessin/Whiteley: Parallel Visions, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2018, p. 196
5. Brett Whiteley: Feathers and Flight, Brett Whiteley Studio, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 4 June 2020 – 28 March 2021, see https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/listen/whiteley-feathers-flight/ (accessed 16 October 2024)
 
KELLY GELLATLY