2006.Q3 | artonview 47 Spring 2006

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Third Intermediate Period, 21st–22nd dynasties (1069–715 BCE) Cartonnage of Djedkhonsouioufankh plastered, painted and gilded linen Collection Musée du Louvre Photograph © Georges Poncet, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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Principal Sponsor

The Crafted Object • Revolutionary russians

MICHAELRILEYUNSEEN SIGHTS

14 July – 16 October 2006 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Imants Tillers installing Terra incognita 2005 at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2005 The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency.

nga.gov.au

Michael Riley Wiradjuri/Kamileroi peoples Untitled from the series cloud [cow] 2000 printed 2005 chromogenic pigment photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Š Michael Riley, Licensed by VISCOPY

contents

artonview Publisher National Gallery of Australia nga.gov.au Editor Eve Sullivan

4 Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre 8 Revolutionary Russians: Commemorating the centenary of Shostakovich

Designer Sarah Robinson

16 The crafted object 1960s–80s

Photography Eleni Kypridis Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie Steve Nebauer John Tassie

24 The Gallery of Southeast Asian Art 28 New acquisitions

Designed and produced in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia Printed in Australia by Pirion Pty Limited, Canberra

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2 Director’s foreword

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Published quarterly: Issue no. 47, Spring 2006 © National Gallery of Australia Print Post Approved pp255003/00078 All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

Submissions and correspondence should be addressed to: The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 artonview.editor@nga.gov.au

42 James Turrell changes the shape of the sky 45 Travelling exhibitions 46 Abracadabra: the magic in conservation 50 Tribute: Gela Nga-Mirraitja Fordham c. 1935–2006 52 Tribute: Micky Garrawurra 1940–2006 54 Development office 55 Access services: Making a difference 58 Faces in view

Advertising (02) 6240 6587 facsimile (02) 6240 6427 artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au RRP: $8.60 includes GST Free to members of the National Gallery of Australia For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership contact: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6240 6504 membership@nga.gov.au

front cover: Rajasthan or Uttar Pradesh, India Lakshmi Narayana 10th–11th century sandstone National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

direc tor’s foreword

The Gallery is beginning to look different. And we will see more changes over the next six months. Last month we finished the first complete cleaning of the building’s outside walls. Ugly stains have been removed and the building looks immaculate.

Inside, we have commenced a relighting program that will eventually show all of our display galleries literally in a new light.

Old, unsightly and inconsistent fittings will be replaced under the supervision of George Sexton, the world’s leading museum lighting expert.

On display in the Australian Galleries are two major new additions. One is Australia’s first Symbolist painting, Charles Conder’s intriguing Hot wind 1889, an important painting thought to be lost. We are grateful to the Sarah and Baillieu Myer Family Foundation for helping us purchase the work.

The other is Sydney Long’s Flamingoes c. 1906, a decorative art nouveau painting acquired with the generous assistance of donors through the Masterpieces for the Nation fund.

We are now seeing the beginning of the reconfigured displays of the permanent collection – the Indian Gallery opened late last month and the Southeast Asian Gallery opens in September.

While highlights from the Indian subcontinent include newly acquired second-century Gandharan work from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and sculptures from Nepal and Bangladesh, most of the art on display is from present-day India, with spectacular Buddhist, Jain, Hindu and Islamic works. More than half of the sculptures and architectural elements have been acquired in the past eighteen months and some have not been shown before.

The collection of Indian sculptures and architectural structures, textiles and paintings is the largest and most important in our region outside India. This display includes a marvellous sixteenthcentury Deccan canopy from the facade of a building (its purchase generously assisted by Margaret Olley AC) and the Lakshmi Narayana featured on the cover of this issue, an excellent example of the kind of figure imagery that adorned medieval temples in central India. Narayana (which means ‘universal abode’) is one of the many emanations of Vishnu, the ‘preserver’ and maintainer of cosmic order, an appropriate icon for these unsteady times.

The new Southeast Asian Gallery emphasises our strengths in sculpture and textiles from Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other Asian neighbours. It also features new major acquisitions, particularly early ancestral animist works.

On show in our old downstairs Asian Gallery is the rare and wonderfully preserved early sixteenth-century Japanese painted folding screen from the Muromachi period, a recent gift of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation. As outlined in my Vision for the National Gallery of Australia (available at nga.gov.au/Vision), while the arts of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent are the main focus of the national Asian collection, we are also committed to developing a small but high quality North Asian collection.

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Behind the scenes, we are working on the reconfiguration of the main level gallery spaces opening in late October as a chronological survey of late nineteenth-century and twentiethcentury international art focusing on the School of Paris, Dada and Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art. These movements are of course crucial to the careers of many noted Australian artists whose work will be presented in context here for the first time. The new international displays present a broad range of media – paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, illustrated books, photography and the decorative arts, including our Ballet Russe costumes. It is hoped that these displays will generate a new interest in, and understanding, of our collection strengths.

Meanwhile, our temporary exhibitions program continues unabated, with the extraordinary contemporary survey exhibitions of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley (on display until 16 October).

The exhibitions are supported by the new National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibition Fund, led by the enthusiastic and tireless advocate Rupert Myer, Chair of the Gallery Council. We also thank the Michael Riley Foundation for assisting with the research and organisation of the Michael Riley exhibition and publication, and the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative for assistance with research and loans.

Michael Riley: sights unseen and Imants Tillers: one world many visions present two very complementary points of view. Acclaimed Indigenous photographer and film-maker Michael Riley’s searingly poetic images present an alternative to conventional icons of Christianity, reflecting what he has described as the ‘sacrifices Aboriginal people made to be Christian’. In contrast, Imants Tillers, a second-generation Australian artist of Latvian descent, perhaps more than any other Australian artist living today, demonstrates the cultural legacy and condition in which locality fails to entirely address what constitutes our cultural identity.

This issue of artonview launches The crafted object 1960s–80s and the dynamic Revolutionary Russians, featuring works from the collection across a broad range of media, and also previews our major summer blockbuster exhibition, Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre: journey to the afterlife. The coming months will be very exciting for the Gallery as we redirect attention to the exceptional strengths of the National Collection and our ongoing program of changing major exhibitions.

Ron Radford Director

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Donations James Andrew Roslynne Bracher Charles Curran AC Ashley Dawson-Damer Penelope Evatt-Seidler Richard and Maryan Godson Andrew Gwinnett Lee Liberman Myer Foundation Brian O’Keeffe AO and Bridget O’Keeffe AM The Sarah and Baillieu Myer Family Foundation Margaret Hannah Olley Art Trust Roslyn Packer Maxine Rochester Andrew Rogers Catherine Rossi Harris AO Rotary Belconnen John Schaeffer AO Raphy Star Patricia Stephenson Gifts American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia Avril Burn Eduardo Campaner Chris Canning Tony Coleing Robyn Daw Barrie Dexter Blair Gardner Jonathan Hope James and Joan Kerr Darani Lewers Klaus Moje Robert McDougall Donald Moffatt Ron Radford AM Dorothy Reid Jill Richards Patricia Sabine Carmen Scott Stills Gallery and the Freedman Foundation in memory of Linda Slutzkin John Thompson Alathea Vavasour

Grants Australia Council for the Arts Visions of Australia Masterpieces David Adams Ross Adamson Antoinette Albert Robert O Albert AO Robert Allmark William Anderson Susan Armitage Stuart Babbage Peter and Dorothy Barclay Peter Boxall Robert Brennan Christine Burgess Esther Constable Lyn Conybeare and Christopher Conybeare AO Ann Cork Greg Cornwell Elizabeth Coupland Debby Cramer Research Services James Cruthers Lyn Cummings in memory of Clement G Cummings David and Laurie Curtis Joan Daley OAM Kathy Davis Winifred Davson MBE Barbara Dickens in memory of Mairie Pender Peter Eddington Jacqueline Elliott Pauline Everson Florence Fane Joyce Fildes OAM in memory of Eleanor Fildes Brian Fitzpatrick Jane Flecknoe R and A Fleming Friends of Cowra Art Gallery Neilma Gantner Pauline Griffin AM Joyce Grimsley June P Gordon William Hamilton Vi Harding

David Healey Elisabeth Heard Shirley Hemmings in memory of Anthony Reis Janet Hine Keith Hooper Claudia Hyles Father Jack Susan Jardine Christopher Johnson Judith Johnson Pamela Kenny Peter Kenny Richard Kingsland AO CBE DFC and Lady Kingsland Judy Laver Paul and Beryl Legge-Wilkinson Bernard Leser W and H Lussick Judith MacIntyre Jenny Manton Margaret Mashford Patricia McCormick Simon McGill Jean McKenzie Paul McKeown John Middleton QC Eveline Milne Kathleen Montgomery Nance Atkinson Trust Susan Neumann W Newbigin Angus Paltridge John Parker Lee-Anne Patten SV Plowman Lady Praznovszky Susan Rogers Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose K Saxby Gisella Scheinberg OAM S Schonberg Heather Shakespeare Dick Smith AO and Pip Smith Elizabeth Smith Wendy Smith in memory of Robert Bruce Smith Ann Somers Lady Synnot Elizabeth Tanner

Kenneth Taylor AM and MH Taylor Sue Telford Noel Tovey HN Truscott AM Morna Vellacott Elizabeth Ward Joy Warren OAM Gough Whitlam AC QC and Margaret Whitlam AO Stephen Wild Yvonne Wildash I Wilkey Muriel Wilkinson Lady Wilson Robine Wilson in memory of Donald Edward Wilson Donna Woodhill Sponsors Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative Casella Wines Forrest Inn and Apartments Harvey Norman Westfield Woden Michael Riley Foundation Saville Park Suites

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Ptolemaic Period, 32nd Dynasty (332–30 BCE) Funerary chest of Hetepimen plastered and painted wood Collection Musée du Louvre, Paris Photograph © Georges Poncet, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre: journey to the afterlife 17 November 2006 – 25 February 2007

This summer in Canberra the Australian public will have the opportunity to see an extraordinary collection of art and artefacts from one of history’s most enduring civilisations. Over two hundred objects will go on show in an exhibition of Egyptian antiquities from the Musée du Louvre in Paris. This momentous event is the first exhibition the Louvre has sent to Australia in nearly two decades. Many of the works are drawn from the permanent display of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre, while others have never been on public display.

The ancient Egyptians saw life as a continuous process, in which mortal existence was only preparatory to the transformation brought by death, a mere shadow of the delightful world to come. A life lived morally and in accordance with the Egyptian commandments would allow a soul to pass through the final gate from the Underworld to the paradise of the Field of Reeds after judgment by the god Osiris. The journey between death and the Hall of Judgement was, however, lengthy and fraught with danger. The deceased had to set out equipped with amulets, magical spells and blessings from the gods. The exhibition draws its narrative from the Book of the Dead, or what the Egyptians called the Book of Coming Forth by Day, a compilation of spells and incantations to secure protection against the perils of the journey. The manuscripts were often illustrated with scenes of the stages of the journey, or the rewards awaiting those who completed it successfully and gained entry to the Field of Reeds. Visitors will have the pleasure of seeing a number of these painted papyrus manuscripts in the exhibition.

Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre: journey to the afterlife will include a broad range of subjects and themes in a variety of media, showcasing the incredible skill and virtuosity of ancient Egyptian artists and

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New Kingdom, late 18th – early 19th dynasties (1323–1295 BCE) Fragment of an Osiris pillar limestone Collection Musée du Louvre, Paris Photograph © Georges Poncet, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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Third Intermediate Period, 21st–22nd dynasties (1069–715 BCE) Cartonnage of Djedkhonsouioufankh plastered, painted and gilded linen Collection Musée du Louvre Photograph © Georges Poncet, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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craftspeople. We will see major sculptural works in stone and bronze, illustrated manuscripts, painted chests and mummy cases, low reliefs, jewellery, ceramics, and fine wood carving.

The smallest objects in the exhibition are amulets and jewels for adorning and protecting mummies, made from ceramic, carnelian, and other semi-precious stones. An army of over two hundred faience ushabti figures stand to attention, ready to act as deputies for the deceased in the afterlife, performing on his or her behalf any duties required. Hieroglyphic inscriptions on illustrated stele invoke the gods to grant favours and safe passage to donors on their travels through the afterlife to the Hall of Judgement. Painted scenes on canopic chests and mummy cases show vignettes from the journey of the dead, as they travel beyond the mortal realm towards eternal life with the gods. Lifelike sculptures and mummy portraits ensure the survival of the physical form, the eyes of the deceased gazing at us across the millennia. Throughout, the sublime, impassive faces of the gods watch over the progress of souls through the rigours of life and the Underworld’s dangers.

