Press Release: Tony Irving

Opening Saturday September 12, drinks with the artist 3-5PM

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of Tony Irving’s, Other places, other views Saturday 12 September.

Tony Irving is one of Australia’s leading contemporary realist painters whose devotion to realist painting extends across four decades. Irving is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Lady Potter Collection as well as numerous other public collections throughout Australia. He has held exhibitions in the UK, Indonesia and Singapore and in 1966 was awarded the coveted McCaughey Prize.

Other places, other views draws on the local architecture of Irving’s native Victoria, his extensive European travels and a love of the Old Masters. The large scale of works such as the monumental, Motel, forces the viewer to consider bland 1960’s architecture in a new context along side similarly large paintings of European side streets. Siesta in Constantina is precisely executed, as are all the paintings; every detail is paid acute attention from the faded stripes of a pedestrian crossing to the cast iron arabesques of street lamp brackets. Shadows in Time is based on a street in Castlemaine Victoria but brings to mind the vast Venice panoramas of Canaletto. Irving softens the seriousness of the size and detailed execution of these paintings with his characteristic humor – placing a squashed Mcdonalds cup on the tarmac in Shadows in Time, a lone dog pacing the street during siesta in Bar Gregorio or a cat at the window of a down and out Motel in Motel.

Tony Irving’s Other places, other views is on view from Thursday 10 September until Wednesday 23 September.