Linda Marrinon

Sydney, 1986
acrylic on canvas
201.5 x 174.3 cm

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Provenance
The artist
Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
Acquired by the present owner from the above on 14 October 1986

Literature
Chris McAuliffe, Linda Marrinon – Let Her Try, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2007, illus. p.46


Sydney, 1986, is one of several large paintings by Marrinon from 1986-87 that satirised the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne.

Typical of Marrinon’s works from the 1980s that drew on the wit and simplicity of cartoons, the painting depicts a figure blowing a kiss at the Sydney Opera House – then still a relatively new structure – with the harbour city’s name in large, unadorned, bold print along the canvas’s bottom edge.  The work relates to other works like Rialto, 1986, which depicted the Melbourne towers that opened the same year as simple boxes with the buildings’ name in a font reminiscent of a glamour magazine.

The naïve style that Marrinon adopted in this period has been compared by Chris McAuliffe as being akin to lo-fi rock bands of the 1990s reacting against the digital age.

Further in his 2007 monograph on Marrinon, McAuliffe wrote about what he called her “sequence of iconic renditions of Sydney and Melbourne” in the following terms: “It’s one thing, Marrinon seemed to suggest, for these historical rivals to belittle each other as Tinsel town and St Petersburg respectively, but it’s another entirely to act this out on an extravagant architectural scale. In Sydney, 1986, Jorn Utzon’s Opera House has all the flamboyant and impractical extravagance attributed to the harbour city.” (Chris McAuliffe, Linda Marrinon: Let Her Try, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2007, p. 46)

Jack Howard, 2026