Book review
Published by World Art and distributed by Craftsman House
Australian artist Howard Arkley, who emerged in the eighties, is best known for his airbrush paintings of the great Australian blight—Suburbia. Authors Ashley Crawford and Ray Edgar waste no time in locating Arkley with other Australians who comment on this culturally embarrassing area, linking Arkley with the art of John Brack, the writing of Robin Boyd (in particular The Australian Ugliness) and the humour of Barry Humphries. Inte restingly all are from Melbourne, the city that congratulates itself on its own innate good taste.
In contrast to these figures, Arkley's approach has always been deadpan, seemingly uncritical and lacking a satirical edge. Arkley clearly loves Australiana and has immersed himself in this subject matter to the point of permanent commitment. His celebration of the suburban banal, long regarded as anathema to good taste, is effective because it is so close to the bone. Suburbia is the site of the cringe. Nothing, it is assumed, ever happens there; this is terra nullius as far as culture is concerned. The existence of suburbia somehow undermines the myth we have of ourselves: although 90% of Australians live in cities we like to imagine the typical Aussie as the laconic country dweller, at ease in the outback. But Arkley paints our home range—the facades, veneers and the public fronts of the bark huts of contemporary squatters.
For most Australians, the role of art is to express our romantic relationship with the landscape. Arkley's paintings oppose this national expectation: our ideals and aspirations, as expressed by the triple fronted brick veneer, the garden gnome and barbecue area of suburbia, seem limited, vulgar and lacking in nobility. However to read the paintings in this fashion