They ain’t dead meat! Dyer reminds me of Nigel Kennedy (Dr.) criss-crossing the boundary’s just so the average punter will get sucked onto a field they probably would never have trodden. I hope this article hasn’t put the mockers on Geoff though.
Michael Swanton..

I can’t help but note Mr Dyer’s Archibald 2011 entry is very much in the manner of or is that after Francis Bacon’s great painting Man with Meat painted in 1954.  A massive not to mention deeply disturbing image.  The painting owed much to the dark almost morbid drawing and paintings of Goya.  Bacon’s 1954 painting also owed a great deal to the classical portraiture Velasquez. 

This new work lacks the darkness of its forebears and as such misses the mark assuming it is trying to capture the Mona experience.  But then it’s only my opinion.

I much prefer the Flanagan portrait a much deeper and far stronger painting and a worthy winner of the Archibald.

I like the Walsh image very much, it has more painterly energy than the Flanagan painting and to me it tells a story of a brilliant restless man held fixed for the process of the artist’s careful observation. It’s a beautifully captured moment, blessed with the sincerity of genuine artistic intuition and tremendous painterly skill. But both paintings are terrific. Geoff Dyer is a terribly under-rated Australian artist, in dire need of local and national curatorial consideration and focus.

My question remains; what will it take for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery to start honouring this tremendously gifted Tasmanian artist? When Dyer won the Archibald for his Flanagan painting, the institution hung a couple of his loaned landscapes mounted on warped stretchers. Such off handed institutionalised gracelessness is truly shameful.

Locally, Dyer suffers paradoxically for his unsought popularity, his considered lack of UTAS art speak, his depth of well-honed literary interests, his acute social awareness and his gentle bonhomie towards young independent artists. Fortunately he likes to drink too. My conversations with Dyer tend to forage widely; he is at times movingly profound in his acute insight into the influences affecting his mighty artistic and literary inspirations and this will always be worth listening to.  I have been talking with artists good, bad and brilliant around the world throughout most of my working life. In my view, Geoff Dyer has more than his fair share of the all-important intuitive intellect characterising some of the greatest visual thinkers of his generation and beyond.  He loves football too but he couldn’t fill out a grant application for love or money.

Geoff Dyer should be on the Board of Trustees of TMAG representing the real concerns of artists in this state, standing up for the status of creativity in a (local) world dominated by committee devised cultural choices and our provincial tourism industry’s perceptions of artistic excellence. Most importantly, Dyer would assist TMAG polish itself to the point where it begins to emit a warm glow of artistic open-mindedness, an increased depth of cultural curiosity, as well as respect and social appreciation for artists. It is time for TMAG to open their arms and their hearts to Geoff Dyer’s exceptional artistic vision of Tasmania and its people.

I don’t care if I am dead meat! I agree 11/10ths with your last paragraph Jane.  Michael Swanton.

The portrait ‘Dave - with meat’ is a bit Ivan Durant for me, but the concept bears repeating.

Picking the winner here is harder than winning a Cup sweep