Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Lot 18
Lin Onus(1948-1996)Ongoing Adventures of X and Ray (You haven't seen my keys have you Mick)?, 1994-95
Amended
19 November 2017, 16:00 AEDT
Melbourne, ArmadaleSold for AU$13,420 inc. premium
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Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
Lin Onus (1948-1996)
Ongoing Adventures of X and Ray (You haven't seen my keys have you Mick)?, 1994-95
signed lower right: 'Lin Onus'
gouache with gold leaf on illustration board
50.0 x 38.0cm (19 11/16 x 14 15/16in).
signed lower right: 'Lin Onus'
gouache with gold leaf on illustration board
50.0 x 38.0cm (19 11/16 x 14 15/16in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Private collection, United States of America
RELATED WORK
Ongoing Adventures of X and Ray (You haven't seen my keys have you Mick)?, 1994-95, 50.0 x 38.0cm in the collection of the Onus Estate in Margo Neale, Urban Dingo: The Art and Life of Lin Onus, 1949-1996, Thames and Hudson, Victoria, pl.47, p.99 (illus.)
"On his journeys north in the guise of mythmaker, Onus passed Lake Eyre, and it was there that he encountered the dingo, an animal for which he developed a powerful affinity and one of many that he drew into his niche. Here was not the demeaned dingo of recent colonial history, hunted for its scalp and fenced off from its native hunting grounds. Here was a survivor, an animal of dignity, stealth and cunning...Onus saw obvious parallels with the treatment of Aboriginal people. He politicised these animals with red, black and yellow of the Aboriginal flag in bands...On a personal level he identified with the dingo as soulmate, attesting that he spotted them around Lake Eyre before anyone else in the car had a chance to see them.
It was in 1990 that the dingo fulfilled an additional role in Onus's evolving creation myth when it found a fellow traveller in the stingray. Just as the dingo had become a totem for Lin Onus, the stingray, through similar personal experiences and associations with Arnhem Land, became a metaphor of self for collaborator Michael Eather...A parallel existence developed between the lives of these two artists, enacted is a series of works entitled 'Ongoing Adventures of X and Ray'...In this scenario the two 'totemic' animals perform moral and political roles as they travel to places where Lin has been or inhabit fictionalised landscapes."
(Margo Neale, Urban Dingo: The Art and Life of Lin Onus, 1949-1996, Thames and Hudson, Victoria, pp.19-20)
Saleroom notices
This lot has an export permit under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986