Tim Johnson
The Electric Fans, c. 1980
acrylic on canvas
27.5 x 43.5
cm
signed and titled (on the reverse)
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Tim Johnson's painting 'The Electric Fans', circa 1980, is a portrait of an obscure underground music act of the same name. The painting is part of a concentrated series of works that the celebrated Australian artist made between 1979 and 1983, which also featured bands like Radio Birdman and The Sex Pistols. While deeply interested in both the audio and visual culture of the punk and rock movements, it was their unique ideologies and fierce spirit of independence that the conceptual artist was drawn to. In 'The Electric Fan', the band’s portrait is rendered in a crude, expressionistic style. Here, Johnson characteristically flattens the illusion of depth in the picture, dissolving the image into a field of colour. It's as though the punk rock pin-ups have intruded into the space of Modernism, the pure field of colour corrupted by the presence of popular culture.
Provenance
The artist
Private collection, Sydney