Untitled [Suicide study] (1982-3) [W/P]

This work, shown at the George Paton Gallery in 1983 as one of three ‘working drawings for recent paintings’, clearly formed part of the planning process for Suicide (1983). In this preliminary work-on-paper version, the man to the upper left looms above the slumped woman below, whereas, in the completed painting, the woman assumes a far more vivid and exhilarating form – and the male figure has disappeared.

Many thanks to the University of Melbourne archive for forwarding installation photos of the present work (July 2010).

Provenance

• unknown

Exhibited

• George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne, May-June 1983 (‘Comic Stripping’)