Cover Image: Theo Koning, Horse – Eight Hands (1977), wood, fur, skin, bones, bicycle wheels and other found objects, 145 x 205 x 80 cm. The University of Western Australia Art Collection, Gift of Sir James and Lady Cruthers, 1977. © the artist’s estate.

Objet d’Art  – Theo Koning Retrospective 
Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre
15 November 2025 to 26 January 2026

To try and capture the essence of the late West Australian artist Theo Koning’s work in one word is to fall woefully short of its sheer breadth, talent and sincerity. The major retrospective exhibition Objet d’Art, now on display at Fremantle Arts Centre is an in memoriam to Koning, a celebration of his significant contributions to modern art in Western Australia, and a singular opportunity to experience such a large collection of his oeuvre in one place.

A Perth local for most of his life, Koning migrated with his family to Perth in 1953 where they settled in Claremont. His upbringing in Perth and engagement with its art community fostered an experimental energy in his creative process across an array of mediums, from paintings to sculpture, drawings to poster art. 

Koning’s style is characterised by the poeticism of found objects, coloured with a surreal and thoughtful wryness. His combination of materials with astute, cutting and comical commentary on art and modernity as he saw it, makes for inspired and enduring visuals. This exhibition is a reflection on Koning’s unfiltered reality of living your art, the rapture and tension of being a conduit for pure artistic process, an ‘objet d’art’ as he called it.

Objet d’Art has an expansive selection of Koning’s oeuvre and curator Andre Lipscombe has done an excellent job of giving the artworks and objects space to tell Koning’s story.

An example of Koning’s two-dimensional works, All in the Head 11 (lurking) (1988) is a playful but dark depiction of headspace. In it, a giant, red, Picasso-esque head dominates the landscape below, its mind literally clouded, and a sinister man with a red snake for a mouth lurks in the head’s shadow. The acrylic on canvas work elevates the idea ‘troubled state of mind’ to a poetic, figurative level, allowing the audience to identify with plight of the strange figure with their head in the clouds and an insidious being within.

One of the most unusual and striking of Koning’s pieces is Horse – Eight Hands (1977), an abstract, disjointed, and stripped back sculpture of a horse. Held together with a makeshift wooden crate structure, the animal is made of wood, fur, skin, bones and bicycle wheels. Cobbled together from a selection of found objects, the life size figure is disturbing, and yet endearing. With a burlap sack for a stomach, a nosebag for a head, and wheels for hooves, the horse is an almost-creature making do with the sum of its parts.

Objet d’Art is a fitting tribute to one of Western Australia’s greatest modern artists. The exhibition is a comprehensive and fascinating chronology of Koning’s artistic process.  To see the exhibition is to understand the passion, thoughtfulness and vision of Koning and the impact he made on Perth’s cultural landscape. The contributions and efforts made for this exhibition by many of Perth’s leading WA art curators, writers, academics and collectors is a touching indication of the presence Koning had within Perth’s artistic community. He is sorely missed.