Concrete Playground

Plundering the depths of Martin Sharp's personal collection, rumoured to be  labyrinthian in its documentation, the Museum of Sydney has unveiled an exhibition comprised of some of Sharp's most iconic works. Martin Sharp Sydney artist is a retrospective that spans the artist's life to date through imagery, much gathered from his own archives.

With well-known interests in recurring subjects that tend to combine both elements of Pop iconography and a certain kind of sobriety such as Luna Park, Ginger Meggs and his friend Tiny Tim, Sharp's work is instantly recognisable. Having forged a career as an art director and co-founder of the truly incredible "magazine of dissent" Oz with Richard Neville in 1963 (launched on April Fool's Day, no less), Sharp rose to notoriety through both obscenity trials and the prodigious output of idiosyncratic work.

Much has been made of the artist's gaggle of friends at that time, the psychedelic offspring of the Sydney Push perhaps, but it's the art that Sharp has continued on with that is the core of this exhibition. It extends further than a simple retrospective of the work of an artist, it is also a retrospective of Sydney and the artist's role in its once counterculture history that is so often overlooked or forgotten.

There is also a series of talks to coincide with the exhibition throughout November:
Sunday 1: Ace Bourke, exhibition coordinator
Sunday 8: Albie Thoms, filmmaker, speaking about his life with
Martin Sharp in the Yellow House
Sunday 15: Luke Scriberras, artist and friend of Martin Sharp
Sunday 22: Richard Neville, former editor, Oz Magazine,
futurist and writer

Image: Film Strip (detail), Martin Sharp