GARRY SHEAD
Sydney NSW, Australia | Born 1942
Garry Shead is one of Australia’s most distinctive figurative artists, with a career spanning painting, drawing, printmaking, illustration, film and cartooning. Born in Sydney in 1942, he studied at the National Art School in 1961–62, where he formed a longstanding friendship with fellow artist Martin Sharp. During the early 1960s Shead, Sharp, John Firth-Smith and Ian van Wieringen were involved with the satirical publication The Arty Wild Oat, while Shead also contributed cartoons to Oz, The Bulletin, The Sydney Morning Herald and Honi Soit. He later worked as a scenic artist for the ABC before devoting himself increasingly to his own art.
Shead held his first solo exhibitions at Sydney’s influential Watters Gallery in 1966 and won the Young Contemporaries Prize the following year. Travel through Papua New Guinea, Japan and Europe and a number of international residencies broadened his experience, but the Australian landscape, literature, history and the human figure remained central to the development of his work. His paintings frequently combine observation with imagination, allowing real people and places to merge with literary, historical and mythological references.
Throughout his career Shead has developed a highly personal visual language in which lovers, artists, muses, writers and historical figures inhabit mysterious and often dreamlike worlds. The relationship between the artist and the muse has been an especially enduring subject. Male and female figures appear together in intimate, theatrical or allegorical situations, sometimes tender and sometimes enigmatic. This theme is particularly well represented in the works held by Plum Gallery, which include several Artist and Muse compositions alongside works depicting lovers, embracing couples and solitary figures.
Literature has also provided Shead with an important source of inspiration. Among his best-known bodies of work is his celebrated series inspired by D. H. Lawrence and Lawrence’s Australian novel Kangaroo. Rather than simply illustrating literary narratives, Shead uses them as starting points from which to explore relationships, identity, desire, landscape and Australian cultural history. His work frequently moves between the real and imagined, giving his figures a quality that can feel simultaneously contemporary and timeless.
Royal imagery forms another fascinating strand within Shead’s work. Queens, coronations, ceremonies and other symbols of monarchy recur in his paintings and prints, often transformed through his highly individual imagination. Plum Gallery holds a particularly interesting selection of these works, including Coronation, Queen and Consort, The Bearers, Night Knighthoods and Ceremony. Seen together, they demonstrate Shead’s ability to take recognisable historical or ceremonial imagery and turn it into something theatrical, mysterious and distinctly his own.
Portraiture has also played an important role in Shead’s career. In 1993 he won the Archibald Prize for his portrait of his friend, Sydney publisher Tom Thompson. The National Portrait Gallery also holds Shead’s 1986 portrait of his longtime friend Martin Sharp, while his work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, state galleries and numerous public and private collections.
Shead’s interest in storytelling extends beyond individual subjects. His earlier experience as a cartoonist and filmmaker contributed to the strong narrative quality that runs throughout his art. In a recorded interview from 1970, Shead discussed the relationship between his cartoons, painting and social commentary, reflecting an interest in art as something closely connected to lived experience rather than separate from it.
Across more than six decades, Garry Shead has created an extraordinary and highly individual body of work. His paintings, drawings and prints move freely between portraiture, literature, history, mythology, romance and imagination. Whether depicting an artist and muse, lovers, royal figures or scenes of psychological drama, Shead creates images that invite the viewer to construct a story beyond what is immediately visible.
Plum Gallery holds an extensive selection of Garry Shead works, ranging from intimate drawings and limited-edition prints to substantial original paintings. Together, these works provide an opportunity to explore the recurring figures, narratives and themes that have characterised Shead’s distinctive contribution to Australian figurative art.
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