Signed: 'Looby' lower right
Exhibited: Keith Looby 'The Bureaucracy Suieet', Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1983
Illustrated: Humphrey McQueen, Suburbs of the Sacred, 
Transforming Australian beliefs and values, penguin books 1988, p.197 

Looby developed three sequences of paintings in the early 1980's which arose from his long contest with the art establishment: 'National Gallery', 'Art Eaters' and 'Bureaucracy Suieet' which the current painting 'Dear Sir' belongs to. Looby had held a long term dispute with the Melbourne art critic Patrick McCaughey and it is from this dispute that 'Dear Sir' 1983 was inspired. The picture was Looby's entry for the Sulman Prize in 1983. Knowing that McCaughey would be the judge that year, Looby submitted the painting in mock deference. The central figure is Looby himself, waving a white enveloped letter from his left hand; from the other hand, a long-barrelled black revolver pointed at the heads of three of art's task masters who are depicted upturned on the green.