Speed!

Ivor Francis’s drawings from his teenage years and early twenties reveal an imagination inspired by the futuristic dystopia of the science fiction genre. Popularised by writers such as H.G. Wells, and his novel, The War of the Worlds (1898), the genre presented both a critique and celebration of the modern industrial society. Francis’s art expresses both these strands, in particular the social impact and potential of technology during both war and peacetime.

Leaving London as an unaccompanied seventeen-year-old, Francis arrived in South Australia in 1924 to seek employment opportunities, first working on the remote Eyre Peninsula as a labourer and later as a primary school teacher.

The relief print Speed! was created in 1931, not long after Francis moved to Adelaide, where he continued to work as a teacher while completing his fine art studies. The image was published in Forerunner, the magazine of the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts.1 In the print Francis transforms the humble tram into a speeding rocket, the abstract patterns emanating from its body conveying its speed. The low perspective suggests that it is close to being airborne.

Francis became an active member of the Adelaide art scene from the late 1930s, exhibiting with progressive artists and, in 1942, becoming a founding member of the Contemporary Art Society of South Australia. A prolific writer, he also worked as an art critic in South Australian newspapers from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Maria Zagala, Associate Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs