What do we talk about when we talk about Dale Frank?
Recognised worldwide as a boundary-pushing practitioner whose oeuvre includes intimate performance pieces and large scale-paintings with structural elements, his multidisciplinary output has exhilarated audiences since the late 1970s.
Jenny Hicks’ dazzling documentary depicts this colossal contrarian, chronic pained curmudgeon, as an iconoclast larrikin, larger than life, habitual imbiber of Drambuie and scotch whisky, the rusty nail elixir that alleviates the pain and lubricates his spirit.
Ambitious, prodigious, prolific, eccentric, eclectic, reclusive, Dale Frank is all that and more, painter and planter, landscaper and collector.
His Hunter Valley property is wonder work in progress creating a botanical work of art, nurture imitating nature on vast acreage, a bio canvas more Bosch than Capability Brown, while inside the premises, a cornucopia of collectables.
Dale Frank is a not only a Renaissance man, but a Restoration man.
A ratbag in the ranks of art whose work and company enables us to feel alright about their extravagances, excesses and eccentricities, Dale Frank is a curated work of self, a portrait of the artist as a strung man.
DALE FRANK – NOBODY’S SWEETIE follows the artist in the lead-up to this latest show, his 35th solo exhibition, held at Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, offers a remarkable glimpse into not only Frank’s unruly yet generative process, but his degenerative disease, and his obvious ease with gallery owner, Roslyn Oxley.
Frank was championed by Oxley, and their ongoing relationship is a pivotal part of this production, as is his relationship with his studio and gardening assistants and his dog.
DALE FRANK – NOBODY’S SWEETIE is a frank and fearless and forthright film, fabulously fascinating and enormously entertaining, a real kick in the arts.
