2014.Q1 | Artonview 77 Autumn 2014

N AT IO N A L G A L L ERY O F A U S T R A L IA , CA N B ER R A

AUTUMN 2014 | 77

Garden of the East Bali: island of the gods Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia

AUTUMN 2014 | 77

AUTUMN 2014 | 77

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Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Apart from uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of Artonview may be reproduced, transmitted or copied without the prior permission of the National Gallery of Australia.

Exhibitions

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EDITOR Eric Meredith DESIGNER Kristin Thomas PHOTOGRAPHY by the National Gallery of Australia Photography Department unless otherwise stated RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Nick Nicholson PRINTER Blue Star Print, Melbourne PREVIOUS ISSUES nga.gov.au/Artonview

Director’s word

All that glitters is not gold: textiles of Ancient Peru

Simeran Maxwell

In the sun: import and home-grown photography

Gael Newton

FX Harsono writing in the rain

Anne O’Hehir

Arts of Bali

Robyn Maxwell

Divine essence

Michael Gunn

Features 22

Early colonial: newly acquired paintings, prints and drawings Roger Butler

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Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2014

Anne Gray

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Acquisitions

WARNING Artonview may contain the names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased.

The painting, the print and the tankard

Robert Bell

32 Richard Browne Seven watercolours 34 Jean Baptiste Apuatimi and Greg Orsto Tutini 35 John Brack Study for ‘Men’s wear’ 36 William Robinson Twin Falls and gorge 37 Buleleng, north Bali, Indonesia Two figures of Wilmana 38 Kamasan, Bali, Indonesia The temptation of Arjuna

REGULARS 40 Facesinview 42 Members news 43 News from the Foundation 44 Thank you …

46 Creative partnerships

(cover) Thilly Weissenborn Balineesch dansmeisj in rust (A dancinggirl of Bali, resting) c 1925 (detail) photogravure 21.1 x 15.9 cm purchased 2007

(opposite) André Roosevelt Temple entrance, Bali 1928 gelatin silver photograph 22.7 x 16.6 cm purchased 2007

Governor-General Quentin Bryce AC CVO and guests at the Jeffrey Smart memorial service, 29 November 2013

Director’s word The cool and inspiring spaces at the Gallery have provided the perfect refuge for those seeking relief from yet another long, hot summer. I hope you’ve been able to take advantage of the diverse range of temporary exhibitions and permanent collection displays at your National Gallery in Canberra.

Our Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru exhibition continues to attract crowds eager to discover the rich and varied ancient cultures of this distant South American land. The exhibition showcases the skill and craftsmanship of more than 19 different Peruvian cultures, culminating in the Inca Empire, which ruled from 1400 to 1533 AD. The exhibition not only shows beautiful objects of precious metals, especially gold and silver, but intriguing objects of stone and feathers and remarkable, colourful textiles up to 2000 years old.

The expanded Family Activity Room has proven particularly popular with our younger guests, who have enjoyed exploring the ancient Peruvian way of life through puzzles, a treasure-filled tunnel under Machu Picchu and treks on the Inca Trail.

In this issue of Artonview, Simeran Maxwell explores the techniques used by the various cultures to produce the extraordinary range of textiles in the exhibition. Gold and the Incas is open until the end of the Easter long weekend and I encourage you to come along and absorb some of the splendour and drama that characterises ancient

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Guests enjoy the official opening of the Gold and the Incas exhibition, 5 December 2013

Peruvian society, through objects that have not been seen in Australia before.

Last year we celebrated Canberra’s Centenary with three international blockbusters almost back-to-back—ToulouseLautrec, Turner from the Tate and Gold and the Incas—as well as a host of other exhibitions and additional public programs.

In 2014, we maintain our commitment to delivering distinguished exhibitions from abroad as well as shows generated from our own extensive permanent collection. The first new exhibition for the year is a unique exhibition on historic Indonesian photography. The Gallery’s Asian photographs collection has grown from just 200 in 2005 to nearly 8000 today, with in excess of 6500 photographs from Indonesia, including over 100 works by the notable Javanese photographer Kassian Céphas.

Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s will be the first survey in the Asia Pacific region of photographic art from the Dutch East Indies, covering the last century of colonial rule just prior to the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia in 1949. It features the work of Céphas along with other prominent photographers working in the region at that time including those of Indonesian, European and Chinese descent. The exhibition opened to the public on 21 February.

In June the Gallery will present a second Indonesian exhibition. Bali: island of the gods will feature works of astonishing quality and beauty across a wide range of media:

sculpture, painted hangings, illustrated manuscripts and textiles. The Gallery has one of the most important Indonesian collections in the world and we have been recently building the collection, with many of the works to be seen for the first time in this show.

These back-to-back Indonesian exhibitions will showcase the Gallery’s diverse holdings from one of our nearest neighbours. In 2014, the Government’s Australian International Cultural Council has chosen Indonesia for its Focus Country Program. It is timely, therefore, to hold these complementary exhibitions in Australia and raise awareness of the depth of our collection of works from one of our most important neighbouring cultures.

From Indonesia we travel east, across the Pacific to the islands of Polynesia for our groundbreaking exhibition Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia, which will open at the Gallery in late May. In this issue, Michael Gunn, Senior Curator, Pacific Arts and curator of the exhibition, explores the Polynesian concept of the god image atua and its central role in the remarkable history and challenges faced by the Polynesian people over the last 3000 years. Never before in the world has an exhibition like this been staged. We have borrowed objects from around the world and the Gallery will tour this exhibition internationally.

These diverse and groundbreaking exhibitions are complemented by a display in our Photography Gallery of recent

acquisitions of photomedia and video work by artists primarily from Southeast Asia (including Indonesia) and South Asia.

Our travelling exhibitions program also continues throughout 2014, with Capital and Country: the Federation Years 1900–1914 opening at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery this month, Carrol Jerrems: photographic artist at the Casula Powerhouse in Liverpool from April and, for its final destination before returning to the Gallery, Melbourne gallery goers will have the chance to see the beautiful Stars of the Tokyo stage at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, from May. I am also excited to announce that our spectacular 2010 blockbuster exhibition Ballets Russes will be travelling to Tokyo in June.

In addition to our busy exhibition schedule, this summer the Gallery also hosted two other major events. In midJanuary we invited 16 Year 12 students from around the country to participate in the annual National Summer Art Scholarship.

The week-long intensive program exposes students interested in the visual arts to the inner workings of the Gallery and gives them unique opportunities to hear and learn from the range of specialists employed across this institution, from curators and photographers to conservators and marketing staff. Later in the month we hosted the National Visual Art Education Conference with national and international keynote speakers reflecting on the broad interests and key issues in visual art

education in Australia. This is the second such conference held by the Gallery and was a great success, with some 200 attendees from across the country engaging with national curriculum issues as well as enjoying the many learning resources the Gallery has to offer.

Each year we select a work for acquisition through our Masterpieces for the Nation Fund. In 2014 we have chosen a delightful early colonial work from Tasmania by Benjamin Duterrau entitled An infant of Van Diemen’s Land 1840. The painting depicts a young Australian child playing with her toy, surrounded by native flora and gazing intently at a nearby bird. It is a charming work that demonstrates Duterrau’s eye for strong forms and detail. The artist arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1832 at the age of 65, settling in Hobart with his only daughter.

This intriguing 175-year-old portrait has been cleaned by the Gallery and adds to our strong collection of Tasmanian colonial works. Tasmania produced Australia’s most interesting art of the 1830s and 1840s.

In other acquisitions, we have recently acquired many paintings and sculptures from Bali in time for our exhibition in June.

Along with a shrine hanging from south Bali, we add two colourful stone and wood sculptures of demonic winged creatures, which would probably have been placed on a temple or pavilion to ward off danger.

As many of you would know, in June last year one of Australia’s most distinctive senior artists, Jeffrey Smart, died in

Italy. Smart was known for his strong compositions and confronting urban landscapes. In memory of this unique and talented individual, the Gallery hosted the Jeffrey Smart Memorial Service in our Gandel Hall on Friday 29 November 2013.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce AC CVO gave the official tribute, followed by reflections from Edmund Capon, Philip Bacon and me. The Australian opera singer Lisa Gasteen performed several pieces from Wagner’s The Wesedonk Lieder, the artist’s favourite music. It was a moving morning but there were also some amusing stories about his long creative career and interesting life. Over 300 visitors attended from across Australia.

While the Centenary celebrations are over, there is still much to celebrate in Canberra at your National Gallery of Australia. We will again participate in the Enlighten Festival and be sure to visit our website to discover the many other events taking place at the Gallery over the coming months, including film screenings, music performances, masterclasses and a number of engaging activities associated with the Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru exhibition.

Ron Radford

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Nazca culture South coast 100–700 AD Tie-dyed panel 500–700 AD (detail) wool 135 x 175 cm Ministerio de Cultura del Perú: Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú, Lima photograph: Daniel Giannoni

A l l t h at g l i t t e rs i s not gol d Textiles of Ancient Peru Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru until 21 April 2014 | nga.gov.au/Incas

One of the most intriguing and eyecatching aspects of the current exhibition, Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru, is the extraordinarily range of textiles. Textiles played an integral part in ancient Peruvian life, as well as death. Political and religious leaders donned elaborate garments that marked their rank and importance. Textiles were also used as currency and to pay taxes to the ruling elite. Cloth was used as offerings to the gods in ceremonies, sometimes adorning effigies or burned as a form of ritual sacrifice. Woven fabric also performed a vital role in the burial practices of many Peruvian cultures.

