Fallen Anzac

The blurred forms in Ivan Durrant's paintings of Australian Rules football deny us the close details of a specific game. Attention is shifted to the high-key colours of the spectacle. Intense colour suggests the overall intensity of the experience; not just the vibrant hues of the players' stripes but the noise of the crowd and the heated passion of a hard-fought contest. The colour is televisual; saturated and glowing. The tightly cropped compositions are another clue that the paintings are based on television broadcasts. The family resemblance between sport and the entertainment industry has fascinated Durrant since the 1970s, when he exhibited paintings of Australian jockeys and Hollywood movie stars. Durrant presents football at multiple removes from the stadium; the match is shot and broadcast, the artist tapes and views the game, pausing the image to snap a photograph from the television set in his lounge, then bases a painting on the result. The resulting contrast 'a heated moment, processed and frozen into a painted image' has a poignant character; art can seem a distant echo of the real world, while the real world is itself a televised experience.