Ken Done

Biography

In 1988, at the entrance and exit of the Australia Pavilion at the World Expo in Brisbane, stood enormous alphabet blocks about six metres high. Ken Done made them, and they were among the most photographed works at the Expo. The colourful Children of the World facade of the United Nations Pavilion was also his.

He was born on 29 June 1940 in Sydney.

An only child, he grew up in the suburbs of the city (which part, north or west, is given differently in different sources). At fourteen he left high school and from 1954 to 1959 studied at the National Art School in East Sydney. At the end of the 1950s he went abroad and began working for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, in its New York and London offices. In 1967 he won a Gold Lion at Cannes, and in the 1970s he received other professional awards of the advertising industry. He returned to Sydney in 1969 to pursue his own art, and gave himself fully to painting in 1975. His first solo exhibition was held in Sydney in 1980. Since then he has staged, by one account, more than a hundred exhibitions devoted solely to his work, by another more than fifty, so I would not repeat an exact figure. His paintings have been shown in Australia, Japan and France. His first European exhibition took place in Paris in 1996, and in 2000 his work was seen in Los Angeles and London. In 1994 the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney staged a major retrospective. Later came the exhibition “The Joy of Colour” (2015, a gallery in Seaforth, his first solo show in a commercial gallery outside his own space) and the touring show “Paintings you probably haven’t seen”: from 2019, thirty-five works travelled for almost three years through regional galleries from Far North Queensland to Victoria.

Together with his wife Judy Done he founded the company Done Art and Design. They began with small runs of T-shirts, carrying Ken Done’s pictures and Judy Done’s garment designs. Later a popular range of clothing and homewares, with simple, brightly coloured images of Australian landmarks, was sold under the Done Design brand. In 1993 the company won the Grand Award of the Fashion Industries of Australia. From 1989 to 1999 one of his works appeared every week on the cover of the Japanese women’s magazine Hanako.

In 1989 he was commissioned to paint a Group A BMW M3 racing car for the BMW Art Car series, in which Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Frank Stella had worked before him. He chose abstract parrots and parrotfish: in his conception, they convey the beauty and speed of the car.

In October 1995 Prime Minister Paul Keating asked him to sketch designs for an Australian flag. Done submitted sixteen designs to Ausflag, some of which dated from as early as 1981. For the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney he created a series of works for the opening and closing ceremonies. In 2006 he designed and made the United Buddy Bear for Australia, for the international exhibition series. There was a conflict, too: in September 1993 the band TISM released an album with a koala in his manner, holding a syringe in its mouth. Done obtained an injunction banning its sale, and in November the record was reissued under the title “Censored Due to Legal Advice” with a new cover.

He has long supported art in Australia, in particular through awards and sponsorship for schoolchildren. From 1988 he was a UNICEF Australia Goodwill Ambassador. In 1989 he won the Australian Father of the Year award. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to art, design and tourism. Among his other honours are an honorary degree from Sydney Graphics College (2002), the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Award (2007), the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame (2013) and the Australian Fashion Laureate Lifetime Achievement Award (2022). His gallery is in The Rocks, Sydney.

He divides his own work into art, design, illustration and business, and believes that art need not live only in museums.