The earliest textiles in the exhibition were made by the Paracas culture, located on the south coast of Peru. Extraordinarily colourful mantles (cloaks) were discovered in the 1920s when 429 mummy bundles were uncovered. The Paracas people buried their dead seated in baskets with many layers of cloth wound around the body.

The mantle with stepped pattern, for example, was found in the Wari Kayan necropolis, part of a mummy bundle which contained 44 other mantles, 47 capes, 35 skirts, 19 unkus (poncho-like garment) and seven headbands.

The extremely arid conditions of the Peruvian coastal area preserved the mummy bundles from water and mould, ensuring that the textiles have remained in astonishingly pristine condition despite being over 2000 years old. The mantle with stepped pattern is a wonderful example of the vibrant colours achieved from natural dyes made from a range of substances including vegetable and animal matter and minerals. The step motif, which suggests a temple structure, is created using 10 hues ranging in colour and tone.

The most striking element of this, and many other Paracas textiles, is the border that features the lima bean god—the bean-shaped deity holding a staff in each hand, with an elaborately decorated face under a four-pronged trophy-head headdress. Each embroidered motif of the god varies in colour and design, signalling the exceptional talent and ingenuity of the weaver. Typically these borders were woven separately from the central section. The complete cloth was later stitched together and trimmed with a multi-coloured fringe.

In addition to the three types of looms used by ancient Peruvian weavers, techniques such as looping, braiding and knotting

were used to create a wide variety of decorative textiles.

Another southern coastal culture to produce distinctive textiles was the Nazca, who flourished from 100–700 AD. Their textiles can be divided into three time periods. The final era, the Nazca-Huari period, produced extraordinarily colourful tie-dyed patchwork cloth. Each component of the panel was individually tied and dyed, then stitched together to produce rich and complex geometric designs. The panel in the exhibition is unusual for its large size, with most surviving examples comprising only small fragments. The cloth has been created in two distinct sections—the top half consists of large pieces of cloth interlocked into a stepped pattern and the bottom section is formed from a series of smaller squares. Each piece of cloth was separately woven using a discontinuous warp and weft technique that was also used by the Paracas culture and historically unique to ancient Peru. The idea of cutting cloth to fit a shape, pattern or garment design was unheard of in any Peruvian culture and, as with this example, each piece of cloth was woven specifically to the need of a particular textile. This time consuming

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and laborious process, described by textile expert William J Conklin as ‘darning raised to high art’, results in a dazzling visual effect.

The tie-dyeing technique was also used by the Huari culture that took over the Nazca region in 600 AD. Their fondness for tie-dye patterns is evident not only in their textiles but also on their pottery. Distinctive faceneck jars—a type of effigy pottery where a sculpted head sits atop a bulbous vaseshaped base—are often decorated with a pattern of squares and circles that mimics tie-dyed cloth. Weaving traditions were inherited by successive cultures in ancient Peru, as a result of which continuity of techniques can be seen from the earliest cultures, like the Paracas, through to the Inca. The tie-dyeing technique, however, disappeared after the fall of the Huari Empire around 1000 AD. Ancient Peruvians used a combination of native cotton and camelid wool.

Archaeological evidence suggests that they began to cultivate cotton and growing it as crops as early as 4400 BC. Peruvian cotton (Gossypium barbadense) is renowned

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for its long staple which helps creates the extremely fine thread used in Peruvian textiles. Woollen yarn came from one of four camelid species—vicuña, guanaco, alpaca or llama—that were domesticated around 5000 BC. Alpacas and llamas were also used to carry light loads and they have been found mummified in tombs as ritual sacrifice.

Feathers from Amazonian parrots and other colourful birds were also used to create elaborate patterned textiles. The yellow tabard with cat and bird design in the exhibition exemplifies the flamboyance of Chimú featherwork. This elegant garment features yellow, turquoise, red and black feathers which may have come from the macaw (yellow and turquoise), Paradise Tanager, Razor-billed Curassow or Guanay Cormorant (black), Aratinge parakeet and Amazona parrot (green) and the Chilean Flamingo (red–orange).

The Chimú were also renowned for changing the colour of a bird’s feathers through a process known as tapirage, where the feathers of a live bird were

plucked, and toad’s blood and other substances were rubbed into the body.

The feathers subsequently grew back in a different colour.

The tabard was made with a central slit in the cotton backing fabric for the head to pass through and the more elaborately decorated side would probably have been worn to the front, with the simple bold yellow side to the back. Each feather was individually stitched to the undyed natural cream backing fabric, a narrow section of which is exposed across the shoulders. The motifs of eight birds morphing into four cats, and the mirror red and blue wave patterns below, demonstrate the inventive and abstract nature of many Chimú feathered items. While more stylised than those seen in the art of previous ancient Peruvian cultures, the length of their bills suggests that the images are seabirds, probably pelicans.

The influence of the sea and fishing is most evident in Chancay open-work fabric. As a coastal culture in central Peru, Chancay people survived on both ocean and

river valley fishing. Net-making practices developed into superb cotton open-weave textiles with intricate patterns. Weavers were adept at controlling the density and texture of the complex cloth produced. Although sometimes described as ‘lace’, ‘embroidery’ or ‘gauze’, the fabric is actually none of these.

Known technically as ‘open-weave’, it is created from an open network of warps and wefts. The complex patterns are constructed with pairs of warps, around which paired wefts are wrapped and then knotted to form a network of grids. The resulting textiles, used as women’s head cloths, were particular to the Chancay culture.

Incan men wore specific garments as emblems of their status. The eight-pointed star, known as a tocapus, became a symbol of the Inca ruling elite. It may have been reserved only to be used to decorate garments worn by the royal family (after whom the culture was named by the invading Spanish).

Despite these seemingly imperial overtones, the tocapus pattern was commonly used by the Chuquibaba culture who lived in the southern highlands from 1000 AD until it

was subsumed by the Inca Empire around 1470. The conquering Inca adopted and re-used the bright star design. In the red, yellow and green unku (tunic), the stars are interspersed with a design of four yellow and white llama heads. As with all garments of this type, the tunic has been woven in one piece with a selvedge slit for the head and the sides sewn up, leaving room for the arms.

While the Spanish conquistadors were attracted by the Inca’s wealth of gold and silver, the Peruvians themselves valued their textiles more than the precious metals.

When they first greeted the Europeans they presented them with a gift of cloth rather than gold. Like the ancient Peruvians, once audiences recover from the blinding brightness of the gold and silver treasures in Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru, one of the 34 remarkable and intricate textiles will most likely be the lasting memory.

(opposite) Paracas culture South coast 700 BC–200 AD Mantle with stepped pattern c 100–200 AD (detail) wool 109 x 252 cm Ministerio de Cultura del Perú: Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú, Lima photograph: Daniel Giannoni

Inca culture Centre, south and north 1400–1533 AD Unku [Tunic] with a tocapus pattern cotton and wool 110 x 50 cm Ministerio de Cultura del Perú: Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú, Lima photograph: Daniel Giannoni

Chancay culture Central coast 1200–1450 AD Open-work textile with fish design cotton 105 x 96 cm Fundación Museo Amano, Lima photograph: Daniel Giannoni

Simeran Maxwell Assistant Curator, Exhibitions The book Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru is available at the NGA Shop for $39.95 and selected bookstores nationally for $49.95.

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Unknown photographer Woman from Bogor c 1890 albumen silver photograph 20 x 25 cm Purchased 2013

In t h e s u n Import, export and home-grown photography Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s until 22 June 2014 | nga.gov.au/GardenEast

From the early 1840s reports of the new illustrative medium of ‘sun pictures’ rapidly travelled along the trade routes of Asia and the Pacific. The news was soon followed by the arrival of imported camera kits and examples of mirror-like miniature daguerreotypes on metal plates and, from 1851, of the new ‘wet-plate’ process which produced unlimited numbers of richly detailed prints on glossy paper from a single glass negative.

Access to the new services, including the much desired personal ‘likenesses’, waited on the arrival of enterprising young men advertising themselves as a ‘daguerreian artist’, ‘photographist’ and then, ‘photographer’. Their new vocation was well established worldwide by the early 1860s, but until the 1890s photographers in both Asia and Australia largely came from the colonial heartlands in Europe.

As early as December 1839, French artist Theodore Maurisset had depicted the world’s first travelling photographer as a slim, dark-suited figure with his ‘appareil pour le voyage’—a portable camera and tripod tucked under his arm. The image of the photographer at work outdoors with his dark tent (early photography had to be exposed and developed on the spot) became a staple of histories of the medium.

Relying on customers from many nations and races, needing to undertake endless

negotiations with officials as well as the coolies, and having to lug their equipment on excursions, meant that photographers in foreign lands needed to be both competent and charming. In Asia the photographers adopted a spotless white suit, the uniform of their expatriate European customers.

While daguerreotypy and the related cased ambrotype process on glass plates of the 1850s–70s were well established in Australia, examples of the many thousands of plates made in Asia, including Indonesia, are almost non-existent and can be glimpsed only in reproductions. The first and most varied widely disseminated views of Indonesia in the 1860s–80s came from the Jakarta based studio of the British photographers Woodbury & Page (Artonview 76 Summer 2013, pp. 20–22).

Like many foreign photographers the founders of Woodbury & Page returned to Europe, but others, such as the Flemish– Dutch theatrical performer, artist and photographer Isidore van Kinsbergen, lived out their lives in Java. Kinsbergen produced a popular series of elaborate still life tableaux of native types and indigenous aristocrats in the 1860s and made the first extensive record of antiquities at Borobodur in 1873.

