Miles Howard-Wilks, painting, trains, 2011
Summary
Melbourne-born artist Miles Howard-Wilks is primarily a painter, but he also works with ceramics, photography and animation. He is an acute observer of the world and creates views that are both real and super-real. Howard-Wilks regularly returns to certain themes, including the Australian landscape, animals, football and trains, subjects of great personal interest to him.
Engaging the familiar motif of the train, this work in gouache and ink on paper effectively concertinas time and space. The complex compositional space brings past and present into communion through its interlocking of disparate but related vignettes. Look closely at these and the detailed individual observations seem to suggest 19th-century strolling, 20th-century commuter trains, and 21st-century technology; this layered, subterranean world proposes a singular vision of urban life.
