Howard Arkley: Not just a suburban boy (Brief lives) (2002)

by Edwina Preston

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Howard Arkley's neon airbrush paintings of Australian suburban houses and their interiors represented this country at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Arkley's work has been compared to a visual equivalent of the monologues of Barry Humphries. Arkley was also a wild man. This concise account describes the artistic breakthroughs, his relationship with Nick Cave and the Birthday Party, and the heroin which killed him soon after his talent was recognised around the world. It is the fascinating story of a highly gifted artist who took suburbia seriously.… (more)

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Surrey Hills, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Box Hill, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Prahran, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

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Epigraph

You don't have to be a mindless conformist to choose suburban life. Most of the best poets and painters and inventors and protestors chose it too. It reconciles access to work and city with private, adaptable, self-expressive living at home.

Hugh Stretton
Ideas for Australian Cities, 1970

'What I would actually like to do is equivalent to when you're driving along in the country and you look at the landscape and you say "Oh there's a Fred Williams." You change the way people see it. And you make people look at it.'

Howard Arkley 1997

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For Sarah and Marijke

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On 22 July 1999, at 6am, Howard Arkley was found in his studio dead from a heroin overdose.

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Howard Arkley's neon airbrush paintings of Australian suburban houses and their interiors represented this country at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Arkley's work has been compared to a visual equivalent of the monologues of Barry Humphries. Arkley was also a wild man. This concise account describes the artistic breakthroughs, his relationship with Nick Cave and the Birthday Party, and the heroin which killed him soon after his talent was recognised around the world. It is the fascinating story of a highly gifted artist who took suburbia seriously.

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