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Ken Unsworth
Principal Author Anthony Bond
ARTAND Foundation, Sydney
Ken Unsworth: Truly, Madly
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
14 September 2018 – 17 February 2019
Our Kenundrum was the title of a dance performance gifted to the artist Ken Unsworth on his 78th birthday by the Australian Dance Artists, a group he has gathered around himself over the last eighteen years to continue to develop a practice that can only be summed up as a conundrum. Normally, this group of senior dancers—the oldest is 72—start with Unsworth’s figure drawings, suggesting body shapes, stage designs and props in his mind. Music may be commissioned. Then, it is up to the dancers to create an evening’s performance for an invited audience in Unsworth’s South Sydney studio.
I have seen three of these events. The price of entry being simply a willingness to discuss ideas raised afterwards over wine and cheese. But many more have been recorded in an amazing festschrift publication. Unsworth’s multiform career is described by the former Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) Senior Curator, Tony Bond with assistance from others: Jill Sykes on dance; René Block, the German curator, on Unsworth’s international reputation; Felicity Fenner on the little-known paintings in his life; the late William Wright interviewing him; and Anna Johnson extracting more meaning from his works on paper than the others have chosen to attempt.
Coincidentally, the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV’s) celebration of Unsworth’s career, Ken Unsworth: Truly, Madly, has limited its horizons by selecting only installations from the artist’s diverse provocations, which include land art, sculpture, body art, drawing and painting, multimedia and dance. A further disadvantage lies in the scatter of