Ich hab dich leib Arnold Böcklin's 'Isle of the Dead'

Opening at Lismore’s Serpentine Community Gallery

on Friday 27th January 2017, from 7pm,

local artist Lindsay Hunt presents a solo show in two parts.

 

In gallery 1, his latest body of work

- “Ich hab dich leib (platonic love for)

Arnold Böcklin's ‘Isle of the Dead'”

- is inspired by the 19th century Swiss symbolist’s

 influential series of paintings. Speaking of his first

 encounter with this work, Lindsay commented,

“Although I was very young at the time I still retain

an echoing impression, haunting and almost cinematic.”

While in gallery 2,

“Celebrating 25 years as an exhibiting artist”

will provide exhibition goers with a thoughtfully

selected range of works created throughout

this contemporary Australian artist’s career.

'500 years'

mixed media

Trained in his home city of Sydney and in London at the Royal College of Art, Lindsay Hunt creates works in a number of media including oil, acrylic, ink, pastel,

charcoal and pencil, as well as using print techniques including woodcut and drypoint etching. The content of his work is varied, with themes drawn from personal experience and perceptions of the world - and often strongly expressed in work that is satirical and darkly poetic.

Based in the Lismore region since the late 1990s,

Lindsay has led a rich life that has seen training

in both the visual arts and in architecture.

His interests extend further however,

with two threads that seem to dominate

 - ancient history, including written language, hieroglyphics and the cursive scripts of ancient civilisations,

and injustice in all of its forms

from backyard bullies to the subjugation

by those in power, not least, 'The Establishment'.

He has taught extensively in the disciplines of

Art and Design at a number of Australian tertiary institutions and has exhibited extensively

in well-known galleries in Sydney,

regional NSW, Brisbane and Melbourne.

 His work is held in private and corporate collections

in Australia, and private collections in London.

Everyone is welcome to attend the opening celebration.

Light refreshments will be available.

Prior to the opening, Guy Ingram checks artwork labels

Lindsay Hunt (right) and friends

In Gallery 1, “Ich hab dich leib (platonic love for) Arnold Böcklin's ‘Isle of the Dead'"

- a series of ink, charcoal and acrylic on board works created during 2016 and 2017.

'Two Souls: Adrift'

'Two Souls: In Southern Latitudes'

'Two Souls: Tempest'

'Approaching the Isle'

'Two Souls: Fading'

'Soul with Elements'

'Souls facing Turbulence'

'A Soul Abandoned'

'The Journey'

'A Phantom Shamanic Cat'

'Dispersing Souls'

In gallery 2, “Celebrating 25 years as an exhibiting artist”

'Self Portrait with Green Bonnet'

1992

mixed media on archival paper

'Herr Doktor with the Rabbit Mask'

1992

mixed media

'Crossing Oceans'

1992

mixed media

'White Text'

1993

mixed media

'Mit Ein Dogzie At Your Throat'

2002

oil on ply

'The Johnny Virus Cometh'

2005

unique state print

'Burning Barricades'

2005

oil on ply

'Boy Bone Offering To the Cloud God'

2006

hand-coloured woodcut

'Wrestling Evil'

2006

collotype diptych

'Ineffectual Gyrations in the Presence of Evil'

2006

drypoint on archival paper

'Toxic Fly of Greed'

2006

wood-cut, 2-colour unique print

'In Search of Bellini'

2006

artist proof

'Burning Barricades 1'

2007

oil, charcoal

'Calculating Pond'

2010

mixed media on paper

'Hansel and Gretel Revisited'

2012

oil on prepared paper

from the series

'The Birth of the Winged Ones'

2011

mixed media on archival paper

'The Republic of Art'

2012

oil on ply

'500 years'

2013

mixed media

'Self portrait with friends'

2013

oil on ply

'The Magic Cat'

2014

unique state print

'McMeowie'

2015

mixed media

The show is on view until 25th February.

A little about Böcklin's ‘Isle of the Dead'

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) produced five different versions of the mysterious

'Isle of the Dead (German: Die Toteninsel)' painting between 1880 and 1886.

The title, which was conferred upon it by art dealer Fritz Gurlitt in 1883, was not specified by Böcklin,

though it does derive from a phrase in  an 1880 letter he sent to the painting’s original commissioner.

Böcklin himself provided no public explanation as to the meaning of the painting, though he did describe it as

“a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.”

Prints were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century - Vladimir Nabokov observed in his novel Despair (originally published in Russian, serially in the politicized literary journal Sovremennye zapiski during 1934)

that they could be "found in every Berlin home".

Versions 1,2,3 & 5 are pictured below. The 4th version, owned by entrepreneur/art collector

Baron Heinrich Thyssen and hung at his Berliner Bank subsidiary, was burned during

a WWII bomb attack and survives only as a black-and-white photograph.

In the almost 140 years since Böcklin created the first version of this work, the 'Isle of the Dead' has inspired many new works in the fields of theatre, film, literature, music, television and painting.

Among them are:

 Sergei Rachmaninoff's 1908 symphonic poem 'Isle of the Dead, Op. 29', Salvador Dalí's 1932 painting 'The Real Picture of the Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin at the Hour of the Angelus', Canadian animator Craig Welch's 1996 animated short 'How Wings Are Attached

to the Backs of Angels' and, in 2016/2017,

 Lindsay Hunt's most recent body of work.

Source: Isle of the Dead - Wikipedia

Arnold Böcklin's 'Die Toteninsel

- IV' black & white print