Dale Frank at National Art School

A former gaol that was once Australia’s most formidable place of incarceration is currently hosting a survey of the works of one of Australia’s foremost abstract artists, Dale Frank.

Presented across two floors in the old Darlinghurst Gaol, now the National Art School, and titled, Showers and Growers, the show contains 45 large-scale paintings, sculptures and installations by Frank. It’s a rare opportunity to experience his work, completed over the past ten years, with some never seen before.

Frank has been at the forefront of Australian contemporary art since he first exhibited in the mid-seventies, and he is represented in every major gallery in the country. He represented Australia in the Venice Biennale and, most recently, at the 55th Art Cologne.

“Dale is well known as a painter of abstract work, and is one of Australia’s most formidable contemporary artists,” said Katrina Cashman, Gallery Manager and Curator.

“He is mainly known for his high colour, vivid and glossy abstract works that have a sense about them of being poured onto a substrate of canvas to perspex.

“The liquid is then manipulated by him on the surface to make these incredible abstract paintings.”

Born in NSW’s Hunter Valley in1959, Frank was awarded the Red Cross Art Prize, judged by John Olsen in 1974 before moving to Italy in 1979 to pursue a career as a performance artist.

He quickly made a name for himself with solo exhibitions in Dublin, Budapest, Milan, London and New York, before being included in the 4th Sydney Biennale in 1982.

In the same year Frank joined the fledgeling Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, which still represents him.

Since that time Frank’s work has moved through many styles including drawing, photography and interactive installations, to the present abstract varnish works.

“There is a lot of experimentation with epoxy glass and resins on perspex that have a metallic sheen about them,” Cashman said.

“The colours are incredibly bright and vivid, royal blues and dark purples and then the epoxy resin coagulates on the surface, almost looking like the way an egg yolk forms.

“These beautiful shapes appear, which the artist manipulates through the eyes and pigments.”

The sandstone campus of the NAS once housed murderers, bushrangers and general colonial low-life, but now it contains the two-level gallery that in recent times has hosted major shows by Elizabeth Cummings, John Olsen and Colin Lanceley.

“When we go upstairs we see a different side of Frank’s practice, and that is work with found materials in the form of assemblage,” Cashman said.

“There are repetition of multiples, so it could be something as provocative as a sex toy (or) it could be be a rubber clown mask that is repeated onto the surface of the painting that creates this incredible grotesquery that is at once beautiful but also a revulsion.”

More than a gallery, the NAS space is also meant to be an opportunity to showcase the best of Australian art to the students at the school.

“One of the curatorial decisions in programming it was to make  those academic connections across the school so we can expose our students to as many artists and practices we can,” Cashman said.

The NAS Gallery welcomes the public and is open six days a week from Monday to Saturday 11am to 5pm and is free to enter.

Dale Frank:Growers and Showers

Until June 1

National Art School Gallery, Taylor Square, Darlinghurst

FREE entry

nas.edu.au/dale-frankgrowers-and-showers