My memories of Perth in the eighties are like that of visiting a familiar old dog. One occasionally tries to befriend it by bringing a little food and water, seeing its indifference to both, you reach out to stroke its head, only to be quickly snapped at. Indignant, you quickly withdraw and shut the gate sharply. These memories, are a mixture of bitterness and fondness, and tinged by missed opportunities, they continue to be unresolved.

What were the eighties like in Perth? In a time of emerging contrasts in wealth, (me on the bottom of the scale), it certainly was no Arcadian dream, though the more privileged 'yuppies' in our society were maniacally trying to create one. The art scene itself though was a little removed from these goings on, as the main players in Perth's finance world have never been great fans of local contemporary art, sticking more to blue chip investments in the arts like VanGogh's Irises. This meant those involved were genuine in their interest and eager in their support in fostering a growing art scene.

The excitement and opportunism of the eighties art scene is typical in the work of John Beard.  Here was painting which not only blurred the line of figuration and abstraction but also of bluff and credence. His work now seems to have become one of the many orphans in the art gallery basement. However, John Beard's enduring legacy was the excitement that he brought into the Perth art scene, instilling in it for a moment a degree of international context.

Though I always regarded John with suspicion as his ambition for his painting went well beyond Perth, this ambition also brought to Perth artists of an international calibre such as Tim Jones and John Bellamy. Though fiercely territorial, he was always incredibly encouraging not only to me but to a large group of the artist community. Talking to Beard at an art opening one felt you were given something incredibly profound, only to have it float away some hours later like a balloon.

The eighties were like that, a dream that one had awake, and the exciting ideas that one had at these gatherings would fade away when the social context which provided the motivation for them was removed.

This was not to say I didn't do any work, in fact I did a lot, but much of it was as appealing to exhibit by galleries as biting into a sand encrusted sandwich. It was so subjective in its approach that it defied being presented in a broader context. At the time I think I had a peculiar, secret fondness for this.

The first five years of the eighties were the most painful in my entire life. What caused this" pain? In hindsight it could have been brought upon by the role I had given myself - a contemporary artist located on the periphery of society and being in Perth on the very periphery of the international art scene. The eighties - a time of blatant, ambition. In stark contrast art schools in the seventies taught a disdain for ambition and preciousness of the object. The cultivation of this inner sensitivity was in direct contrast to the following eighties materialism.

A cloud of confusion came over me, and the question arose as to why these sensitive fellas from the seventies were now making so much money out of solid objects. We were also told by this generation to 'grasp the nettle' but by and large rarely given it. The internal struggle of how to resolve this along with all the confusing questions of gender in the eighties meant I wanted, like any threatened male, to hide away in my shed. Given a complete instruction on the art of the twentieth century in art school with emphasis on Dada, Pop Art and Conceptualism, I felt thrown into a world that seemed primarily about networking and business. The legacy of this education whereby a man hole or a stain on the carpet can be seen as art, provided a freedom I embraced but also an existential baggage I reluctantly carried. Where was the support for the artists coming out of art school in WA? It wasn't possible to support oneself doing this kind of work, there was an absence of post graduate study at the time and the Department of Arts was just a small house in Outram St, West Perth. The most we could hope for was an airfare supplied by the Guy Grey Smith Travelling Fund to see how well our contemporaries were doing over east with Australia Council funding.

You might have heard Perth was comfortable enough for an artist on the dole . It makes me think of Orwell's main character in 1984 yearning beyond immediate material comforts for emotional and spiritual union. In the eighties the government felt rich so they left artists largely alone on the dole. One almost felt like the offspring of a rich daddy, though a little stingy, he gave you enough to live but not enough to grow. The vicious dichotomy of the dole in the eighties. Truly '1984' - limited material freedom and guilty emotional containment - enough to watch but not enough to participate. So the first half of the eighties I mostly watched and it drove me mad.

Though my peers may have had different experiences I know they have suffered similar pains. Part of the way to shoulder the responsibility of being an artist is to acknowledge that it is a very difficult profession and to bring to the attention of the wider public who would rather see paintings done by artists wearing rose coloured glasses, that for the artist to see clearly, and make art that is meaningful in the world that he/she is currently living in, wearing them is not possible. Occasionally I ponder perhaps another path would be to detach oneself from this environment and create work that looked like it was made in another time. I felt this strategy if done well would certainly be an affront to some but for me it could only operate convincingly if it commented on the time it was living in, in the work itself. This view was brought upon by my education in art school in the seventies emphasizing the real.

The need to recreate the art of the past seemed illogically driven by an urge to want to make sense of a world which clearly doesn't, and in the end was a kind of nostalgia. My feelings then of trying to recreate the art of the past are summed up by the lyrics in Tom Waits' 'Train' song; 'this train took me away from here but it can never take me home.'

