No Standing Any Time c1980

Summary

Jack Louis Koskie (1914–97) was born in Yorkshire, England. He arrived in Australia in 1939, working as a commercial artist while maintaining a studio practice. Koskie worked mainly in a representational mode, and here he has turned his hand to depicting a quotidian scene at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market. Painted around 1980 and entering the collection through the Lord Mayor’s Acquisitive Art Award that year, ‘No Standing Any Time’ contrasts the titular traffic directive with a group of women conversing at Melbourne’s historic fruit-and-veg market. The women may be standing but they are anything but still, energised in their engagement and their presence not at all impeding the work of the stall-holder.