The family of Muslim Sultan of Yogyakarta, Hamengkubuwono VI, was one of the first to be photographed in 1857 by

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Swedish adventurer photographer Cesar Düben. The Sultan sought to have a courtier trained in photography and accepted the gift of Düben’s camera in 1858, but had to wait until 1871 when his Javanese court official, Kassian Céphas, learned the process from the then official court photographer, Dutchman SW Camerik. Céphas went on to a remarkable career as a professional photographer, respected and honoured for his record of Javanese antiquities and culture. His work has an elegant calligraphic design allied with the styles of traditional Javanese art.

Other than portraits, a substantial part of the output of the foreign owned and operated photographic studios established in mid to late nineteenth-century Asia

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were views of exotic places and people, sold as souvenirs and for export. The first of these from Indonesia reached Europe and America in the late 1850s, setting stereotyped impressions of the Indies and its ancient monuments, of tropical fruits and dusky maidens that last to the present day. Another major income stream that developed for the studios were urban and pastoral images for export that had more to do with real estate and agribusiness opportunities than natural beauty.

Increasingly, resident ‘westerners’, many born in Asia, as well as affluent Indonesian, Chinese and Malay customers, comprised a domestic market sufficient to keep more studios in business and support growing numbers of locally-born photographers.

By 1900 photographic illustration was the norm in publications, and the heavy family album and portable portrait on card was a staple of domestic life.

International companies led by Kodak in America had created a worldwide industry catering both to professionals and to the huge middle class of amateur snapshooters, tourists and keen camera club members.

The camera now went everywhere and was charged with keeping memories alive. A small number of amateur and professional photographers were influenced by romantic turn-of-the-century salon style art photography. The top professional studios in Indonesia in particular followed trends in advertising overseas and supplied artistically styled illustrations for advertising and

tourist brochures. The flourishing shipping cruise lines and tourist offices of the early twentieth century happily praised the artistry of their favoured studios.

A by-product of early tourist promotions was the passion for pilgrimages to Bali by artists, writers and photographers in search of a tropical paradise, free of the political turmoil and industrialised modern life of their homelands.

No European photographer in the tropics could work without the services of local coolies and servants, many of whom became skilled technicians, but few assistants­— whether Javanese, Balinese or Sumatran— ever became known professionals. With the advent of easy commercial processing and international suppliers, Chinese and

Peranakan (Chinese–Malay) run studios emerged in the 1890s. These studios inclined more to providing portraits, but also marketed views, and often bought the negative stock of earlier European owned studios as they closed.

Japanese studios were also a significant group, with S Satake—originally a print and decorative art dealer from Yokohama— being one of the longest running, from the 1910s to 1930s. Satake travelled around in a special caravan, photographing views to which he brought the beauty of ukiyo-e prints.

As in Europe, many women worked in studios, as retouchers and processors, but only Indonesian-born Thilly Weissenborn— whose German–Dutch parents were planters

(opposite left) Isidore van Kinsbergen Javanese fruit c 1865 albumen silver photograph 15.5 x 10.7 cm Purchased 2013

(opposite right) Cesar von Düben Princesses (Java) 1857 plate from Memories from the East Indies, CE Fritzes, Stockholm, 1886 lithograph after a photograph 15.7 x 24.2 cm National Gallery Research Library

Kassian Céphas The southern gate of the kraton of the Sultan of Yogyakarta c 1890 albumen silver photograph 9.8 x 13.7 cm Purchased 2013

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—had a studio in her own right, in Garut in the resort upland area of west Java from 1917 to 1940. Like her younger Australian contemporary, Olive Cotton, Thilly’s heart was in landscape work, to which she brought a hybrid Modernist and Pictorialist art photography style of luminosity.

Weissenborn trained in the Surabaya studio founded in 1887 by Armenian immigrant Ohannes Kurkdjian, then managed by British professional Geo P Lewis who had a distinctive art photography style.

Weissenborn’s work was extensively used for tourist and shipping line publications in the 1920s–30s. Like many Dutch nationals in Indonesia, Weissenborn suffered during World War II and later lost her archive. She returned to the Netherlands in 1956.

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Two serious amateur art photographers presented in the exhibition are remarkable for their bodies of artistic documentary work. The German–Dutch doctor Gregor Krause, who worked for the Dutch colonial military and petroleum companies in Java, Bali and Borneo from the 1910s–30s, was one of the first modern documentary photographers. His studies of landscape and the apes of Borneo were inspired by his ecological concerns. His 1920s–30s books and articles on Bali inspired a later generation of European and American photographers to seek out Bali as a ‘last paradise’. The second figure is German Tassilo Adam, who came to Sumatra to work as a planter in 1899, became a photographer to aid his developing passion

for ethnography of the Batak people and spent five years photographing at the courts of the four principalities of central Java in 1923–28.

Photographers in the 1930s, such as Portugese Shanghai-based dentist and merchant Arthur de Carvalho, were almost obsessed with the Hindu culture and lifestyle of the Balinese. They used modern cameras and, for the first time, photographs could capture action and place the viewer in the scene. Many of the later photographers in this vein owe a debt to the influence of Hollywood movies and the genre of ‘ethnographic-pictorialism’, which mixed the romanticism of the non-industrialised tropics with degrees of serious ethnographic reportage. The realities of the hard labour

of children on plantations and in factories attracted no European-style documentary exposés, rather these children provided subjects for rustic peasant images.

A particular feature of Garden of the East is a selection of family albums from the 1910s–40s, many bound in distinctive Japanese or Batik patterned cloth boards, that record the colonial lifestyle (for the affluent) in the Indies. Hundreds of these once treasured narratives ended up in the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s in estate sales of former Dutch colonial and Indo (mixed race) family members who had returned or emigrated after the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia.

In presenting Garden of the East the National Gallery of Australia seeks to excite

interest in the photographers of Indonesia, to salute both their skill and contribution to the visual heritage of Asia.

(opposite) S Satake Eruption, Java c 1930 gelatin silver photograph 16.2 x 21.8 cm

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography, and curator of the exhibition

Purchased 2007

The book Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s is available at the NGA Shop for $39.95 and selected bookstores nationally for $49.95.

Gregor Krause Female orangutan with baby proboscis monkey c 1923 plate from his portfolio, Borneo, G Kolff & Co, Jakarta, 1926 photogravure 22.4 x 29.4 cm Purchased 2007

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FX H A R S O NO W RITI N G I N THE R A I N Finding your place in the world: recent acquisitions of Asian photomedia from 28 February 2014 | nga.gov.au/photospace

The artist repeatedly writes his name in Chinese characters on a pane of glass, using the traditional tools of brush and ink.

A sudden tropical downpour washes the ink away, but in the face of this seemingly disastrous setback FX Harsono steadfastly continues his task.

In the mid-1960s, in line with government policy in the early years of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, Harsono adopted an Indonesian-sounding surname out of necessity and expediency in order to continue his studies. A Chinesesounding surname was an instant barrier to employment and education—to being accepted as part of the national community.

His Chinese birth name, Oh Hong Boen, was one that he had to reclaim and learn how to write in Chinese characters. Writing in the rain is a powerful meditation on the enduring nature of identity, of the spirit, in the presence of deprivation and hardship.

Harsono’s career, spanning over 40 years, encapsulates the charged social and political change associated with Indonesia’s transition to democracy. An outspoken art student in the 1970s, Harsono was a founding member of the radical artistic collective Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (GSRB).

By the time of his graduation from the Jakarta Art Institute in 1991, he had

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established himself as a central figure in the Indonesian contemporary art world.

Ethnic Chinese people suffered brutal victimisation at the time of the May 1998 riots that accompanied the fall of Suharto as president. Harsono, Chinese-Indonesian and Catholic (FX for Francis Xavier, his baptismal names), suffered a profound personal and artistic crisis, not surprisingly questioning his role as national spokesperson for Indonesian political and cultural life.

He also questioned his place in society— belonging and not-belonging—the member of a minority that has faced repeated discrimination. Over the intervening 15 years, Harsono has adopted a more personal tone in his work, looking into and learning about his heritage. It shows a commitment to continually reassess his practice in order to reflect the cultural diversity of Indonesian society, as well as keep his work relevant to a contemporary art scene in which issues of identity often dominate.

Harsono’s work is part of a display in the Photography Gallery focusing on recent acquisitions of photomedia and video work by artists primarily from Southeast Asia and South Asia. The mediums of photography and video engage with the everyday as well as blurring the lines between what is real and what is constructed, enabling

artists to make uncompromising yet poetic statements about what concerns them.

Many look to the past—to history, to earlier works and traditional techniques—in ways that make them relevant to the present.

Other artists in the display include Melati Suryodarmo and Mella Jaarsma (Indonesia), Yee I-Lann (Malaysia), Manit Sriwanichpoom (Thailand), Gonkar Gyatso (Tibet), Dayanita Singh and Pushpamala N (India). While these artists naturally have individual perspectives and personal concerns that distinguish their work, they also share common preoccupations that reflect their place in the world today. Using the global language of contemporary practice, they address issues around the defining of identity and the complexities of staying true to tradition, including implications on a national level. The stakes are high. These artists make works that have loss, both individual and cultural, at their core; works that are testaments to the resilience and strength of the human spirit.

Anne O'Hehir Curator, Photography Lisa Catt Intern, Photography Department, 2013 FX Harsono will speak about his practice on 4 June as part of a weekend of events for this exhibition, Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s and Bali: island of the gods.

FX Harsono still from Writing in the rain 2011 single channel colour video, sound duration 6 minutes 12 seconds purchased 2013

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A RT S O F B A LI Bali: island of the gods 13 June – 3 August 2014 | nga.gov.au/Bali

The arts of the Indonesian island of Bali have captured and charmed visitors for centuries. The only large and vibrant Hindu community surviving outside India, Bali epitomises the colourful and creative impulses associated with the rich cycle of Hindu festivals, communal celebrations and daily domestic worship.

