In 1916 Burton J. Westcott moved the Westcott Motor Car Company to Springfield, Ohio from Indiana. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Westcott family home with a detached garage that included a design for a large turntable (never installed) to prevent cars driven into the garage from having to be turned around manually (cars at the time did not have a reverse gear). The garage also include two pony stables, connected to the main house by a pergola.
Perry will use the Westcott family garage as a stage for a series of objects, paintings and posters that form a larger installation. According to Perry:
‘I was interested in the family garage as an unsorted private collection; a window into a collective history. Relics from failed business ventures, family holidays, personal stories, popular trends and forgotten projects. I have also been thinking about the family garage in connection to the artist studio as two such spaces that contain these relics. There’s something amateur about working in the garage: it’s a bit Chitty chitty bang bang. Westcott’s garage is particularly interesting to me as it encapsulated the period of change around the start of the 20th century: horse stables alongside a revolving motor car turntable.’
Perry was born in the UK in 1988. He graduated from a BFA (Painting) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2009 and an Honours (Painting) from RMIT in 2012. Solo exhibitions include Moonraker, TCB Art Inc, Melbourne, 2012; andThe Eagle has Landed, Rearview, Melbourne, 2011. Selected group exhibitions include 500 Methods, Next Wave Festival, 2012; S.A.A.P, Lowrise Projects, Richmond, 2012; Boom Boom, Napier Hotel, Melbourne, 2011; and The Float, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, 2009.
