FOOTBALLERS AND FLOWERS
VAS RENN
AUGUST 29 - SEPT 7
2024
Seasonal subject matter abounds in an exhibition of new work by Vas Renn –where the ephemeral nature of flowers – their oft-times brilliant hues, at other times subtle and translucent forms – remind us of meaningful continuity and regeneration in the natural world.
These same descriptions might also be poetically employed, to describe VFL footballers from the 1960s – a “Golden Age” – when a dozen local teams faced-off in the very same conditions at the very same time on a Melbourne afternoon.
Vas has produced twenty portraits, derived from the 1964 series of Mobil Footy Cards – also a time that marks the beginning of the football Cheer Squads – a youthful innovation in a decade of necessary regeneration and reinvention.
The Cheer Squads of this time were raucous, irreverent, fervently impassioned collectives– having emerged from the suburban streets – and as such they were neither controlled, nor manipulated by the governing bodies.
This was a time of new ideas, new music and inevitable protest - much of which was directed squarely at an obedient and compliant conservative government who had needlessly sent teenage boys to the horrors of war in both Korea and Vietnam.
In the portraits of these young footballers, we are reminded of the open and innocent faces of recently conscripted youth, about to be sent to cataclysmically life-altering events by a narrow minded and insensitive government.
It was no wonder that the ubiquitous Cheer Squad duffle-coats were so very conspicuous at the anti-war Moratorium marches of the late 1960s.
Vas Renn’s paintings are produced with a clarity of vision and a clarity of painterly mark making. There is assurance in each stroke – a reassuring certainty - that a portrait or a still-life might yet convey observations about social and political concepts.
