"Roger Kemp: Visionary Modernist" Exhibit (Melbourne, Australia)

 

"Roger Kemp - Visionary Modernist" Exhibit

The Roger Kemp: Visionary Modernist Exhibit, developed in close association with the estate of the artist who died on September 14, 1987, is the first major exhibition to chart the development of unique and enigmatic Australian artist Francis Roderick "Roger" Kemp’s extraordinary career as one of Australia’s great innovators in the field of abstract art.  Opened at the Ian Potter Center: NGV Australia last August 22, 2019, the exhibition runs until March 15, 2020. 

Check out "Ian Potter Center: NGV Australia"

 

Abstract expressionism art on display

Kemp is best known for his four large-scale tapestries that hang in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Great Hall which are among the Gallery’s most identifiable pieces of art.  Recognized as one of the great inventors in abstract art, Kemp strove “to make visible the invisible.”

 

The exhibition, the most comprehensive retrospective of this acclaimed artist’s work (comprising paintings, prints and sketches), features several never before publicly exhibited works.  Exploring the artist’s extraordinary career, it reveals an artist whose concerns go beyond the physical world. This exhibition presents a timely and comprehensive review of these and other dynamic abstract works from the artist’s career.’

It begins with his earliest paintings of symbolic landscapes and angular dancing figures then continues through his work of the 1950s (where the human form is transfigured and becomes part of an abstract structure) and on to his later works (highly resolved paintings of the 1960s, 70s and 80s where the geometric structure heightens the symbolic richness contained within) which reveal an artist whose concerns go beyond the physical world.

 

The interest of this unique and enigmatic artist was not in the overriding traditions of figurative and landscape art, nor the prevailing trends in non-objective art, but rather something much deeper and more metaphysical.   His works from this period are charged with great emotional energy and are the pinnacle of an artistic and spiritual journey.

 

Ascension (1960-65, synthetic polymer paint on composition board)

Coinciding with the exhibition, the National Gallery of Victoria is publishing a comprehensive monograph which features the artist’s work and new scholarship from Australian experts.

 

Flight in Space I (ca. 1960–1965, enamel paint on composition board)

Roger Kemp: Visionary Modernist: Level 3, The Ian Potter Center: NGV Australia, FederationSquare, Melbourne. Admission is free. Further information is available from the NGV website: NGV.MELBOURNE.