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Shaun Tan - 'City Limits' - oil on canvas
$30,800.00 AUD
$30,800.00 AUD
City Limits
Oil on canvas by Shaun Tan (2017).
Artwork size: 150 x 100 cm (59.1" x 39.4")
Originally published in Tales from The Inner City, Walker Books / Allen & Unwin 2018 (Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration, UK)
‘City Limits’ is an illustration for a short story about horses in 19th century cities, how they were a primary form of transport and labour, including working treadmills to power factories and other crippling tasks, generally treated as machines and routinely beaten. The motto of one American factory stable, carved in the rafters to remind handlers to show no mercy, proclaimed ’Sentiment pays no dividend’ and this was a common attitude considered necessary to sustain urban growth (not unlike our tacit attitudes to other things today). That almost every modern city owes an immense debt to horsepower is rarely remembered, much less acknowledged. My story is essentially a ghost story, inspired by my two-year-old daughter's comment from the back seat one night, that she could see animals running alongside our car. The story ends with the image of horses gathered at a point from which they can’t escape, wishing only to be seen by others, to be acknowledged as having existed, as illustrated in my painting. —Shaun Tan