Cirrus@Austlit

'Garry Shead is an artist who has kept a journal - a cross between a sketchbook and a diary - for much of his life. In one such volume of this journal, there is a title written in white littering on the black cover: 'Malley Book 1'. In it there is a remarkable series of ten consecutive drawings executed in six days between 12^th September to 18^th September 2002.'

As Shead wrote in his journal 'Who is Ern Malley/is he two men/ a creation - the figure of Jesus Christ?' After years of thinking, experimentation and a large number of photographic collages, this was the first coherent series of drawings by Garry Shead devoted to Ern Malley, a theme which has become one of the central concerns of his art, and which has found expression in a major series of paintings, drawings, three-dimensional ceramics, collages and etchings.'