Skip to content

Collection

An image of The roofs of Oxford Street (Taylor Square) by Thomas Spence

Thomas Spence

(Australia 1952– )

Title
The roofs of Oxford Street (Taylor Square)
Other titles:
The roofs of Oxford Street, Taylor Square
Place of origin
Darlinghurst → Sydney → New South Wales → Australia
Year
1993
Media category
Drawing
Materials used
pencil, graphite, watercolour, scraping out, silver, blue and red glitter, green and black ink, black and copper coloured acrylic on three sheets of whit wove paper on board
Dimensions

101.7 x 242.8cm sheet overall; 110.0 x 250.0 x 2.5cm frame

Signature & date
Signed l.r.corner, brush and black ink and l.l. corner (twice), black fibre-tipped pen "T W Spence". Signed verso, fibre-tipped pen "Thomas Spence". Not dated.
Credit
Gift of the Trustees of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation 1994
Accession number
200.1994
Copyright
© Thomas Spence
Location
Not on display
Further information

The landscape of the remote rural property where Thomas Spence was born differs in every respect from his adopted home of Sydney.

'When I first came to the ‘big city’ of Sydney in my twenties it was like arriving in Disneyland, a world of lushness and plenty – suburban gardens full of flowers, green grass, lights everywhere, in contrast to the austerity and harshness of rural life. This suburban landscape was captivating creatively for a time and dominated my work for a number of years. It was during this time that I decided I would concentrate exclusively on drawing – graphite on paper with an occasional acrylic wash. This technique allowed me the kind of precision and detail I was after to describe the minutiae and almost infinite detail of people’s lives in the suburbs, which so interested me (Thomas Spence, 2003)'.

Spence made a number of small drawings from the top of a block of apartments on Flinders Street, Darlinghurst, near Taylor Square in inner Sydney, which he developed into this drawing in his studio. The attraction afforded by this vantage point was that it gave him an unusual view, looking down on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Spence made three or four other drawings of Oxford Street, including one of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, a street parade that takes place there, until he found access to the apartment rooftop was no longer available.

Bibliography (5)

Sasha Grishin, The Canberra Times, ‘Farce v serious art judgment’, pg. 17, Canberra, 23 Mar 1994, 17.

Hendrik Kolenberg, The Dobell Prize for Drawing: 1993-2004, ‘Introduction: the first ten years’, pg. 8-9, Sydney, 2004, 9, 14-15 (colour illus.), 18, 19 (colour illus.), 50, 51.

Hendrik Kolenberg, Contemporary Australian Drawing: 20 years of the Dobell Prize for Drawing, ‘Introduction’, pg. 6-14, Sydney, 2012, 2 (illus., detail), 7, 22, 23 (colour illus.), 60.

Bronwyn Watson, The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Drawing on the fine detail’, pg. 26, Sydney, 27 Apr 1994, 26.

Gavin Wilson, Thomas Spence: 35 years of expressing the inexpressible, Queensland, 2010. cat.no. 1

Exhibition history (3)

Dobell Prize for Drawing 1994, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 19 Mar 1994–15 May 1994

Dobell Drawing Prize 1998 (Touring show):

Contemporary Australian Drawing: 20 Years of the Dobell Drawing Prize: