Roger Kemp

"I take all my work down to one entity, one unit that becomes equal to what one octave is in music. What it is possible for a composer to get out of an octave, I can get out of these units, these symbols of mine. I use the principal of the fugue. Bach’s music is a close parallel, in that he can get his symbols down to such mechanical perfection and at the same time maximum emotion comes out. The same principal runs through all the arts."
- Roger Kemp, Australian, 1982

"Universal in its ambitions, yet individual in its resolution, the art of Roger Kemp was integral to his effort to make sense of the world, the outward sign of a solitary quest for enlightenment. It could appear quirky and obsessively idiosyncratic, but the nature of the painters experience did not preclude the graceful, the lucid, the uncannily profound. There are moments of poignancy in his oeuvre, moments of blunt greatness, of depth of feeling."
- Christopher Heathcote

"Kemp embodied to successive generations the very idea of what it was to be an artist. It was a calling, not a career."
- Patrick McCaughey

Born in 1907 in Eaglehawk, Bendigo Victoria. Kemp studied for a short time at the Working Men’s College in Melbourne and from 1933-35 at the National Gallery School of Art, Victoria.  Kemp developed a unique style of non-representational painting, which drew on both geometric abstraction and abstract expressionism.

To the early Modern’s, the challenges of the cultural, spiritual and intellectual life brought about by the modern world left the individual with a deep sense of dislocation. To meet this challenge Kemp attempted to bring the focus back to individual experience. Using art symbolically to restore a lost centre he laboured to evolve a symbolic language, which would effectively make his paintings revelatory.

Kemp’s early work, of pastel colored and elongated figures, reflected the impact of Cezanne and Cubism.  These works were out of sync with the tonal technicality of the Gallery school at the time. Kemp’s interests lay in the unseen aspects of reality and his work reflected the originality of someone working alone. Kemp spent many hours at the National Gallery Library and Arts Bookshop in Melbourne hunting for broader influences of reference for his work.   

Kemp’s style developed rapidly. He had a lifelong relationship with music, and constantly referenced it in terms of movement and rhythm in his work. His response to the Ballets Russes in Melbourne in the 1930’s strengthened his use of the human figure as a basic unit symbolically representing man and the drama of his condition.  At this time he also joined the Theosophical Society to pursue his interest in philosophy and man’s relationship to the spiritual world. 

During the war years Kemp’s palette darkened and his pictorial space filled with a dense structure of elongated human forms. Kemp’s symbolic, abstract language continued to develop. By the 50s and 60s his enamels had grown in scale and moved away from the intensity and drama of the1940s. Images of flight appeared and figures grouped and moved apart within a strong and dynamic grid. Kemp’s concerns were both physical and metaphysical. He was seen as an artist dealing with religious concerns; his paintings glowed with the rich luminosity of stained glass.

Although maintaining a steady output in his early years, it wasn’t until 1961 after winning the McCaughey prize in Melbourne that his art began to gain significant recognition. He went on to win: The John McCaughey Memorial Prize, National Gallery of Victoria, 1961;Darcy Morris Memorial prize for Religious Art,  1964; Albury prize, 1964;Georges Invitation Art Prize, 1965; Transfield prize, 1965; Blake Prize, 1968,Blake Prize 70 (shared).

Around 1968 Kemp started to work on very large rolls of paper and canvas. This gave him an unlimited scale of action and greatly increased his productivity. His work developed a new physical freedom and  spontaneity creating a dynamic relationship with his rigorous sense of geometry. Kemp traveled to London in 1970 where he worked at St Catherine’s Docks on the river Thames in a studio obtained through the S.P.A.C.E program. His time in London culminated in an exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute Gallery in 1971.

In the Sequence paintings of the 1970s Kemp reconfigures the square and the circle, which are his expression of the fundamental elements of the universe.  He drew on his fascination with science and mathematics (for( in the development of his own structural principles. He created a strong fundamental basis base from which to work from and regenerate his creativity, resulting in the endless variety of form in these works.

On returning to Australia he began to teach Art at The Prahran College and at the same time joined George Baldessin in his new print workshop in Melbourne. By 1976 he had produced over 80 etchings. These huge prints of structural complexity and visionary intensity represent some of his finest drawing. The creative energy throughout the 1970’sculminated in 1978 with the “Cycles and Directions,” exhibitions. Organized by Patrick McCaughey through Monash University to 70th Birthday, five simultaneous, retrospective exhibitions were held in Melbourne at Exhibition Gallery, Monash University: College of the Arts Gallery: University Gallery, University of Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria and Realities Gallery.  

Kemp maintained a long association with The Victorian Tapestry Workshop. A suite of six interpretations in tapestry of Kemp’s paintings now hang in The Great Hall at the NGV.   Five of these were made possible through the generosity of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. The sixth “Unity in Space” is part of the Tapestry Foundation of Victoria’s collection through the Sarah and Baillieu Myer Family Foundation.

In the 1980s Kemp’s paintings continued to grow in scale he was now working on 2 metre high rolls of canvas. Despite restrictions from ill health, his work evolved and demonstrated an exuberant fluidity.  And the basic forms in these paintings now floated in harmony,or interacted with a new expansive lightness.

During 1970s and 80s Kemp developed a close relationship with both Realities Gallery and Coventry Gallery both holding several of his major exhibitions. A major factor in stabilising and giving direction to his career was his long marriage to Merle McCrohan, a colleague and art student at the Melbourne Technical College during the late 1930’s. They had four daughters.

Towards the end of his life Kemp received the Distinguished Artists and Scholars Award of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council 1973, Silver Jubilee Medal, 25 years Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1977; OBE, Order of the British Empire for Services to Art, 1977;Honorary Doctor of Laws Monash University, 1984; Life Membership of NGV for Service to Art, 1984; Painters and Sculptors Award for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Art 1986 and AO, General Division of the Order of Australia for services to art in 1987.

Courtesy of Roger Kemp Trust