interviewed by Ainsley Gibbon
Andrew Arnaoutopoulos's obsessively worked paintings and installations have been described variously as minimalist,
expressionist, as hard edge abstraction, social commentary and as being referential of landscape and of industry. They are open ended enough to accommodate all these readings. Here Ainsley Gibbon talks with the artist about his recent installation, Monoliths, and its basis in industry and in his experience of the "Ring of Brogar", a neolithic stone circle at the Orkney Islands. Monoliths was shown at the Queensland Art Gallery and was assisted by the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council.
Ainsley Gibbon: Going back to 1988 when we last talked about your work, you referred to your experience as a graphic artist in industry, which led to your interest in the way surfaces weather and soil in the industrial environment. This fed directly into your studio practice, where you re-presented the soiling process-the industrial by-product. Could you elaborate?
Andrew Arnaoutopoulos: I used to go down to the machines in the factory to check prints and things. I would walk through every day and the soiling was there and over the years I slowly realised that I was looking at a type of language. At that stage, I was bringing the factory imagery into the work, as in the exhibition of 1984, Works from the Factory- so that was just the beginning. It was funded through the Visual Arts Board, a Project Grant. This was the first time that I exhibited the soiling around the factory machines. In that exhibition I was eager to go both ways, so I also exhibited paintings of pure surface.
Ainsley Gibbon : You were trained as a graphic artist... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline