Gleeson produced the Peregian Suite (a series of 22 collages) while staying at Peregian Beach in Queensland in Summer 1982-83. Having given up all his public commitments as visiting curator, lecturer and author he had decided to devote himself to painting full time. The book records how these collages set off the great late period of his work, of which Reef painted in 1983 is the first.
On a summer holiday in Peregian in December 1982 to January 1983 I worked on this sequence of decalcomanias using collage to enhance the suggestions I discovered in the random dispositions of the pigment. To convert it to a landscape I applied a film of black or coloured tissue papers, often in layers, and I completed the transformation by adding a further collage of images as extensions of the implications provided by the paint.
So wrote James Gleeson in the foreword to the 22 works made at Peregian Beach in Queensland which was later bound into a volume titled Peregian Codex. It was a vital moment for Gleeson the artist.
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