Thank you to Andrew McIlroy for his inclusion of Peter Wegner’s current exhibition Reminisce: Paintings from life, in the essay ‘Heads, Rooms and Flowers.’, published to his Substack, THIS ART LIFE.
The review highlights three exhibitions showing across Sydney: Peter Wegner, David Fairburn and Edmond Thommen.
Excerpt below:
‘Three significant Australian artists, David Fairbairn, Peter Wegner and Edmond Thommen, are exhibiting in Sydney within weeks of one another, each beginning with the human figure and finding much more. David Fairbairn’s portraits, Peter Wegner’s figures and interiors, and Edmond Thommen’s photographs of women and flowers make a strong case for the continuing richness of figurative art in Australia. Their individual achievements are worth examining, but so too is what becomes apparent when their art is considered together.
(…)
Peter Wegner also draws with great assurance, but Reminisce: Paintings from life, at King Street Gallery on William, extends well beyond the sitter. There are portraits, including Elisabeth Cummings, but also couches, armchairs, tables, folded cloth and domestic rooms. Fairbairn concentrates upon the head. Wegner is just as interested in the things people have handled, occupied and worn.
Wegner has been exhibiting for more than forty years. He won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2006 and the Archibald Prize in 2025 with his portrait of Guy Warren at 101, while his portrait of Cummings was a finalist in the 2026 Archibald. Those prizes have inevitably reinforced his reputation as a portrait painter, but the furniture and interiors in Reminisce are no digression.
A couch is not an especially forgiving subject. It can become dreary very quickly, or quaint if a painter decides old upholstery requires affection. Wegner avoids both. Cushions sag, fabric loosens and throws lie where somebody has left them. He does not burden the couch with symbolism. Years of use have already given him enough to paint.
The chairs and tables are much the same. They have been sat on, shifted, leaned against and lived with. An empty chair could easily become a solemn statement about absence, but Wegner has the good sense to resist the temptation. It remains a chair, worn by use and worth painting for that reason.’
