A Quest for Enlightenment: The Art of Roger Kemp - Tapa dura

The most publicly accessible art of the late Roger Kemp is perhaps those magnificent tapestries that hang in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria on St. Kilda Road. This major figure of Australias post-war art world is the subject of Christopher Heathcotes latest book. Of Kemp, he writes: Throughout his adult life Roger Kemp was fascinated by weighty questions: Why do we exist? What is mankinds relationship with Nature? Is there a cosmic order at play beyond physical things? He wanted to find value and meaning in the world, so he sifted through ideas from poetry, philosophy, science and religion, trying to make a coherent shape out of them. And so he developed his distinctive abstract paintings and an unique mode of thought which he regularly debated in memorable conversations with many people in the decades before he died. This revealing and richly illustrated biography and art monograph is long overdue.