Thomas Hoareau Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1961 -

Thomas Hoareau is an Australian contemporary artist who has been developing his practice for thirty years. He graduated from the West Australian Institute of Technology in1984 and has been associated with the figurative painters known as Oddfellows. Hoareau is best known for work that combines the personal and the public within the landscape of the city.

His first decade of painting in the eighties consisted of an eclectic use of figurines, book dust-jackets and souvenir kitsch that he had scavenged from this urban environment (Parade in Memory of the Aboriginal on top of the Padbury Building in Vestiges 1987, Man on Fire in Among the Souvenirs 1987, Asphalt and Desire in Local Talent 1990).

During the nineties, in exhibitions such as Through the Window 1992, Forrest Place During the Time of the Fly Plague 1995, and Street Works and Homages 1998, Hoareau explored themes which incorporated a direct artistic relationship with the stimuli of the city, including performance photography and direct observation to develop his urban subjects.

In the last decade a recurring theme for the artist has been the estranged relationship that painting has to everyday culture and to salvage some meaning from this experience. The initial expression of that dilemma was his salon scale six-part painting, My 6PR Painting, 2002 and his large two part work, My History Painting, 2003. The theme of modern disjuncture was further developed into a series of paintings that re-contextualised distant nineteenth-century French painting within his immediate local environment, as seen in the exhibitions, Lavage, 2012 and A Case of Déjà Vu, 2011-2013.

Hoareau's current focus is an iconic exploration of early West Australian history. He has painted John Gaven, the first European hung in West Australia, (February 21st 1841 in Heroes and Villains, 2011) and Martha Rendell, the last woman executed in Western Australia (Foul Breath Rendell, 2012). An analysis of the artist's work until 1999 can be found in David Bromfield's Suitcase City: A Study of the Work of Thomas Hoareau Perth, 1999.