my design fix

Shag Exhibition – Inscrutable Mystery Guide

Shag currently has an exhibition touring Australia titled ‘Inscrutable Mystery Guide’. The Melbourne opening night was held at Outré Gallery on Friday, August 14 with a cocktail party at the Walsh Street House by Robin Boyd on the Saturday night. With Shag also flying over from Los Angeles for the exhibition it seemed like the perfect excuse to fly over to Melbourne for the weekend. Below are some photo’s I took at the exhibition:

‘This work is playful, but I’ve tried to throw a couple spanners into what people might expect from my art.  I’ve created 99 small, colorful paintings of tikis, but each tiki bears a symbol.

"Inscrutable Mystery Guide" is actually the little book that accompanies each small tiki painting.  It’s my hope that the books won’t be seen by anyone except the person who owns one of those paintings. I want to bring them into my own little cult and tell them some secrets.

In addition, I’ve created several large, panoramic canvases which will give further clues as to what the whole thing is all about.  In the past year my work has gotten darker and moved into new themes and imagery, but I’m trying to reconcile my old body of work with my new work, and trying not to be as manic depressive and serious as I was in the last year or so.’  - Josh Agle aka Shag

It was also a nice surprise to see Artist’s Proof prints of most of my favourite Shag paintings from previous exhibitions on display. Above Left: ‘Dickie Bird’ (the centrepiece of the Walsh Street House cocktail party) Top Right: ‘An Extraordinary Evening’ (the first Shag painting I ever saw and fell in love with) Above Left: ‘The Relentless Party’, Bottom Right: An original Shag painting from the 90’s

I love the stairs in this one (Hey! I’m an architecture geek – give me a break!) Funnily enough it’s titled ‘The Stairs’

Above Top: ‘The Marauder’ (I’ve got this one hanging proudly on my wall at home) and Bottom: ‘Rose Seidler’s House’

The exhibition is showing in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth:

• Outré Gallery Melbourne: August 14 – September 3
• Outré Gallery Sydney: August 21 – September 10
• The newly opened Outré Gallery Perth: August 28 – September 17

For an in depth review of this exhibition check out the Shagwatch Blog or for more info on Shag and Outré visit:

• www.shag.com
• www.outregallery.com

I’ll follow up this entry shortly with some photos from the Mid-Century soirée with Shag at Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street House so stay tuned…