Author(s): THOMAS DAVID

Art and Design

This richly detailed and colourfully illistrated book explores, via a series of key themes, the work of Melbourne artist Andrew Sibley. A self-confessed obsessive, with demonic energy and fierce determination to 'live his art', Sibley presents his 'family' of contemporary 'everyman' and 'everywoman', now more lighthearted than they once were in his earlier work. As Helen Elliott remarks: 'There is every possibility of happiness in the world, the music plays, the people dance, the moon sparkles, the lovers love'. But as David Thomas's text reveals, in Sibley's images not all is ever quite what it seems - human beings are a strange crowd, but there is little they can conceal from the artist with his insight into the human condition. The text explores Sibley's recent themes such as his 'Beautiful Human Zoo' with all its foibles and 'The Artist in Love', the latter presented via Sibley's quirky visual interpretations of popular songs. Nor is the political context neglected. Altogether, a very thought-provoking monograph on an artist who has been surprising us for many decades.