The wide range of works—sculpture, textiles, paintings, architectural elements and ritual objects—in the Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition of Balinese art will excite and surprise visitors, even those who have journeyed to the exotic island.

Balinese fabric traditions are rich and varied, readily demonstrated in the examples drawn from the National Gallery of Australia’s world famous collection of Indonesian textiles. Among the most admired are the geringsing, created only in one village in east Bali. Through double ikat, the most complex of techniques, both the warp and the weft threads are separately tied

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into the designs, which only become evident when interlaced during the weaving process.

The most striking of the handspun cotton geringsing (a term loosely translated as ‘protection from illness’) display scenes of praise and adoration akin to the bas relief stone sculptures on Hindu temples in Bali and on surviving remains from mediaeval Java. Other Balinese textiles are vibrantly coloured, with heroic figures, floral fantasies and dynamic religious symbols rendered in silk, sequins and gold and silver thread.

Painted hangings, hung in and around temples and shrines for temple and palace festivals, also draw their imagery from Hindu symbols and legends, most notably the tensions and battles in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Included in the exhibition are two fine ider-ider, narrow valances illuminating scenes from the great Hindu epics that decorate the eaves of open air pavilions: one ider-ider from the collection of the late Professor Anthony

Forge is over 17 metres long. Drawn from the Adiparwa, the first book of the Mahabharata, a recurring theme on the large squarish tabing, which hang as backdrops at temple rituals, is the creation of the universe from the Ocean of Milk as it is churned by opposing forces of gods and demons pulling on the great serpent.

The national collection includes three superb manuscripts with similar subject matter from the Mahabharata: the Adiparwa and the Smaradahana are formed from long rectangular palm leaves incised in breathtaking detail. The third comprises exquisite double-sided ink drawings on English laid paper dated 1811, the period of Raffles’ brief governorship of the Indonesian archipelago. It illustrates the Ramayana, probably the best known of the Indian epics, with scenes of the distressed Sita in captivity on Ravana’s island, the monkey general Hanuman carrying her ring back to her searching husband Rama,

Tenganan, Bali Sacred textile (geringsing wayang kebo) late 19th century handspun cotton, natural dyes, gold thread; double ikat, embroidery 54 x 212 cm Purchased 1982

Bali Page from a Ramayana Kekawin manuscript early 19th century Chinese ink on English paper, watermark J Whatman 1811 37.5 x 46.8 cm Purchased 1990

and the monkey army constructing the causeway across from India to the island to mount the successful confrontation and rescue.

The Balinese sculptures in the exhibition are brilliantly painted and range from overtly Hindu images, such as the god Vishnu mounted on his vehicle the giant Garuda bird, to ferocious guardian creatures whose destructive powers balance the benevolence of other deities to maintain cosmic order. Often composed of elements of real animals, birds and fish, such demonic creatures feature bulging eyes, menacing fangs and dangerous claws.

Drawn entirely from the Gallery’s important and diverse collection of Balinese art, the Bali: island of the Gods exhibition will be accompanied by an informative illustrated catalogue.

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

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Tahiti French Polynesia Double-headed figure early 19th century wood 59 x 43 x 20 cm The British Museum, London © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

D I V I N E E S S E NC E Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia 23 May – 3 August 2014 | nga.gov.au/Atua

Ancient Polynesia remains one of the great mysteries of human migration.

Groups of people sailing on double-hulled canoes eventually made their way out from the edges of the Western Pacific and found islands in the middle of the ocean, thousands of kilometres away.

How did they do it? Were these feats of navigation and survival pure chance, when few of the intrepid voyagers reached an island and unknown numbers died in the attempt? Or was there something more?

Polynesian people reached Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia 3000 years ago bringing with them their atua—their gods—and their art traditions, part of their cultural knowledge developed over thousands of years.

During a later period of long-distance sailing around 1200 years ago, the navigators headed further east into unknown territory.

They found the islands we know today as the Cook Islands, the Society Islands including Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands.

From the Marquesas Islands, the great Polynesian navigators of the mid-fourteenth

century found Hawaii to the north, Aotearoa New Zealand to the south, and Rapa Nui Easter Island to the east.

Oral traditions tell us that upon landing on an island, the chief’s first action was to establish a sacred enclosure so that he could provide a home for his atua, which he brought with him. These sacred enclosures eventually became the structures known as marae, heiau, or ahu, and were the point of interaction between the people, priests and the atua, often through the medium of an art object. Artists created unique objects, often figure sculpture, to house these atua, to provide them with a home and a focus.

Even on small atolls 40 or more sacred enclosures have been found. Some were for family shrines, others for larger family groupings, and at least one on each island for the national shrine—for the king or chief. Atua were part of life on every level of society, and most atua were represented by an artwork.

In hierarchical Polynesian society the aristocracy (the ariki) could trace their ancestry back to the moment when one of

their ancestors made love with a god. This divine essence gave aristocrats the authority to command the ordinary people. This authority was also essential to survive the long ocean journeys of up to 100 days.

For aristocrats to maintain their semidivine status, they needed the atua and their presence, located in art objects that became the focus of their power.

On many islands, where the people had divided into two or more opposed groups, warfare became part of life. Sometimes the cause for a war would go back many generations—perhaps a dispute between two brothers that had occurred hundreds of years earlier. To gain the advantage over an enemy, leaders would try to invoke the help of atua, and eventually this led to human sacrifice. This did not occur on every island, but on the larger islands this was the accepted ritual.

When war broke out, often the key objective of a raiding party would be to seize the atua of the enemy and carry it away in triumph. Without their atua, the people would lose the will to fight and

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Mangaia Cook Islands, Central Polynesia Tangi'ia sennit [coconut fibre], barkcloth, feathers 44 x 18.5 x 11 cm Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

(opposite left) Rarotonga Southern Cook Islands Fisherman's god (Oramatua) late 18th to early 19th century wood, black paint 33 x 15.5 x 14 cm The British Museum, London © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

(opposite right) Marquesas Islands French Polynesia Stone figure 19th century stone (volcanic) 15.1 x 19.5 x 6.3 cm Musée du quai Branly, Paris © 2013. Musée du quai Branly photograph: Hughes Dubois/Scala, Florence

would be defeated. One of the key objectives in life was to gain the help or influence of an atua, and people would go to any lengths to achieve this.

Some societies thought that Western explorers or traders visiting in ships were atua. Women in their hundreds would swim out to the ships so that they could make love with an atua—to the astonishment of the sailors. The women would climb up the anchor chains, crawl through gun ports and climb the rigging, with the beleaguered captain hard put to regain control of his ship and his men.

After that initial period of interaction with Westerners, missionaries began to arrive in ships with the aim of abolishing idolatry as they saw it—Polynesian people making sacrifices in front of art objects in sacred enclosures. The missionaries could see the link between idolatry and human sacrifice, and they coerced the kings or leaders to break with their religious practices and destroy their religious objects.

As the people began to convert to Christianity their art objects were burnt or

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smashed. Very few survived the iconoclasm that began in the late eighteenth century and continued through into the early twentieth century. Some of the missionaries, especially those belonging to the London Missionary Society, returned home with these ‘idols’ to display and raise funds for their missionary work; eventually giving them to museums.

For its new exhibition Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia, the National Gallery of Australia has negotiated loans from more than 30 museum collections around the world. The British Museum is lending unique Hawaiian god figures and the Kunstkamera in St Petersburg is lending their precious Easter Island bird man.

Museums in Zurich, Geneva, and Paris are all lending their prized Polynesian pieces.

The exhibition explores the relationship between atua and art, between spirits and sculpture, between gods and priests, between women and men. It looks at some of the most unique works of art in the Polynesian world and tries to make sense of an enduring mystery surrounding religious objects and their association with belief in gods.

Religious belief is never an easy topic to work with, for each viewer brings a perspective shaped over a lifetime of experience and cultural background. The Western belief system does not generally acknowledge the existence of spirits in wood or in stone art objects, even though we may quite happily talk about an object having a remarkable presence.

In this exhibition ‘presence’ is something the viewer may experience. It may be the thrill of standing in the presence of a real god from a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean­—a battered god, a god that has lost his arms, yet a god that can stand up today, on his four legs, looking past you into the night with his unseeing eyes, imparting a sense of stillness and peace.

The presence found in an Easter Island moai kavakava, gaunt, haunted, with glittering eyes staring into another world, a figure with an aku-aku inside him—either a wild spirit or an ancestor, something that kept him alive for more than 600 years.

Tiki figures­—from the Marquesas Islands, from Tahiti, from Hawaii and from

Aotearoa New Zealand—are a type of art object that we think we all know about, until we realise that we are familiar with the word ‘tiki’, but the art object is still a mystery. There is good evidence to indicate that the tiki concept came to Polynesia from South America, either directly to the Marquesas Islands by Polynesian navigators, who also made the return journey, or by Inca who sailed to Rapa Nui Easter Island by raft.

In developing this exhibition we have been fortunate to work with our Polynesian colleagues in Tahiti, the Cook Islands and Hawaii, helping us to understand the Polynesian viewpoint on atua and on the many subtle aspects of the relationships between atua and art objects.

Without their help we would not have been able to achieve an awareness that has enabled us to work with the presence in these objects.

Michael Gunn Senior Curator, Pacific Art The book Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia will be available at the NGA Shop for $39.95 and selected bookstores nationally for $49.95.

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Robert Neill Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land 1828 oil on board 22.7 x 29.8 cm purchased 2013 247793

Ea r ly co l on i a l Newly acquired paintings, prints and drawings

The National Gallery of Australia played a major role in the 2013 Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, Australia. As the Royal Academy Australian partner, the Gallery was instrumental in the selection of works and the writing of essays and catalogue entries.

