Feature Story

A Conspicuous Object

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In 1849 The Maitland Mercury described the newly opened Maitland Hospital as ‘a conspicuous object’. Located on Campbell’s Hill, the front of the building faced towards town across the Mount Pleasant floodplain. Now, more than 170 years on – and imbued with a layered history – the time has come for a new Maitland Hospital to open to serve the needs of a growing community. As part of the transition from the old to the new site in Metford in early 2022, and as an acknowledgment of the important role The Maitland Hospital has played in the local community through its history, the Collected Memory Project was initiated as a partnership between Hunter New England Local Health District, Health Infrastructure and Maitland City Council. The main objective of Collected Memory is to connect the Maitland community with the new hospital by realising a variety of heritage items and artworks in the public spaces of the new hospital. Art, history and health intertwine in the objects and works going on display, which aim to invite reflection and evoke community memories. Curated by Emeritus Cultural Director Joe Eisenberg, Collection Curator Cheryl Farrell, and historian Janis Wilton, the exhibition at MRAG, A Conspicuous Object – The Maitland Hospital, and its website (aconspicuousobject.com.au) are companions to the Collected Memory Project. For the exhibition,

ten contemporary artists respond to stories and memories shared by staff, volunteers, patients and community members. Some of these stories are available on the website, where you can also share your memories of the hospital. Among the artists in the exhibition is contemporary printmaker, painter, sculptor and graphic artist, G.W. Bot, who creates her own signs, which she calls glyphs, to capture her close, personal relationship with the landscape. For A Conspicuous Object, she focused on the hospital’s gardens. “Gardens,” Bot says, “symbolise many things to different cultures. Upon entering a garden one encounters different pathways of meaning.” In relation to the hospital’s gardens, Bot reflects, “Since [its] establishment ... the gardens have always been a part of the hospital in some shape or form, sometimes well looked after, sometimes neglected. A garden needs a gardener in the same way that a medical doctor is needed to tend the medical care of a patient.” Artist Susan O’Doherty draws upon recycled everyday materials to create assemblages, collages, paintings, and sculptures, offering provocative commentary on gender, consumerism, violence, memory and history. For A Conspicuous Object, she created a series of soft sculptures representing the various occupations available to women at The Maitland Hospital over time, such as ‘Maternity Nurse’. “Raised on a textile mount, a white cane pram represents the maternity nurses and the women who have given birth at The Maitland Hospital from its very beginning. Linking the decades, the late nineteenth century castor oil bottles and midtwentieth century half pint milk bottles symbolise both motherhood and the care and support given by nurses and midwives at the hospital in the journey from pregnancy to birth and postnatal care.” Anita Johnson works with familiar objects and language to elicit feelings of longing and memories of place. For the exhibition she has transformed salvaged broken objects into artworks that explore experiences of separation and union, illness and repair. “I am interested in alternative understandings of repair as opposed to restoration to former wholeness and utility. I like to play with the curious suggestion that objects could be imagined as having parallel lives and hardships to our own. I repair them into new autonomous objects, free to leap across the room, to play, to retaliate, to be other than they are expected to be, to go beyond their objecthood.” Words: Janis Wilton, Exhibition Curator A Conspicuous Object – The Maitland Hospital is showing from 16 October 2021 – 6 February 2022. Visit the website, and share your story, at aconspicuousobject.com.au The exhibition and website are presented by Maitland Regional Art Gallery in partnership with Hunter New England Local Health District and Health Infrastructure.

IMAGE

1 Val Anderson, Maitland Hospital building 1849, 1992, drawing

When The Archibald Prize comes to town

It’s a grand occasion when The Archibald – the most popular and prestigious annual prize for portrait painting in Australia – comes to town. When MRAG hosts the touring 2021 Archibald Prize exhibition in early 2022, it will be just the third time in its 100-year history it has been shown in Maitland. It being the 100th birthday of The Archibald makes it even more of an occasion.

