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<\/p>\nDURING 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
‘Endlessness!’, ‘Enthusiasm’, and ‘Finger in the nose’ are just a few of the signs he produced.<\/p>\n
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Other less topical signs include a reproduction of the Pura Milk logo, a company started by his father “along with Big M”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Mad Max, Rambo, Gremlins, Police Academy, Pirates of Penzance, Barry Humphries<\/em> and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat<\/em>\u00a0are among the hundreds of titles and accompanying imagery he and colleagues produced from their Fitzroy studio, usually with a three-day turnaround. “I came back from overseas after getting my apprenticeship and working in London,” he said.<\/p>\n “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\u2026 the first job I got.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n “He’s a great man, a really great man,” he said of Barassi.<\/p>\n “I’ve met plenty in the\u00a0industry who aren’t, but he’s definitely not one of them.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The trial became the longest, most expensive art fraud case in Australia’s legal history.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “I’m doing one or two portraits a day\u2026with some text and brief descriptions of why I did it and who they are.<\/p>\n “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\u2026but no one’s ever done it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n
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\nHe 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.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/IMG_1716_61205.jpg\")
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