Tony Bishop


Tony Bishop

Tony, an Invercargill friend of mine has an exhibition of his paintings
at Milford Gallery in Dunedin.
On Friday night I went to his opening
and then crossed over the road to see Billy Apple’s show
at Brett McDowell Gallery, previously known as Marshall Seifert Gallery.

This is a detail from one of Tony’s paintings and I have put it on this posting
because for some reason the stylised way in which these sheep
have been painted made me laugh out loud. I have no idea why
but it has something to do with the way
in which there is absolutely no visual overlapping
at all between one sheep and another, something that would not happen
in real life of course.

I suspect that one of the reasons why it appealed to me so strongly
is that it illustrates a motif that persists in my work, the ‘aesthetics
of dispersal’.

Three of four months ago I took the photo below. It’s nothing more than
a sketch, but it illustrates the point.

Tony Bishop

Since being in Southland I’ve met many delightful people, all of them with very different interests.

One of these is Tony Bishop, here seen posing in front of a portrait of himself. The painting, quite a strong likeness, was made by someone else.

His house is a goldmine of diverse objects. I quite like this photo and because of the flat planes of colour I can see it being made into a tapestry, something I’ve wanted to make for some time. I would have to pay someone else to actually stitch it because my stitching always looks tormented.

A sign on the front door says NO EFTPOS.

Tony is an actor, painter, collector and wit and best of all, a friend.