Philippe Le Miere’s ‘Alice and Kelly at the table’ brings together two iconic protagonists of Australian art: Charles Blackman’s Alice from Wonderland and Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly. Representations of Alice and Kelly are now quintessential to Australian art. They remain at the echelons of auction earnings and pride of place at museums. In Le Miere’s remix, he recalls this fame, raising questions around Australian modernism, the role of antiheroes in art and how an image changes meaning over time. What if Alice, the wide-eyed ingénue, had tea with Ned Kelly?

Philippe LE MIERE (1975 - )
'Alice and Kelly at the table' 2024
acrylic on paper
Edition of 50
Image Size: 20 x 15 cm
Dimensions: 30 x 21 cm
Signed: Numbered, titled and signed in margin
Comes with Letter of Provenance

Condition: Excellent

(c) The Artist or Assignee

A word about the medium. This work is a pochoir (posh-waar) print. Emerging in late nineteenth-century Paris, pochoir printmaking involves layering and hand-colouring each component of the image. This unmechanized process gives each edition its own ‘aura’ while requiring significant time and skill. By the 1930s, pochoir had largely faded with the rise of more efficient, mechanized printing techniques. Master printmaker Jeffrey Makin was the first to connect Le Miere's experimental process with this nearly forgotten early twentieth-century practice. Subtle disturbances in the painted surface, with elements slightly misregistered, enhance its textural appeal. Once embraced by Matisse and Picasso, pochoir is now revived by Le Miere, uniting art and craftsmanship to imbue each piece with the essence of an original painting.