Artwork Information

Imants Tillers' paintings seek to renegotiate Australia's physical and cultural isolation from the rest of the world. For many years, Tiller's has made paintings based on reproductions of other artist's works. In this, he shows the main method by which we see art from other places - in magazines and books. Tillers' displacement of those images parallels the dislocation suffered by his parents as they left Latvia as refugees from World War II. "Paradiso" - Italian for paradise - is also an anagram of "diaspora" - the dispersal of people. "Paradiso" is one of three major works on this theme. It incorporates images of works by Colin McCahon, Joseph Beuys, George Maciunas, Shane Cotton, Julian Dashper, Gordon Walters and Georg Baselitz.