Although ancient Egyptian art is often perceived to be about death and the tomb, the exhibition shows that the elaborate funerary preparations and mummification rituals were actually only the first step on the path to eternal life. The Field of Reeds was a paradise imagined by a simple, agricultural society: tilling fertile fields, tending fat livestock, hunting in a countryside teeming with birdlife and game, dancing and listening to heavenly music, and fishing in swollen streams. It was a life like that along the Nile, but brighter, more beautiful, and more restful, where magical servants carried out the more tiresome tasks, and everyone was comfortable and happy. This was not only a paradise for the upper classes, but also one to which every Egyptian aspired. Some of the works depict the world to come; others serve as reminders of it, such as a blue glazed bowl decorated with the water lilies that symbolise rebirth and the fecund splendour of the afterlife.

Among the most spectacular objects in the exhibition are the sarcophagi, coffins and cartonnages – mummy cases made of linen or papyrus strips held together and hardened with plaster and resin then covered in painted decorations. To enter the Field of Reeds, it was not just necessary for the soul to pass the final Judgement of the god Osiris. The body must remain intact for the soul to be reunited with it and these coffins protected the mummified remains from physical damage. Together with the accompanying wall paintings, low reliefs and portrait sculptures inscribed with the names of the deceased, they also allowed the soul to find and recognise its body more easily and substituted for it in the case of loss or damage. One of the most exquisite examples of painting to be seen in the exhibition is the Cartonnage of

Djedkhonsouioufankh, which combines a portrait of the deceased with a scene in the Hall of Judgment, a variety of talismanic motifs, and symbols of the afterlife and the journey of the soul.

Pharaonic culture lasted in ancient Egypt for well over three thousand years, gradually evolving over this time as the kingdom was conquered, divided, reunited, and transformed. The exhibition imparts an understanding of how these changes affected religious belief and art production over the millennia, from the Old Kingdom, when the pyramids were built to Cleopatra, last of the pharaohs, and the Roman conquest two thousand years ago.

This exhibition of Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre is unlike any exhibition of ancient Egyptian art and culture ever seen in Australia. Visitors will gain an appreciation of Egyptian artistic traditions and the enormous skill of the ancient hands that fashioned the works on display, and an understanding of their functional context. Ancient Egypt holds a perennial fascination, one that this exhibition will

reignite in anyone who has a memory of a school project on the pyramids, or a first encounter with a mummy on a museum visit. The exquisite workmanship of the objects in the exhibition grants the ancient Egyptians their longedfor immortality, bridging the intervening millennia and allowing visitors to accompany them on their journey through the Underworld.

The National Gallery of Australia is proud to be the first venue to host this outstanding exhibition from one of the foremost collections of Egyptian art and antiquities in the world. a

New Kingdom, 18th–20th dynasties (1550-1069 BCE) Funerary pectoral: Isis and Nephthys protecting Khepri gilded wood inlaid with lapis-lazuli, glass and faience Collection Musée du Louvre, Paris Photograph © Christian Décamps, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Bronwyn Campbell Co-ordinating curator, Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre: journey to the afterlife is organised by Art Exhibitions Australia and the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in association with the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Further information at nga.gov.au/Egypt

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Revolutionary Russians: Commemorating the centenary of Shostakovich 23 September 2006 – 28 January 2007

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky October idyll, from Zhupel [Bugbear] no. 1 1905, reprinted in Pulemet [Machine-gun] no.1 1905 colour lithograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Unknown artist The responsible editor swallows the amnesty in Maski [Masks] no. 9, 10 April 1906 colour lineblock National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

2006 marks the centenary of the birth of the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich. He was born in St Petersburg on 25 September 1906 into a Russia racked by revolutionary ferment. In the hundred years that followed, Russia endured continual upheavals and at least four revolutions. The first began in 1905 and lasted until 1907, while the year 1917 saw two in February and October. As well as the Civil War of 1918 to 1921, the new Soviet Union saw Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s, then invasion by Nazi Germany in the Second World War. This was followed by the turmoil of the Cold War from 1945, until a largely peaceful revolution saw the end of the Soviet Union and its empire between 1989 and 8

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1992. Political and economic dislocation was mirrored by cultural and artistic advances and retreats, breakthroughs and stagnation.

In the visual arts, the twentieth century was distinguished by the adoption of new, modernist visual languages, especially the multiple images of printing, photography and film. These are all media where the aura of one original work is replaced by numerous identical versions. In Russia the idea of cheap and plentiful art objects mirrored the ideal of creating a new society, in fact a new human being: Homo sovieticus. The utopian idealism of the project lasted only a few years, but the form continued into the 1970s.

In 1905 the first Russian revolts of the twentieth century began as the Tsarist regime’s imperial adventure, the attack on Japan in 1904, began to fail. The shock of European defeat by an Asian nation was complete: Russia’s ambitions for a Pacific empire and a warm water port were crushed, along with its navy, at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905. In contrast to the aristocracy’s leisured, luxurious life, peasants and workers suffered under appalling conditions, and were joined by the intelligentsia in opposing the autocratic and incompetent regime. On 9 January a peaceful demonstration at the Tsar’s Winter Palace in St Petersburg turned into the massacre of Bloody Sunday when troops fired into the crowd, killing and wounding more than a thousand people.

In the tradition of the lubok, the coloured folk woodcut print, and the unauthorised pamphlet, hundreds of savagely critical illustrated newspapers were published in the temporary relaxation of censorship when the government floundered between 1905 and 1907. The National Gallery of Australia’s collection of 167 issues includes some harrowing images of the poor, victims of the Tsar and his three agents (the nobility, the military and the church). Bloody Sunday altered the view of the Tsar as protector, the Little Father of the people: Nicholas II

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Natalya Goncharova Vertogradari nad lozami [Gardeners over the vines]

by Sergei Bobrov 1913 colour lithograph Gift of Orde Poynton Esq. CMG 1993 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Olga Rozanova Zaumnaya gniga [Transrational book]

by Aleksei Kruchënykh and Alyagrov 1915 collage, colour linocut National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

was now seen as an oppressor like the others. Radical, broad, and excoriating in their depiction of the forces of repression, most surprising perhaps is the hatred the artists and illustrators expressed towards priests. One extraordinary image shows a naked woman crucified – unusual in a prudish culture where nudity was banned apart from a few high art representations, and where the Orthodox Church controlled religious discourse.

But a bare-breasted female Jesus? Even now it appears confronting.

In the years before the outbreak of war in August 1914, Europe was convulsed by modernism in the arts.

Russia was industrialising rapidly, producing a large and liberal middle class as well as some enlightened patrons.

The painters Kazimir Malevich, Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov all produced original lithographic book illustrations in the style of Russian Futurism. In Gardeners over the vines 1913, for example, Goncharova develops the idea of Rayism, where bolts of lines and divided forms dissect images of the natural world. Radical verse and writing were accompanied by abstracted compositions, which could be produced in large, cheap editions to broadly disseminate radical artistic ideas.

After the Bolshevik Revolution this became state policy, which would lead to criticism and then suppression of individual creation.

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An upsurge of patriotism which greeted the First World War produced some extraordinary visual creations, such as Goncharova’s portfolio War: Mystical images of war 1914. Symbols of nation states – the white eagle of Russia and the English lion for example – co-exist with images of death and destruction: the pale horse; the doomed city; a common grave. Angels hover but cannot protect the Russian army. Malevich used the lubok woodcut style in his jocular, bloodthirsty posters exhorting the defence of the Motherland, with verse captions by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Despite the initial support, carnage on the front and incompetent military command led to the liberal February Revolution of 1917. The Kerensky government’s inability to end the war sparked the Bolshevik Revolution in October, the victory of Lenin’s Communist Party and the eventual establishment of the Soviet Union.

In the first heady days of the Revolution many artists enthusiastically joined the struggle, especially after Western Powers, including Britain, France, the United States and Canada, intervened in the Civil War to support the White Army. The movement of Constructivism grew out of the attempt to bring education and modern art to the masses, through the famous Agitprop trains (agitation and propaganda travelling in rail carriages), publications, clothing design, architecture, films and radio. Aleksandr

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Kazimir Malevich Poster: Nu i tresk-zhe, nu i grom-zhe! [What a boom, what a blast!]

1915 colour lithograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Vladimir Tatlin and Gustav Klucis led attempts to modernise Russia though radical aesthetics, under the auspices of Narkompros [the People’s Commissariat for Enlightening] as the Education and Culture Ministry was called.

Inventive women artists and designers, notable in their numbers and predominance even before the start of the First World War, continued to figure prominently until the 1940s. Olga Rozanova, in her Transrational book 1915, plays with the conventions of the medium itself: the cover has a button attached to a cut-out red paper heart; inside, Aleksandr Kruchënykh’s transrational verse is rubberstamped at random across the text pages, accompanied by colour linocuts based on playing cards. Valentina Kulagina’s striking poster for the Art exhibition of the Soviet Union 1931 shown in Switzerland presents as metaphor for the building of the new society and pin-up of modern design, a cylindrical orange-red construction worker.

An odd continuation of Tsarist tradition occurred through the use of porcelain blanks from the Imperial Porcelain Factory, founded in St Petersburg in 1744.

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Artists, including Wassily Kandinsky, decorated plates, cup and saucers and teapots in various styles to fit the times.

Sergei Chekhonin’s teapot, My work is my truth 1921, combines an elegant and animated crimson ribbon with the flower motifs of folk art, encircled by the emblazoned slogan. Even under the new order, work of this quality was too expensive for ordinary people, and such porcelain remained a luxury for the well-connected or was exported to sympathisers and collectors in the West.

El Lissitsky was originally a disciple of Marc Chagall at Vitebsk in the revival of Jewish culture in Russia, made possible after the Revolutionary government lifted a Tsarist ban on printing Hebrew letters. He then became a convert to the pure rationality of Malevich’s abstract cause, and contributed his considerable talents as a book and exhibition designer to the service of the Revolution.

Lissitsky went to Germany in 1921 as a surrogate diplomatic representative of the Soviet Union, which was not recognised by the Western powers. They imposed economic, political, military and cultural blockades against the new Russia after their unsuccessful military

intervention in the Civil War from 1918 to 1920. Lissitsky found artistic confrères in Germany at the Bauhaus, as well as in The Netherlands, especially Theo van Doesburg and other Neo-Plasticists. His playful use of red and black typographic symbols to construct Mayakovsky’s poems in For the voice 1923 underlines Lissitsky’s combination of intuition and expertise.

The tall figure and bald head of Mayakovsky haunt 1920s modernism in Russian art and literature. Rodchenko used him as a subject in the always enjoyable cover illustrations to Mayakovsky’s poetry pamphlets, his large head adorning the back covers, his brain with aeroplanes circling it standing in for the world. They collaborated on the radical art journal LEF, which stood for Left Front for the Arts, and its successor, Novy LEF or New LEF. Rodchenko used the face of Mayakovsky’s muse, Lilya Brik, for the cover of Pro eto [About this] 1923. It was the first book ever to be illustrated using photomontage, and the artist increasingly demonstrated his grasp of the dynamic and abstract qualities inherent in the medium of photography.

The Communist Party saw culture as an important tool in the transformation of society, and controlled it through state associations such as the Union of Artists and the Union of Composers. By the end of the 1920s, as Stalin tightened his grip on power, modernism was seen as counter-revolutionary and bourgeois, and Socialist Realism became the only acceptable artistic style. Rodchenko also worked with Stepanova, his wife, designing books and journals such as USSR in construction, an ironical title during this time of great famine, stemming from the failed collectivisation of agriculture and ideologically-based mass murders in the Soviet Union from 1930 onwards. It may be this contradiction, and the betrayal of the original ideals of the Revolution, which led many artists to withdraw from the public realm. Rodchenko’s tender, contemplative Portrait of my daughter 1935, while still using radical angles and unusual juxtapositions, could hardly claim any political territory or any Soviet identity.

Musicians, like many visual artists and writers, fell foul of Communist Party edicts commanding Marxist optimism and clarity while banning bourgeois decadence.

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Sergei Chekhonin Teapot: My work is my truth 1921 porcelain National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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Modernism was seen as incomprehensible to the masses, and counter-revolutionary in its visual sophistication and complexity. Film and photography escaped the harshest strictures, as they could be defended as inherently narrative and naturalist, if not distorted too far by such techniques as superimposition and collage. Dmitri Baltermans’ brilliant snapshot of soldiers in action, Attack!

1941, counterposes the blurred figures of fighters in motion with focused, static shooters.

