Wayne Youle | National Fuckin’ Treasure

{Suite} will be presenting Wayne Youle’s ‘National Fuckin’ Treasure’ (NFT) at this year’s Spring1883 Melbourne Art Fair

NFT features new works inspired by Sidney Nolan’s paintings of Ned Kelly, an interest which started during Wayne’s three-month residency Artspace Sydney in 2012, when he saw the exhibition ‘Sidney Nolan: Illuminations’ at the NSW State Library.

The legend of Ned Kelly as a lovable rouge, as someone who evaded justice and ultimately became an Australian hero, had great appeal to Youle. He could see a shared sensibility within New Zealand culture; the elevation of a criminal to a folk-hero has also been celebrated in a series of works by Trevor Moffitt about sheep drover James McKenzie. Although, unlike Nolan and Moffitt, no overt narrative weaves its way through the works in NFT. Youle uses the series instead to reflect on the idea of the character becoming bigger than the story. In Youle’s works, Ned Kelly and his helmet become a caricature of Nolan’s version, broken down to a simplified, almost comic book style rendering. That the viewer can nevertheless instantly tell who the paintings depict, demonstrates the power of the image; we don’t need the narrative setting or the stark Australian landscape of Nolan’s works to convey the story, the helmet is enough.

NTF will be on show 4-7 August

Photo of Wayne by Dave Richards

July 10, 2021