The Agent II 2021

RICK AMOR born 1948

The Agent II 2021

oil on linen
100.5 x 97.0 cm; 102.5 x 99.5 cm (framed)
signed and dated lower left: RICK AMOR '21
inscribed and dated verso: The Agent/ II/ AP 21/ May/ 100x97

Provenance:
Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2021 (label attached verso, stock no.22523)
Private collection, Sydney

Exhibited:
Niagara Galleries at Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Sydney, 9-12 September 2021 (label attached verso)

Related Works:
The Agent 2019, oil on canvas, 81.0 x 117.0 cm, private collection

Estimate: $30000 - 40000

Result Hammer: $32000

When describing the characteristics of Australia’s capital cities in 1944, author Myra Morris wrote of the obvious charms of Sydney and Brisbane, compared to the discreet and enigmatic character of Melbourne. Morris, who was Amor’s maternal aunt, states, ‘Melbourne may look sober… but it actually turns out to be a strange and intensely poetic place… a city of enchantment.’(1) It is this mysterious side of the city that has captivated Amor for decades, bolstered by his extensive reading of the classic dystopian texts of Franz Kafka and George Orwell. In his own words:

I’ve always thought that behind the façade of a building all sorts of mysterious things go on. I suppose it’s from my childhood and reading Kafka. I like to suggest that behind the prosaic reality something else is lurking.(2)

Vacancy and a sense of loneliness are common tropes used throughout Amor’s paintings of the Melbourne CBD, including The Agent II. Originally a theme the artist explored during the severe economic contraction of the early 1990s, which left many shops and workplaces empty, depictions of secluded and quiet public spaces have persisted in Amor’s practice to present day. As art historian Gary Catalano describes, their ‘immaculate emptiness identifies [these spaces] as a sites of failed hopes and expectations,’(3) thus adding to the ever-present sense of melancholy for which Amor is known.

When Amor includes a figure in these empty scenes, they are typically alone and shrouded in darkness, such as in his renowned The Waiter 1996 and the present work, The Agent II 2021. Hence the appositely titled exhibition at McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park in 2005, Standing in the Shadows, or Catalano’s monograph titled The Solitary Watcher. This semi-concealment of the figures means they can operate as a symbol for the everyman as their individuality has been eliminated. In this way viewers can project themselves into the figure, allowing them to experience a heightened state of solitude.

A perception that certain spaces are off-limits or out of bounds is also prevalent throughout Amor’s Melbourne paintings. Whether it is the cavities of a decommissioned factory, the lonely corridors of an office building, or the closed galleries of a museum, we get a sense that we should not be here. Through these depictions Amor is probing the distinction between public and private space and how this has changed over time. In The Agent II we are sandwiched between two city buildings in what appears to be a rarely frequented back alley. The titular agent is waiting by a side door, presumably for his talent, furthering the notion that we are ‘behind the scenes’.

Most of the composition is in shadow, including the viewer’s standpoint, adding to the secretive mood of the painting. This is juxtaposed against a rectangle of bright sunlight at the end of the laneway, in what is a classical use of the linear perspective painting technique. The channel of space within the composition is used to determine the direction of the viewer’s eye. This technique, first popularised in Renaissance art, is used so ruthlessly by Amor that at times his Melbournian paintings bring to mind a prison or labyrinth, rather than a city street.(4) This commitment to the geometric values of the Renaissance is present throughout Amor’s oeuvre, as observed by art critic Robert Nelson:

His work showing derelict industrial plants and the doorways of old bureaucracies has the pictorial stability of Piero della Francesca … The perspectives and linear logic of the Renaissance assert their haunting powers of description.(5)

Footnotes

1. Morris, M., Australian Landscape, John Sands, Sydney, 1944, quoted in Catalano, G., The Solitary Watcher: Rick Amor and His Art, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2001, p.148

2. Rick Amor, quoted in Catalano, G., op. cit., p.149

3. Catalano, G., op. cit., p.153

4. Ibid., p.152

5. Nelson, R., 'Dark and Classic Painter', The Age, Melbourne, September 1995

Asta Cameron

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