Author(s): Ken McGregor

Art and Design

Jasper Knight is a young artist who belongs to that group of individuals sometimes described as 'junk poets'. He gathers his inspiration and builds his art from the throwaway detritus of urban society. In a sense, his art is both a celebration and a critique of consumerism. Most of Knight's iconography can be found in the decaying areas of once thriving industrial docklands. He skilfully depicts the old trucks, the discarded heavy earthmoving equipment and the smashed bodies of expensive motor vehicles. The rusting iron structures that once supported heavy industry, old piers and cargo wharfs, the ferry landings around well-used harbours, the crumbling facades of derelict buildings, lonesome chimneys, cranes and other abandoned machinery are his subjects. Knight has painted the docklands of Melbourne and the piers and ferries of Sydney Harbour. In 2006 he painted fourteen works that were exhibited in London under the title 'An Island in the Sun'. This series was painted in and around the old discarded Renault car factory at Ile Seguin, an island in the River Seine at Boulogne- Billancourt on the western edge of Paris.