As well as its great literary culture, Russia had a glorious tradition in the performing arts: drama, opera, ballet, classical music. The latter produced two of the greatest composers of the twentieth century, Shostakovich and Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky emigrated to Switzerland in 1914, returning for a single visit in 1962, while Shostakovich composed his joyous, serious, frivolous and profound oeuvre in Russia. As well as his fifteen symphonies, substantial chamber music such as the profound string quartets, operas and ballets, Shostakovich composed more than thirty-five film scores. It is his aural contribution to the Gesamtkunstwerk of Soviet cinema which is celebrated in this exhibition.

From the beginning of sound in cinema, Shostakovich worked with many Soviet directors, especially Grigori

Kozintsev, with whom he spanned his film career from New Babylon in 1929 to King Lear in 1970. Their finest collaboration was Hamlet 1964, perhaps the best screen version of a Shakespeare play ever made. It is only rivalled, visually and for its psychological insight, by their King Lear 1970, with its outstanding acting, photography, direction and score. Shostakovich supported his family in the early twenties by playing the piano to accompany silent films.

As well as his many original film scores, his music has been orchestrated later for the soundtrack of silent film masterpieces such as Battleship Potemkin 1925, directed

by Sergei Eisenstein, and Man with a movie camera 1928– 29, directed by Dziga Vertov.

Shostakovich died in Moscow on 9 August 1975, as the Soviet Union he had known for almost all his life faltered into its last, corrupt, decades. The Revolution was soon to fail and dissolve. Its main legacy was terrible loss and destruction, yet some of the original optimism of trying to build a new society remains in the creations of revolutionary Russian artists. a

Dmitri Baltermans Attack! 1941 gelatin silver photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Aleksandr Rodchenko Back cover of Sergeiu Eseninu [To Sergei Esenin] by Vladimir Mayakovsky 1926 colour photolithograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Christine Dixon Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture Further information at nga.gov.au/RevolutionaryRussians

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The crafted object 1960s–80s 26 August – 10 December 2006

Alan Peascod Jar 1986 glazed stoneware National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The crafted object 1960s–80s brings together a wide range of Australian craft works from the national collection, many of which were acquired early in the Gallery’s history and have not been displayed for over a decade. This exhibition focuses on the period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when a revival of studio craft practices opened up new possibilities for expression in the visual arts in Australia.

The international revival of studio craft grew from a number of influences and traditions which had survived into the postwar period of the 1950s and 1960s. These centred on the celebration of the handmade and the unique object in the face of dwindling craft training and the increased availability of higher-quality manufactured goods; the successful integration of designers and crafts practitioners with the industrial process of applied arts manufacture in Scandinavia; a closer connection between the work of sculptors and designers in the expression of organic modernism; and the exposure of craft practice as a lifestyle choice through popular and professional architecture and design journals promoted through craft organisations and societies and museum and commercial art gallery exhibitions. A major influence in ceramics was the philosophy and practice of the British potter Bernard Leach who, with Japanese potter Shoji Hamada, promoted the appreciation of an Anglo–Japanese vernacular approach to form and technique.

A younger generation of Australian artists, craft practitioners and designers began to engage with these streams from the late 1950s, establishing craft organisations that would shape agendas for the integration of craft training, scholarship, marketing and innovation with the mainstream of the visual

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arts and design industries. It was an area of practice increasingly promoted and nurtured by the national craft organisation, the Crafts Council of Australia (later, Craft Australia) and its affiliated crafts councils in each Australian state, and supported with the funding and advocacy of the Australia Council through its Crafts Board, which was established in 1973. This Board represented the Australian government’s first formal recognition of the crafts and operated a number of programs to support the professional development of this nascent industry. It developed its own contemporary craft collection and mounted exhibitions of this work. It also assisted artists through the purchase of their work and encouraged and supported state and regional art galleries to acquire and exhibit Australian craft. The Board’s programs were a positive response to the large number of exhibitions of contemporary craft coming into Australia from overseas in the early 1970s, allowing Australian audiences to make connections with new Australian work.

As a result of the Crafts Board’s activities during the 1970s this substantial collection of contemporary Australian craft in all media was acquired for inclusion in nine travelling exhibitions of ceramics, jewellery and textiles (mounted in the period 1975–83 within Australia and overseas) that were a central part of its program to expose and promote Australian craft overseas. The works in these exhibitions were selected by a number of institutional and independent curators and experienced craft practitioners, resulting in collections of objects that demonstrated a rich and representative cross-section of contemporary Australian practice.

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Elizabeth Olah Sunrise and shade 1981 sterling silver, 18 carat gold, porcelain and opal Crafts Board of the Australia Council Collection 1980 Ragnar Hansen Tea service 1982 sterling silver and ebony National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Marea Gazzard Kamares VII 1972 glazed stoneware Crafts Board of the Australia Council Collection 1980 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

In 1980 the Crafts Board of the Australia Council Collection, by that time comprising 898 works, was given to the National Gallery of Australia, substantially boosting its nascent decorative arts collection and providing a strong foundation for the subsequent acquisition of contemporary Australian craft. The Crafts Board Collection remains a rich expression of the most significant period in the development of Australian craft practice and contains important early work by most of Australia’s now senior craft practitioners. As a collection, it is striking evidence of how a group of interconnected art forms flourished through government support and patronage, giving visibility and authority to practices that had previously been excluded from the lexicon of the fine arts.

The ceramics, glass, metalwork, jewellery, woodwork, textiles and leatherwork included in this exhibition have been drawn extensively from both the Crafts Board Collection and the National Gallery of Australia’s own early acquisitions from the mid-1960s to the mid 1980s. They are displayed in thematic groupings to reflect some of the influences that impacted on the field during a period of two decades characterised by enormous social change, design experimentation and the search for alternative means of visual expression in the production of functional and sculptural objects. While

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this search for a direct expression of material and form that characterised the craft revival of the early 1960s had antecedents in the British and American Arts and Crafts movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its late twentieth century manifestations owed less to a rejection of industry than to the exposure of a younger generation of designers and makers to myriad influences on the nature of object-making.

With increased opportunities from the mid-1960s for Australians to travel abroad, allowing a maturing, and design-educated post-second world war generation of makers first-hand access to the richness and diversity of the material cultures of Asia, Europe and the Third World, a broadened dimension of expression through craft media and techniques entered the repertoire of Australian craft practice. Traditional modes of training, skill development and apprenticeship were encountered and adopted by a number of Australians willing to subject themselves to such rigours. These experiences gave many makers a foundation for their own studio practice and were revealed through hybrid work (particularly in the area of ceramics) that explored and combined the qualities of both foreign and Australian materials, techniques and design motifs. The enduring ceramic traditions of Japan dominated studio ceramics,

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Helmut Lueckenhausen Teraph I 1985 mahogany, Huon pine and synthetic polymer paint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Mona Hessing Scoop 1972 woven wool construction National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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allowing Australians to engage with its material culture through locally-produced objects interpreting the complexities and subtleties of traditional Japanese firing and glazing techniques.

The intrinsic uniqueness and material qualities of the hand-crafted object existed as a counterpoint to the wider world of art and design from the mid-1960s, from pop and op art and minimalism to the new design forms and use of plastics and other synthetics in furniture, industrial design and fashion. The postmodernist fervour of architecture and object design from the late 1970s also encouraged a new appreciation of other design and craft traditions, such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century porcelain, Venetian and Bohemian glass, Victorian jewellery, art nouveau and art deco design, and those more broadly determined examples of kitsch and popular culture. Such traditional modes of expression found new proponents among Australian craft practitioners who would expand the stylistic and technical vocabulary of the crafts through work that offered witty, intellectually engaging and technically accomplished interpretations of these styles.

These influences ran parallel to that of Scandinavian design, which reached its peak of marketing exposure in Australia during this time. Offering models of rational production and astute marketing through eloquent expressions of natural and indigenous materials, the Scandinavian approach to design (which combined craft and functionalist traditions with modernist ideals) provided models for the curricula of Australia’s newlydeveloping tertiary craft and design courses. From these programs emerged a new generation of craft artists and designers with a thorough understanding of materials and techniques, allied with a confident approach to design and the expression of narrative and content in their work. For instance, the abundance of native woods in Australia provided a challenge to designers and woodworkers to exploit their particular qualities while addressing the rising concern for the preservation of natural resources. Similarly, much work in ceramics and textiles addressed environmental issues.

Such discipline encouraged experimentation with materials and processes not usually associated with crafts. The increased availability of refractory metals, high-performance ceramic and glass materials, synthetic fibres and composites, allied with the skilled use of high-tech equipment (including the early use of computers in the design process), gave makers the confidence to explore new approaches to form, colour and texture. This was seen particularly in the fields of jewellery and metalwork, where the use of industrial materials led to not only new forms and materials for personal adornment but also a rejection of the values of the traditional world of commercial jewellery, with

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Frank Bauer Neckpiece 1977 18 carat gold and stainless steel Crafts Board of the Australia Council Collection 1980 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Klaus Moje Uriarra 1985 fused and kiln-formed glass Purchased from Gallery admission charges 1988 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

its emphasis on prestige and the value of precious materials. Instead, the body became a site for design experimentation and a focus for discourse on the nature of personal adornment and expression.

Engaging with these modes of practice brought many Australian designers and makers into contact with overseas institutions and colleagues, building professional relationships that resulted in visits to Australia from wellknown and experienced artists to undertake residencies and workshops, hold exhibitions and participate in conferences. Some stayed, or came specifically to take up teaching positions, injecting new approaches to training while developing their own work to reflect their experience of Australia. In turn, Australians began to find opportunities to travel and work overseas, undertaking research and developing their skills for extended periods on grants from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council.

The travelling exhibition programs of Craft Australia and the Crafts Board offered numerous opportunities for Australian participants to travel with exhibitions and represent their fields of practice, while organisational affiliations with international craft organisations such as the World Crafts Council facilitated dialogues for Australian delegates on broader issues in the field.

Such expanded horizons helped Australians to frame a view of their own contribution and to begin to define

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what qualities characterised Australian craft and design.

For the first time, through direct experience of works in exhibitions and their publication in specialist and established art and design journals, Australian crafts began to be seen and evaluated in an international context by audiences with few preconceptions of an Australian style.

The twenty years from 1965 to 1985 were characterised by radicalism, social upheaval and change, generational conflict, the exploration and politicisation of gender issues, war and global concerns for the state of the environment, all fuelled by increased access to information and the accelerating availability of new technologies. While the revival of the slower and more introspective modes of craft practice may have seemed escapist in the face of such global urgencies, its intimate and individual nature allowed a number of artists to use it as a form of protest, satire and subversion. Feminism, for instance, opened up modes of critical inquiry into what had been categorised and marginalised as women’s craft, politicising materials, techniques and approaches to production. In Australia, the Vietnam war, Indigenous rights, the rise and fall of the Labor government (under which the Australia Council had developed its programs of support for the crafts), ecological concerns and environmental activism, gay

politics and outright larrikin humour were all subjects for craft practitioners to investigate and enjoy through work that was unconventional, sometimes impractical and often deliberately garish and grotesque. Pride in popular culture, allied with a revival of interest in the vernacular (from traditional trades, bush crafts and handicrafts to overt expressions of Australiana subjects and motifs in the decorative and applied arts) broadened the historical frame of reference for craft practitioners.

The experimental and adventurous atmosphere that surrounded the crafts during this twenty-year period opened new pathways of inquiry to many practitioners, encouraging many to forge unique expressions that would find their way into public collections and, as a result, into the wider world of the visual arts. The National Gallery of Australia, along with most state and several regional art galleries, developed important collections of craft from this period, providing a greater public access to the new work being produced across the country. A new generation has matured since most of the works in this survey were produced, yet there is little understanding of the critical role that these works and their makers played in redefining Australian decorative arts and design. This exhibition offers a reassessment of the work of the period and encourages a generation born since the 1980s to engage with ideas that redefined notions of the role of craft in the interpretation of the

Australian experience. That role has broadened since the mid-1980s, much of it through the later and current work of many of the artists whose work is shown in this exhibition, as well as the work of their younger contemporaries. Their contribution to defining the most important period of craft and design innovation in the history of Australian decorative arts is beginning to be more widely understood and opens stimulating avenues of inquiry for researchers and collectors alike. a Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Stephen Benwell Sculptural piece 1979 glazed stoneware, underglaze painted decoration Crafts Board of the Australia Council Collection 1980 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Margaret Dodd Holden with lipstick surfboards 1977 glazed earthenware National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Further information at nga.gov.au/CraftedObject.

