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Gavin Brown and William Eicholtz are both unique artists who have resolutely followed their own aesthetics, quite outside the tides of fashionable movements. Their long careers have consistently defied categorisation, challenged accepted tastes and standards, and delighted dedicated collectors. Firm friends since they first met in the early days of Melbourne’s ‘gender-bending’ nightclubs – when creativity manifested itself in many different guises – the artists have remained close throughout their ensuing art careers. And yet, despite a friendship of almost 30 years, many individual exhibitions, and countless promises that they ‘really should have an exhibition together one day’, Gratuitous Garland is the first time their works have sat side by side.

Image: Gavin Brown & William Eicholtz, Gratuitous Garland: A Botanical Metaphor, 2011. Photograph Chris Orr.