Provenance:
Purchased from Petar James Gallery, Auckland, circa 1974 by current owner.

The early 1970s represented a seminal time in Killeen's artistic development and, more broadly, the crystallisation of our own national response to Abstract Expressionism and quest for abstraction. A Bit of Backbone belongs to the artist's Comb series of 1973-74 which repeatedly drew on the motif of a Polynesian comb to create a beautifully minimalist, cross-cultural abstract space. Killeen has realised something of a paradox: the image appears to float in an infinity of alternate, abstracted space, whilst at the same time existing in complete two-dimensional flatness. Herein, the clarity of the void which divides the mottled white teeth of the comb is therefore as significant as the stencilled shape itself.