Lifelong friends and business partners Geoffrey Legge (b. 1935) and Frank Watters OAM (1934–2020) ran Watters Gallery in inner Sydney from 1964 to 2018. As gallerists and collectors, they encouraged, promoted and mentored several generations of Australian artists, and introduced a great many people to the pleasure of collecting art. 'Some of the earliest Australian video, installation, and performance art was shown at Watters Gallery,' art historian John McPhee wrote in 2014. 'Work considered outside the mainstream, overlooked, or too controversial was never a problem.' Because of their profession, Legge and Watters were depicted by various artists and in various mediums. Sculptor Robert (Bob) Jenyns, who began exhibiting with Watters in the 1970s, made this sculpture to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the gallery's establishment. For many years the sculpture lived in Watters' flat on the top floor of the gallery's premises in Riley Street. Watters gifted the work to the National Portrait Gallery in 2018, when he moved away from Sydney and back to the Hunter Valley, where he had grown up.
Gift of Frank Watters OAM 2018. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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Audio description
Show transcript
Two gentlemen celebrating a birthday (Frank Watters and Geoffrey Legge) by Bob Jenyns is a sculptural work, 69cm tall, 108cm long and 51cm wide.
The artist has made the work from painted wood, denim, wool, plastic and candles. This use of materials, the visibility of its construction, bold block colours and cartoon style doll or puppet-like figures gives the work an air of hand-made simplicity.
Geoffrey, in a black jumper, and Frank, in red, sit opposite, with a birthday cake on the table between them.
The table is rectangular, with a top of grey-green laminate and four square, dark grey legs. Traces of how the work was made and used include puttied-in screw holes, painted-over wooden edges and scuffed surfaces.
Geoffrey and Frank are similar in both appearance and posture. They have large, smooth, carved wooden heads, thin bodies and limbs and are clothed in tight jumpers and jeans. The Gentlemen sit on oversized chairs, their legs dangling, too short to reach the ground. The wooden chairs are the same colour as the legs of the table, with their dark grey paint worn off in parts.
Geoffrey has warm chestnut brown hair that covers his ears, and a full beard. His face is pale pink, with brown eyes beneath thin gold-wire glasses frames perched on his nose. He wears a black, woollen, turtleneck jumper. The ribbed cuffs of his sleeves almost engulfing his hands. The bottoms of his blue jeans are slightly frayed, over the top of his boots, which have been carved from wood and painted brown.
Frank’s helmet of hair is a slightly cooler brown to his friend’s, with ears poking through at the sides. He has pale pink skin, bright blue eyes, and a neatly kept moustache and goatee. Frank wears an orange-red, woollen turtleneck, with cuffs turned up at the wrists. His jeans are slightly short, revealing tacks, and brown brush marks on the cream fabric of his legs, from the painting of his wooden shoes.
Geoffrey and Frank look towards each other, with their arms resting on the table top, palms facing slightly up. In the centre of the table, a dark brown wooden chocolate cake sits between them. It has two layers, separated by an unevenly painted band of white cream. The top of the cake is decorated with a pale blue plastic Happy Birthday sign in cursive letters. Two plastic male figurines dressed in white sports clothes, facing away from each other, are caught in a suspended run. Around them, is a circle of ten tall white candles, like a ring of pillars or columns.
Written by Carolyn Eccles and voiced by Lucinda Shawcross
