Perth Voice Interactive

A smooth white leg sticks up in the air, a red wheel attached. Next to it a walking stick wears a single shoe.

Theo Koning’s latest exhibition is full of quirky pieces sure to make viewers laugh, and ponder.

As I spoke to Koning it struck me that a lack of academic success seemed to be a common thread amongst artists.

Koning told me he suffers a form of dyslexia, and left school aged 15. He was the third artist to have told a similar tale in as many months.

“My father said you are not doing that well at school, but you are good at woodwork,” the Fremantle sculptor, painter and art teacher tells the Voice.

An apprenticeship with a furniture-making firm put him on his future path, although at the time he didn’t realise it.

“I thought I would go further [in furniture making], but I was always fascinated by design.”

Enrolment in a night school sculpture course at the then-Claremont Technical College was Koning’s light-bulb moment.

“My world opened to me. Everything else fell into place,” he says, adding reading also became a pleasure for the first time as he boned up on art history.

His first exhibition was at the Fremantle Arts Centre in 1974 with a couple of artist mates: “My part was the hot chook slot” a sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken/meets old-style deli, Koning recalls.

A skull in a cage from the installation is still on show in his studio, a bustling, crowded space that is a treasure trove of timber and metal in a variety of shapes and sizes, and an eclectic mix of “stuff” collected over the years.

“[Bits] from op-shops, fetes or street throw outs. I gather as I drive along and see something that is interesting.”

Built of recycled bricks, “when you could pick them up for nothing”, his studio is a pristine space where thousands of objects are more art than clutter.

Koning puts his almost obsessive neatness down to his apprentice days, where as “floor boy”, he had to ensure there was no sawdust, nor anything else, under foot.

Training films showing what could happen if there was debris left in a place filled with buzz saws and cutting tools terrified the youngster: “[People] slipping on a piece of wood—you don’t want to know what happens.”

In his latest exhibition There Be It, Koning departs from his usual style of  a variety of raw and weathered timbers, mixed with contrasting “found objects”.

“I wanted it to look like one form, a unit not made of many bits.”

Renaissance art learned at college was dredged from his memories to achieve the finish he wanted, a gesso mixture from a recipe dating back hundreds of years.

“[Made] with rabbit skin glue and calcium carbonate.”

Gesso was used by Renaissance artists to prepare and preserve a canvas. Koning uses it to give his sculptures a smooth, almost “fake plaster” look.

Long one of Perth’s most senior and respected artists, Koning has works in galleries around the country, including the National Gallery in Canberra.

There Be It is on until October 5, at Turner Galleries, 470 William Street, Northbridge.

by JENNY D’ANGER