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National Gallery of Australia
Our spirit flies further Introducing Qantas Dreamliner
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[1]‘Daily Rituals’ with Alyssa McClelland. Shot in Creative room 105 by Lee Grant.
Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me Carlos Fuentes
[2]‘Borrow Tomorrow’ exhibition by Luke Chiswell at the Nishi Gallery. With Michael Lenaghan shot at Lake George by Arnad Hajdic.
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[2]Ken Neale at Monster kitchen and bar with ‘Golden Man’ made by H.J. Huwman. Shot by Ross Honeysett.
When travelling this winter, don’t forget to pack your NGA membership card, and spread the word …
‘A membership to the National Gallery offers benefits at your local state galleries, as well as at the MCA and MAAS in Sydney.’
(02) 6240 6528 or nga.gov.au/members Arthur Streeton Ariadne 1895 (detail), oil on wood panel Members Acquisition Fund 2016–17 Donate online at nga.gov.au/giving
ISSUE 90 WINTER 2017 Contributors Tina Baum, Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Kelli Cole, Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Emma Kindred, Curator, Nineteenth-Century Australian Art Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator, Photography Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax, Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings Frances Wild, Learning Programs Coordinator Guest contributors Simon Elliott, Deputy Director, QAGoMA Matthew Franklin, ANU medical student John Thomson, Co-Founder and Director, Foxy Production, New York City Advertising enquiries artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au Enquiries artonview.editor@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/artonview © National Galley of Australia PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au
Published quarterly. Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Every effort has been made to identify copyright holders but omissions may occur. Views expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the NGA. Artonview may contain names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. ISSN 1323-4552 Designed by Kristin Thomas Printed by CanPrint, Canberra, on FSC and PEFC certified paper using vegetable-based inks FSC-C017269 | PEFC/21-31-41
Cover: Yhonnie Scarce (Kokatha & Nukunu peoples) Thunder Raining Poison 2015 (detail), glass, wire, metal armature. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016. This acquisition has been supported by Susan Armitage in recognition of the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum Left: AES+F Inverso mundus 2015 (detail), HD-video installation. AES+F | ARS New York. Courtesy the artists, MAMM, Anna Schwartz Gallery and Triumph Gallery
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CONTENTS 5
DIRECTOR’S WORD Gerard Vaughan
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COMING SOON Barnett Newman, Russian centenary, David Hockney, Arthur Streeton, Diane Arbus, Indigenous Australia
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EXHIBITION LISTING
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COLLECTION DISPLAYS ALBERT NAMATJIRA Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax and Kelli Cole highlight the late Gordon Darling’s passion for Albert Namatjira’s watercolours
AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONISM Emma Kindred explores some of the great figures and works of Australian Impressionism that will be part of a new collection display at the NGA
22 CURRENT MAJOR EXHIBITION DEFYING EMPIRE Tina Baum expands on the work of the thirty Indigenous Australian artists she has chosen for the NGA’s Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial and Kelli Cole highlights the latest iteration of NGA Play
34 COMING MAJOR EXHIBITION HYPER REAL Discover seven artists from the NGA’s upcoming major exhibition Hyper Real
40 EXHIBITION MEXICAN MODERNISM Shaune Lakin discusses Australian Grant Mudford’s photographs of Mexico, currently on display at the NGA with other great modernist visions of the country
44 AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE NGA MARK HILTON John Thomson profiles Australian artist Mark Hilton, whose opportunity to experience New York is thanks to the AusArt Fellowship offered by the American Friends of the NGA
46 DONOR JAMES ERSKINE Simon Elliott interviews philanthropist James Erskine, a gallerist, passionate art collector and pioneer of sports marketing in Australia
50 PARTNERSHIP ARTMED Frances Wild interviews Professor Walter Abhayaratna and Ian Thompson about the NGA’s ongoing Artmed program and its impact on the medical profession, and Matthew Franklin shares his experience of the program
54 NEW ACQUISITIONS Philip Wolfhagen, Judith Wright, Mortimer Menpes, Kathleen Sauerbier
58 NGA LIFE 60 SPONSORSHIP AND DONATIONS
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DIRECTOR'S WORD
DIRECTOR’S WORD Gerard Vaughan
Hardly a week has passed since we opened our third National Indigenous
from major exhibitions at the London National Gallery and the relatively
Art Triennial, Defying Empire, on 26 May. And, of course, the day after
new National Gallery of Singapore), including works by luminaries such
marked the fiftieth anniversary of the historic ‘Yes’ vote in the 1967
as Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts. A newly acquired
Referendum. One is cause for celebration, the other for reflection. It is
and very rare painting by Charles Douglas Richardson, ‘The last of the
astonishing to consider that it was only fifty years ago that our first
flock’, an incident in Australia 1882, will join Streeton’s Golden summer,
people were formally included as Australian citizens.
