Chris Zanko’s Regent Theatre artworks are on display at Wollongong Art Gallery. Photo: Jessica Maurer.
Chris Zanko’s first solo art show was hung at the Egg and Dart Gallery in Thirroul in 2018.
A story in the University of Wollongong’s The Stand magazine in March that year reported that the entire show sold out in 45 minutes, a day before it opened.
“Zanko has been quite literally carving a name for himself in the art community,” the story by Paul Jones said. “The young artist carves and chisels lines into pieces of plywood and then paints them in to create amazing images of houses.”
Well, there has been very little stopping Zanko since.
Apart from exhibiting in Japan (a rarity for an Illawarra-based artist) Chris Zanko also hit the big time in late 2020 when he was invited by the Sydney Living Museum to create a work marking the 70th anniversary of the Rose Seidler House.
It was his interest in architecture (both exterior and interior) that got Zanko this prestigious gig – Harry Seidler being one of the doyens of Australian mid-20th century architectural art.
That characteristic Zanko style – extending even to the humble fibro art of the Illawarra’s Housing Commission homes – was something Chris was quick to grasp.
It was the increasing rarity of this architectural style which in part enabled Zanko to see – apart from the asbestos – its virtues. That insight helped kicked off what is now shaping up to be a stellar artistic career.
There at Gwynneville, Sandon Point, Warrawong and Bellambi, Zanko understood that – apart from their often tiny kitchens – these fibro structures had been a boon for workers and their families and when bathed in his characteristic images of sunlight and shadow, they were by the 21st century a local heritage very much under threat.
The most recent commission for Zanko has come from the Wollongong Art Gallery which was keen to gain his take on a great Wollongong architectural icon – the Regent Theatre in Keira Street.
Just as Harry Seidler was one of the masters of mid-20th century Australian architecture, Marion Hall Best (1905-1988) was a genuine wonder when it came to Australian interior design. And even though the Regent Theatre’s was designed way back in the 1930s by Reginald Magoffin (1908-1989) it was not built until the mid 1950s.
Fortunately, the owners then had the good taste to have the extraordinarily gifted Marion Hall Best take charge of the interiors.
So some of Illawarra’s finest interior images today survive thanks to the allure of Best’s striking interior design flair.
Upon opening of the Regent Theatre, her work became a feast for Wollongong’s mostly totally amazed eyes and a great many Illawarra resident still have the fondest memories of the excitement and wonder of stepping into Marion Hall Best’s extraordinary and beautiful colour schemes and designs.
Those living outside of Illawarra, however, were mostly very late to the party in appreciating the magnificence of what could be found inside Reginald Magoffin’s ultra late and rather muted art deco facade.
Yet in May 1997, Lenny Ann Lowe visited the Regent and saw what was later publicised in Sydney as Illawarra’s only heritage toilet: “a women’s loo … with 1950s dazzle”.
However, although Michael Lech (like myself) missed seeing the Regent’s women’s loo, when the theatre was up for sale in 2019 Lech recognised it was still “probably the only non-domestic place you can see an interior decorated by Marion Hall Best (even if a bit changed since completed in 1957)”.
Lech remarked that “you can still see some of the painted glazes, a Douglas Annand mural, Japanese translucent paper and the pumpkin shaped lights of sheet metal” which were according to Marion, “perforated to make a play of shadow on the ceiling”. And better still, Michael Lech also took some great photos.
But apart from being a true masterpiece of Australian interior design, the Regent Theatre also originally functioned as a community access point for Illawarra’s nascent art scene.
The Illawarra Art Society, formed in the 1950s, even held some of its first exhibitions in the beautifully painted foyer.
So with the commission by Wollongong Art Gallery, Chris Zanko and Marion Hall Best are now bound together as among the prime dynamic duos of Illawarra artistic endeavour.
And some of the interiors of the Regent Theatre – as Chris Zanko has now so distinctively and lovingly detailed – provide us with a reminder that this was about as good as public interior design in 1950s Illawarra ever got.
Zanko’s Regent Theatre pieces Regent I – V, are now on display at the Wollongong Art Gallery, Burelli Street, Wollongong.
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