EAMO DONNELLY
'HEALTH FOOD OF A NATION!'
Lamington Drive Gallery is filling up the Esky's with it's favourite tinnies, applying the zinc cream and lining their pockets with copper to proudly present a visual technicolour explosion of Australiana this spring. 'Health Food of a Nation' Eamo Donnelly's inaugural solo exhibition!
Walking out of a Milkbar with a hundred mixed lollies bought with your dollar from cash a can, you forgot your hang ten thongs and the concrete is burning your feet. You flap up the street back home to your cream brick suburban paradise, where the sprinkler is spraying Snowy River water all over the buffalo. Water droplets fall from the beaks of the tyre swans and the concrete stalks. The aroma of freshly cut grass almost, but not quite overpowers the flavours of the Pine Lime Splice dripping down your arm. Applying a fresh swipe of yellow zinc on your nose, you're reminded by Sid to slip slop slap before heading to the back beach to skim your Esky lid in the shallows. On the way, you walk into an old warehouse in Keele street and it occurs to you, you're not eight years old anymore, the warm feeling of nostalgia has taken you back to a time you remember but may have forgotten, a time when ice cream was the Health Food of a Nation.
Half exhibition, half museum, 'Health Food of a Nation' will take you back to the days of an Australia we hazily remember with fondness. The colour, the energy, the fun in the sun, the beach culture, when summers were long and hot. Let Eamo take you down an Australian memory back lane, get inside his head, see his processes, his influences, understand his love affair with Australian post war history and Australian popular culture and experience his personal ongoing collection shamelessly coined 'the Australiana archive'. This is not just an art show, it's more likened to a museum experience you wouldn't want to wag school for.
Hanging like Aunty Edna's unmentionables on the hill hoist, will be an extensive display of Eamo's personal works, commercial commissions and editorial from the past 3 years, presented as limited edition fine art prints. These works will be mixed with a bag of fizzo's from Eamo's 'Australiana' collection including milkbar memorabilia, signage, packaging, posters, newspapers, stickers, postcards, Esky's, game boards, tyre swans, his personal Australian TV archive of BETA (yes, beta) and VHS from the 60s to the 80s and an extensive Polaroid collection of Milkbars taken across Melbourne and Geelong. Captain Cook will get a look in at Eamo's original ink and brush works on paper that form his illustrations, including some rare rendered pencil works
from the early naughties. Plus in the corner shop Lamington Drive will be selling a range of Red Spot Specials from Eamo's Milkbar, t-shirts, wall clocks, postcards and POKETO wallets.
Internationally acclaimed and award winning Australian illustrator, Eamo Donnelly, is best known down under for his intricate hand inked, character driven illustrations that fuse an eclectically dynamic, technopop colour palette with a true blue Aussie cheekiness. Having worked for the past 3 years extensively in the American editorial market, Eamo has illustrated for some of the world's most recognizable publications including Maxim, ESPN, Men's Health and Playboy. Health Food of a Nation will be Eamo's first opportunity to display these works in his hometown of Melbourne. With a client list that has included Blender, CBS Interactive / Chow.com, Complex, D Magazine, ESPN, Edible San Francisco, GQ, Golden Plains Festival, Jmag, King magazine, Maxim, Men's Health, Mountain Dew, Monument, Nike, Orange Coast Magazine, Playboy, Runners World, Radar magazine, Redbull, RipCurl, VH1, Health Food of a Nation will also showcase these commissions as limited edition fine art prints.
As well as commercial commissions abroad, Eamo's love affair for Australian nostalgia prompted him to create personal works that reflected the beauty and uniqueness of the culture he grew up in. These detailed and colourful works have been seen on Jeeps for Mountain Dew, wallets for Poketo in L.A, shoes for String Republic in France, t-shirts for Owl Movement in Florida, esky's, stubby holders, clocks, bar walls and street posters and in exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney and in the U.S and the U.K.
In 2009 he was short listed for best original illustration in the Australian Desktop Create Awards. His illustrated campaign with Y & R New York "The Wonderful World of VH1" won Silver for Illustration and Print at the 2010 International Cannes Lions, and won Gold for Campaign at the 2010 Clio Awards in New York City. In 2010 Eamo was invited to be a speaker at the 25th Anniversary of Melbourne's International Design Conference AGIdeas and was featured in the 25th Anniversary AGIdeas book. His work has been featured in Desktop, Computer Arts, EMPTY, Semi-Permanent, The Vine, King magazine, Thunder Chunky, WeAreTheImageMakers, The Bigger Book of Fashion Illustration, AGIdeas 25th Anniversary, threethousand, Attitude, Acclaim, Academy For Men and arts features in The Age. He is represented in Australia by illustration agency The Jacky Winter Group in Melbourne and in the United States by Illustration agency
Gerald & Cullen Rapp in New York.
So for a tip top, true blue, Oz explosion, get your volleys and double pluggers down to Lamington Drive Gallery this spring for Eamo Donnelly's 'Health Food of a Nation!'
Opening Night Reception September 2nd 6PM - 9PM
Exhibition Runs September 3rd - October 2nd
Lamington Drive Gallery
15 - 25 Keele St, Collingwood (near corner of Smith Street)
info@lamingtondrive.com 03.8060.9745
Gallery Hours
Wednesday - Friday 11-6, Saturday 12-5
http://www.lamingtondrive.com/
