Tony de Lautour Artist

Tattoos, Skulls and Kiwis

Listen to this story
I know that when Dad bought the second-hand camping store, or just after he sold it, I worked in there for a bit, like one day a week, and a lot of people that came in selling stuff had those hand-made amateur tattoos, with kiwis, little N Zs and dots and cobwebs, and I know that that influenced the work a bit as I’d been thinking of those and it started turning up in my work.

Tony de Lautour

 

TONY DE LAUTOUR, born 1965 in Melbourne
Tony de Lautour was born to New Zealand parents in Australia and came to New Zealand as a young child. He first came to critical attention in the early 1990s, emerging as part of a younger generation of graduates of the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts working in Christchurch at the time. This wave, including the likes of Séraphine Pick and Peter Robinson, have gone on to become some of New Zealand’s most high profile artists, represented in most of the country’s public collections. They have shown with Brooke-Gifford since the beginning of their careers. De Lautour’s art began anchored in an ironic celebration of Christchurch’s darker underbelly, drawing on a vocabulary of prison tattoos, graffiti, heraldic British lions and cartoon kiwis, but over time increasingly came to embrace a more formal language of abstract painting, drawing on avant-gardes of the early twentieth century in his own inimitable way.

URL: http://www.brookegiffordgallery.co.nz/artists/tony-de-lautour

  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour
  • Image courtesy of Tony de Lautour

Building information

Billens’ Building
(also known as England Brothers House)
167-177 High Street
Date: 1906
Architect: Robert William & Edward Herbert England
The building burnt down on 7 December 2012