We acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the Country on which the Art Gallery of NSW stands.

Title

Made in Wadeye

2012

Artist

Gareth Sansom

Australia

1939 –

Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom
Alternate image of Made in Wadeye by Gareth Sansom

  • Details

    Place where the work was made
    Wadeye (Port Keats) → Northern Territory → Australia
    Date
    2012
    Media categories
    Drawing , Collage
    Materials used
    ink, lead pencil, graphite, coloured watercolour pencil, fibre-tipped pen, ball-point pen, egg tempera, earth, collage on white cartridge paper
    Dimensions
    29.7 x 42.0 cm each sheet; 119.0 x 210.0 cm overall; 127.5 x 219.0 x 6.2 cm frame
    Signature & date

    Signed and dated l.r. corner, black fibre-tipped pen "GS ‘12".

    Credit
    Gift of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation 2012
    Location
    Not on display
    Accession number
    380.2012
    Copyright
    © Gareth Sansom/Copyright Agency

    Reproduction requests

    Dobell Prize for Drawing
    Winner - 2012
    Artist information
    Gareth Sansom

    Works in the collection

    11

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  • About

    Gareth Sansom was born in Melbourne and studied art at RMIT between 1959-64. He came to prominence as a figurative painter in Melbourne in the 1960s at a time of increasing abstraction, with influences ranging from British pop art to Francis Bacon. Sansom’s idiosyncratic drawings, watercolours, collages and paintings work straddle figuration and abstraction, and are based on a personal iconography that extends back over fifty years, and includes imagery of a sexual, philosophical and religious nature. His work defies narrative - despite the apparent randomness of the images, the artist’s formal and aesthetic ordering of them within the structure of the composition renders them whole. Works on paper – drawings, watercolours, photography and collage – have always been a key part of his practice - he represented Australia at the Seventh Triennial India in 1991, and won the National Works on Paper Award at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery in 2006, exhibiting watercolours in both.

    'Made in Wadeye' is a suite of twenty drawings selected by the artist from a larger group of about forty made over a period of about eleven days in Wadeye, a remote Indigenous settlement south west of Darwin, in September 2012. Sansom spent two weeks in the town with his wife, a doctor, who had flown in for a month of clinical work. He walked the streets of the town, sometimes taking photographs, and observed and met the local people. The drawings were made in a pad of cartridge paper, disassembled once he returned to his Melbourne studio. To some, additional collage was applied, and then a selection of the final exhibited works made.

    Works on paper are a discrete and ongoing aspect of Sansom’s oeuvre – "They balance out my work, explain what I am doing" (interview with the artist and AGNSW, 19 November 2012). Occasional drawings are used to resolve problems in a painting; some are kept in a “collage box”, for possible re-use in future works. Sansom’s Wadeye drawings were made independently of any other work, a product of his time in the settlement, which was a dislocating experience of time and place. However, while Wadeye was the impetus for the series, it was not its subject; "I make stream of consciousness drawings with sources going back years" (interview with the artist and AGNSW, 19 November 2012). References to Wadeye are limited to a small hand-drawn map given to the artist by a local nurse, which he has added as collage in one of the drawings, and some earth, captured in egg tempera on paper.

  • Places

    Where the work was made

    Wadeye (Port Keats)

  • Exhibition history

    Shown in 3 exhibitions

  • Bibliography

    Referenced in 16 publications

Other works by Gareth Sansom

See all 11 works