Kim Carpenter is the creator, director and designer of Brett and Wendy… A Love Story Bound by Art, a new mixed-media work created for his company Theatre of Image and presented in association with Riverside Theatres, Parramatta and Sydney Festival.

Writing in the program, Carpenter says that he “created this script like a collage, gathering material from interviews, conversations, books, observations and personal experiences and curated them into a form as I ‘see it’.” He also writes that “the heart of this piece is the struggle of the artist as child/man. The painter alone, between his mind, heart and hand, searching for the god-given moments to produce pictures that we all identify him by.”

Paul Gleeson as Brett Whiteley. Photograph © Fabian Astore

Some elements of the collage work extremely well; others, particularly the text, are less effective, so that although there are some strong moments the overall effect is a fleet-footed 75 minute theatrical biography of a renowned Australian figure, that ticks many of the major points in his life and career, but but without bringing a great deal of depth to Whiteley himself or the people around him.

The show moves from Whiteley’s...