Brett Whiteley

(1939-1992)

Platypus, 1970

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Bonython Gallery, Sydney
Australian Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso)
Private collection
Goodmans Auctioneers, Australian & European Paintings, Sydney, 3 August 1999, lot 122
Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney (label attached verso)
Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2001

EXHIBITED
Sounds, Paintings, Sculpture, Film, Drawings, Jottings, Innuendos, and Sideglances, Bonython Galleries, Sydney, June 1970; then Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 9 - 30 August 1970 (illus. as screenprint exhibition poster)

RELATED WORKS
Platypus, screenprint, exhibition poster for Australian Galleries, 1970
Platypus, screenprint, advertising poster for Festival of Perth, 1971

Whilst Brett Whiteley's 1970 exhibitions with Bonython Galleries in Sydney and Australian Galleries in Melbourne were uncatalogued and untitled, we can be certain given its use on the exhibition poster to promote the show that our work, Platypus, was included. With his recently completed The American Dream, as its centrepiece, the exhibition also included a 3 metre portrait of Baudelaire as well as 'a Japanese room, and images of Australia - The Olgas, Kookaburras, Aboriginal totems, pictures of the Opera House and Sydney falling into the sea. There were gloriously decorative honeyeaters and frangipanis from the paradise which had rejected him. It was overwhelming to almost all who viewed it.

There was also sound, as Laurie Thomas noted: "A sound like a million cicadas pierces the eardrums when you go into Brett Whiteley's exhibition at Bonython Gallery. The cicadas becoming screaming sirens, police sirens and female sirens, and the medley and the cacophony of cities, sex, despair, joy, evil and beauty. This is no cool withdrawal from life."'1

We gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance of Kathie Sutherland in cataloguing this work.

1. Laurie Thomas, 'Passion and Power in Whiteley Exhibition', The Australian, 16 June 1970