“. . . his gothic absurdist humour . . .”

Michael Vale describes the sources of his art as “James Ensor, the old masters and comic books.” Although this oversimplifies his art practice, it does contain a kernel of truth. Dogs in suits smoking pipes, skeletons in overcoats, figures with bandaged faces in pink suits, harlequins, people in masks and Astrakhan hats, cardinals’ hats and flying saucers are some of the objects that populate his art, while the settings include precipitous rock ledges set within romantic sublime alpine landscapes as well as in strange forest clearings.

Vale in his art consciously brings to mind a dark gothic sensibility, where he creates fantastic settings, like stage sets, onto which he introduces his cast of characters that appear like the dregs of Halloween or characters from the carnival assembled at a time of darkness when the veil between our world and the world beyond is thinnest.

Vale was born in Albury in 1952 and is based in Melbourne and has worked with video, film and music creating stage sets and painting backdrops. He subsequently taught painting for many years at Monash University. He is basically a self-taught artist, who has followed an unconventional path in his art practice. By listening to Bob Dylan in the 1960s, he discovered the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire. He found a mentor in James Ensor and inspiration in the use of the mask as a way of moving his narrative away from the local and the specific to a more universal level. He embraced Ensor’s philosophy when the Belgian master said: “The mask means to me: freshness of colour, sumptuous decoration, wild unexpected gestures, very shrill expressions, exquisite turbulence.” In his art, Vale appropriates the old masters – Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Matthias Grünewald, Thomas Gainsborough, Hieronymus Bosch, Caspar David Friedrich, and scores of others. He also constantly turns to films as a source of inspiration.

Vale’s main process of art making could be described as collage, where he quite literally will take a setting from Rubens, a figure from van Dyck, an idea from Ensor and, in the classic French meaning of the word ‘coller,’ stick it together. Of course, everything is then reworked with his gothic absurdist humour with skulls, skeletons and smoking dogs as the seams between his adaptations are dissolved in his fluid expressive brush strokes in vibrant oil paints that on occasion with loving miniaturist precision pick out precise details and textures. Over the years, Vale has developed his peculiar signature style that he prefers to describe as his special ‘art brand.’

His success in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, 2021 and regular appearances as an Archibald finalist has kept his name in circulation, but this survey exhibition, the Cuckoo, the Herring and the Trembling Tambourines, of thirty key paintings from 2008 to 2026 is his first major survey exhibition in a public gallery. The title of the show is taken from the title of a recent painting and according to the artist highlights three main characteristics of his art – his cuckoo stealing habit, the appropriation of Ensor’s Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring, 1891 and the tambourines – and his love of music. For all of its whimsy, Michael Vale emerges as a significant artist worthy of national attention.

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Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA works nationally and internationally as an art historian, art critic and curator.

 

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
28 February to 31 May 2026
Victoria

Originally published in print – Art Almanac, April 2026 issue, pp. 26–29