The Walk in Darkness, 1990
synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 24 canvas boards, each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 29979 – 30002
152.5 x 152.5 cm (overall)
Provenance
Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne
Private collection, Hobart
Goodmans Auctioneers, Sydney, 23 October 2000, lot 168
Private collection
Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 2 September 2003, lot 62 (as 'Dievturi')
Paul Sutherland, Sydney.
Estate of the above, Sydney
Deutscher and Hackett, Australian + International Fine Art, Melbourne, 21 April 2021, lot. 57
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Australian Art, Colonial to Contemporary, Deutscher Fine Art,
Melbourne, May – June 1995, cat. 114 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)
Literature
Curnow, W. Imants Tillers and the 'Book of Power', Craftsman House, G+B Arts International, Sydney, 1998, p. 137
"In some ways Tillers has been identified as a quintessential postmodern artist in his use of appropriation and quotation. What is so fascinating about his approach, however, is that the best of it has a distinctly personal dimension.... From the 1970’s onwards he made a virtue out of the distance of Australia from the so-called centres of Europe and America, bringing together imagery from well-known and relatively unknown artists. Along with Tillers’ particular interest in post-Second World War German art, his works reveal an equal passion for artists from the so-called peripheries, including the great New Zealand painter Colin McCahon, who has been an ongoing source of inspiration." (Ron Radford, Imants Tillers: One world many visions, National Gallery of Australia, 1989. p.6)
"When Tillers first saw McCahon's Victory over Death 2 in the National Gallery of Australia he was struck by its overwhelming presence and landscape associations. In an interview with Jenny Harper, who curated an exhibition of Tillers’ work for the National Gallery of New Zealand in Wellington in 1989, he also noted his attraction to McCahon's use of contemporary scale, the arte-povera painting surfaces he sometimes employs, the conceptual flavour of the numbers and words, the ‘radical hybridisation of received styles and ideas’, and his use of biblical quotation that gives his work a simultaneously archaic and contemporary presence.
He added: There is a constant tension between the search for meaning, the desire for transcendence and pervasive, immovable scepticism. It is this aspect of McCahon that I find most interesting and most relevant to our condition today." (Imants Tillers: one world many visions, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1989, p.33)
Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney