In New York in the late 1970s, Richard Prince’s ‘re-photographs’ of Marlboro cigarette advertising without logos reclaim the iconic hero of the frontier – the American cowboy – from the clutches of commercial advertising. Some 30 years later Queensland artist Michael Zavros’ recent work revisits Prince’s Untitled (cowboy) series.
Spanning more than 15 years of the artist’s practice, this exhibition brings together the Prince/Zavros series of drawings and paintings with recent paintings of interiors, earlier works of men’s fashion drawn from commercial advertising and ‘TV’ paintings. Appropriating photography via painting, Zavros re-presents Princes work to a contemporary audience, for whom the original context of cigarette advertising is redundant.
Rockhampton Art Gallery
Until 7 April, 2013
Queensland
The Tiger, 2012, oil on canvas, 210 x 170cm
Courtesy of the artist and Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane
