Bill Luke’s many faces

DURING the pandemic, when much of the world’s population were confined to their homes, Jan Juc artist Bill Luke did what he has done for much of his life: paint signs and display them for the public.

A pictorial sign-writer who was once Melbourne’s go-to guy for the entertainment industry when new films or theatre productions needed advertising, he amused himself by painting signs that were a wry commentary on the times and placed them in the front window of his home for the public to see.

‘Endlessness!’, ‘Enthusiasm’, and ‘Finger in the nose’ are just a few of the signs he produced.

Other less topical signs include a reproduction of the Pura Milk logo, a company started by his father “along with Big M”.

At the peak of his sign writing career, with vinyl printing yet to emerge, the talented pictorial artist and his team were painting signs for up to 13 cinemas a week, along with advertising for Melbourne’s major theatres.

Mad Max, Rambo, Gremlins, Police Academy, Pirates of Penzance, Barry Humphries and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat are among the hundreds of titles and accompanying imagery he and colleagues produced from their Fitzroy studio, usually with a three-day turnaround.

He credits an early stint with legendary footballer Ron Barassi’s office furniture business as being highly influential in how he would later understand and navigate the design and art world.

“I came back from overseas after getting my apprenticeship and working in London,” he said.

“I liked furniture, I loved all the three-dimensional stuff, I was a very good drawer and I used to draw interiors for architects and Ron found me somewhere and said you want to come work for me as an interior designer… the first job I got.

“The second day I was there he sent me out to the airport to pick up some guys from Motorola when Motorola first started in Australia, and I had to find offices for them, and fit out the offices for them, I’d never done anything like it in my life. I loved it.

“He’s a great man, a really great man,” he said of Barassi.

“I’ve met plenty in the industry who aren’t, but he’s definitely not one of them.”

When technology revolutionised the industry and did away with much of the old-school hand painted sign writers, his focus shifted more to furniture, marketing and design, before retiring aged 55 and “living the dream” for the past 22 years.

A lifelong love of portraiture led him into the courtroom where he became a sketch artist and sold images to major newspapers for a decade.

It was there he stumbled across Remy van de Wiel QC, who in 2016 successfully represented art restorer Mohamed Aman Siddique, who had been accused of faking Brett Whiteley paintings.

The trial became the longest, most expensive art fraud case in Australia’s legal history.

Mr Luke’s painting of Mr van de Wiel was a finalist in the 2017 Archibald prize.

A current project he is doing is producing 365 portraits during 2023.

“I’m doing one or two portraits a day…with some text and brief descriptions of why I did it and who they are.

“I do it for me, but I would love it if someone came along and just said ‘Can we take these away and hang them and have a little exhibition?’ I’d say yeah…but no one’s ever done it.”