Eaglemont 1889, Roberts’s The sculptor’s studio 1885 and many others to
It took us one hundred and eighty odd years of violence,
present to audiences at the NGA one of the nation’s most admired art
displacement, loss of culture and overt racism to stand up and say
movements. And, with any luck, the installation will include a special
‘Yes’ to recognising our Indigenous peoples among Australia’s official
surprise. This in-depth display of the national collection of Australian
population figures (before which they were not counted at all) and
Impressionism will be a major event in itself, and we anticipate it will
to amending the constitution to allow the Commonwealth to create
draw visitors from all over Australia. Our newly appointed Curator of
laws for Indigenous peoples nationwide. Previously, laws pertaining to
Nineteenth-Century Art, Emma Kindred tells the story on pages 16–21.
Aboriginal people varied greatly from state to state, with varying and
Shortly after, in our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander galleries,
uneven outcomes. After the referendum, there was a positive atmosphere
we will be expanding our Hermannsburg display to celebrate the legacy
suggesting that things were about to change. However, it still took
of early to mid twentieth-century Aboriginal watercolourist Albert
another twenty-five years before we saw another major step forward with
Namatjira through a representative selection of his extensive oeuvre
the historic Mabo decision of 1992.
and the work of his successors and contemporaries. The display will
We all know how difficult the road to reconciliation and mutual
acknowledge the late Gordon Darling’s, and Marilyn Darling’s, enduring
respect has been, and Indigenous issues may already seem distant or
efforts to highlight the importance of Namatjira, not only by collecting
even confronting for many of us, but we have an obligation as a nation
the artist in depth and gifting works to the nation over the years but
to turn our attention to them. We can’t let another fifty years pass before
also by instigating projects aimed at deepening our understanding of
we again say, ‘Yes’. And this time we need to say, ‘Yes, we recognise you,
this seminal Indigenous Australian artist. The NGA’s touring exhibition
and you have our attention’. Artists such as those who have been selected
Seeing the Centre: the art of Albert Namatjira 1902–1959 was the result of
for this year’s National Indigenous Art Triennial by our curator Tina
one such project. Following Gordon’s passing, a substantial additional
Baum, a proud Larrakia, Wardaman and Karajarri woman from northern
gift of thirty‑one superb examples of Namatjira’s work was made, plus
Australia, have given voice to matters that are important to Aboriginal
an exceptional cash bequest to enable the NGA to continue buying the
and Torres Strait Islander people, matters that should also be important
work of Namatjira and the Hermannsburg School. We are all deeply
to us all. So this winter at the NGA let’s celebrate the impressive
grateful for this magnificent, continuing gift to the nation. Sarina
achievements of our Indigenous artists by taking the time to find out
Noordhuis-Fairfax and Kelli Cole explore this remarkable story further
and understand what they have to tell us. This is the largest survey yet
on pages 10–15.
of Indigenous art at the NGA. Let’s make it the most attended as well,
Also in this issue, we highlight seven of the artists whose works are
as we discover the continued excellence and deeply interesting range of
in our upcoming major exhibition Hyper Real. From the work of the
Indigenous practice today and reflect on how art can help all Australians
earliest practitioners of Hyperrealism to their contemporary successors,
understand our history and move forward.
this exhibition will bring the human body into sharp focus and present
The NGA has committed to developing a new Reconciliation Action
a future reality we have yet to discover. We also explore the real effects of
Plan to deepen our already strong engagement with Indigenous issues,
our Artmed program in discussion with ACT Health’s Ian Thompson
particularly with regard to professional development through our annual
and Professor Walter Abhayaratna and through the firsthand account of
Indigenous Arts Fellowship and Leadership program so generously and
a medical student’s experience of the program. And we learn more about
enthusiastically supported by Wesfarmers Arts. Once again, I would like
one of the NGA’s most significant donors, James Erskine, in an interview
to thank Wesfarmers Arts for their continued support of our full range of
with our former assistant director Simon Elliott (now Deputy Director
Indigenous programs, including the triennial.
of QAGoMA).
In the coming weeks, our Australian art displays will be renewed to highlight our masterpieces of Australian Impressionism (many returning
The NGA’s winter season is full of surprises and special displays. We look forward to seeing you here.
