Wagner Art Gallery :: Specialists in Australian Fine Art

Frank Hodgkinson

Soaring the Bungles

29th July - 24th August 2006

The complete of the late Frank Hodgkinson’s last painting journey made in 2000 – 2001

A Bigger Bungle Bungle, Oil on Canvas, 200 x 300cm

Frank Hodgkinson was most prolific during his painting life in terms of producing artwork based on his journeys. He kept diaries and sketchbooks (some which have been published – Paris, Kakadu, Arnhem Land, New Guinea) which creatively documented his travels and which provided a catalyst for his major paintings and watercolours.

The Bungle Bungle’s was Frank Hodgkinson’s last painting journey. In 2000 he flew with wife Kate to the Bungles and recorded these works, sketching daily in the field and later completing the series in his studio between 2000 – 2001. Frank died in August 2001. This is the first time these paintings and works on paper have been exhibited, as a complete series, in its entirety.

“Walking and painting in these gorges was tough – for the first time, Frank let me carry his paint case, as we scrambled across dry creek beds, clambered stony ravines so deep and narrow as to be able to touch both sides of the chasms with outstretched arms. We shared the sense that this was it – as indeed it proved to be – his last painting journey.” - Kate Hodgkinson

“Though earthbound experiences in the gorges and creek beds of the Bungle Bungles fired studies of unique texture, form and colour it was flying over them that sparked the sense of levitation in these paintings. Particularly in the tiniest of helicopters without restricting doors, I felt as free as a bird to hover, soar, touch down on smooth domes and pot-holed beehives of sandstone and to perch on the fans of Livistona palms. An exhilarating sensation opening a vision, direct and abrupt. It crystallised a lifetime of dreams in colour of levitation, surreal yet so real – abstraction counterfeiting realism.” - Frank Hodgkinson, 2001

Afterglow, Ink and Watercolour on Fabriano Paper, 49 x 67cm