When beloved Australian satirist John Clarke died suddenly last year, his comedy partner Bryan Dawe found the public outpouring of grief overwhelming.
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So overwhelming, in fact, that after almost a year, he left the country for five months to get away from it.
Clarke and Dawe had long performed as a comedy duo on television, where they staged mock interviews about issues of the day.
After Clarke died while bushwalking in the Grampions in April 2017, Dawe retreated to Tangier, Morocco, a favourite destination, where he put together an exhibition of distinctive artworks and allowed himself to grieve privately.
“I was the public face of it all and it was really tough for 11 months,” he said.
“I just had to go because I didn't have any time to stand back and grieve myself for John...It was all coming from absolutely the right place, people were just wonderful and they were mourning the loss of John, they were mourning the loss of Clarke and Dawe, and they were concerned about my wellbeing and how I was. It was very overwhelming, and I just got to the point where I thought well, I've just got to go somewhere and give myself a break.”
In settling in Tangier for five months this year, he was joining a long tradition of artists, writers and musicians who have, at various times in history, gone to the fabled city to reinvent themselves.
“Tangier is different from any other city that I've been to in Morocco, and it was a free city from about 1923, so it attracted everyone, all the great beat writers in the 1950s,” Dawe said.
“It's a port city, and I grew up in a port city and I felt very at home there. I grew up in Port Adelaide, and Tangier's just Port Adelaide with the Moroccan language, [and] a little more colourful.”
His series of multimedia works, including photography, drawing and collage, is now on display at the Bungendore Woodworks Gallery.
Although the works are not a reference to Clarke’s death, he said travelling to Morocco, where he had spent time before and grown to love, was a vital time of resetting.
“It enabled to me to stand back and grieve myself about John, and realise how much I missed him and what I missed,” he said.
Dawe has had several previous exhibitions, although he took a five year break at one point to escape from “that whole Sydney/Melbourne arts scene".
“I didn't want to know about it, it was not what I was doing the art for.”
He had already had an exhibition in Tangier on a previous visit, when he began experimenting with digital art.
“I had no idea what I was doing. I'm not a photographer, technically I wouldn't know jack about photography, and I can't paint and I can't draw, but I seem to be able to meld all those things together when I'm doing this work, which is montage and collage,” he said.
“It's free, I'm not bogged down by ‘oh you can't mix that colour with that’, and because I'm doing it on the iPad and the computer, by and large, I can rub it out and keep on going until I get it right.”
He doesn’t travel with any art supplies, preferring the liberation of carrything nothing more than an iPad and digital pen.
“It's excellent, it's great, you can take your studio wherever you like, and it's a lovely learning process,” he said.
Passage, by Bryan Dawe, is showing at Bungendore Woodworks Gallery until July 31. Dawe will be speaking at the gallery on August 3 at 6.30pm. For more information, visit bungendorewoodworks.com.au