As always, a who’s who of Australian culture is represented in the 2021 exhibition. Sitters include actress Rachel Griffiths, who hosted the 3-part ABC documentary Finding the Archibald; Dhungutti artist Blak Douglas, whose work was included in MRAG’s recent exhibition, Shadow Boxer; 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame; and broadcaster Kerry O’Brien. All 52 finalists will be shown, including, of course, the winning portrait by Peter Wegner of 100-year-old-artist Guy Warren.

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As we prepare to welcome the Archibald back to Maitland, and to join in the excitement of the centenary celebrations, we thought we’d share with you some of MRAG’s own connections to the Prize.

One of the earliest artworks acquired into the MRAG Collection, the painting J.W.A. Smith (a portrait of the artist's father) by Joshua Smith, was a finalist in the 1937 Archibald Prize. Joshua Smith’s name might be familiar to you

as the subject of the controversial 1943 Archibald-winning painting by William Dobell. The question of whether Dobell’s painting of Smith was a caricature or a portrait rendered both the painting, and the sitter, at the mercy of THAT court case in Sydney in 1944. The next year, in 1938, 28-year-old Nora Heysen was the first woman and, at the time, the youngest artist, to win the Archibald.1 Fellow artist Max Meldrum at the time was scathing of Heysen’s success and declared, “If I were a woman, I would certainly prefer a healthy family to a career in art”.2 The work of Heyson, along with that of other female artists to win The Archibald – including Wendy Sharpe and Judy Cassab – is well represented in the MRAG Collection. Eighty years on and for the first time there is gender parity for artists selected in the 2021 Archibald.

Artist Mitch Cairns’ portrait of art collector and philanthropist Reg Richardson AM was a finalist in the Archibald in 2014, the last time MRAG hosted the exhibition. Both Cairns and Richardson, a long-time supporter of MRAG, attended the opening celebrations. Richardson has loaned numerous artworks from his private collection to MRAG for exhibitions over the years, and Cairns’ portrait of Richardson was later acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. Cairns went on to win the Archibald Prize in 2017 with his portrait of fellow artist and life partner Agatha Gothe-Snape. The Archibald-winning portrait in 2014, incidentally, was Fiona Lowry’s painting of Penelope Seidler AM, who has many links to Maitland and made a major gift to the MRAG Collection in 2019. Her bequest was celebrated in the MRAG exhibition Unfolding Time: Penelope Seidler’s Gift to Maitland. The winner of the 2021 Archibald Prize is painter Peter Wegner’s portrait of artist Guy Warren who, fittingly, also turned 100 this year. Warren himself won the Archibald in 1995 with his portrait of sculptor and friend Burt Flugelman (Flugelman with Wingman). MRAG has had the pleasure of hosting Guy Warren on a couple of occasions to officiate at events, and the MRAG Collection includes several works by Warren – such as Wingman as Icarus – with motifs that echo his Archibald-winning work. We hope you enjoy reflecting on stories from the history of the Prize, and perhaps uncover more, as you take in the portraits in the 2021 Archibald.

Words: Kim Blunt, Senior Curator The 2021 Archibald Prize, touring from The Art Gallery of New South Wales, will be showing at MRAG from 22 January to 6 March 2022.

FOOTNOTES

1 www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artsets/5pl8w9/print accessed 4 July 2021 2 www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/1938/16506/ accessed 6 July 2021

IMAGES 1 Wendy Sharpe, Self portrait, 1988, mixed media on paper 49 x 39.5cm, Donated through the Australian Government's

Cultural Gifts Program by Robin Gurr, 2012, Maitland Regional

Art Gallery Collection. A portrait of Wendy by Dagmar

Cyrulla was a finalist in the 2021 Archibald. 2 Joshua Smith, J.W.A. Smith [portrait of his father], 1937 oil on canvas, 122 x 77 cm, Gift of Yve Close, 1999,

Maitland Regional Art Gallery Collection