Three of a Kind (1999)

“Three artists come together, marking their collaboration with the simple title ‘Three of a Kind’. There is no theme, nor any curatorial overcoding; in short, no critical guidelines to prompt the viewer’s response. What a relief. In these times of curatorial mediation it is rare to find a show left to speak for itself, to stand unaided. Three artists, all unlike in style and medium – a photographer, a painter and a sculptor – challenge the viewer to find the connecting thread of their difference…

“Wart’s paintings are formal, painterly and perfectly resolved: luscious textures of cream and asphalt with a de Kooning attention to line and gesture. A punctured mark of bleeding red is balanced by a line of intensity. There’s a hint of an abstracted narrative which teases beyond the formal appeal of the works: the line is a spine or an arrow paring flesh; the heart a bloody mess. Wart, who, in her earlier canvases, can rarely resist telling a good yarn, in larrikin letters writ large in a delicate pointed hand, holds back. Likewise, a potentially too metaphoric play of blood, asphalt and flesh is tempered by the drama of the surface: the line of grey which holds its own against an expanse of whipped buttery whites. Excitement is in the lay of the paint.”

– Review by Ann Finegan, in flyer for the exhibition at Gallery 19.

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