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collec tion focus

The Gallery of Southeast Asian Art

Tanimbar islands, south Moluccas, Indonesia Ceremonial pendant and clan heirloom [masa] 19th century gold alloy, cinnabar; beaten metal, repousse National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Khmer people, Cambodia or Thailand Buddha Shakyamuni under the serpent’s hoods late Angkor period (12–13th century) stone National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Gallery of Southeast Asian Art introduces the richness of the region’s art practice in all significant media over more than a millennium. From its roots in the veneration of ancestors and the spirits of nature, through the great classical Hindu Buddhist epochs and the farreaching influences of Islam and Christianity, Southeast Asian art in the national collection reveals the vibrancy and eclecticism of the region’s cultures.

Even before the Australian National Gallery opened to the public in 1982, the art of Southeast Asia had been a key focus of the Gallery’s collecting strategies, an indication of a developing awareness, post the Second World War, of Australia’s geographic location. Over the past three decades, a rich, diverse and unique collection has been established. With its relocation to the entrance level, following the new installation of the art of the Indian subcontinent, the Southeast Asian displays celebrate exciting new acquisitions and revitalise old favourites, 24 national gallery of australia

including works most recently seen in the exhibitions Sari to Sarong and Crescent Moon. Through objects in a wide range of materials – wood, textile, bronze, gold and paper – enduring themes important to Southeast Asia’s art, culture and traditions are explored in the context of active engagement at a crossroad of culture, trade and exchange. The national collection is particularly strong in sculpture and textiles from the region.

Buddhist and, to a lesser extent, Hindu sculpture from Cambodia, Thailand and Burma has long been at the heart of the Gallery’s Southeast Asian sculpture collection. The enlightenment of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni has remained a popular theme in Southeast Asian Buddhist art. The Gallery holds a number of sculptures of the Buddha seated with his right hand reaching down to touch the ground, capturing the instant when Shakyamuni calls on the Earth to witness his victory over the temptations of Mara. Related images depict the Enlightened Buddha, protected from a fierce storm by the serpent king as he meditates. These key events in the life of the historical Buddha are among those succinctly narrated in the temple hangings and canopies from Cambodia and Burma. Aniconic imagery of the Buddha includes the huge recently acquired seventeenth-century Burmese stone footprint inscribed with 108 symbols relating to the Buddha.

Hindu images on display in the new Gallery range from a rare eleventh-century gilded bronze figure of the god Shiva from Angkor-period Cambodia to nineteenthand twentieth-century manuscripts, embroideries and silk brocades illustrating narrative scenes from local versions of the great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, from Bali, the only remaining Hindu culture in Southeast Asia. Textiles from the Gallery’s worldrenowned collection of textiles illuminate the regional variations in artistic styles, especially across the Indonesian

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archipelago where they have survived as heirlooms, alongside valuable Indian cloth traded into the region over many centuries.

Recent acquisitions, however, have strengthened the representation of ancestral and animist art from the Southeast Asian region. While animist traditions predate Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, and the powerful influences of trade, particularly with India, China and Europe, they have continued to coexist with the world religions. On display are wooden ancestral figures, architectural elements for clan houses and tombs, objects used by village priests in magical rites, and textiles whose creation and designs can be linked to the ancient beliefs related to fertility and renewal. These works range from the rice guardian bulol figures of the Ifugao people of the northern Philippines to a funerary spirit figure in the form of a bird from upland Vietnam. The symbolism of prestigious and mythical composite creatures such as the buffalo and dragon is similarly associated with protection and abundance. Also central to Southeast Asian ceremony are elaborate gold ornaments – earrings, headdresses and pectorals – which serve as markers of rank, as well as clan heirlooms and items of bride-wealth. In exhibiting metal objects alongside textiles, the displays emphasise the dualism of male and female elements in Southeast Asian cosmological beliefs, where the hot sharp male arts of smelting and carving are ritually paired with the soft cool textile skills of women.

Since its arrival through trade with the Arab world, India and China almost 800 years ago, Islam has been a significant force in the art of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as Muslim communities of Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam. Arabic calligraphy and the importance of the divine written word for spiritual, talismanic and symbolic purposes in Southeast Asia’s Islamic art is not confined to religious texts, such as the Gallery’s Qu’ran from Borneo, but also adorns cloth, stone, wood and metal. The wide-ranging impact of international trade and design evident in the region’s arts encompasses Chinese mythical beasts such as the mythical qilin unicorn and phoenix, floral chintzes and fairy tales from Europe, and Mughal niches, elephants and tigers from India and Central Asia.

The Gallery of Southeast Asian Art provides a unique opportunity for visitors to experience the rich and diverse artistic achievements of Australia’s northern neighbours.

From the inception of the national collection in the 1960s, Southeast Asian art has been central to the Gallery’s vision of Asian art. The launch of the new Southeast Asian displays in late September will celebrate and demonstrate this long commitment to the great art traditions of Southeast Asia. a

Toba Batak people, Sumatra, Indonesia Priest’s container for magical potions 19th century water buffalo horn, wood National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Battambang region, Cambodia Buddhist temple hanging or canopy [pidan] late 19th century silk, natural dyes; weft ikat National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Robyn Maxwell, Melanie Eastburn and Hwei-Fen Cheah Asian Art

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new acquisition A sian Ar t

A 16th-century Japanese screen Pine trees by the shore

With thanks to the generosity of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation, an extraordinary pair of Japanese folding screens has recently entered the Gallery’s collection. Painted around 1550, Pine trees by the shore is a rare example of an intact pair of screens from such an early date. More often only single screens survive from this period.

Called byobu, or ‘protection from the wind’, in Japanese, screens are an integral part of Japanese interior space – designed to serve as room dividers as well as objects of beauty. Painted screens were frequently commissioned by wealthy patrons and embellished according to their tastes and position, and whether the screens were intended for public or private use. Certain subjects appealed to particular audiences at different times but land and seascapes remained popular over the centuries.

The subject of pine trees by the shore, known as hamamatsu, has a long history in Japanese painting.

The pine tree [matsu] is a symbol of youth and longevity.

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The theme is thought to have come to prominence in the landscape painting of the Heian period (794–1185) and continued to be fashionable in the centuries that followed. It is, however, the Muromachi period, when the Gallery’s screens were painted, with which hamamatsu scenes are most closely associated. The oldest known extant screen showing pine trees by the shore is a single screen from a fifteenth-century pair in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum. Despite being produced at a time of war and upheaval, the art of the Muromachi period was vibrant and innovative.

Pine trees by the shore is a vibrant scene of horses amongst the pines beside an inlet. The right screen shows horses galloping into the picture, becoming quieter with each panel: by the fourth panel they are reclining. The exuberant entrance of the horses is balanced on the left screen by a small group of intricately painted boats returning from fishing. Inspection of the boats reveals the crew of two of the vessels struggling with the full sails, while another craft heads to shore. There are two small

salt-preparing huts on the shore and in the distance, on the other side of the river, two larger buildings appear amongst a grove of trees.

Beneath clouds and undulating mountains, the flowing water wends across both screens. Painted in blue and white mineral colour accented with mica and gold dust, it appears to sparkle through the twisted pines, some needles of which have been embellished with silver. The rich gilding on these screens has been applied to create particular effects. The sky, for instance, is ornamented with gold leaf glitter and torn pieces of gold leaf while the clouds were constructed using rectangular sheets of gold.

Pine trees by the shore is an exceptional work of art and a marvellous addition to the Gallery’s small but treasured collection of Japanese art.

Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573) Pine trees by the shore c. 1550 pair of sixfold screens; ink, gold and colour on paper Gift of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation, 2006

Melanie Eastburn Curator, Asian Art

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new acquisition A sian Ar t

Monumental wooden architectural elements from the Deccan region of India

Deccan region, India Architectural brackets and lintels 1450–1600 wood Purchased with the assistance of the Margaret Hannah Olley Art Trust 2006 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Many of the most admired aspects of Indian art in museum collections were originally created as elements of temple and palace architecture, although their gallery display rarely illuminates that role. The acquisition of a set of large Indian architectural elements, through the generous support of well-known Australian artist Margaret Olley, has prompted the National Gallery of Australia to recreate some of the glory of Indian architecture. The bold effect distinguishes the new Asian galleries, both in terms of creating an evocative atmosphere for Canberra visitors to enjoy the art of India and by contributing to the uniqueness of the Asian displays, which are quite distinct from those of the Australian state galleries. Erected in the foyer near the entrance of the newly relocated Asian galleries, where they echo the concrete vaulting of Colin Madigan’s architecture, this series of massive teak brackets and corbels is over two-and-a-half metres tall, supporting sixmetre-long lintels.

From the Deccan region of central India, their elaborate wood carving displays the fusion of Hindu and Islamic imagery that was to characterise architectural decoration in many areas of the Indian subcontinent during the rule of the great Mughals. The design of these brackets evokes the sinuous serpentine form, with vestigial eye circles, of the mythical makara widely found in Hindu temple architecture. The intricate layers of geometric detail and foliate pendants and arabesques on the brackets and lintels, however, reveal the strong Islamic character of the arts of the Deccan. The sculptures have been radiocarbon dated to 1450–1600, a period coinciding with the establishment of the Mughal Empire throughout India.

(Akbar the Great reigned 1556–1605.) Although parts

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of the Deccan were never fully conquered, the wealthy sultanates of the Deccan plateau had a long history of Islamic contacts and cultural influences, first through trade. The resulting style features complex ornamentation widely found on the region’s elaborately worked stone and wooden architecture, of which the Gallery’s wooden brackets and lintels are fine examples.

Because of the size of the architectural elements, the Gallery has divided them into two groups of three brackets, with corresponding corbels, and two lintels – one set flagging the entrance to the Asian galleries, while inside another group towers imposingly above the sculpture, creating niches within which are displayed small paintings and textiles. The installation of this amazing structure has been a complex and major undertaking for the Gallery. In the original architectural setting, the heavy brackets, smaller interconnecting corbels and the long lintels resting atop were marvellously stable, held together, without nails, by gravity and tongue and groove fittings.

In their new permanent home, reinforced walls and steel fittings have been added for safety reasons. This, however, only encourages our admiration for the art of Indian traditional architecture. The Gallery is very grateful to the Margaret Hannah Olley Art Trust for generously assisting the Gallery with its purchase of this exciting acquisition.

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator of Asian Art

new acquisition Pacific Ar t s

Solomon Islands Post from ceremonial house

Solomon Islands, Owa-Raha (Santa Ana) Post from ceremonial house c. 1900 height 128 cm wood National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Gallery recently acquired a magnificent sculpture from the Solomon Islands, a wooden post from a ceremonial house. It is carved in the form of a naked man with earrings and armlets, who stands on the head of a bent and crouching smaller man. The main figure is topped by the body and tail of a large shark, flanked by two bonito. The sculptor retains the original tree trunk’s cylindrical form, while establishing a rhythm of masses up and down the work that also contrasts and differentiates the front from the back. Earthly and divine creatures are combined to produce a work of great mana, the spiritual power desired by humans.

Geographically, the Solomon Islands consist of a chain of islands stretching from Bougainville (politically part of Papua New Guinea) south-east to Vanuatu, between the South Pacific Ocean and the Coral Sea. Culturally, the Solomon Islands are divided between coastal fishing people and inland farmers, with distinct spiritual beliefs. Art was a reflection of the beliefs which underpinned everyday life, not an activity undertaken for its own sake. Men were the carvers of wood, women the makers of textiles.

The post was created, probably more than a hundred years ago, on the small volcanic island of Owa-Raha, which lies at the south-eastern tip of San Cristobal, making it the southernmost island of the Solomon Islands chain proper. Owa-Raha, also known as Santa Ana, is 18 square kilometres in area, with a population

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of 1,600. Before their recent conversion to Christianity, the people of Owa-Raha centred their religion on the bonito (Katsuwonus pelamis), large fish similar to tuna.

The scholars Douglas Newton and Hermione Waterfield in their 1995 study Tribal sculpture explain that bonito, ‘being the vehicles and manifestations of the gods, were sacred; therefore fishing, and everything associated with it, was sanctified.’

Ceremonial houses were used to keep boats and also for men’s meetings and initiations. ‘They were the centers of ancestral reverence: model canoes and large carvings of bonito were kept in these houses as shrines for ancestral skulls. They had much the same architectural grandeur [as New Guinea houses]; their roofs were supported on huge posts carved with full-length figures of bonito, sharks, and ancestors’, according to Newton and Waterfield. The Gallery’s work, recorded in France in the middle of last century, originally stood on a pole of two metres or more, under the protection of an overhanging roof.

