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Having
established a solid career in his home-town
of Perth, Garry Pumfrey has recently
relocated his practice to Melbourne’s
beachside suburb of St Kilda. The result
of this continental crossing has been
a wealth of new inspiration drawn from
the vestiges of Melbourne’s industrial
past. As a landscape painter Pumfrey’s
style exploits a deft use of high realism
to capture the underlying drama of a
scene, the general banality of the built
environment serving to reveal underlying
cultural dilemmas or desires. Best known
for his portrayal of the industrial
boom besieging Perth’s outer regions,
this new Melbourne sojourn has led Pumfrey
to explore the forgotten or dwindling
industrial blocks behind Port Melbourne.
While the rest of Melbourne is being
transformed by a surge of medium density
apartment dwellings, Pumfrey has headed
instead for the shadowy spaces under
and around the Westgate Bridge, to the
often overlooked remnants of a working
class portside culture of industry and
manufacturing. With its giant silos
and plumes of grey smoke, areas such
as Fisherman’s Bend offer a radically
different view of Melbourne.
'I love the drama of the port
area - the looming structure of the
Westgate Bridge and the monolithic quality
of the areas factories. In contrast
to the relatively new rise of industrial
activity in Perth, Melbourne’s
factories have an aged, heavy quality.'
As vignettes of an overlooked landscape
Pumfrey’s paintings offer both
an opportunity to observe Melbourne
with fresh eyes and to acknowledge a
scene that may soon succumb to the expanding
boundaries of inner city development.
Garry Pumfrey studied art and
design at the Claremont School of Art,
before studying for a further twelve
months at Edith Cowan University in
1999. He won an award in the 2004 Town
of Vincent Art Award, won the Peoples
Choice Award at the City of Joondalup
Invitational Art Award in 2004 and has
taken out first prize twice at the Gascoyne
Biennale and once at the Kalgoorlie
Boulder Art Exhibition. He was awarded
ArtsWA funding for his Melbourne and
Sydney exhibitions, and has work in
several public collections, including
Parliament House Collection, Murdoch
University and Edith Cowan University. |
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Nylex
Silos 2009
oil on linen
44 x 59cm
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