The Gallery was the largest lender of works, providing about 100 works ranging over the 200 years represented in the exhibition.

The exhibition gave a clear indication of the Gallery’s great strengths in Indigenous art and almost all the major periods and art movements from the 1850s to the present.

It was apparent, however, that works of art from the earliest period of European settlement in Australia were not as strongly represented as other areas of the Gallery’s contribution.

The Gallery, now entering its 34th year, is ambitious to achieve its aim of creating a comprehensive collection of Australian art from all periods and all Australia; but it is the new kid on the block. Several of the cultural institutions that preceded the Gallery have had a century or more to acquire the earliest works produced in Australia. For example, the National Gallery of Victoria was founded in 1861, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1880, the Art Gallery of South Australia the following year, and the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Australia’s oldest regional gallery, in 1884.

Public libraries were even more attuned to

the acquisition of historical works and the State Library of New South Wales and the National Library of Australia were enriched by the vast collections of Sir William Dixson and Rex Nan Kivell respectively.

As a result the Gallery has always had to work hard to locate works that have remained in private collections and, through dealers and auction houses, has expeditiously acquired works as they appear on the market. Since the selection of the Australia exhibition was finalised, the Gallery has added substantially to its early colonial collection and has been able to acquire an impressive range and number of major paintings, prints, watercolours and decorative arts, which will be presented in future exhibitions.

The most modest of the items is a delightful image of a Coola (koala) and its young. John Lewin, the colony’s first professional artist, made the drawing for this work in New South Wales in 1803. He belonged to a family of natural history artists and learnt the skills of close observation of his specimens, which he combined with a keen sense of composition.

The unknown engraver for this work, published in The animal kingdom in 1828, has treated the original drawing with great respect, achieving an animated rendering in the difficult medium of copperplate engraving. It is in its engraved form, which

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was widely circulated and copied, that Lewin’s drawing became the iconic image of the koala. The Gallery was also fortunate in acquiring another iconic image by Lewin—a watercolour of a male and female kangaroo depicted on the Liverpool Plains.

The artist produced this popular image in a number of slightly different versions in watercolour as well as an oil painting, probably in 1819. In England it formed the basis for engravings. Even after Australian flora and fauna were well established in England (and France)—kangaroos adapted well to the English climate and were kept in the parks of many stately homes—these iconic images remained in circulation.

The painting An emu, a Cape Barren goose and a magpie goose, in a landscape 1820 is by

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the English painter Henry Bernard Chalon (1770–1849), who was appointed animal painter to Frederica, Duchess of York, in 1795, and later held the same title under the Prince Regent and King William IV. The work was painted from life, the birds being part of the Tower of London’s Royal Menagerie. This zoo, populated by gifts to the crown of rare animals, existed since the eleventh century. In the eighteenth century it was opened to the public and in 1835 the animals were moved to the London Zoo in Regent Park. Given the artist’s title and the subject of the work, it is not inconceivable that this painting was commissioned, or painted, in anticipation of Royal patronage.

The Indigenous people of Australia were a major preoccupation of artists and

writers in the early nineteenth century and the letters of the missionary Samuel Leigh (1785–1852) to the brethren of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in London are typical of this. He reported on Aboriginal Australians in some detail, his observations moving from flights of fancy to detailed descriptions and his letters contained illustrations by convict artist Richard Browne (1776–1824).

Like Leigh’s text, Browne’s drawings are a strange mix of fact and fantasy. As an artist he was probably untrained; he was more likely to have been a limner—an artisan more used to painting inn signs and coach decorations than fine art. Still his depictions have a disarming honesty and are regarded as some of the most important depictions of the Aboriginal people in the Sydney

region during the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie.

Robert Neill migrated to Tasmania with his wife, children and parents in 1820. His father ran a printing business in Edinburgh, and in his youth Robert was a keen student of natural history. He drew the local Aboriginal people and sent descriptions and specimens of Tasmanian flora and fauna back to Great Britain. His painting Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land 1828 depicts a group of Aboriginal people, both men and women, gathered around a harvest of seafood. Neill’s skill in scientific observation and powers of picture making are evident in this, the colony’s first oil painting of Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

Algernon Burdett Jones, police magistrate

and coroner, owned the painting when it was exhibited in Hobart alongside works by John Glover in 1851.

Neill’s painting is important as a foundation work in the portrayal of Tasmanian Aboriginal people in the Gallery collection. Others include Glover’s oil painting Mount Wellington and Hobart Town from Kangaroo Point 1834, and the two paintings by Benjamin Duterrau, Native taking a kangaroo 1837, and Mr Robinson’s first interview with Timmy 1840. The Gallery also has three watercolour portraits of Aboriginal people dated 1852.

Duterrau is best known for his portraits of Tasmanian Aboriginal people and the mystique surrounding his ‘National’ picture, which represented European conciliation

(opposite) Henry Bernard Chalon An emu, a Cape Barren goose and a magpie goose, in a landscape 1820 oil on canvas 24 x 45 cm purchased 2013

John Lewin Kangaroos on the Liverpool Plains c 1819 watercolour on paper 28.3 x 38.8 cm purchased 2013

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(opposite) Benjamin Duterrau Portrait of a gentleman 1819 oil paint on canvas 91.2 x 72.1 cm purchased 2013

John A Gilfillan Andrew Bridges Murray 1848 pencil, watercolour and gum arabic on card 22.9 x 19.1 cm purchased 2013

with the local Aboriginal population.

Much of his work was more prosaic, however, comprising portraits of the local gentry and their children. Indeed he had already exhibited examples of this genre at the Royal Academy before migrating to Tasmania aged 65 years. Duterrau was not a natural painter. He was trained in the workshop of his father, Perigal & Duterrau (Watchmakers to the King), respected clockmakers and silversmiths, where he picked up the trade of engraver when not frequenting the then fashionable coffee houses. The lack of professional training as a painter gives his works a clumsy and naive, yet genuinely authentic, charm. Portrait of a gentleman 1819 was probably painted in London while An infant 1840 was produced in Van Diemen’s Land. After the artist’s

death both works ended up in England, where they were purchased at auction from descendants of the artist.

Portraiture was the bread and butter of many colonial artists and John Alexander Gilfillan (1793–1864) was no exception.

Turning to art later in life, Gilfillan trained in Scotland where, in 1830, he was elected professor of drawing and painting at Anderson’s University, Glasgow.

An adventurous youth, he remained a restless soul. A resident in New Zealand in the 1840s, he specialised in portraits and subjects relating to the Maori people.

After the violent death of his wife and children he travelled to Sydney and then South Australia where, in 1848, he painted the gentle watercolour portrait of his brother-in-law Andrew Bridges Murray,

the government printer and editor of the South Australian newspaper. A few years later he moved again, lured by the Victorian gold rush. In Melbourne he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Victoria.

Like Duterrau, he was an advocate for the value of art in society; both gave public lectures to their colonial audiences.

Appreciation of colonial artists and their work is in its infancy, and there is only a handful of scholarly publications relating to Australian art produced before 1850. As the Gallery’s collection of such works continues to expand, the opportunities to examine this period in greater detail will increase, as will the enjoyment of work by these artists.

Roger Butler Senior Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

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M as t e r p i e c e s fo r the N ati on F UN D 2014 Benjamin Duterrau An infant of Van Diemen’s Land Contribute to the acquisition of Benjamin Duterrau’s lively yet quirky oil portrait of an infant in Tasmania. For further information or to make your tax‑deductible donation, call (02) 6240 6454 or fill out and return the donation form in the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2014 brochure.

This robust Australian child with sweet, rosy cheeks sits on the ground playing with a cup and ball toy in a Tasmanian setting.

She is dressed in a white late Regency-style dress, made of muslin, and a bonnet, apt clothing for the Australian summer. She has been seated firmly on a bright red rug with a cloth background. She smiles, has alert blue eyes, and seems to be happily posing for this painting, which has little of the conventional sentimentality of many child images. Benjamin Duterrau has focused on her face, with her body compressed towards the bottom of the canvas, and the forms simplified.

The infant is depicted looking intently at a little bird (possibly a juvenile Flame Robin or a Tasmanian Thornbill) on the branch of a tree, an endearing companion to the girl. Nearby there is a cool expanse of water.

Beside her, on the ground, are self-conscious additions of distinctly Tasmanian plants—a white flag iris (the upper blue flower), Australian bluebells (below), spiny-headed mat rush or sedge and a white paper daisy.

Above her, there are the leaves and yellow flowers of a wattle tree. In this way the artist made sure that his subject was recognisably ‘an infant of Van Diemen’s Land’. It is probable that the artist painted the outdoor background detail after he had depicted the child, whom he would have portrayed while seated indoors.

Duterrau is best known for his portraits of Tasmanian Aborigines and images of Australian history. He was born in London in 1768, where he was apprenticed to an engraver, and exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy and the British Institute between 1817 and 1823. In August 1832,

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at the late age of 65, he arrived in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) as a free settler, accompanied by his only daughter, Sarah Jane. He settled in Hobart, where he worked as a portrait painter and contributed to Hobart’s cultural life by lecturing at the Mechanics’ Institute on fine arts and its importance to the artistic development of the colony. His best known painting, The conciliation 1840 (TMAG, Hobart), was the first Australian historical composition, an idealised depiction of George Augustus Robinson’s ill-conceived conciliation with the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. He had a somewhat robust naive painting style, a tendency to simplify forms, but a sharp eye for detail, which he used to render his subjects with a sense of bold colonial freshness, without any flattery.

