Stuart Black - 'Passing Trucks, 90-93'

Wednesday 17 - Sunday 28 January 2018

Midsumma Festival 2018

The late Stuart Black’s art is intrinsically linked to homosexuality.

Living at a time when gay people were inventing themselves; a time of hope, desires, disappointment and conflict, Black’s art sits at the end of late modernist practice, with its stress on individual expression, creativity and invention. Art of a more culturally enlightened time when images of sexual difference and experience were sympathetically and critically examined.

Passing Trucks exhibits Black’s works while he was living in St Kilda.

In spite of the voyeuristic excitement suggested in other works the view from Black’s penthouse was not always pleasant and comforting. Almost immediately after moving in, Black noticed that trucks filled with animal carcasses and hides were speeding along the freeway towards the meat works on the other side of the city.

Not visible from the street, his ‘god’s eye’ view of this grim traffic motivated him to embark on what was to be his last major series.*

*excerpts from Still Life - Stuart Black by Craig Judd. 

Black (1937-2007) was a Melbourne-based painter who gained critical notice early in his career for a refined synthesis of modernist styles. As a mature artist, Black made art as a diarist and social commentator. He also made art purely for pleasure. The Stuart Black Memorial Bursary to the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, allows selected young artists to acquire materials, to travel and have the support of a sponsored drawing teacher. It is a lasting legacy of this charismatic personality and much admired teacher.