With thousands of completed works scattered through every room of his rambling Darlinghurst terrace house to choose from, his first major exhibition in more than a decade, Strange Light, is to take place at The Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf from August 14 to September 1.
The Strange Tree – Light and Snow (detail).Credit:
“I haven’t done a lot of exhibitions over the last 40 years, and I am now looking forward to it,” he says, his slim frame folded into a collapsing armchair, surrounded by a jumble of paintings, sculptures, cane weavings and piles of books. “The most wonderful thing is that my family have all come together to help put it together, which is something that also brings me great joy.”
His three children and grandchild have all been an important part of his art life. The room upstairs, where his granddaughter often sleeps, has two walls filled with 42 small paintings of the faces of all the members of her family and ancestors. “She was sometimes afraid when she was young, so I thought it was good to surround her with the pictures of all the people who love her,” says Eadie.
‘My family have all come together to help which is something that also brings me great joy.’
Robert Eadie
Upstairs in the old house, which was once rented by Jim Devine, the underworld husband of notorious madam, sex worker and sly grog seller Tilly Devine, is Eadie’s studio, a jumble of paints, chalks and works-in-progress. It’s here that he plays music – country music or Bach – as he works for up to eight hours a day.
It’s also where he’s done most of his work, including for group shows like the Biennale of Sydney, Sculpture by the Sea and the Melbourne Sculpture Triennial, and other pieces held by the Art Gallery of NSW and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
The son of a butcher, Eadie graduated from the nearby National Art School in 1966 and went on to teach there for the next 20 years, latterly as the head of drawing and painting. He was in Canberra as artist-in-residence at the Australian National University when he suffered his stroke.
“I am still just as ambitious for the work, but now when it’s finished, often I’ll just put it under the bed or in the back of the cupboard,” he says. “So this idea of an exhibition is very appealing.”
Strange Light by Robert Eadie, August 14 – September 1, The Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf, 548 New South Head Road, Double Bay.
