ICONOCLAST

In art there is only one thing that counts,” the French painter George Braque once noted, “the bit that cannot be explained”. And so it is with the work of Reg Mombassa, known to most as a musician and artist, but who is also a writer, poet and – at least according to frequent collaborator Mambo – a “humanist, sage, dispenser of arcane wisdom, buggerer of sacred cows and much-loved national treasure”.

In his orbit, everything seems to lend itself to allegory. His home in the Sydney suburb of Glebe is strewn with guitars and canvases – his work and others’ – thrown into panels of light by an array of stained glass windows. Up a ladder – perhaps an ascension to a higher, purer state of creativity – sits his attic studio.

In one corner lies a scale model of a home that the artist’s father built in New Zealand while a dusty table bears the ashes of various forebears and small creatures he has known and loved. Beside his late mother’s remains and patinated watch sits a jar of glitter pens and an abandoned album