Lamington Drive Gallery is filling up the Esky’s with it’s favourite tinnies, applying the zinc cream and lining their pockets with copper to proudly present a visual technicolour explosion of Australiana this spring. ‘Health Food of a Nation’ Eamo Donnelly’s inaugural solo exhibition!
Walking out of a Milkbar with a hundred mixed lollies bought with your dollar from cash a can, you forgot your hang ten thongs and the concrete is burning your feet. You flap up the street back home to your cream brick suburban paradise, where the sprinkler is spraying Snowy River water all over the buffalo. Water droplets fall from the beaks of the tyre swans and the concrete stalks. The aroma of freshly cut grass almost, but not quite overpowers the flavours of the Pine Lime Splice dripping down your arm. Applying a fresh swipe of yellow zinc on your nose, you’re reminded by Sid to slip slop slap before heading to the back beach to skim your Esky lid in the shallows. On the way, you walk into an old warehouse in Keele street and it occurs to you, you’re not eight years old anymore, the warm feeling of nostalgia has taken you back to a time you remember but may have forgotten, a time when ice cream was the Health Food of a Nation.
Internationally acclaimed and award winning Australian illustrator, Eamo Donnelly is best known for his intricate hand inked, character driven illustrations that fuse an eclectically dynamic, techno-pop color palette with a true blue Aussie cheekiness.
Half exhibition, half museum, ‘Health Food of a Nation’ will take you back to the days of an Australia we hazily remember with fondness. His personal collection shamelessly coined ‘the Australiana archive’ is not just an art show, it’s more likened to a museum experience you wouldn’t wag school for. Hanging like Aunty Edna’s unmentionables, will be an extensive display of Eamo’s personal works, commercial commissions and editorial from the past 3 years, presented as limited edition fine art prints. These works will be mixed collection of milkbar memoribillia, signage, packaging, posters, newspapers, stickers, postcards, Esky’s, game boards, tyre swans, his personal Australian TV archive of BETA and VHS from the 60s to the 80s and an extensive Polaroid collection of Milkbars taken across Melbourne and Geelong.
Eamo has illustrated for some of the world’s most recognisable publications including Maxim, ESPN, Men’s Health and Playboy. Health Food of a Nation will be Eamo’s first opportunity to display these works in his hometown of Melbourne. With a client list that has included Blender, CBS Interactive / Chow.com, Complex, D Magazine, ESPN, Edible San Francisco, GQ, Golden Plains Festival, Jmag, King magazine, Maxim, Men’s Health, Mountain Dew, Monument, Nike, Orange Coast Magazine, Playboy, Runners World, Radar Magazine, Redbull, RipCurl, VH1, Health Food of a Nation will also showcase these commissions as limited edition fine art prints.
The corner shop (Lamington Drive) will be selling a range of Red Spot Specials from Eamo’s Milkbar, t-shirts, wall clocks, postcards and POKETO wallets. So for a tip top, true blue, Oz explosion, get your volleys and double pluggers down to Lamington Drive Gallery from Thursday the 2nd of September for Eamo Donnelly’s ‘Health Food of a Nation’!
See more of Eamo’s work over at The Jacky Winter Group