The house post from the Solomon Islands exemplifies the best art of Melanesia and the Solomon Islands. It is an extraordinary and powerful sculpture, which will serve to highlight the Gallery’s renewed commitment to the prominent place of Pacific art in its collection and displays.

Christine Dixon Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture

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new acquisition A sian Ar t

Trident with Auspicious Kali Created in southern India in the 11th century, this bronze sculpture shows the formidable Hindu goddess Auspicious Kali, or Bhadrakali, seated in front of a trident, the sides of which curve inwards to meet the central tine. According to the Kamika Agama, a text of the time, the prongs of the trident represent purity, activity and lethargy.

Bhadrakali is one of the many manifestations, both creative and destructive, of the Great Goddess Devi.

Wielded by the Great Goddess in cosmic conflict, the trident is also closely associated with the god Shiva who uses the weapon to free the human soul from burden.

Shiva has several shaktis, divine female counterparts, including Bhadrakali, Kali, Durga and Parvati, who are also regularly depicted with tridents. Bhadrakali’s connection with Shiva is further indicated by the other attributes she shares with him – the sacred thread that crosses her body, the knotted snake above her breasts and the crescent moon in her flame-like hair.

Like the fangs extending from the corners of her mouth, Bhadrakali’s four arms emphasise her supernatural qualities. One hand is raised in a gesture of protection and reassurance while each of the others holds an object associated with the goddess – a noose, a trident (one tine of which is broken) and a bowl made from a human skull.

Made using the still widespread lost-wax or cire perdue technique of metal casting, the trident with Bhadrakali was made during the Chola dynasty (9th– 13th centuries), a period of Indian art renowned for extraordinary sculpture in bronze. Fine tridents such as this were produced for use in ritual rather than battle.

The base supporting the trident and goddess is hollow, allowing the sculpture to be attached to a pole and carried in temple festival processions. The sculpture’s slightly worn appearance is due to ritual bathing and anointing by Hindu priests and devotees, with substances such as milk, honey and ghee, purification practices which continue to occur in many Indian temples.

Tamil Nadu, India Chola dynasty (9th–13th centuries) Trident with Bhadrakali 11th century bronze National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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Melanie Eastburn Curator, Asian Art

new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Charles Conder Hot wind

The Gallery has recently acquired a major nineteenthcentury symbolist painting by Charles Conder, Hot wind 1889. Painted during the great Victorian drought of 1888–89, the work had been taken by Conder to England in 1890 and had disappeared for many years from public view. It was documented in numerous accounts in Conder’s time and subsequently became one of the great mysteries of Australian art history. The rediscovery of the Hot wind 1889 in a private collection fills an important gap both in our understanding of Conder’s output and in the history of Australian art.

This evocative painting caused quite a stir when it was first shown. In a letter of 1889 Conder wrote that it represented the harshness of drought. The femme fatale breathing smoke from a burning brazier across the parched desert plains towards a distant town aptly symbolises the spectre of drought. The eerie effect is heightened by the powerful emptiness of the space and the serpent that moves in towards the mysterious personification of drought. Conder wrote that he felt this work was one of the best paintings he had done.

His friend Arthur Streeton was also impressed and delighted by the way that the design broke with tradition.

The emphasis in the Hot wind is on symbolist evocation: on light and heat, sensual beauty and danger.

The pale, bleached shimmering tonality of the foreground landscape is also characteristic of some of Conder’s best works. The cumulative elements of this painting reflect the artist’s own passions: his love of theatrical expression, his intense imagination, his familiarity with contemporary symbolist trends in Europe, his feeling for the Australian landscape and his profound awareness (as a result of the death of his brother and personal illness) of our human mortality.

We are indebted to the Sarah and Baillieu Myer Family Foundation for their generous assistance in acquiring Hot wind, a work that is arguably the most important of Conder’s group of allegorical paintings and that will greatly strengthen the national collection.

Charles Conder Hot wind 1889 oil on board Purchased with the assistance of the Sarah and Baillieu Myer Family Foundation 2006 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture

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new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Fred Williams Saplings

Fred Williams Saplings c. 1961 oil on board National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Fred Williams is one of Australia’s greatest landscape painters. He created a highly original way of seeing the Australian countryside based on his experience of the landscape around Mittagong to the Dandenong Ranges, and the southern coast of Australia to the Pilbara region of the north-west. The Gallery’s recent purchase, Saplings c. 1961, is a vibrant, sensuous painting presenting a view of a sapling forest from close quarters. The tall trees are cut off above and below, so they float in the picture plane without sight of earth or sky and almost merge one into another. They are so pared down that they have no leaves or limbs. But despite this – or perhaps because of it – we feel the very physicality of the central blond tree trunk as if we could reach out and touch it. Williams has conveyed the density of a sapling forest, the sense of being engulfed within a mass of trees as an image for meditation, for soaking the self into.

In Saplings Williams showed that he was interested in portraying nature in a new way – in merging a contemporary concern with abstraction, flat surfaces and gesture with an ongoing interest in figuration. He demonstrated his fascination with subtleties of tone and colour and with rich painterly textures – from nuances of dusky greens and blues to the daring addition of a velvety black with a wedge of vibrant red.

Williams painted this work in 1961, at a time when he was working with extraordinary concentration and energy.

At this time he also produced a large number of etchings and gouaches in which he focused on the trunks of closely grouped trees, reducing his images to semi-abstract vertical lines. In these works, as in Saplings, Williams did not just create an impression of a particular place, the surface appearance; he also conveyed something about the character of the bush that is absolute and enduring.

Anne Gray Assistant Director, Australian art

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new acquisition Australian Print s, Drawings and Illustrated Book s

Arthur Boyd Senior Gathering seaweed before the storm, Sandringham Beach

Curators are often asked to view works of art from private collections, which sometimes bring unexpected surprises.

It was just such a chance encounter that enabled the Gallery to acquire its first work of art by Arthur Merric Boyd: a watercolour, Gathering seaweed before the storm, Sandringham Beach 1900, which comes to us in its original gold mount and frame.

Grandfather of Arthur Boyd, Boyd Senior was an important artist of the Federation period and he and his wife, Emma Minnie Boyd, also an accomplished watercolourist, were to found one of Australia’s most famous artistic dynasties. Boyd had an early introduction to plein-air painting through his school teacher, the British artist Thomas Wright, a founding member of the Victorian Academy of the Arts. At the National Gallery School, Boyd was introduced to Louis Buvelot’s tonal impressionism and the French Barbizon School. He exhibited with the Heidelberg School of Australian Impressionists at the Victorian Artists Society and often accompanied Charles Conder on sketching sojourns.

Arthur and Minnie Boyd were drawn to the seaside suburbs of Melbourne’s Port Philip Bay, where they lived. Boyd’s love of the sea inspired many of his oil and watercolour paintings and, in his later watercolours in particular, he sought to capture the effects of light on water. Gathering seaweed before the storm, Sandringham Beach is filled with transparency and light, giving the scene a quiet energy. On a seaweed-strewn beach a small figure coerces his struggling horses to hasten their pace. The forces of the gathering storm overshadow their efforts as the rain-drenched clouds roll in and a lightning flash illuminates the late afternoon sky. A flock of birds are caught in a gust of wind and tea-trees bend in compliance to the approaching storm. Boyd’s fondness for the landscape and his respect for the labours of the worker struggling against the forces of nature are the overwhelming elements of this wonderful watercolour.

Arthur Boyd Senior Gathering seaweed before the storm, Sandringham Beach 1900 watercolour on paper National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anne McDonald Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

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new acquisition Australian Photography

Trent Parke Minutes to midnight

Trent Parke Backyard swingset, Queensland 2003 from the portfolio Minutes to midnight 1999–2004 gelatin silver photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Trent Parke is a self-taught photojournalist who began working for newspapers in the early 1990s after a career as a professional cricketer. In June 2003 he became the first Australian photographer to be accepted into Magnum, the renowned photo-agency founded in 1947. Members voted to accept Parke as an associate member in 2005 with his submission of Minutes to midnight, a portfolio of images drawn largely from a road trip around Australia in 2003–04 made with partner Narelle Autio (also an award-winning photojournalist). For this work Parke was also awarded the prestigious W Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. The Minutes to midnight project was sparked by a 2003 newspaper survey that Parke read in which it was reported that the majority of those asked believed that an era of Australian history was coming to an end and that the nation had lost its innocence.

Parke set out on his own journey of discovery and, unlike those who practised conventional photojournalism, embraced the personal in the final portfolio with images such as Narelle, six months pregnant, swimming in a billabong, curled like a baby in the womb; and the birth of

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his son Jem. Parke has written: The camera helps me to see. When I was young my mother died suddenly of an asthma attack, from that day on I questioned everything around me, life, death and our reason for being. Forever searching.

Poetic and moody, Minutes to midnight offers a dark, even apocryphal, reading of contemporary Australian society. The depiction of often small, private moments are emblematic of events of global significance and of how Parke, representative of his generation, feels about his place in the world.

Parke’s work is at the forefront of a new approach to photojournalism which allows greater inclusion of the subjectivity and aesthetics characteristic of ‘art’ photography. His work is a reflection of how the genre has continued to evolve and become a potent force in contemporary photographic practice.

Anne O’Hehir Assistant Curator, Photography

new acquisition International Photography

Dayanita Singh Sybil and Sunanda, Calcutta

Documentary photographers can make specimens of the rich and rally concern for the poor and powerless but often miss seeing their own social milieu as an exciting subject. After spending almost a decade photographing the disadvantaged and disenfranchised – the prostitutes of Bombay, sufferers of HIV/AIDS and so on – internationally known contemporary photographer Dayanita Singh turned instead in the early nineties to photographing Indians from her own social class living in the big cities. The photoeditors in the West to whom Singh first showed these images refused to believe that they were indeed taken in India, a country that they viewed as exotic and other, or as the site of disasters. It was a reaction guaranteed only to steel Singh’s resolve. ‘There are many versions of India’, she has argued, ‘and this is mine’.

Drawing upon a wide-ranging knowledge of the history of both portrait painting and photography, Singh’s images are composed with an almost academic precision, but also allow for the unpredictability and uncontrollability of the moment captured on camera. Someone hurries unawares through the back of the shot. One of the women engages with the photo-making process in the expected way, not smiling it is true, but staring into the lens. But what of the younger woman sitting to have her photograph taken? Eyes closed, she has unexpectedly disappeared into her own private world. The image becomes so much more than the sum of its parts: it becomes a site for the imagination, a mystery.

Singh explores her own relationship with the sitters: their hopes and vulnerabilities in being photographed; the relationships of the sitters to each other – depicted through closely observed body language; and our relationship with the places we inhabit, how our environments become emblematic of who we are.

Dayanita Singh Sybil and Sunanda, Calcutta 1997 gelatin silver photograph NGA Photography Fund: Farrell Family Foundation National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anne O’Hehir Assistant Curator, Photography

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new acquisition International Print s, Drawings and Illustrated Book s

Edgar Degas Mademoiselle Bécat at the Café Ambassadeurs

Edgar Degas Mademoiselle Bécat aux Ambassadeurs [Mademoiselle Bécat at the Café Ambassadeurs] 1877–78 lithograph The Poynton Bequest, 2005 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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A major figure in French art, Edgar Degas is renowned for his portrayal of contemporary Parisian life in the latter half of the nineteenth century, reflected in his scenes of the racetrack, the café, the orchestra, the opera ballet, the café concert and brothels. His art also became increasingly intimate, informal and radical in its composition and execution.

The lithograph of Mademoiselle Bécat aux Ambassadeurs [Mademoiselle Bécat at the Café Ambassadeurs] 1877–78 is an important example of Degas’ embrace of modernity and his technical virtuosity.

Mademoiselle Emélie Bécat was a significant figure in the world of the café concert in Paris. The café-concert evolved in the 1840s, and it was made popular during the Exposition Universelle of 1867. These open air concerts on the Champs-Elysées proved very popular, especially during the summer heat. Cafés, such as the Café Ambassadeurs, Alcazar, Eldorado and Le Bataclanes, were places of pleasure in the centre of Paris. One contemporary wit, Gustave Coquiot, commented that `the repertoire of the café-concert is almost entirely composed of those concerns which arise below the belt’. Mademoiselle Bécat made her debut at the Ambassadeurs in 1875 and she was a sensation. Degas had previously made drawings and monotypes of Mademoiselle Bécat performing. She is shown here singing with gusto, arms raised and in full voice, before her adoring public seated in the dark in the foreground.

