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Title

Outer spice

1969

Artist

David Aspden

England, Australia

01 May 1935 – 26 Jun 2005

  • Details

    Date
    1969
    Media category
    Painting
    Materials used
    synthetic polymer paint on canvas
    Dimensions
    152.4 x 244.0 x 2.8 cm stretcher
    Signature & date

    Signed and dated c. verso, black fibre-tipped pen "ASPDEN 69".

    Credit
    Purchased with funds provided by an anonymous purchase fund for contemporary Australian art 1970
    Location
    Not on display
    Accession number
    OA19.1970
    Copyright
    © Karen Aspden

    Reproduction requests

    Artist information
    David Aspden

    Works in the collection

    70

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  • About

    This high-keyed, optically thrilling painting was the first work by Aspden to be acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It reveals the artist’s genesis in the avant-garde of 1960s Sydney in which a generation of young painters – inspired by contemporary developments abroad, most significantly in the United States – turned to a highly refined and reductive formalism as a new way of thinking about and making art. In this ‘new abstraction’, concerns of subject and social or geographical context were subsumed by the purist, formal qualities of the work.

    While Aspden’s early experimentation in the 1960s with shaped canvases, expanses of uniform colour and hard-edged geometic forms gave way to a freer, more painterly style in the 1970s, some elements of his early hard-edge colour-field phase remained. These included his habit of working on a large scale, his fascination with colour and formal relationships within an image, and his interest in the idea of art as an experience, in which the autonomous object had a direct and active relationship with the viewer.

  • Exhibition history

    Shown in 5 exhibitions

  • Bibliography

    Referenced in 12 publications

    • Bruce Adams, Sunday Australian, 'Tailor-made for cultural limbo', pg. 22, Sydney, 30 Apr 1972.

    • Gallery A (Melbourne), David Aspden (1969), Melbourne, 1969. cat.no. 4

    • G.E.W. Harriott (Editor), The Sydney Morning Herald, 'Art prizes awarded', pg. 10, Sydney, 14 Jul 1972.

    • Terence Maloon, Birth of the cool, Canberra, 2015, 3 (colour illus.), 5 (colour illus.), 42. cat.no. 2

    • Patrick McCaughey., Age, 'Stamina, a realist and some graffiti', Melbourne, 06 Aug 1969. Exhibition review.

    • Alan McCulloch., The Sydney Morning Herald, 'Making the eye twitch', Sydney, 06 Aug 1969.

    • John McDonald, The Sydney Morning Herald, 'Harmonious effects', pg. 14-15, Sydney, 13 Aug 2011-14 Aug 2011, 14. Article appears in 'Spectrum' supplement.

    • Hal Missingham (Editor), Art Gallery of New South Wales Quarterly, Sydney, Jul 1971, 606. Special Gifts

    • Helen Campbell with Eric Riddler, David Aspden: the colour of music and place, 'Chronology', pg. 79-85, Sydney, 2011, 14-15 (colour illus.), 80, 88.

    • Daniel Thomas, Gallery A Sydney 1964 - 1983, 'Ralph Balson and Gallery A', pg. 103-115, Campbelltown, 2009, 101 (illus.), 110 (colour illus.), 112.

    • Alan Warren., Herald Sun, 'Tuning in to an artist', Port Melbourne, 06 Aug 1969. Exhibition review.

    • Natalie Wilson, Tackling THE FIELD, 'Tackling The Field', pg. 1-29, Sydney, 2009, 4 (colour illus.), 25. NOTE: This work was hung in an adjoining room for the duration of the 'Tackling THE FIELD' collection focus display.

Other works by David Aspden

See all 70 works