Catalogue Essay: 'my first painting show ever' 

In her talk ‘Drawing in the Continuous Present’ artist Amy Sillman argued, “drawing is something everyone can do, literary everyone doodles […] drawing is anti-‘masterpiece’ thinking, it is grassroots thinking, where you are building something […] it’s democratic, it’s the underdog”. For Jackson Farley, sarcasm and irony have always been devices for entertainment and critique. In ‘my very first painting show ever’ he offers agitated scenes of absurdity in a lop-sided dreamscape; of monarchs, devil children, and a screaming cloud-cock. This body of work presents critical paintings like never before. It’s giving fantasy, anxiety, crayons and devilish icing that will make your teeth fall out.

A theatre of the artist’s life working towards a show during the pandemic, the exhibition comes to you in seven ‘pts’, arrested two dimensionally, flat and static on the gallery wall, but not too far from the world that we come from (it all started at an Officeworks discount sale). Half the show is large Prismacolored scenes of alien figures, horny flowers and a ‘legged horse trying to work it out’ - in other words, the show is serving a big piece of Jackson’s pandemic heart. Sincerely.  

Jackson often returns to the devices of theatre and performance in his practice, reminding us of the significance of joy to a proper sense of sanity. We see this in ‘my very first painting ever pt. V’, where we are presented with a scene of devils dancing around a fire upon a hill in the recognisable arrangement of Matisse’s ‘la danse’ painting. Stylistically, the colouring-book amateurism operates with a knowing ludicrousness setting alight the scale of masterpiece ideals. In reassembling the art ‘canon’ and performing the painter, Jackson reminds us of the value of joy and freedom.

In the other half of the pencil-paintings, which are actually more like, pen-paintings, text functions importantly to weave the chaos and narrative of the show together. The individual captions in each frame, when read collectively begin to build a critique of the masterpiece and genius thinking. In ‘pt. II’, ’I am the hand that feeds you’ is scratched into a sad penis flag held by a creepy hand face-figure. The naïve simplicity of the black biro dresses the sincerity and cruelty of the statement, making you laugh and cry at the same time. In another scene, ‘pt VII’, a drawer, draws a reclining nude out the front of ‘Sad Castle’, 51% of which is also owned by the nude model. The blurbs in the work, intentionally wild and obscene evocatively ground the ideas behind, ‘my very first painting show ever’. Jackson’s painter-performativity plays with the myth of the painter, the absurdity of the genre and the ideas of ‘genius’ behind it. 

Idiosyncratic and a hopscotch of art process, category and material, this body of work is not interested in over conceptually rationalising a reason for making art. Instead with self-care pencils and schoolboy humour, Jackson spins the narrative of paint fluidity and institutionalised grandeur. Playing with reality, expectation and the pressure of being an ‘artist’ in Sydney, Jackson’s ‘pencil-paintings’ point to the uneasiness and ‘baggage’ within painting histories.

It’s direct, it’s drawing, it’s pencil-painting, ‘my very first painting show ever’, is as innocent as it is cynical.  Jackson shows us that picking up a paint brush and joining the league of world changers who change the world with a flick o’ their wrist has never been so fun. In turning things on their head and parodying the process, with a pinch of existentialism, Jackson’s pencil-paintings are evocative of ‘anti-masterpiece’ thinking. Allow yourself to be entertained, smile, and let Jackson Farley save the art canon with his pencils.

Claire de Carteret

writer & curator

This essay was researched and written on the unceded lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I would like to pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded.