Artist celebrates three decades

A RETROSPECTIVE on 30 years of work by Hobart artist Wayne Brookes is on show at the Despard Gallery until the middle of next month.

Offerings include the humorously named If It’s Not Baroque, Don’t Fix It; All That Glitters Is Not God; and an Elvis-inspired show Disgraceland.

“It’s been a really fantastic adventure with Despard,” said Brookes, whose first show coincided with the Hobart art institution’s first anniversary in 1988. “Despard has had to put up with a lot of obsessive shows as I’ve developed over 30 years,” he said.

His various art “obsessions” — from forays in baroque and Americana to self-portraits and Gloveresque landscapes — have sprung from a “mind like a pinball machine”.

Brookes, an art history teacher at the UTAS School of Creative Arts in the 1980s, said he intended his show to be like a “Bunnings catalogue”, where viewers were seduced by choice.

His focus has shifted dramatically through the years. Most recently his attention has turned to landscape painting, his first incursion in the medium being shortlisted in this year’s Glover prize.

Despard Gallery owner, Steven Joyce describes Brookes as “one of the most influential artists and art teachers in the state [and] one of the most consistent artists I’ve represented, with his eye for detail and love of intrigue.”

Brookes’s show runs from to August 19.