Imants Tillers
(Australia 30 Jul 1950– )
- Title
- Counting: One, Two, Three
- Year
- 1988
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint, gouache, oilstick on 162 canvas boards Nos. 17188-17349
- Dimensions
-
251.0 x 639.0cm overall installed
- Credit
- Gift of the artist 2006
- Accession number
- 92.2006.a-fffff
- Copyright
- © Imants Tillers
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
This painting is from 'The book of power' series of multi-canvas appropriation works which Imants Tillers began in 1981 and still continues. Tillers cites the work of other artists to question authorial originality, how images circulate and to investigate ideas about location and place.
The numerals 1, 2, 3 are taken from a work by New Zealand modernist painter Colin McCahon. Tillers has overlaid the McCahon work onto a landscape of Lake Wakitipu in New Zealand by colonial artist Eugène von Guérard. He has added
a third appropriation, the signature of Italian artist Georgio de Chirico. De Chirico’s reuse of his own early 20th-century imagery, in works he painted much later, is an example of the cultural recycling that fascinates Tillers.- Bibliography (5)
-
Graham Coulter-Smith (Author), The Postmodern Art of Imants Tillers: Appropriation 'en abyme', 1971-2002, London, 2002, 173-174, 173 (illus.).
Charles Merewether (Australia; Scotland) (Author), Towards Infinity: works by Imants Tillers, Mexico, 1999, 51 (colour illus.).
Wystan Curnow (Author), Imants Tillers and the 'Book of Power', Singapore, 1998, 96 (colour illus.).
Jenny Harper, Imants Tillers: 19301, 1989.
'Imants Tillers in Wellington', Jenny Harper & Imants Tillers interview, pg. 52-55, Art New Zealand Winter 1989, Winter 1989, 52 (illus.).
- Exhibition history (4)
-
19301, Bess Cutler Gallery, New York, 1989–1989.
19301, National Art Gallery, Wellington, 25 Feb 1989–09 Apr 1989.
19301, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 13 May 1989–11 Jun 1989.
Towards Infinity: works by Imants Tillers, Museo de arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), 24 Sep 1999–01 Jan 2000.
