Susanna Freymark
New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Stockholm, Milan, Brussels, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Toronto are a long way from Kyogle.
Artist Ross Tamlin has painted 1000 artworks and 600 of them are overseas.
Ross sits in a chair on the veranda of the Roxy Gallery as people mill around inside checking out his paintings.
The MADE IN AUSTRALIA exhibition features 50 artworks, some done in 1994 up until now.
Ross has been painting more than 30 years.
He used to work in a paint factory.
“I used to do colour matching and I took paint home,” Ross said.
He’s comfortable using house or enamel paint and it gives his art a hyperrealistic feel especially the paintings of place names or shipping containers.
One of his paintings of signs is on Fifth Avenue in New York, he said.
Ross was born in New Zealand in 1958, and moved to Kyogle in 2003.
This is his first exhibition in Kyogle.
“It takes a year to do one painting such as a landscape,” he said.
His corrugated place name paintings are done more quickly, he can paint several a month. And it is these that sell so well overseas.
Ross said he was fortunate he could paint full time and make a living as an artist.
“Every morning I go for a walk at 6am,” he said.
“I think about what I want to do.”
While he paints he listens to music on headphones – a bit of Joy Division or 80s music is part of his creative process.
His favourite painting at the exhibition in Kyogle is the large canvas he did in 2007 titled No War in Iraq.
It is a political painting, much like the one of Tony Abbot with the laughing clowns.
Ross’s style developed while he was renting a flat in Lewisham in Sydney’s inner west in 1999, where he became fascinated by the weathered corrugated iron wall bordering the property. His neighbour told him the wall had originally formed part of horse stables dating back to the early 1900s.
He developed his art practice at Meadowbank TAFE and was influenced by the work of New Zealand artist Rosalie Gascoigne, who transformed found materials such as corrugated iron and road signage into contemporary artworks.
In 1987, Ross’s art journey was interrupted by a cancer diagnosis. That scare gave him renewed energy to pursue his art career.
And here he sits, the unlikely artist, watching people marvel at his art and wonder how one man can create artworks with such different styles.
The title for his exhibition comes from a simple declaration on customs paperwork when his art is shipped overseas: Made in Australia.
Those three words became far more than a shipping requirement – they came to represent an artistic career that has travelled the world while remaining firmly rooted in country Australia.
Ross’s international success began through the vision of Byron Bay’s Retrospect Gallery which took his work to international art fairs.
The turning point came at the 2012 Hamptons Art Fair in New York. A representative from a Canadian gallery discovered Ross’s distinctive corrugated iron text paintings and travelled to his studio in Kyogle to see the work firsthand. He was invited to exhibit in their galleries within the Hilton and Four Seasons hotels in Whistler, British Columbia.
It was a breakthrough moment to the international market.
And you can see the pieces on display in Kyogle.
MADE IN AUSTRALIA is on display until September 13 at the Roxy Gallery, Kyogle.
OPEN: Wednesday-Saturday: 10am – 3pm and Sundays: 10am – 1pm