Richard Lewer's Theatre of Sports (2016). All images courtesy of the artist
Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist Richard Lewer loves sport. But he’s more interested in losers than winners—stories of failure over tales of triumph. In his 12 panel oil painting Theatre of Sports, he examines the vulnerability of famous athletes up close, capturing the moments of self-flagellation and disappointment when they lost a crucial point or didn’t manage to outskill an opponent.It took the artist about four months to finish the painting, but he’d been collecting images of sporting losers for years—from television, newspapers and the internet. The panels depict the likes of tennis player Nick Kyrgios, fighter Ronda Rousey, and hurdler Sally Pearson.
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“As a country,” he explains to The Creators Project, “We expect these people to win all the time. But i’m more interested when they lose.”“Most of them have to come back from that, and how do they do that? Continue to love the sport and dominate. That’s the main area of focus that i’m interested in—how they pick themselves up when they fail.”
Nick Kyrgios slams down a racquet in defeat
Watching TV footage of a heartbreaking loss provides a satisfying sense of voyeurism—we’re as fascinated by losers as we are by winners. “It can be quite cringeworthy,” Lewer says. “In the footy finals next month they will show footage of the other team on the ground crying. Someone’s always got to lose, don’t they?”So obsessed are we by the divide between winning and losing that we ask losers to explain themselves. “In tennis particularly, I’m always interested in the second place speech," says Lewer. "I know what the reaction of the winner is going to be, but the loser—forced to go up there and talk about it. That’s interesting.”
Sally Pearson collapses
The Olympics have shed new light on Lewer’s work. “Many of our athletes are the best in Australia, but when they go out into the world they’re not,” Lewer says. “And at Rio, commentators won’t give them a break.”“I’m interested in extremes,” he says. “The idea of collecting images of these people in their most vulnerable states. You’ve dedicated your whole life to this, what does it mean to fail?”
Ronda Rousey defeated
Lewer is a sportsperson himself—he coaches boxing, and considers tennis and table tennis part of his weekly routine. He says there are more similarities between art making and athleticism than you’d think—what he calls a “natural connection” between the discipline required for either occupation.
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