Lot 20

In overall good condition, minor handling creases to the edges of the sheets. Two brown stains upper and lower centre edges, although these appear to be from the artists' studio. Framed with perspex, overall size 172 x 226cm.


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Private collection, Melbourne

Gregory, J., Arkley Works: Howard Arkley Online Catalogue Raisonne, https://www.arkleyworks.com/blog/2022/03/28/interior-with-built-in-bar-1992-w-p-howard-arkley-juan-davila/

© The Estate of Howard Arkley and Juan Davila
Courtesy of Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art

RELATED WORK:
Interior With Built-In Bar 1992, silkscreen, diptych, edition of 6 + 4 Artist's Proofs, 169 x 216cm (sheet, overall)

Juan Davila and Howard Arkley had an extensive collaborative partnership that evolved over many years and led to the production of three-dimensional installations, silkscreen prints, paintings and works on paper. Interior with Built-in Bar 1992 is a major work on paper collaboration that signifies a momentus shift in their partnership. Howard Arkley and Juan Davila's collaborations have made a significant impact on art history in Australia and demonstrated the possiblities of artistic partnerships that, until more recently, has been greatly underappreciated.

In 1992, Juan Davila was already well known for his sharp political paintings and Howard Arkley for his domestic interiors. Aesthetically, the work of Arkley and Davila did not typically speak the same language. While Arkley took a cleaner approach to his paintwork, and frequently drew upon appropriation and manipulation of existing images, Davila was far more gestural, with his work driven by political commentary and the mainstream media. In contrast, too, Arkley was more naturally inclined to accept the role of collaborator, as he had done previously, whilst for Davila it was new territory. The two artists continued to push the boundaries for each other, challenge eachother, right up to the point where ego would normally want to take over but there remained a harmony to the process.
Howard Arkley's Mix 'n Match show at Tolarno Galleries in 1992 was inspired largely by images found in the American book, The Instant Decorator, by Frances Joslin Gold. The book was given to Arkley by fellow artist John Nixon and several pages went on to inspire both Arkley and Davila in their collaborations. The book featured transparent sheets which enabled the reader to experiment with swatches and colour choices. This overlaying of colour and pattern throughout both artists' work, especially in the early 90s, can be traced back to this book.

Arkley and Davila presented their first major collaborative installation, Blue Chip Instant Decorator: A Room, at Tolarno Galleries in 1991. Shortly after this the pair created the original gouache, and resulting silkscreen print Interior with Built in Bar 1992, a work which demonstrates the union between the two and the balanced merging of their two artistic styles. This gouache here illustrates the key moment when "Arkley and Davila adopted a copycat mode of authorship where the hand was deliberately muddled though appropriations of each other's form and style." (1) The composition of Interior with Built in Bar displays picture frames lopsided and an inversion of floor to ceiling, reflecting Davila's vision of the interior whilst responding to Arkley's perspective. Interior with Built in Bar deliberately and successfully "blurs the signifiers of authorship." (2)

Arkley and Davila's project Icon Interior 1994-2001 was the final resulting collaboration between the pair, completed by Davila after Arkley's death. In Interior with Built in Bar and Icon Interior we can identify more than one author within the work, but the focus is not to be on who created what, but rather how the two hands at work responded to eathother's strengths and limitations as artists and collaborated in the truest sense of the word.

Olivia Fuller | Head of Art

(1) Jones, G,, The Man with Two Faces: Quoting the Collaborative Hand of Howard Arkley and Juan Davila, Emaj Journal, issue 7.1 November 2013, accessed online
(2) Ibid.