Much of the contemporary painting done in the eighties both internationally and locally was informed via lessons learnt from seventies conceptual art involving performance, installation and photography. Admittedly never a large movement in Perth, but it was a very persuasive influence in our art education. Much of the art history we studied was constructed around it and it informed much of the contemporary figurative painting done in Perth in the eighties by creating a new road for the cul-de-sac painting had found itself in.

In the seventies both locally and internationally contemporary figuration was largely associated with photo realism and the deadpan LA work of David Hockney. Both of these sought a rhetoric in their work mimicking the conventions of photography and film. Unfortunately much of the expressive potential of painting was made mute through this process and the engagement painting had with the viewer was minimal. In the eighties it was made clear that painting,  particularly figurative work which some thought, had had its day could operate in a new psychological space still influenced by these genres but having its own particular character. This space was a legacy brought upon by work in the seventies which went beyond the object and created subject matter which involved directly time, location and other external influences. This space, though narrow was like a breath of fresh air filling a stale room, allowing painting to operate outside a simple nostalgia for its past glory. It seemed to say that art could exist primarily for a philosophical engagement with the world, ultimately existing beyond community responsibility and ready patronage. Perhaps overly idealistic at the time it opened a river of subject matter, which is still being processed by the artists who initiated it.

This can clearly be seen internationally in the work of Immendorf, Clemente and Fischi. Each of these artists, Immendorf's personalisation of German history, Clemente's hands on reworking of Tantra and Fischi's confessional adventure into the pedophiliac mind of America seemed to share the idea that strong links exist between our personal experience and the larger world. What was also apparent in these artists and others was the nonhegemonic approach to painting as something that was given. Through the breadth of subject matter, this approach attempted to sweep away previous distinctions between high and low art, naive art, art brut, categories of figuration and regionalism and in doing so breathed new life into the rarefied atmosphere created by late modernist purity.

In Australia I clearly remember being affected by the work of Peter Booth's Painting 1982, which now hangs in the Art Gallery of S.A. Here was painting which was deeply rooted in art history through the influence of Goya and Surrealism but simultaneously operating in a space utterly contemporary, examining our deepest, darkest fears. A far cry from the figuration of the seventies which because of the use of photography and pop had lost its voice.

Locally artists in Perth were also, as stated earlier, driven by similar machinations of history to create figurative work and not simply because of overseas influence as some would think. An artist who typified this trend was Theo Koning. Having experimented with Dada influenced performance, installation and sculpture in the seventies and his painting, having previously been heavily influenced by Jasper Johns, took a decidedly figurative turn in the eighties. Introducing in his painting a three pronged area of influence drawing on cubism, via Picasso, vernacular culture in the form of theatrical masks and costumes, and a highly personal narrative, he forged an impressive body of work. The new pictorial conventions present in the eighties crossed generations affecting younger artists including myself. Another contemporary who's work was clearly affected by this mood was Andre Lipscombe who's large, awesome paintings of submarines, which were sensing uneasily our permission to have nuclear submarines in our harbours.

Other artists who went on to produce work which involved these new pictorial conventions included; Judith Van Heeren, Tom Alberts, Fred Gilbert, Valerie Tring, Michelle Sharpe, Phillip Burns, Richard McMahon, Laurie Smith, Shaun Wake-Mazey, Cathy Cinnani, Rick Vermey, Derek Tang, David Watt, Trevor Woodward, Ivan Bray, Phillip Berry, Simon Gevers, Michael Calin and Jane Barwell, to name a few. This lengthy list is definitely varied. What they all had in common was certainly not style, a progressively archaic term these days but work which imbued art making in Perth with innovative approaches to a bank of subject matter, and perhaps like robbers they would withdraw on this bank in sometimes historically unsolicited ways. It was always visually demanding of attention whether it be the dynamic urban spray paintings of Derek Tang or the old world mythology of Ivan Bray or the feminist abstractions of Michelle Sharpe.

This pluralism of the eighties developed in the nineties into a fictionalization of approaches. Nevertheless, it validated previously thought conventional forms of painting, one of them being realism. Internationally this is reflected by the re-emergence of interest in the painter Lucien Freud. Locally, this trend surfaced in the artists who exhibited in the Oddfellows exhibition at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. Another peculiar aspect to the eighties, was that you never knew who your friends or enemies were. This was brought about by the collapse of the old model of radicalism v's conservatism. Performance artist or painter, it seemed as though everybody was in the same boat. Though some might have tried to see themselves apart, the weight of art history seemed somehow for a time removed and everyone engaged in a process of becoming.

Thomas Hoareau Aug/Sept 1999