RICK AMOR

Niagara Galleries, Melbourne (label on reverse)
Corporate collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above

This work is in very good, original condition. Some surface spots, lower centre.
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Rick Amor's landmark exhibition Williamstown: The Bay, The Port¹established a set of motifs and moods which have sustained his practice for many years. The seated man in the present work, for example, ultimately derives from the earlier Watcher on the Pier (1986, private collection). The passive, anonymous figure not only humanises the vacant industrial landscape, but also serves as a cypher for the artist himself. Most importantly, it assists entry into the picture by providing a 'substitute viewer'² onto which the audience can project their own perceptions and imaginings.

Developed from a plein-air watercolour³, the landscape of The Port is pure Melbourne docklands, both in the empirical realities of the Newport Power Station and Westgate Bridge and in the general mood of melancholic poetry, in the shadowy horizon pierced by smokestacks, cranes and power poles.

The overcast, twilight darkness is, however, relieved by golden sunshine in the upper right, which reflects brightly on the wharf building on the left, its highlit façade recalling Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad (1925, Museum of Modern Art, New York) or Ryder's House (1933, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington).

1. Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 6 – 23 May 1987
2. Rick Amor, interview with Gary Catalano, 12 November 1998, in Catalano, The Solitary Watcher: Rick Amor and his Art, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2001, p. 98
3. The Port, 1990 (exhibited Rick Amor, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 10 – 27 April 1991, cat. 3)