Australian group of mixed-media artists active in 1962. They formed
for the purpose of staging an exhibition of the same name. Ross
Crothall (b 1934), Mike Brown and Colin Lanceley worked
together in Crothall’s studio in Annandale, a suburb of Sydney, in
1961. They shared an interest in assemblage, collage, junk art,
objets trouvés and in non-Western art. Brown, who had worked in
New Guinea in 1959, was impressed by the use in tribal house
decoration and body ornament of modern urban rubbish such as broken
plates and bottletops. Crothall delighted in the altered objet
trouvé, for example egg cartons unfolded to become the Young
Aesthetic Cow, or pieces of furniture crudely gathered into
frontally posed female icons, sparkling with buttons and swirling
house-paint, with such titles as Gross Débutante. Lanceley was
deeply influenced by his teacher John Olsen and through him by Jean
Dubuffet. He covered impastoed surfaces with junk materials, often
decorating distorted female forms with strings of pearls, broken
plates and other items; in Glad Family Picnic (1961; Sydney,
A.G. NSW) elements combine into a garish visual cacophony.
Ross
Crothall
Discuss Art
Please note: site admin does not answer any questions. This is our readers discussion only.