Oil, gold leaf, collage, rock, perpex, electricity, pencil, PVA, varnish, brain, earth, twig, taxidermied bird, nest, egg, feathers, cicada, bone, dentures, rubber and metal sink plug, pins, shell and glass eye on eighteen wood panels, 203 x 1615 x 9 cm; not signed, not dated
Inscriptions: c. in black ink (panel 1) 'For the poet is a light + winged and holy thing,/ and there is no invention in him until he has been/ inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind/ is no longer in him; when he has not attained/ to this state, he is powerless and is unable to/ utter his oracles/ Plato/ 1. The way that can be spoken of/ Is not the constant way;/ Alchemy/ the Grand work/ to bring together all the previous/ TRANSMUTATION/ or God?/ A lot of the time the experience cannot be expressed by merely discribing [sic] one single absolute image,/ for one image cannot hold it. Only by evoking a chain of images, as in a dream, does one/ approximate the experience. A single flash of understanding with each grouping or 'chapter' of/ forms, is what is expected from the viewer. This elliptical + heretic style of painting allows/ for infinite freedom - for both of us. But to lose the place, or stumble, all is lost, the/ picture is meaningless. The thread is the Transmutation./ The fine art of painting, which is the bastard of alchemy, always has been always will be,/ a game. The rules of the game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic/ fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe, the centre of the meaning of existense [sic]'
Exhibited: Bonython Gallery, Sydney, 1972-3, show not catalogued
Literature: Thomas (2) 972. Adams 1973. Borlase 1973. Thomas 1973. Rawlinson 1973. Lynn 1976. McGrath 1978, pp.143-9 (illus)
Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Purchased by the New South Wales State Government 1994, transferred to the Gallery 1998
Painted over one year, Alchemy summarized Whiteley's state of mind at the time in all its myriad accumulation of influences in his own history as an artist. Like The American Dream this was another self-portrait on a gigantic scale, without the fierce political agenda in its conception. Spread over 18 panels it may be read right to left as a vision of earth, ocean, sky through transmutations of flesh, genitalia, fornication and landscape, ending with a white sun and serpentine tentacles set against a gold background. The last two panels were from a destroyed portrait Whiteley had made in 1972 of Yukio Mishima, a Japanese writer who committed seppuku in 1970, believing that the gap between art and action could be closed effectively through ritual death. According to literary mythology Mishima's final vision as the knife cut into his flesh, was of an exploding sun which lit the sky for an instant of so-called spiritual illumination. The vision in fact became the technical beginning of Alchemy, as Whiteley developed his composition from left to right. But the work can be read either way, or even from the center, where an image of the word 'IT' holds the fulcrum between opposing ideas.
- Barry Pearce, Head Curator, Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales
The most self-conscious piece of writing Whiteley ever did, apart from his thumbnail-in-tar signature, was IT of Alchemy 1972-1973, an ominous, austere pronoun uniting the notional wings of his altarpiece to nascent addiction. This IT compacted life, passion, death and faith in a single, empowering word, which, acknowledging the wonderous impossibility of alchemy and its bastard, art, he characterized as completely linguistically indescribable.
- Bruce James. Freelance art writer, Sydney Morning Herald art critic.
(Taken from Education collection notes on Alchemy)
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