Interior with Built-in-Bar 1992 [W/P] [Howard Arkley & Juan Davila]

This intriguing work clearly formed a key step in the preparatory process leading to the Arkley-Davila screenprint Interior with Built-in Bar (1992) [W/P]. It combines silk-screened line-work (retained in the print) based loosely on the ‘Traditional Living Room’ template from Arkley’s copy of Gold’s Instant Decorator, with extensive additional gouache line-work and areas of colour that, while varying in certain details, are obviously related to the final print, which is identical in scale.

In this work, however, the bar scene, depicted upside down, is far more visible, jostling for attention with the tidy domestic details of Gold’s decorator source. The added imagery also includes Central and South American decorative patterning similar to that used in several of Davila’s early 1990s works, such as Mexicanismo 1990. Interestingly, these visual and cultural clashes are considerably more muted in the final print, where grey line-work and pastel hues seem to relegate the bar to the ‘background.’ For the complex implications of these various issues, the reader is referred to Guy Brett & Roger Benjamin, Juan Davila, Miegunyah Press, 2006, pp.2ff. (Brett’s essay); see also Arkley and Davila’s Blue Chip Instant Decorator: a Room [3/M].

The inscriptions indicate Arkley and Davila’s dual authorship, while also alluding ironically to British and US Pop artists Patrick Caulfield and Roy Lichtenstein.

Provenance

• Private collection, Melbourne
• Auctioned by Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 9 May 2022 (‘Centum’), lot 20: details and photo as shown here; est.$55-75,000; sold for $112,500 inc.B/P ($$90,ooo hammer price)