Duterrau died in Hobart in 1851, aged 84.

Among Duterrau’s images of early Tasmanian men and women settlers are a small group of portraits of children. This 1840 painting, An infant of Van Diemen’s land, has come from the artist’s family, by direct descent, which suggests that it was either a portrait of a child who had some personal relevance to Duterrau, or was perhaps a portrait that remained in his studio after the family who had commissioned it rejected it. This was not unusual for commissioned portraits, including those by celebrated artists as diverse as Titian, Rembrandt, Degas and Australia’s own George W Lambert.

Alternatively, it might be a memorable ‘sample portrait’, to show possible clients what the artist was capable of producing.

In July 1833, before he painted this work, the Hobart Town Courier reported Duterrau

as saying that ‘art and science have but little chance of being promoted in Van Diemen’s Land, owing to the infancy of the colony— an infancy that some may wish would last for ever … How different are the true friends of infancy, who watch the growing strength and are ready to help with ardent zeal in every laudable pursuit that may lead to dignified character’.

Certainly, the painting suggests Tasmania to be a safe and bountiful natural playground and her inhabitants to be healthy and free to play—in bare feet—perhaps more than they might have done back in England.

The painting has recently been cleaned by the Gallery’s painting conservation department after over 100 years of accumulated surface grime, probably as a result of smoke from household hearth fires.

This gave the child quite a suntan. However, following the Gallery’s cleaning, the infant’s features are more evident, and she is now shown to have delicate pinkish flesh. The cleaning has also emphasised Duterrau’s love of primary colours, which contributes to the charm of this painting.

This delightful and naive painting is one of only about 25 oil paintings that have survived and can be firmly ascribed to Duterrau. He is also known to have created a small group of watercolours, etchings and relief sculptures in Tasmania. This painting strengthens our already strong Tasmanian colonial collection. An infant of Van Diemen’s Land is a memorable portrait of Australian childhood and speaks to us clearly, even after 175 years.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art

Benjamin Duterrau An infant of Van Diemen’s Land 1840 oil on canvas 69.8 x 57.8 cm

T he pa i n t i ng , t he p ri n t and the tankard

A recently acquired decorated silver half‑pint tankard is an unusual example of mid nineteenth-century Australian decorative arts aligning with painting of the period. Its repoussé decoration is based on English artist Harden S Melville’s well-known oil painting The squatter’s hut: news from home 1850–51, which has been in the national art collection since 1964. The image was popularised

by George Baxter’s 1853 intaglio relief engraving Australia. News from home, two copies of which are also in the national art collection.

The painting, the print and the tankard depict three squatters in a rough wood

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slab and bark hut, relaxing after the day’s labour by reading mail from home, Britain.

They are watched from the hut door by two Aboriginal men. The semi-reclining man is reading a copy of The Illustrated London News, open at a page with an illustration of London’s Great Exhibition building of 1851. It suggests that for the squatters, who are carving out a new life in a distant part of the British Empire, such reports of the modernity of the pavilion, in contrast to their hut, and the exhibition’s influential and extravagant displays of material from around the globe might have brought a sense of connectedness to their pioneering efforts.

The tankard itself is a typical example of the style of British George II silver from 1748, with later decoration to suit the tastes of a different period. This was a common practice among early Australian silversmiths who were born and trained in Britain. They often brought stocks of existing eighteenth-century silver to suit the demands and tastes of their new clientele in Australia. The stock items were then modified, engraved or decorated, or made and engraved to order, often as commemorative or presentation items.

This was such a work and bears the style and techniques of the prominent Melbourne silversmith William Edwards,

who was born in London in 1819 and arrived in Australia around 1857.

Its illustrative narrative after a highly popular and widely distributed print and its overall florid decoration contrast with its plain and sturdy form by London silversmith William Williams. Indeed, the tankard represents the changing and eclectic tastes in metalwork by Australian makers of the 1850–60 period. The work is engraved in a cartouche, flanked by a kangaroo and an emu, with the inscription ‘RJH A birthday present 1856’, indicating that it was commissioned in Australia as a birthday gift for the donors’ great-greatgrandfather John Houlding in Liverpool.

Houlding’s descendants emigrated to Australia in the 1950s. Among them was June Gardner-Brown. She acquired the tankard from her brother, who had inherited it through family who had emigrated to Kenya.

Mrs Gardner-Brown’s family has donated this work to the Gallery in her memory.

This object is an early and important part of the national art collection of post-1850 silver works by William Edwards and other Australian silversmiths and creates an unusual link to one of the most well-known paintings of the period in the collection.

Robert Bell AM Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Harden S Melville The squatter’s hut: news from home 1850–51 oil on canvas 87.8 x 102.1 cm purchased 1964

George Baxter Australia. News from home 1853 'Baxter' print 11 x 14.9 cm The National Gallery of Australia Oscar Paul Collection, gift of Henriette von Dallwitz and of Richard Paul in honour of his father, 1965

William Williams (silversmith) William Edwards (silversmith and decorator) Tankard 1748–1856 sterling silver 12.4 x 13 x 10.2 cm gift of Susie Gardner-Brown and Jo and Peter Pagan in memory of Elizabeth Gardner-Brown, 2013 100 Works for 100 Years

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Richard Browne Seven watercolours 1821, in Reverend Samuel Leigh, letters to Wesleyan Missionary Society, London, 1821, watercolour, pen and ink, sheets 35 x 25 cm, gift of the Uniting Church in Australia, 2013 248693

The life of convict artist Richard Browne endures in fragments. Newspaper clippings, notes scrawled in books and dormant curls of microform reveal a partial biography.

A series of watercolours newly acquired for the national art collection illuminates the life of this artist and his role as a seminal image-maker in nineteenth-century Australia.

Transported from Dublin to Port Jackson in 1811, Browne undertook several artistic commissions during his sentence but became best known for stock portraits of Aboriginal people which he sold as souvenirs in Sydney on his release. A similar series of watercolour drawings illustrates a

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folio of letters composed by the Reverend Samuel Leigh in 1821 to London-based brethren of the Wesleyan Missionary Society.

Browne’s inelegant portraits of local Aboriginal people were censured by art historian Bernard Smith, who described them as ‘grotesque caricatures’ in his renowned volume European vision and the South Pacific. Robert Hughes was more circumspect in The Fatal Shore, suggesting Browne’s apparent prejudice reflected the desperate need of a convict to believe in a social class inferior to his own.

Others surmise that Browne’s portraits reflect the principles of phrenology, an eighteenth century pseudoscience that

related cranial forms to predisposed behaviours. This latter link is tenuous given phrenology gained currency among the European middle-class only after 1815, but it evidences the culturally encumbered nature of these otherwise modest images.

It is difficult to assert that prejudice alone compelled Browne to paint his pictures as he did. The artist’s extant artwork fluctuates wildly in delicacy and detail, and despite the period vogue for silhouette pictures, Browne’s watercolours are stubbornly twodimensional. Unable to execute standard technical lessons including perspective,

Browne’s portraits are perhaps those of a competent yet essentially untrained artist.

Image and text together attest to the troubled relations between Aboriginal people and Europeans in the early nineteenth century. Leigh’s pious prose rests uneasily beside Browne’s subjects, who smile inscrutably from grey paper sheets.

Whatever his perceived shortcomings, Browne’s interest in ethnographic detail indicates Aboriginal customs were firmly entrenched and largely resistant to the teachings of Methodist missionaries like Samuel Leigh. Only a year after having assured his London brethren of the Mission’s success, the 1822 Report of the

Wesleyan Missionary Society of the New South Wales conceded, ‘the Mission to the Aborigines continues to wear an aspect not the most promising … Extensively good effects are probably remote’.

Elspeth Pitt Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

(left to right) Portrait of a female to give a more perfect idea of their features Burgon (commonly called Long Jack) A native of New South Wales A woman known as Pussy-Cat or Humpy Mary Weapons, including four different types of spear, the hootia or fish-gig, the nulla nulla and the wamareen A New Zealander 249035, 249037, 249039, 249040, 249041, 249042

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Jean Baptiste Apuatimi and Greg Orsto Tiwi people Tutini 2011, natural earth pigments on iron wood, 220 x 38 x 36 cm, purchased 2013

Tutini was painted by extraordinary elder and Tiwi artist Jean Baptiste Apuatimi before she passed away in early 2013 and carved by her son-in-law Greg Orsto.

Apuatimi began painting in 1997 and is well known for her striking geometric designs, often featuring her clan designs, on canvas and sculptures. Orsto was tutored by Apuatimi’s late husband and pioneer Tiwi sculptor Declan Apuatimi, which is evident in the similarity of carving style. The work depicts the Pukumani ceremony, which tells how death came to the Tiwi people.

Legend tells that, in a time before death, the ancestor Purukupali went hunting, leaving behind his wife Bima and infant son Jinani. While Purukupali is away, his brother Tapara seduces Bima. Enthralled, she leaves Jinani under the shade of a tree and makes off with her lover. Sadly, on returning, Bima finds her son dead in the sun. Purukupali is enraged, hitting his wife and chasing her into the forest, where she turns into a curlew to forever wail for her dead son. His brother pleads with him, saying that he can bring Jinani back, but Purukupali does not believe it. They fight, wounding each other badly. Purukupali takes his son’s body into the sea. Grieving, he declares that death shall come to the world.

The figures of Bima at the base, Tapara in the centre and Purukuparli on top all face the same direction, with their arms, faces and backs showing traditional Tiwi body designs. Tutini is a remarkable final work by a much-loved artist that truly represents the excellence of Tiwi art.