Degas was a great collector of art and a particular favourite was the work of Honoré Daumier. For this lithograph Degas has drawn from the style and technique of the French caricaturist, composing the view from the orchestra pit, lighting the performer from below, scraping back the surface of the inked stone to create the lights, including the spectacular chandelier, and adding lithographic crayon to emphasise form.

Degas did not make large editions of his prints: in fact some remained unique. He did, however, produce approximately fifteen impressions of this work, now almost all in public institutions, which suggests the composition was a favourite of his.

Jane Kinsman Senior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

new acquisition International Decorative Ar t s and Design

Bettina Speckner Box

Here is an empty seat in an unknown garden, inviting us to spend time in contemplation. An etched blossom keeps company with precious droplets of moonstone; it could be spring, and yet there remains an unsettling, wintry undertone. The monochromatic soft greys infuse the work with a certain pensiveness, even melancholy, that encourages reminiscences.

German artist Bettina Speckner uses unusual juxtapositions of photographic imagery and materials, which she then places within formal settings that refer to historical jewellery and metalwork traditions. The elegant simplicity of this box evokes the Arts and Crafts Movement from the late nineteenth century, yet it frames a recent photographic image taken by the artist. This apparent contradiction of form and content plays on the nature of memory and the preciousness of time.

The seemingly capricious placement of the moonstones on the lid disturbs the smooth symmetrical surface of the box, interrupting the underlying mood of nostalgia. The gemstones and the etched flower motif anchor the two-dimensional image within its three-dimensional setting, drawing attention to the very deliberate nature of its construction. Despite her apparent affection for using portraiture and landscape imagery in her work, Speckner avoids presenting a straightforward story. Primacy is given to the object, not the narrative.

The use of photographic imagery is a constant preoccupation for Speckner, challenging accepted notions of preciousness and adornment. In this work, the congruence of traditional forms and materials with the photo-etched image has resulted in an intriguing object that resonates with history yet remains deeply personal.

This work was included in the 2005–06 exhibition Transformations: the language of craft at the National Gallery of Australia.

Bettina Speckner Box 2000 silver, photo-etched zinc and moonstones National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sarah Edge Curatorial Assistant, Decorative Arts and Design

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James Turrell changes the shape of the sky

James Turrell Rise 2002 Photo courtesy of the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Photographer: Florian Holzherr.

This is one of Turrell’s Shallow space constructions.

A rectangular false wall is constructed within the gallery and the combination of artificial light, controlled by a timer, and natural light which changes over the course of the day, means the work is never the same James Turrell East portal in the Roden Crater 2002 Photographer: Florian Holzherr.

The Skyspace, approached by the Alpha Tunnel which extends for more than a quarter of a kilometre, is one of a series of chambers within the East Portal.

Viewers are seated on the bench that runs around the perimeter of the space; the aperture opens onto the bowl of the crater

James Turrell cast a spell on the evening of Saturday 11 March 2006. A capacity crowd of artists and museum people, architects and lighting designers, landscape gardeners, astronomers, Quakers, and other fans gathered at his public lecture in the Gallery’s James O Fairfax Theatre. The internationally renowned artist, aviator and rancher engrossed the audience for nearly ninety minutes with stories of his upbringing, his creative output and his philosophical grounding.

We saw intriguing early works, experiments with natural and artificial light, projections and site-specific installations, as well as a range of collaborative projects. We were amused by wry tales of court cases, of human perception, foibles and follies. And we were captivated by the trials and tribulations of moving millions of cubic tonnes of earth to build the spaces, chambers and viewing platforms of his chef d’oeuvre – the Roden Crater on the edge of a Native American Indian reservation in the Painted Desert, northwest Arizona.

From an early reminiscence of being captivated by the glow of a childhood night light, Turrell told us how he

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began to question light and whether darkness is something to be feared. This developed into an awareness of the ability of light and perception to influence human emotion. He realised a desire to work with different types and qualities of light, wanting the ‘thingness’ of light to predominate in his work. By way of example the artist illustrated one of his Shallow space constructions in which natural and artificial light combine to affect the colours perceived and to adapt the architectural space occupied by the viewer. The work appears as if floating on a field of light.

During the 1980s and ‘90s Turrell continued to work on projects dealing with the perception of natural light but also developed environments which expose visitors to complete darkness or isolate an individual within a small, contained space. His indoor installations were further developed to feature water, and to dramatically modify internal space.

He also collaborated with architects. His works are Spartan, quietly elegant and calm. Across the range of his projection work, installation and land art, Turrell makes use of halogen, fluorescent, ultraviolet, tungsten and natural light. All his built environments enhance the senses, causing the viewer

James Turrell at the Roden Crater, September 2001 Photographer: Florian Holzherr James Turrell Gasworks 1993 Photo courtesy of the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Photographer: Florian Holzherr From the series of Perceptual cells. The viewer is rolled through a slit of entry into the fibreglass sphere where a series of light patterns flash to cause an intense Ganzfeld

to experience light in different ways and to ask questions about its source and origins. A Skyspace has the effect of altering what we see with our own eyes. In its simplest form a Skyspace is a viewing chamber without a roof, an aperture opening out to the atmosphere. Because it relies on light, a Skyspace works best in the morning and evening, times of transition between day and night. Initially, much of Turrell’s work was temporary, in keeping with its ethereal nature.

Increasingly, due to the artist’s growing reputation and the complexity of the architectural environments conceived by him, permanent installations have been created all around the world.

In the period 1977–79 Turrell bought a 1,100 acre site around a bowl-like volcanic cinder cone near Flagstaff, Arizona, and began to build the Roden Crater. Turrell’s plans, developed since the early 1970s, incorporate a series of underground chambers, tunnels and portals. As a nakedeye conservatory and the ultimate Skyspace, when complete the Roden Crater will allow visitors to experience the view of both the sun and moon, and to see rare celestial alignments.

The Roden Crater has its origins in pre-historic sites, such as Stonehenge and Mayan temples, and more recently constructed astronomical observatories, such as India’s Jantar Mantar of 1727–34. Turrell likens the structure to a mastaba – an early Egyptian tomb with a rectangular base, sloping sides and a flat roof – but in its final form the Roden Crater may be closer to the elaborate pyramid complexes constructed by the Pharaohs.

Despite having committed huge chunks of time and a vast quantity of funds to the project, throughout a long and sometimes painful process, Turrrell’s sense of humour has

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never been far away. He presented slides of a bulldozer as the ultimate artist’s tool and related stories of explaining his vision to the team: now, he said, ‘we will shape the sky’.

Video footage such as that included in Robert Hughes’ TV series American Visions 1997 effectively shows the impact of the earthworks on a viewer’s perception of the sky and the celestial vault above. Turrell and his team have shaped and reshaped the volcano rim into an ellipse, restoring the topsoil to the upper edge so that the exterior of the structure retains its pristine form. Within the crater, the artist’s interventions are more dramatic. The completed work will contain twenty or more viewing rooms with Wedgeworks, Projection pieces, Space division pieces and Skyspaces, all composed with a palette of naturally occurring materials such as black volcanic sand and ochres assembled from the site, richly-polished stone, bronze and reinforced concrete. On the north-south axis, moonsets are experienced, camera-obscura projections of the cloud, moon and stars witnessed, and future eclipses predicted; the further one delves into the centre, the rarer the events.

Through the aperture of a Skyspace in the East portal the sky appears as if painted: who knows what would happen if one stepped onto the bronze stairs, passed up through the footlights ... into the infinite? a Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture The National Gallery of Australia is currently in consultation with James Turrell over a Skyspace project to be incorporated into the plans for the extended Sculpture Garden. Thanks to Haines Gallery, San Francisco, for assistance with sourcing images.

travelling exhibitions spring 20 0 6

Stage Fright: the art of theatre (Children’s Exhibition)

Constable: Impressions of land, sea and sky Developed by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Generously supported by Qantas Freight, Network 7 and Indemnity Australia.

John Constable A ploughing scene in Suffolk (A summerland) c. 1824 (detail) oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art, New Haven Gift of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon in 1977

Constable: Impressions of land, sea and sky celebrates the art of one of the greatest British landscape painters. It focuses on John Constable as a maker of pictures, and works have been selected to emphasise his art-making processes. nga.gov.au/Constable Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, 5 July – 8 August 2006

In partnership with the Australian Theatre for Young People. Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia.

Loudon Sainthill Costume design for the ugly sister from Cinderella 1958 gouache, pencil and water colour on paper National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Michael Riley: sights unseen Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia.

Untitled from the series cloud [cow] 2000 (detail) printed 2005 chromogenic pigment photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and VISCOPY, Australia

Michael Riley (1960–2004) was one of the most important contemporary Indigenous visual artists of the past two decades. His contribution to the contemporary Indigenous and broader Australian visual arts industry was substantial and his film and video work challenged non-Indigenous perceptions of Indigenous experience, particularly among the most disenfranchised communities in the eastern region of Australia. nga.gov.au/Riley

Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Swan Hill, Vic., 6 October – 26 November 2006

Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha 9th–10th century (detail) from Red case: myths and rituals National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Vic., 16 November 2006 – 25 February 2007

Kenneth Macqueen Summer sky c. 1935 (detail) watercolour and pencil on paper Purchased 1965 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © The Macqueen family

Moist: Australian watercolours Moist is a rare glimpse into the National Gallery of Australia’s extraordinary collection of Australian watercolours. While the title refers to the liquid nature of watercolour, the word ‘moist’ elicits images of an atmospheric, physical or emotional state of being. The watercolours in Moist demonstrate how Australian artists have created visual representations of such states, from the highly figurative to the purely abstract and intensely emotional. nga.gov.au/Moist

David Wallace Stockman and horse 1997 recycled materials including wire, fabric, plastic, buttons National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Burnie Regional Gallery, Burnie, Tas., 9 October – 17 December 2006

Children’s Festival, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT, 25 September – 8 October 2006 Karl Lawrence Millard Lizard grinder 2000 (detail) brass, bronze, copper, sterling silver, money metal, Peugeot mechanism, stainless steel screws National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Mosman Art Gallery and Cultural Centre, Mosman, NSW, 7 November – 3 December 2006 The 1888 Melbourne Cup Warwick Art Gallery Tour, Warwick QLD, 5 – 29 October 2006 Ballarat Fine Art Gallery Tour, Ballarat, Vic., 1 Nov 2006 – 31 Jan 2007

University Art Museum, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld., 5 August – 1 October 2006 Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Booragul, NSW, 15 December 2006 – 21 January 2007

Coffs Harbour City Gallery, Coffs Harbour NSW, 10 July – 24 September 2006

Blue case: Technology Caloundra Regional Art Gallery Tour, Caloundra, Qld., 7 August – 17 September 2006

Riddoch Gallery, Mount Gambier SA, 1 December 2006 – 18 February 2007

James McNeill Whistler Portrait of Whistler 1859 (detail) etching and drypoint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions The 1888 Melbourne Cup and three suitcases of works of art: Red case: Myths and rituals includes works which reflect the spiritual beliefs of different cultures; Yellow case: Form, space, design reflects a range of art-making processes; and Blue case: Technology. The suitcases thematically present a selection of art and design objects for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres that may be borrowed free-of-charge. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn Red case: Myths and rituals and Yellow case: Form, space and design

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, Vic., 25 July – 24 September 2006

An artist abroad: the prints of James McNeill Whistler James McNeill Whistler was a key figure in the European art world of the 19th century.

Influenced by the French Realists, and the Dutch, Venetian and Japanese masters, Whistler’s prints are sublime visions of people and the places they inhabit. nga.gov.au/Whistler

Stage Fright: the art of theatre raises the curtain on the world of theatre and dance through works of art, interactives and a program of workshops conducted by educators from the National Gallery and Australian Theatre for Young People. Worlds from mythology, fairy tales and fantasy characters intended for the ballet, opera and stage are shown in exquisitely rendered finished drawings alongside others that have been quickly executed, capturing the essence of an idea, posture, movement or character. nga.gov.au/StageFright

The 1888 Melbourne Cup (detail) The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change. Please contact the gallery or venue before your visit. For more information please contact (612) 6240 6556 or email: travex@nga. gov.au.

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children’s galler y

Abracadabra: the magic in conservation 28 July – 26 November 2006

In Abracadabra: the magic in conservation conservators from the Gallery’s Conservation Department unpack their repertoire of ‘magic tricks’, to present fascinating techniques that reveal information hidden within the material structure of works of art. No matter how often such discoveries are made, they remain fresh and exciting and it is this sense of magical revelation that the exhibition aims to convey. The science behind X-rays, infrared reflectography, ultraviolet fluorescence and microscopy can be complex but the hey presto! effects are a constant source of wonder and delight.

