Rear View

From 1975 for about 200 days each year over four years Graham Rendoth travelled one-and-a-half hours each way by train and bus from my Wiley Park home in Sydney’s south-west to study at Randwick Technical College and later to Sydney College of the Arts in Balmain. That was a lot of travel, with time to think about college projects, read, and to look at people. For decades as a traveller on public transport, these rear-view portraits have been a discreet way to sketch fellow travellers, while avoiding the confrontation of looking at these ’sitters’ directly, he still fondly captures something of their essence and their immediate space. He sees a challenge in capturing just enough detail so that each person remained individual. The photographs are more recent, but again there is a need to wonder about what that person is thinking and how they fit into this world. With pencil and pen, digital sketches, photography, collage and printmaking, the 226 drawings in Rear View are a diverse, fresh alternative to traditional face-view portraits. There are also 43 photographs.