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The artist's first major
exhibition was held at the Keane Mason Gallery, New York in 1980.
Called Human Field Paintings, the works were derived from
small sections of the human body expanded and flattened to create
ambiguous readings of the figure and to open a dialogue about the
way the body is socially interpreted. For the next two decades
the human form was used in a broader sense; to reflect on our relationship to
the world and how we interpret our experience of it. In this sense the work
aimed for a philosophical and social leaning rather than a political
one.
During the Modernist period artists were generally encouraged to
demonstrate a regular, recognisable style.
But taking issue with this idea, during the 1980s the artist examined a series of different processes to extend
his interests
across a range of philosophical propositions. The early
Human
Fields Paintings began to fracture and then later to fragment as the imagery
moved further from representation.
In 1989, following a move back to
Melbourne and a new environment, the artist reintroduced the human
figure in response to observations of the street people in the vicinity of
his
Fitzroy studio. But these anonymous figures were not designed to
illustrate the observed world but to act as signifiers for a range of
psychological conditions; the dissolving and re-forming
images were meant to reflect upon the fragile and uncertain nature of
human
experience.
Another shift occurred in the early nineties when the artist undertook a Master of
Fine Art at RMIT University - a study of Aboriginal rock art
and the differences between indigenous understandings of experience
and Western
Scientific
Rationalism. For the next five years the artist utilised Leonardo da Vinci’s
scientific drawings as a means to explore what he saw as the
limitations of the Western analytical thinking.
The artist felt that as much as Leonardo dissected
the body, he was also dissecting our perceptions - which eventually
lead to the analytical way we interpret our world today. However, where art is
concerned, he felt that this analytical process might have
a ‘closing’ effect; that Western positivism might be detrimental to
other more poetic aspects of our lives. Up
until 2005 the artist continued to draw on the imagery and history
of science and biology.
More recently the artist has drawn upon close observations
of the world around us in search of some connection to the poetic,
the intuitive, the unrealised. His latest 'cosmos' paintings are
further incursions into the unknown, or more accurately, "the
unknowable". The latest works, titled New Constellations,
subtly reflect on an era defined by new symbols: the pc mouse, the
DNA molecule, the Cluster Bomb. Others search the heavens for
intelligent life, planets to colonise, the answer to everything.
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Human Field Painting IV 1980, 102 x 102 cm Oil on linen
writing
During the 1980s Hollingworth wrote art reviews for the
Geelong Advertiser and various other essays on art and life. In
1991 he undertook a course in Professional Writing at RMIT University
which included Short Story, Non-fiction and Novel Writing.
He has since written newspaper reviews,
catalogue texts and his essays on art have been published in journals
such as Tension,
Dialogue, Art Monthly Australia and Asian Art News. Some of
his short stories have been published in
various literary periodicals such as Overland, Going
Down Swinging and Etchings.
Books:
Nature Boy, 2005. A memoir about growing up a fifth
generation Victorian of rural origin, discovering art and culture,
and the parallels with Australia as a nation, doing the same.
They
called me The Wildman – The prison diary of Henricke Nelsen
2008,
Murdoch pub. An
historical novel, part
fact, part fiction about a Swedish immigrant in the 1800s - an exact
contemporary of Ned Kelly - who hid away on Mt Tallarook for
fourteen years.
Hollingworth has written several other full length
works as yet unpublished which continue his interest in the
outsider; the voice unacknowledged.
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