Artwork information

A male nude crouches in the clearing of a lush environment. The figure’s fingers are curled into two large fists and the exaggerated hands and feet contrast his slender limbs. The youth’s head is shown in profile as he looks pensively downwards. His strong jaw and facial features resemble those of New Zealand dancer and choreographer Douglas Wright, a close friend of the artist Malcolm Ross. Ross graduate from Elam in the 1970s only to disappear from the New Zealand art world, preferring to work in obscurity as a painter, historian, and archivist. An enigmatic figure, Ross carved a solitary path, creating a significant collection of queer art, paintings and sculpture that defied the dominant artistic trends of the time such as abstraction. As Ross’s old friend, artist Paul Hartigan remembers, ‘He was the most brilliant draughtsman…Even though Malcolm made all this kind of cranky stuff, drawing was always a big part of the work’.