Guide: BMW Art Car #8 - BMW E30 M3 Gr.A 'Ken Done'
Background
Three years since BMW had last commissioned an Art Car, executives at the company ordered two new creations from a pair of Australian painters: Michael Jagamara Nelson and Ken Done.
Both works were completed in 1989 and based on Group A racing versions of the now legendary E30 M3.
BMW E30 M3 Gr.A
BMW had devised the E30 M3 as a homologation special to pave the way for the most extreme Group A touring car possible. It came with an array of special parts to include uprated suspension and brakes, wider BBS wheels and flared fenders, a trick aero kit and a host of sporty interior equipment.
In the engine by was a 200bhp 2.3-litre S14 inline four cylinder engine developed specifically with racing in mind.
For Group A competition the S14 unit was taken out to 300bhp and, beginning in 1987, BMW went on to clean up in practically every domestic and international championship.
Ken Done
Born in Sydney in 1940, Ken Done initially grew up in the small fishing town of MacLean in New South Wales’ Clarence Valley.
“I was an only child who liked to paint and my mother was very encouraging. We were quite poor. If you lived in a country town as I did, you had to make a lot of your own fun.”
Having immersed himself in encyclopaedias and the landscape that surrounded him, Done developed a fascination with nature, particularly animals like butterflies, parrots and fish.
Ken Done’s family left Maclean in 1950, initially for the Blue Mountains of west of Sydney and then in 1954 the beach-side suburb of Balmoral.
That year, Done enrolled at East Sydney’s National Art School where he studied for five years.
In 1959 Ken Done graduated and began a successful career as a commercial artist. During the 1960s he went on to join the London-based office of J. Walter Thompson and in 1967 won a Cannes Gold Lion Award at what remains the largest gathering of the advertising and creative communications industry.
Done returned to Sydney in 1969 and began to paint full-time from 1975. He held his first exhibition in Sydney during 1980 and since then has became one of the most highly regarded painters in the Asia Pacific region having staged over 100 solo exhibitions around the world.
Ken Done’s simple, brightly coloured images with their vivid brush strokes have frequently portrayed the typical face of his homeland and yielded perhaps the most original painting style to come out of Australia.
“Wherever you are in the world, there's always something about the Australian light. There's something about the sharpness of it, something about the clarity of it, something about the colours of Australia. And, hopefully, something optimistic about Australian painting too.”
Following its 1988 launch, the Tokyo fashion and lifestyle magazine, Hanako, featured a Ken Done painting on its cover every week for over 15 years.
Done’s M3
The M3 allocated to Ken Done for his Art Car project was a veteran of the 1987 Australian Touring Car Championship during which it had been campaigned by the JPS Team BMW squad run by Frank Gardner.
That year, Gardner’s BMW Australia-backed outfit employed the services of drivers Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst.
Richards went on to win Class B in eight of the nine rounds held during 1987 and also took outright victories against much more powerful Class A opposition at Longhurst, Surfers Paradise, Amaroo Park and Oran Park. Richards was crowned the 1987 champion with 193 points compared to 167 for his closest challenger (Nissan Skyline driver Glenn Seton).
Having reputedly raced just once during the 1988 season, the by now surplus-to-requirements quasi-works car was transformed into a stunning piece of rolling sculpture in 1989.
For his Art Car, Ken Done wanted to capture the happy side of modern Australia and to that end the M3 was covered in the kind of exotic colours that reflected the vitality of his home nation.
Typically Australian features like the sun, beaches and tropical landscapes were used along with the kind of abstract renditions of fish and parrots that characterised so much of Done’s prior work.
“I have painted parrots and parrot fish. Both are beautiful and able to move at fantastic speeds. I wanted my BMW Art Car to express the same qualities.”
With its vivid colour scheme, Ken Done’s wonderful creation could not have been more different to the car’s original black and gold livery of tobacco sponsor, John Player Special.
Text copyright: Supercar Nostalgia
Photo copyright: BMW - https://www.bmw.com