Tina Baum Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

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John Brack Study for ‘Men’s wear’ 1953, pencil on paper, 39.2 x 49.2 cm, gift of Helen Brack, 2013, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program © Helen Brack

This preparatory study for John Brack’s major painting Men’s wear 1953 forms part of a generous gift of drawings donated by his wife, Helen. Offering rare insight into his artistic practice, it underscores his comment to art critic Elwyn Lynn, in her book Contemporary drawing, that ‘drawing controls the idea, guides the subsequent composition and heightens the intensity’.

Eschewing the prevailing modernist style, Brack meticulously transformed his experiences of social routines into stylised vignettes that reveal the tensions underlying contemporary life in Australia. His dour tailor and relentlessly smiling mannequins symbolise customers’ aspirations for authority and respectability, with the placement of these figures based on the geometry of Georges Seurat’s allegorical painting La parade 1887. After transferring his composition to canvas, Brack continued to make adjustments before blocking in colours using a homemade batch of fast-drying Maroger medium. He then meticulously outlined the simplified contours with a fine sable brush—a technique he developed to balance painting with drawing.

The oil painting, acquired by the Gallery in 1982, was included in Brack’s first solo exhibition in 1953. It reflects his disciplined and intellectual approach to art and contains many of his key motifs, including a focus on commonplace objects, a paredback linear technique and the use of the mirror as a device to emphasise contrasts and contradictions.

Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

John Brack Men’s wear 1953 oil on canvas 81 x 114 cm purchased 1982 © Helen Brack IRN 86648

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William Robinson Twin Falls and gorge 2000, oil on canvas, 137 x 183 cm, Ray and Diana Kidd Gift Fund, 2013, 100 Works for 100 Years 222805

William Robinson emerged as a major force in Australian art in the late twentieth century and is recognised as one of Australia’s most significant landscape artists.

His contribution resides primarily in his distinctive response to the Queensland environment, including lush rainforests and coastal locations. Robinson is known for his expansive and complex envisioning of the natural world, inspired by experiences within particular landscapes.

Twin Falls and gorge highlights his experience of the mountainous rainforest

36 ARTONVIEW | ACQUISITION

landscape around Springbrook in Queensland, where he had a studio in the 1990s. Robinson conceived the rainforest from multiple viewpoints, taking into account time–space relationships and shifts of light and shadow. The painting simultaneously grasps what is above and below, close up and in the distance.

The richly modulated textures and perspectives are drawn from Robinson’s memories of time spent absorbing the intimate and fluctuating aspects of the environment; clouds suspended in a blue

sky, the Twin Falls, tussocks, bright yellow blooms, the tips of the tall forest and the bases of large trees are all seen at once.

As Robinson noted in a 2001 interview: ‘Living in the country everything moves— the seasons, the clouds, nothing is set.

There are things behind you, all around you and you are in it … We don’t really have an orientation in this infinity … you can be a time-traveller in your mind in a painting’.

Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture post 1920

Buleleng north Bali, Indonesia Two figures of Wilmana 19th century, jackfruit wood, pigments, 50 x 63 x 22 cm; 46 x 51 x 19 cm, purchased 2014

Three-dimensional sculptures in stone and wood, depicting deities and characters from Hindu mythology in human form and with features drawn from real and mythical creatures, appear prominently throughout Bali. Brightly painted wooden figures are created as architectural elements for temples or royal pavilions. Like this pair, many are ferocious demonic beasts intended to ward off danger and keep evil spirits at bay. In contrast to images of refined Hindu deities, heroic figures, royal personages and priests, demonic identities and figures associated with black magic can be readily identified by their conspicuous fangs, bulbous nose with flaring nostrils, menacing claws or talons, and bulging rather than elegantly almond-shaped eyes. Similar ‘rough’

physiognomy is also applied to heroic bold characters in Hindu legend, such as the bird-man Garuda, the mount or vehicle of the great god Vishnu.

These demonic winged creatures­— fabulous composites of feline, bird and human characteristics—appear to depict Wilmana, the vehicle of Ravana the demonic ruler of Lanka, who holds captive Sita the wife of Rama in the popular Balinese versions of the Ramayana epic.

Following a local variant on the Indian epic, in Balinese imagery it is on his winged mount Wilmana, rather than in a chariot, that the evil Ravana kidnaps the virtuous Sita. And while some versions of Wilmana closely mirror Garuda with feathery tail and bird-like beak, others take a more human

form, though always with widespread wings and grotesque head. Many images of Wilmana depict him grasping a blade and the demons’ clasped fists suggest that each figure once held a threatening weapon.

While their brilliant red torsos and the rich blue highlights on their wings are typical of sculpture created for temple and palace in north Bali, it is not clear whether these figures of Wilmana served as demonic guardians like the ferocious winged lions that are conspicuously placed on the roof beams of major pavilions to protect the festivities taking place below.

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

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Kamasan Bali, Indonesia The temptation of Arjuna [Arjuna Wiwaha]; shrine hanging [langse] 19th century, painting on cloth, 73 x 237.5 cm, purchased 2013

38 ARTONVIEW | ACQUISITION

This fine early Balinese shrine hanging was created in Kamasan, a cultural centre in south Bali connected historically with the royal court of Gelgel. There this style of painting developed, including the twodimensional portrayal of figurative subject matter now associated largely with flat leather wayang puppets. Kamasan style still remains the preferred genre for narrative hangings in Bali’s Hindu temples and shrines. As is common with rare nineteenthcentury examples, the identity of the artist is not recorded.

Painted hangings of this size and format are known as langse, used as curtains or screens around the offering platforms of

Balinese temples. Like many such banners it depicts an episode from the Balinese version of the Mahabharata, the great Hindu epic which narrates the antagonism and final war between the Pandawa brothers and their Korawa relatives. Entitled Arjuna Wiwaha the popular legend was composed by the Javanese court poet Mpu Kanwa in 1035. It illustrates the ascetism and marriage of Arjuna, the most prominent and popular of the Pandawa brothers throughout Bali and Java.

In finely drawn yet superbly animated detail, the scenes on the viewer’s left centre on Arjuna’s mountaintop meditation at a time when the gods are being threatened

by powerful demons. With Arjuna’s help, the demons­— one disguised as a great boar—are ultimately defeated in the battles depicted on the right-hand side of the painting. Arjuna is rewarded with seven months in Indra’s heaven where he marries the seven nymphs who are shown on the left in various amorous scenes trying to tempt him out of his ascetic trance. The figures are carefully developed, and range from the great gods and Pandawa noblemen with their comically rendered servants, to flirtatious nymphs, an aggressive Garuda bird and a wonderfully striped boar.

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

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Stephanie Burn and Jennifer Coombs at Big Draw, 27 October 2013

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Participants of the Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Program with Aden Ridgeway and Gallery staff, 20 November 2013

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Aden Ridgeway speaks to participants

Gold and the Incas Family Activity Room 8

Playing dress-ups in the family room, 26 November 2013

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Children weave with alpaca wool

Gold and the Incas official opening

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11 Jane Hylton views the precious gold artefacts

Members opening of Gold and the Incas 12 Members enjoy exclusive viewing of the exhibition, 6 December 2013 13 Joanne Daly, Louise Adena, Mathew Baletick and Diane Morris

10 Philip and Mary Constable and Peter Hack at the launch, 5 December 2013

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Members news

Gold and the Incas

Members Acquisition Fund 2013–14

Over the summer months members and their guests enjoyed some wonderful events associated with the Gallery’s major exhibition Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru. The exhibition continues until 21 April.

The Members Acquisition Fund 2013–14 continues and we would like to thank those members who have already contributed to the acquisition of Hilda Rix Nicholas’ Three Sisters, Blue Mountains 1921–22. This dramatic oil painting by one of Australia’s most important early twentieth century women artists will become a significant addition to the national art collection.

There are more than 200 objects on display, including exquisite gold pieces, jewellery, sculptural objects, ceramics and elaborate textiles. If you have yet to see these works showcasing the splendour of the ancient pre-Hispanic cultures of Peru, we encourage you to book now.

Toyshop If you are visiting the Gallery with young children don’t miss the children’s gallery exhibition Toyshop, where you will see toys in a wide variety of artistic styles and mediums, and from various cultures. Not just for children, Toyshop will tug at your own childhood memories. The exhibition is open until 6 April.

Traditional Peruvian dancers perform at the Pisco Sour Evening, 1 February

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Pisco Sour Evening Adorned in gold and silk, members and their guests enjoyed a private exhibition viewing of Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru before celebrating the origins of Pisco with traditional Peruvian dancing and Pisco Sour cocktails. The members were delighted to have the Second Secretary from the Peruvian Embassy, Daniel Reategui, join them to discuss the cultural significance of Pisco.

As a member, you can play your part in the life of the National Gallery of Australia and enjoy the many benefits this brings to you and to the community. To become a member, visit nga.gov. au/Members or free call 1800 020 068.

Jenny Bibo and Jane Weatherbey at the Pisco Sour event

News from the Foundation

Foundation Fundraising Gala Dinner and Weekend 2014 On Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 March, the National Gallery of Australia Foundation will host its annual Fundraising Gala Dinner and Weekend. Since 2008, this has been a highlight of Australia’s philanthropic calendar and attracted supporters from all over Australia who have generously contributed towards the acquisition of seven major works of art. This year, the weekend will include an exclusive viewing of Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru followed by dinner in Gandel Hall, curator-led tours of special exhibitions and collection displays, and brunch hosted by Peruvian Ambassador His Excellency Mr Luis Quesada Inchaustegui. To take part in the weekend and support the National Gallery of Australia, contact Liz Wilson on (02) 6240 6691.

