Track 7: Portraying Writers

These artworks are by Rick Amor, one of Australia's most significant contemporary artists. His unsettling pictures of urban and coastal landscapes will be familiar to many viewers. Over his 30-year career, Amor has produced cartoons, book illustrations, prints, paintings and sculptures.  What perhaps is not so well known is his association with the literary world and Overland magazine in particular.

In 1977 he was introduced by Joan Lindsay to Stephen Murray-Smith, the editor of Overland, at the McClelland Gallery at Langwarrin. Amor recalled 'He must have thought I was very poor because he took me aside and said we must give you some work, you obviously need the money'. This marked the beginning of Amor's long association with the magazine as both a contributor and a board member. Amor's pictures of writers were not only confined to the pages of Overland. Peter Carey, Manning Clark, Joan Lindsay, Shane Maloney and Dorothy Porter are amongst the literary luminaries Amor has captured in paint, pencil and print.

In 1990 Barrie Reid (who succeeded Stephen Murray-Smith as the editor of Overland) suggested Amor illustrate an extract from Alex Miller's forthcoming novel The Ancestor Game for the magazine. Amor's illustration for Miller's extract was followed by a dramatic portrait of Miller by Amor in the Spring issue of Overland. The last and final proof of this linocut is displayed in the exhibition. It was the first in a series of portraits of contemporary authors that appeared over the next four editions of the magazine. The subjects included Helen Garner, Robert Harris, Barry Hill and David Malouf, and the portraits of Hill and Garner are also displayed alongside Miller.