In contrast to such revelations, some aspects of conservation practice require conservators to put as much effort into concealment as into unlocking secrets. Considerable expertise is needed to carry out undetectable repairs or to mimic original colour using an entirely different medium. Where damage exists on a relatively large scale, deceptive disguise rather than restoration may be the only option. Conservators therefore develop and practise various strategies for camouflaging their work. Abracadabra is based on the dual themes of hiding and revealing; stylistically it borrows from magicians’ showmanship and it is designed around works of art with strong visual appeal to children.

X-radiography is an imaging technique adopted from the medical profession by conservators. The process involves passing high energy radiation through objects onto photographic film to form a radiograph. The Xray film records differences in material densities. The varying absorption rates are displayed in the radiograph

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as gradations from light to dark: the greater the density, the higher the absorption, resulting in a lighter image.

Metallic elements absorb radiation more than nonmetallic materials. X-radiography provides conservators with detailed information about the concealed structure of works of art, including changes made to paint layers, armatures inside costumes or other internal supports.

The lively and colourful Futurist puppets, Sandwich man [L’Homme sandwich] 1926 and Publicity man [L’Homme reclamé] 1926 by the Russian artist Alexandra Exter were X-rayed in the conservation laboratory in 1999.

The unique, fully-articulated puppets were originally designed for a film and personify different types of advertising. Exter was influenced by the Cubist and Futurist movements, working mainly in theatre set and costume design and on illustrated children’s books.

The artist used materials that every child has encountered and often incorporated into their own art. The skeleton is made of wood and cotton reels and is covered with an outer skin of painted card, collage, fabric, string and sequins. The X-rays identify the presence of random metallic nails, screws and eyelets in the arm, leg and head structures. These images show the location of inherent weaknesses in the construction of the puppets, revealing that the suspension of the marionettes depends on delicate string and fabric to carry the full weight of the object.

This information enabled conservators to make minor modifications that keep the puppets safe for handling, display and storage.

Alexandra Exter Sandwich man [L’homme sandwich] 1926 watercolour and collage on cardboard with wood, cotton, string, book cloth, copper, sequins, steel tacks, bridge nails, steel wire and eyelets National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (Detail) X-ray of Sandwich man highlighting areas held together with tacks

Ultraviolet light is high energy light that literally translates as ‘beyond violet’, violet being the shortest wavelength we can see. Ultraviolet illumination exposes a secret world of fluorescing patterns not visible in normal light. Certain materials absorb ultraviolet light and fluoresce to a lesser or greater degree in a wide range of colours. Conservators can use this information to identify pigments, paint media and varnishes, as well as old repairs and restorations. Art dealers also use ultraviolet to authenticate collectibles.

The Han dynasty Saddled horse from China in the Asian Art collection is fairly representative of the extensive restoration found in similar funerary ceramics from Chinese burial sites. Large areas of ceramic loss have been so skilfully restored that the most experienced eye would find it difficult to differentiate repaired and original areas. Under ultraviolet light the restored areas become apparent immediately because they fluoresce dramatically in contrast to the surrounding areas. An awareness of the location of previous restoration can be crucial for conservators when assessing works of art for treatment, storage, transport or display.

Infrared reflectography relies on the capacity of carbon-based materials to absorb energy in the infrared region. Images of pencil or charcoal underdrawing lying beneath layers of paint and varnish can be captured using infrared lamps, photographic filters and computer software.

Preparatory sketches can add to curatorial knowledge of an artist’s technique and underdrawing found on paintings

by William Strutt and Eric Wilson demonstrate two very different approaches to the construction of a painting.

Han dynasty, China Saddled horse (206 BCE – 220 CE) earthenware Gift of Mr TT Tsui JP through the NGA Foundation, 1994 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Ultraviolet image of the Saddled horse, Han dynasty, revealing locations of repairs and restorations

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Eric Wilson Domestic interior 1935 oil on canvas on plywood National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (Detail) Infrared image of Domestic interior showing pencil grid lines in the centre of the painting

In Domestic interior 1935, Wilson used a grid system to methodically transfer a preparatory sketch to his canvas.

The original drawing was probably highly finished and composed to fit a circular format. Wilson’s execution is assured and there is no indication that the artist made any compositional changes during painting. The stillness and peace of the domestic circle, presided over by the artist’s mother and confirmed and punctuated by the comfortable cat in the foreground, imply that this is a close family living securely within a well-defined social framework. Everything about this painting speaks of planning, method and order; the discovery of the pencilled grid supports this view.

William Strutt, in his companion works from 1889, Cultivating an acquaintance and A warm response, created two charming paintings that record a flurry of action. His underdrawing is spontaneous and loose. The difficulties he encountered during the execution of his vignette can be seen in the changes he made at the preparatory stages and later as he was laying down the paint. Strutt provided himself with several pencilled alternatives for the position of the curious puppy’s tail and he repainted the position of the head several times. In the second painting the artist rearranged the puppy’s howling jaw in both pencil and paint. Infrared imaging also shows that he completed the lobster claw in the foreground, but subsequently remodelled it.

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Microscopy is one of the most frequently used diagnostic tools in the conservation laboratory. Coupled with sophisticated analytical techniques, including polarised light, reactive staining, fluorescence and chemical spot-testing, it can be used to comprehensively identify textiles and paper fibres, paint media and pigments. Employed routinely to magnify surface detail on works of art, microscopy provides information about material content and structure, artist’s techniques and the condition of component materials. For example, magnification can show how well a flaking pigment is adhered to the underlying support or it may reveal an unexpected intricacy in the structure of a decorative textile thread. Conservation treatments are often carried out under magnification to assist with detailed work, such as the consolidation of friable ochre on a bark painting, or repairs to fragile textiles requiring tiny stitches sewn in very fine thread.

Pair of woman’s slippers worn by members of the Peranakan Chinese community in Malaysia, in Abracadabra, has such delicate and tiny ornamentation that microscopic examination was necessary to evaluate the materials and establish the methods of manufacture.

The base cream-coloured fabric is silk velvet. Satin stitch embroidery in very fine silk thread has been laid over padded formwork to create sheen of a high lustre.

William Strutt Cultivating an acquaintance 1889 oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (Detail) Infrared image of Cultivating an acquaintance showing preparatory drawing for the puppy’s tail

The metallic thread was constructed from extremely fine strips of gold-plated, beaten copper wrapped around a silk core. Very fine copper wire was formed into circles, beaten flat and gold-plated to produce tiny sequins which are secured to the velvet by coiled, gold-plated copper wire held tight by silk thread. White glass beads, the size of a pinhead, nestle in the embroidery and the toe of the slipper is edged with woven purple braid. The scale and finesse of this work is breathtaking.

Peranakan Chinese community, Malaysia Pair of woman’s slippers (detail) early 20th century velvet, leather, canvas support, metal nails, silk, metallic thread, laminated paper, sequins, beads; embroidery, appliqué From the Alice Smith collection 1992 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (detail) Photomicrograph of Pair of woman’s slippers showing the fine construction of its decorative elements; metallic thread, sequin, bead and embroidery

Conclusion The focus of Abracadabra is on the visually exciting imagery produced when conservation science meets a work of art. It is designed primarily for children from five to twelve years, with several exhibits offering interactive opportunities that use or simulate conservation procedures. We hope the exhibition will intrigue and delight children and adults alike. a Sheridan Roberts, Jaishree Srinivasan, Fiona Kemp and Stefanie Woodruff Conservation Department

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tribute

Gela Nga-Mirraitja Fordham c. 1935–2006

Gela Nga-Mirraitja Fordham, Rembarrnga people Freshwater Yalk Yalk 2003 graphite on Arches paper National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Inimitable Rembarrnga artist Nga-Mirraitja Fordham died in June. He was of the Dhuwa moiety, Gela skin name, and Mirraitja clan of southern central Arnhem Land.

Rembarrnga country is arid, inland stone country marked by rocky outcrops, sweeping grassy plains and sandy stretches as the landscape gives way to the sandstone escarpment of western Arnhem Land. The Rembarrnga traditionally inhabited the basin flanking the Wilton River.

Fordham was born at remote Bamdibu, north of Bulman, in c. 1935 and grew up living a traditional bush life, going through ceremonial teachings under his father’s tutelage. The war years brought upheaval and regular movement for Aboriginal people of the area. The young Fordham worked as a stockman on stations to the south and west of his homelands. In the 1960s and 70s he spent

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time working in Maningrida on the Arnhem coast. There he worked driving a grader, helping establish an outstation at the time of the burgeoning homelands movement, before returning to his birthplace, where he attempted to establish his own outstation. He spent over ten years at Wugularr (Beswick) where he started painting for the marketplace and moved into Katherine around 1990.

Fordham would not begin to paint on bark for sale in any big way until the early 1980s and by the late ‘80s was prolific and unparalleled. The Rembarrnga live at a cultural divide between eastern and western Arnhem Land. Due to the country’s relative isolation and inaccessibility, Rembarrnga clans have developed art traditions and styles quite separate from each other and quite distinct from other groups in Arnhem Land. Crosshatching is largely dispensed with in favour of bold, painterly white on black.

This characteristic graphic style in Fordham’s art worked well across a number of mediums. His love of drawing is evident in the many and varied works, where one can see the immediacy of crayon on the lithography stone, or the grainy fluid pigment on the organic bark or knotted hollow log where he allowed the materials at hand to determine his mark-making. Fordham was as accomplished making sculptures, carving distinctive representations of Balangjarlngalayn spirit figures and mimis from meandering trunks with vigour.

Fordham has been described as a narrative painter, a natural storyteller. In his art he conveyed the personal and the political, producing numerous images of Rembarrnga creation ancestors (water and stone country spirits, rainbow serpents) in the ‘old style’ and also offering, in many of his works, an alternative Indigenous view of history and current affairs, including those that commented on colonisation, the Second World War, welfare, government and land rights.

His diversity and skill made his work of great interest to collectors and curators. Fordham is represented in key Australian and overseas state, national, university and corporate collections. He was a regular art prize entrant and was rewarded with National Aboriginal Art Award prizes on three occasions (in different media),

including the major prize in 1993 for a bark painting. His work was included in numerous exhibitions, including Tyerbarrbowaryaou: I shall never become a white man (I and II) (1992 & 1994) for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and with the National Gallery of Australia, Aratjara (1993), Flash pictures (1991) and Aboriginal art: the continuing tradition (1989).

The breadth of approach is indicative of Fordham’s whole output, which was immense, diverse, monumental, spirited. Among the significant outputs of his prolific career was his contribution to The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88 of twenty-four magnificent hollow logs in the Rembarrnga group of thirty-five logs.

Fordham’s logs are distinguished by their tall, meandering, knotted forms with black backgrounds and bold figurative elements in white. The menacing imagery is concerned with the epic encounters and great upheavals of ancestors by which the features of the landscape were created. The country is inhabited by spirits and malevolent beings, particularly rainbow serpents in various guises, and spirit figures. Themes of regurgitation, metamorphosis and renewal are prevalent. Rainbow serpents are a key theme in western Arnhem Land painting and for the Rembarrnga.

At times the two approaches in Fordham’s art – the ancestral and the political – converged, making Fordham an artist who defied categorisation but who had found a perfect vehicle in art for his message. For the opening of The Memorial at the Biennale of Sydney in 1988 Fordham sang-in the work with Ramingining artists and gave a speech concentrating mostly on the tradition of the hollow log. His culminating remarks confirmed that The Memorial was a gesture for all Aboriginal people: I’ll explain about this, coffin box.

In Arnhem Land, Northern Territory …

This we singing today Coast Arnhem Land Top Arnhem Land All this group here, got coffin box …

… This coffin box. Lorrkun we call them Lorrkun, Dupun or Coffin Box For everyone in Australia

Gela Nga-Mirraitja Fordham The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88 featuring Fordham’s contribution of twenty-four hollow logs in the Rembarrnga group of thirty-five logs

Another senior Ramingining artist also died in June, Tom Djumpurpur (1920–2006) a Djinba man and contributor to The Memorial. a Susan Jenkins Susan Jenkins is a curator, editor, lecturer, valuer and writer based in Adelaide. She was a curator in Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander art, National Gallery of Australia 1995–2005. This tribute was written with the assistance of Chips Mackinolty, a long-time friend of the artist.

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tribute

Micky Garrawurra 1940–2006

Senior ceremonial lawman and artist Micky D passed away in June. He is now known as Micky Garrawurra, a connecting reference for clan members not unlike a surname. He was of the Dhuwa moiety Liya-gawumirr Buyu’yukulmirr saltwater people, whose country sits in the Crocodile Islands archipelago off central Arnhem Land. Garrawurra’s homeland is Gariyak in Hutchison Strait, south of Langarra (Howard Island).