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2014 The Masterpieces for the Nation Fund has assisted with the acquisition of 11 significant works of art since it was established in 2003. The fund is open to all donors at all giving levels and provides

Generous supporters enjoy the Foundation Fundraising Gala Dinner and Weekend, 16 March 2013

the opportunity to impact positively on the Gallery’s ability to acquire masterpieces for the national art collection. The fund has attracted continuous and regular support from many generous donors across Australia and the world. We are very pleased to announce that the work of art chosen for this year’s fund is a nineteenth century portrait by Benjamin Duterrau An infant of Van Diemen’s Land 1840 (see page 28).

Bequest Circle The Bequest Circle is a way to actively recognise and celebrate supporters who have made a bequest in support of the Gallery.

For more information on the Bequest Circle, contact Liz Wilson on (02) 6240 6691 or liz.wilson@nga.gov.au.

The support of donors to the fundraising initiatives of the Foundation is greatly appreciated. To get involved, contact us on (02) 6240 6691 or foundation@nga.gov.au.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce AC CVO pays tribute to Jeffrey Smart, 29 November 2013

ARTONVIEW 43

Thank you ‌ Exhibitions, programs and acquisitions at the National Gallery of Australia are realised through the generous support of our partners and donors. The National Gallery of Australia would like to thank the following organisations and people:

Grants Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne The Gordon Darling Foundation

Donations Includes donations received from 19 October 2013 to 20 January 2014 Lenore Adamson Donna Bush

Gifts of works of art Ellen Waugh Terry Farquhar Claudia Hyles Ron Radford AM Jason Brown Uniting Church in Australia Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print Fund Brian Blanchflower Helen Brack Daniel Mudie Cunningham Malcolm Forbes Rod Hamilton Mary Page Helen Maudsley Joan Murday Olga Sankey Normana Wight John (Chip) Gordon-Kirkby

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100 Works for 100 Years SERVICE ONE Members Banking

Honorary Exhibition Circle Patrons Harold Mitchell Foundation The Pratt Foundation

National Gallery of Australia Foundation Board Publishing Fund Julian Beaumont Ray Wilson OAM

Members Acquisition Fund 2013–14 Meredith Adams DL Allen Debbie and Fraser Argue Lachlan Astle and Neil Matthews Margaret Aston Judith Avery Professor Jeff Bennett and Ngaire Bennett Judith Bibo David Biddles and Suzanne Biddles Bob Blacklow William Book and Margaret Smythe Charles Bowden Stephen Box and Deirdre Box

Neil Branch Margaret Brennan and Geoffrey Brennan Anthony Briscoe and Judith Briscoe Ron Burns and Gail Burns Dr Berenice-Eve Calf Debbie Cameron Deb Carroll Margaret Chinnery Dr Ian Clark and Dr Margaret Clark David Craddock Merrilyn Crawford Mary Curtis Commander Andrew Dale and Barbara Dale Henry Dalrymple Peter Deighan Peter di Sciascio Cecily Dignan Susan Dimitriadis Jan Dorrington Charles Douglas and Bronwen Douglas Peter Dugard and Lindy Dugard Rosemary Dupont Anthony Eastaway Dr Murray Elliott AO and Gillian Elliott P Flanagan and C Flanagan

Lynn Fletcher and Wayne Fletcher Dr Peter Fullagar and Helen Topor Roy Garwood Maryan Godson and Richard Godson Shirley Gollings and Ian Gollings Sybil Griffiths Peter Grove Sheryl Hansen Dr Frank Harvey and Dr Pat Harvey Katrina Higgins Colin Hill and Linda Hill Meredith Hinchliffe Bernard Hughson Jane Huglin Ron Huisken and Mie Ling Huisken Clare Humphreys J Hurlston and C Hurlstone Gordon Hutchinson Marianne Ilbery Lucie Jacobs Helen Kelleher and Jack Kelleher Margaret Kellond Arthur Kenyon and Helen Kenyon Robert and Mem Kirby Foundation Angus Kirkwood Ruth Kovacic Vera Krizaic

Robyn Lance Christopher Lee Faye Anita Lee Darrel Lord and Cindy Lord Elaine Faye Luhrs and Ronald Luhrs Paul Mattiuzzo and Deborah Mattiuzzo Wendy May Douglas John and Fleur McAlister Diana McCarthy Beverly Molvig and John Truls Molvig Ross Monk and Beth Monk John Moten and Anne Moten Janet Moyle Frances Muecke Dr Angus M Muir Neil C Mulveney Bronwyn Myrtle and John Myrtle Marie Oakes Robert Oser and Agie Oser Leone Lambourne Paget Elaine Paton AO Gary Victor Patterson Robert Pauling Karen R Peedo D Pippen and J Egerton Anne Prins

Michael Proud Wendy Rainbird Lyn Riddett Paul Robilliard and Hanan Robilliard Alan Rose and Helen Rose Peter Rossiter and Linda Rossiter Raoul Salpeter and Roslyn Mandelberg Mark Sampson and Ruth Sampson Robin Schall Claire Elizabeth Scott Judity Shelley and Michael Shelley Rosamond C H Shepherd Elizabeth J Smith Ric Smith and Jan Smith Roman Spano-Francia Marcia Standish David Stanley and Anne Stanley John Stead Robyn Stone Charles Stuart and Gay Stuart Susan Sutton Robert Swift and Lynette Swift Jacqueline Thomsen OAM Helen Todd Dr Shirley Troy Niek Van Vucht and Jenny Van Vucht

Morna Vellacott Donald Charles Ward Karenza Warren Wendy Webb Barbara White and Brian White Ian Wilkey and Hannah Wilkey Muriel Wilkinson Andrew Williamson

Masterpieces for the Nation 2013 Shannon Cuthbertson Robert Pauling Mary Riek Noel C Tovey

Treasure a Textile Maxine Rochester The Foundation also thanks those donors who wish to remain anonymous.

ARTONVIEW 45

Creative partnerships

The National Gallery of Australia is committed to strong creative partnerships and is grateful for the continued support of its sponsors and partners.

PromPeru, a new supporter of the National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia welcomes the generous support of PromPeru for the 2013–14 summer exhibition, Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru. PromPeru is the national tourist office of Peru and the Gallery greatly values its assistance in helping to make this exhibition an exciting and instructive experience.

Visitors to the exhibition also have the chance to win a 12-day trip for two adults to Peru with Chimu Adventures, valued at $25,000.

Peru is a strikingly diverse country with modern cities and exotic landscapes, a rich heritage and culture, and a history spanning more than 5000 years­—including the iconic fifteenth-century Inca site, Machu Picchu.

All exhibition ticket holders to Gold and the Incas are eligible to enter the draw—kiosks are located at the exhibition exit.

Machu Picchu, showing stone architecture and mountains Photograph: Simon Tong Photography

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Fine art movement with the National Gallery of Australia’s Official Freight Partner The National Gallery of Australia is especially appreciative of the ongoing assistance of Qantas Freight. For the exhibition Gold and the Incas Qantas Freight has flown more than 200 objects made of gold, silver, precious stones, textiles and ceramics from Peru to Canberra.

With the support of Qantas Freight the Gallery has mounted numerous ambitious exhibitions in Australia—in recent years Renaissance in 2010–11, Toulouse-Lautrec in 2012–13 and Gold and the Incas in 2013–14.

Focused on providing excellence in air freight services, Qantas Freight is Australia’s largest independent air freight services business, with a proven track record dating back to 1922.

If you are interested in creating ties with the Australian community through the arts, contact Nicole Short, +61 2 6240 6781 or nicole.short@nga.gov.au or Claire Carmichael, +61 2 6240 6740 or claire.carmichael@nga.gov.au

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Experience ‘Gold and the Incas’ at the National Gallery of Australia, only showing in Canberra.

This must-see event is the most important survey of Peruvian art ever staged in Australia. See the splendour of the ancient cultures of Peru and experience the drama and beauty of the famous Incan empire and its predecessors.

SICÁN-LAMBAYEQUE culture. North coast 750–1375 AD. Tumi [Sacrifical knife] gold, silver, chrysocolla, turquiose, lapis lazuli, spondylus; 27.5 x 10.3 cm. Museo Oro del Perú, Lima © Photograph Daniel Giannoni

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Joan Ross, “Darling what else shall we spray?”, from the video “Touching other people’s shopping” 2013 Courtesy Michael Reid Gallery

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australia’s great bark artists

The National Museum of Australia holds the largest collection of bark paintings in the world. Don’t miss the chance to see specially selected barks on display in this stunning exhibition, which celebrates the genius of Australia’s master bark artists.

ONLY ON SHOW AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA, CANBERRA, UNTIL 20 JULY 2014 Purchase your tickets online at nma.gov.au/oldmasters

Free general entry. Open 9 am – 5 pm daily (closed Christmas Day). Acton Peninsula, Canberra. Freecall 1800 026 132 nma.gov.au The National Museum of Australia is an Australian Government Agency. Image: Yirawala, Totemic Crocodile, 1965, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Art collection, National Museum of Australia. © the artist or the artist’s estate, licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency 2013. The image must not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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art monthly 265 NOVEMBER 2013

AUSTRALIA

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important aboriginal art auction melbourne • 26 march 2014 with preview exhibitions in sydney and melbourne

Emily KamE KngwarrEyE AlAlgurA I, 1990 SOLD • November 2013 for $144,000 (including buyer’s premium)

call for entries important fine art melbourne • april 2014 please contact: melbourne • 03 9865 6333 sydney • 02 9287 0600 info@deutscherandhackett.com www.deutscherandhackett.com

gracE cossington smith StiLL Life with BOrONia, 1955 SOLD • april 2013 for $162,000 (including buyer’s premium)

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Garden of the East Bali: island of the gods Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia

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