Born in Sydney, Garry Shead studied at the National Art School in 1961-2. With Martin Sharp, John Firth Smith and Ian van Wieringen he edited The Arty Wild Oat and published cartoons in the Oz, The Bulletin, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Honi Soit. He worked for several years as a scenic artist with the ABC before winning the Young Contemporaries Prize in 1967. In the ensuing years he travelled in Papua New Guinea, Japan and Europe and held several international art residencies. Shead's first solo exhibitions were at the Watters Gallery in Sydney from 1966; he has had numerous solo exhibitions since. His work is represented in the National Gallery, several state galleries and many public and private collections. A finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize of 1987, he won the Archibald Prize in 1993 for his portrait of an old friend, Sydney publisher Tom Thompson.
Tom Thompson (b. 1953) is a publisher and writer. During the 1980s he worked as a journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald and as publishing coordinator of the Encyclopedia of the Australian People (for the Australian Bicentennial Authority) before moving to Collins, for which he developed the Imprint label in 1988. As Publisher of Literature at Angus & Robertson between 1989 and 1993 he developed the Imprint Classics, Lives, and Critical Studies series and published the poetry list. In 1994 he published the first Imprint titles under Editions Tom Thompson, in association with HarperCollins, from which he subsequently purchased the trademark and titles. He is currently proprietor of the ETT (Editions Tom Thompson) imprint, dedicated to keeping classic Australian titles available. Thompson is the author of fourteen books including Growing Up in the Sixties (1986), Hors Texte (Paris, 1997) and Hurstville Oval (2002), the latter one of several pieces written with his wife, Elizabeth Butel. Thompson has an intense interest in Australian sporting history and from 2003 to 2005 published on sporting history and memorabilia for Lawson Menzies.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Richard King 2008
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Adam Knott
Adam Knott (age 27 in 1993)
Garry Shead (age 51 in 1993)
Tom Thompson (age 40 in 1993)
Richard King (16 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Artists Garry Shead and Martin Sharp recount their friendship and the creation of Martin's portrait.
Martin Sharp fulfils the Pop art idiom of merging art and life.