Most records give circa 1940 as Garrawurra’s birth date, reflecting the anomaly in records of Aboriginal people in the area at this time. Bush births, sporadic residence in missions and the Second World War all contributed to the disruption to administration and local lives.

As a young man, Garrawurra worked as a fisherman out of Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island) on Yolngu-owned boats, including a boat called the Djirrpadi, netting around Milingimbi, Langarra and the Glyde River. In adulthood he resided intermittently in Darwin, Milingimbi, Ramingining, Galiwin’ku, Langarra and Gariyak, living a traditional Yolngu way of life, fishing and hunting. Like many of his peers, Garrawurra went through lots of ceremonies, gaining cultural authority, leading singing and dancing. This significant background and knowledge saw him become an artist as well as a ceremony man.

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Garrawurra’s key subject in ceremony and art is the Djan’kawu at Gariyak. The Djan’kawu are important creation ancestors for Dhuwa moiety clans across Arnhem Land. Their significance to the Buyu’yukulmirr lies in their actions in this country. Travelling west with the sun, they crossed from the mainland to Galiwin’ku by canoe and then to Langarra and Gariyak where they ended their travels by canoe before moving on westward to the lands of other clans. At Gariyak, near the shoreline, they made a string of freshwater wells with the plunge of their sacred digging sticks. They gave this place to the Buyu’yukulmirr, and its associated songs, dances, sacred objects and clan patterns.

The Buyu’yukulmirr have two main Djan’kawu designs. The sacred waterholes design – an aerial landscape – incorporating vertical, diagonal and horizontal radiating bands suggests the sun’s rays and the traces of their journey between sites. The second design, a horizontal structure, is distinctive for the parallel bands in red, white and yellow and the absence of cross-hatching. As an emerging painter Garrawurra would paint the sacred waterholes design on barks for sale. While banded designs have roots in ceremony (painted on body and objects), Garrawurra translated them to the medium of bark painting in the early 1990s,

representing a significant shift in his artistic practice as a growing ceremonial and artistic authority.

According to curator Djon Mundine, a former art adviser at Ramingining and Milingimbi, ‘Micky … placed this design boldly onto the flat regular surface of a piece of bark. Its visual effect was stunning … A number of works along the same line followed. Though similar, each was a fine work – individual, and elaborated in a varied manner’. Garrawurra would develop this genre of painting throughout the next decade. In some instances the minimalism of the paintings helped their appreciation as contemporary art; in others they were rejected for looking too modern.

The banded works became Garrawurra’s signature, and were collected at a time when he was also contributing to art awards and exhibitions before the key turning point in his painting journey, the exhibition Yolngu science: objects and representations from Raminginging, Arnhem Land curated by Mundine for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in 2000, for which Garrawurra completed a site-specific wall painting of the Djirrididi (kingfisher) body design. The alternating horizontal bands of red, white and yellow that normally graced barks and hollow logs were painted around the walls and columns of the gallery from floor to ceiling to dramatic effect.

His growing facility in the construction of paintings was perhaps a result of painting in different contexts, mediums and scales. Garrawurra continued to produce a range of complex Djan’kawu related works on bark and paper in his senior years.

While the Gallery has several Djan’kawu works by Dhuwa artists, including designs on hollow logs for The Aboriginal Memorial, Garrawurra’s late works represent well his achievements as a painter. In this suite of works from 2001 the components of a Mululu [native cherry tree] body design are positioned across three paintings, contributing to a whole. The artist seems to have ‘unpacked’ the pictorial elements, continually pushing the boundaries in painting, while providing proof of the ownership and responsibilities of his inheritance – Gariyak in Buyu’yukulmirr country. a

Micky Garrawurra Buyu’yukulmirr/Liyagawumirr people untitled 2001 natural pigments on paper Gift of Nigel Lendon, 2005 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Susan Jenkins Susan Jenkins is a curator, editor, lecturer, valuer and writer based in Adelaide. She was a curator in Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art, National Gallery of Australia, 1995–2005. This tribute was prepared in consultation with Bula’bula Arts, Ramingining.

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development of fice

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2006

(left to right) Jenine Westerburg, Peter Barclay, Simon McGill, Ron Radford AM, Rosemary Thompson, Joy Warren OAM, The Hon. Gough Whitlam AC, Lady Kathleen Kingsland, Sir Richard Kingsland AO, Dorothy Barclay.

We would like to thank all donors who assisted the Gallery in achieving our target to purchase the Sydney Long oil painting Flamingoes, c. 1906. The acquisition of this splendid painting was made possible through the generous contributions of many Gallery and Foundation Members to our Masterpieces for the Nation 2006 appeal. Flamingoes is an important addition to the permanent collection of Australian art.

A celebration of the launch of Flamingoes was held on 1 August, and the Director was delighted to meet new donors to the Gallery and renew acquaintances with established donors. It was also a wonderful opportunity for me to meet donors.

The acquisition of Flamingoes is extremely timely and will complement the recent acquisition of a major nineteenth-century symbolist painting by Charles Conder, Hot wind 1889, which was purchased with the generous assistance of the Sarah and Baillieu Myer Family Foundation.

National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund The National Gallery of Australia Council initiated the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund.

This exciting initiative will be used to provide financial assistance to selected exhibitions. Michael Riley: sights unseen and Imants Tillers: one world many visions are the first exhibitions to be supported by the Fund.

Treasure a Textile Treasure a Textile is a wonderful initiative that supports the conservation of the Gallery’s extraordinary collection of Southeast Asian textiles. Donors receive information on how their donation has assisted restoring the fragile works in our collection and are invited to visit the Gallery’s conservation area once it has been restored. Donors receive acknowledgement for their assistance. There are many textiles awaiting a sponsor, so please contact the Development Office on 6240 6454 if you would like to receive a brochure or more information about this initiative. a Annalisa Millar Sponsorship and Development Co-ordinator

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access ser vices

Making a difference

The National Gallery of Australia has received one of a number of awards given to cultural and other communitybased organisations for their efforts to promote access for blind and vision-impaired visitors. The Making a Difference Award for ‘Supporting people who are blind or vision-impaired to be able to access and fully participate in every part of life they choose’ is an initiative of Vision Australia, Canberra. Each award winner was introduced by a member of the blind and vision impaired community.

Rodney Stephenson, a one-time volunteer in Conservation with a passion for the visual arts, was eloquent in his praise of the Gallery and the importance of access to it as a sighted and now as a vision-impaired visitor.

The Gallery offers a range of Special Access Tours for people with disabilities, including Auslan sign-interpreted tours, descriptive and touch tours for people with vision impairment, and special events for carers (including an art appreciation group). Tours for Carers are among the regular events the Gallery provides to meet the needs of particular special access focus groups.

The Gallery has worked with Vision Australia to train voluntary guides and education staff to deliver descriptive tours. Descriptive tours require specialised training. To ‘say what you see’ is a deceptively complex process. The guide needs to ascertain how much sight the participant has, and how much visual memory. This will affect the descriptive choices made, especially in relation to colour. In a descriptive tour the guide must be aware of not only how to safely and respectfully guide participants through Gallery spaces, but also how to describe works of art to convey size, scale, texture, techniques, composition, content and the spaces in which they are hung. Descriptive tours are conducted with small groups to facilitate discussion.

Touch tours are another wonderful way for blind and vision-impaired visitors to interact with works of art. These tours are always planned in conjunction with Conservation and follow stringent guidelines. Suitable artworks are identified by conservators, nitrile gloves are provided and assistance from trained guides and education staff is necessary. As one participant, Adam Doblinger, described his experience, ‘I really enjoyed the touching part of the tour. By touching the sculptures I could form a picture in my head, I could understand better what was being described … I could feel the details before you started talking.’

Tactile Information booklets are always available at the front desk for individuals visiting the Gallery. These Braille and tactile map booklets are based on works in the Sculpture Garden and paintings and sculpture from the permanent collection.

In October the Gallery will mark Art beyond Sight Awareness Month, an initiative from the US to promote access to galleries and museums. A touch tour for children organised by Education and Conservation will be held in the Small Theatre on Sunday 22 October during International Children’s Week and a descriptive tour for families will be held on Sunday 29 October. These two events focus on special access for children and families. a

Ruth Patterson, Assistant Director Marketing and Merchandising, accepting the Making a Difference Award on behalf of the NGA with Ashley Wood, Corporate Communications Manager, Vision Australia, and Rodney Stephenson Lisa Addison, Preventative Conservator, and Margie Enfield, Voluntary Guide, guiding Adam Doblinger during a touch tour in Asian Art

Adriane Boag Educator, Youth and Community Programs Further information at nga.gov.au/calendar and nga.gov. au/Access or by phoning 6240 6632.

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B A R T O N

Carnival the world on show, Floriade 2006.

The Brassey of Canberra has Deluxe Accommodation Packages from

$164.00 Per room, per night. including a sumptuous buffet breakfast, a complimentary Floriade program, free parking and complimentary entry to Old Parliament House.

Call the Package Hotline 1800 659 191

Belmore Gardens & Macquarie Street, Barton ACT 2600

4HE ART OF RELAXATION

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7ITH 3AVILLE 0ARK 3UITES #ANBERRA S CONVENIENT LOCATION IN THE HEART OF THE CITY THE .ATIONAL 'ALLERY SHOPPING AND MANY OF #ANBERRA S ATTRACTIONS ARE ALL JUST A SHORT STROLL AWAY

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&OR MORE INFORMATION OR TO MAKE A BOOKING CALL SAVILLEHOTELGROUP COM

the bell gallery presents ‘works on paper’ and

the release of ‘a winter in new york’ a folio of nine etchings by peter hickey beginning 10th september

EXTRAORDINARY EVERY DAY

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faces in view 1 Members’ viewing of Imants Tillers: one world many visions and Michael Riley: sights unseen 2 Ian and Austra Hart at the members’ viewing of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 3 Jennifer Slatyer, Saskia, Isidore and Imants Tillers at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 4 Pamela and Ron Walker in front of Imants Tillers’ Nature speaks 1998–2006 5 Isidore and Saskia Tillers performing at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 6 Imants Tillers, Olivia Sophia, Deborah Hart and Michael Jagamara Nelson at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 7 Leon Paroissien and Gene Sherman at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 8 Wendy Hockley (nee Riley) at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 9 Linda Burney and David Riley at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 10 Bernadette Riley and friend at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 11 Linda Burney and Joyce Abraham Riley at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 12 Wiradjuri Echoes performing for NAIDOC Week 13 Brenda L Croft with Megan Tamati-Quennell and Bernadette Riley at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 14 Yurry Craigie, Michael French and Craig Jamieson at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley 15 Wiradjuri Echoes performing for NAIDOC Week 16 Simon Wright, Darrell Sibosada, Stuart Stark, Brenda L Croft and Daniel Browning at the opening of Imants Tillers and Michael Riley

ngashop

the art of shopping

Indigenous arts and craft books and catalogues calendars and diaries prints and posters gifts jewellery fine art cards accessories desirable objects toys jigsaws

Gallery Shop open 7 days 10am–5pm Phone 02 6240 6420 ngashop.com.au Product enquiries 1800 808 337 mobile glass decoration, exclusively designed by Sharon Peters for the Gallery shop, $89.95.

14 – 20 January 2007 Curator, Artist, Public Relations, Designer There’s more to a career in the visual arts ...

If you are in Year 11 in 2006, spend a week this summer at the NGA

Become one of 16 students to participate in the National Gallery of Australia and Sony Foundation Australia Summer Scholarship in 2007.

Come and join the National Gallery of Australia team for a week, discover the collection, find out why works of art are acquired, how exhibitions take place, and what happens in a gallery behind the scenes. You will participate in workshops and receive expert tuition from Gallery staff and professional artists.

For more information go to nga.gov.au/Summer Scholarship or call Adriane Boag on 02 6240 6632

Applications close Friday 6 October 2006

MICHAELRILEYUNSEEN SIGHTS

14 July – 16 October 2006 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Imants Tillers installing Terra incognita 2005 at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2005 The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency.

nga.gov.au

Michael Riley Wiradjuri/Kamileroi peoples Untitled from the series cloud [cow] 2000 printed 2005 chromogenic pigment photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Š Michael Riley, Licensed by VISCOPY

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Third Intermediate Period, 21st–22nd dynasties (1069–715 BCE) Cartonnage of Djedkhonsouioufankh plastered, painted and gilded linen Collection Musée du Louvre Photograph © Georges Poncet, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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