Opposite: Philip Wolfhagen A litany of vapours 2007 (detail), oil and beeswax on linen. Purchased with the assistance of the Foundation Gala Dinner Fund, 2017
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COMING SOON AT THE NGA
BARNETT NEWMAN LOAN
RUSSIAN CENTENARY
Last year, Barnett Newman’s Yellow painting 1949 returned to its
From 19 August 2017
permanent home at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The painting had been on loan to the NGA in Canberra since 2014, filling a gap in our otherwise strong collection of work by New York School abstract artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Now the NGA has secured a long-term loan, from the Barnett Newman Foundation in New York, Broken obelisk 1967/2005, which is already on its way to Canberra and will soon be installed near the entrance of the building. The largest and most significant of his rare sculptural works (he produced only six during his career), Broken obelisk was first conceived in 1963, the same year Martin Luther King delivered his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech while facing the Washington Monument from the Lincoln Memorial. As the Washington Monument encapsulates ideals of permanence, liberty and national pride, Newman’s Broken obelisk speaks volumes. Widely regarded as one of the greatest American sculptures, it may be familiar to readers who have visited the Rothko
To mark the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the NGA will draw on its significant collection of Russian avant-garde art to mount a small display that acknowledges the importance one of the twentieth century’s most artistically ambitious and politically contentious eras. The NGA holds the only collection of Russian avant-garde art in an Australian public gallery. Dating from the first three decades of the twentieth century, this collection includes works made by Russia’s leading artistic figures before and during the Revolution. In addition, the NGA holds over one hundred and fifty rare prints and illustrated books—many of which have never before been on public display—as well as photographs, film, sculpture, theatre pieces and decorative arts. The small selection of works on show at the NGA from the end of August includes some of the most interesting and provocative pieces from this tumultuous period in Russian history to be found in any public gallery Australia‑wide.
Chapel in Houston, where another version stands.
Barnett Newman Broken obelisk 1967/2005, corten steel. On loan from Storm King Art Center, Mountainville
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COMING SOON
Natalia Goncharova Peasants dancing 1910–11 (detail), oil on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1991
DAVID HOCKNEY: A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
STREETON’S ART OF WAR
10 November 2017 to 27 May 2018
15 December 2017 to 29 April 2018
David Hockney has been an important figure on the international art
An important survey exhibition of Arthur Streeton’s war art will open
scene for half a century, and he has been among the most experimental
at the NGA in December, bringing together key works from collections
in terms of embracing new art forms and technologies. While his recent
here and overseas. Streeton’s contribution to the Australian war effort
show in Melbourne focused solely on his iPad drawings, the NGA’s
was significant. He served with the Royal Army Medical Corps at the
upcoming exhibition David Hockney: a different point of view, in Canberra
Third London General Hospital in Wandsworth from 1915 to 1917
from 10 November, will explore the broader history of his printmaking
before leaving for the Western Front as an official war artist in May 1918.
practice through key works from our extensive collection, one of the largest in the world. Printmaking formed a critical path in Hockney’s overall artistic
His wartime output includes images of war machinery stranded in the landscape and scenes of operations headquarters, dressing stations and field hospitals. Streeton visited regions in France where the
development, and it is an art form in which he excels, in which he is
Australian army had been successful against the Germans, including
freer, more experimental and less inhibited in his approach to creating
Mont St Quentin, overlooking the Somme. The National Gallery of
art. The medium has often provided him with a different point of view,
Australia has recently acquired a deftly painted watercolour of this
particularly when other forms of his art, notably painting, were in a
strategically significant area, presented as a gift to Sir John Monash,
stylistic and iconographic cul-de-sac. This free exhibition will illuminate
one of the war’s outstanding commanders.
his great experiments in printmaking over the decades, which have expanded the possibilities of the medium as we understand it today.
David Hockney, Tyler Workshop Ltd, Bedford Village, New York, 1978. Photo: Lindsay Green. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Kenneth Tyler, 2002
Arthur Streeton Balloons on fire 1918 (detail), oil on canvas. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Gilbee Bequest, 1918
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COMING SOON Around Australia and overseas
DIANE ARBUS: AMERICAN PORTRAITS
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA: MASTERWORKS FROM
7 July to 20 August 2017 @ Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery
THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA
The NGA’s exhibition Diane Arbus: American portraits, enthusiastically received by audiences in Canberra in 2016, will begin its tour of Australia at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery on 7 July. It showcases works by American photographer Diane Arbus in the national collection as well as select works by her contemporaries, including some of the photographers who helped shape her photographic vision—all of whom sought to redefine the tradition of photographic portraiture and whose visions of America remain as challenging and moving as they were when first created. Like Arbus, the other photographers in this exhibition were keen, singular observers of the world, transforming the sometimes banal and ugly into images of unexpected beauty. Arbus, however, remains the focus and the star of the exhibition. Once seen, her powerful allegories of postwar America are rarely forgotten.
16 November 2017 to 2 April 2018 @ me Collectors Room, Berlin This spring, the NGA in Canberra will share with audiences in Europe some of its finest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, the largest collection in the world. Indigenous Australia, a new exhibition organised by the NGA and drawn exclusively from Australia’s national collection, will open at me Collectors Room in Berlin in November. It will showcase the very best work produced from the late 1800s through to today, presenting the long and dynamic trajectory of Indigenous art practice since colonisation. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art has taken many forms and is rightly celebrated not just in Australia but also globally as a significant contemporary movement, a major expression of Australian culture. Identity, community, Country, race relations, oppression and subjugation are all handled with intelligence and a powerful self-determination, reflecting deep roots and strong visions for the future.
Diane Arbus: American portraits, installed at the NGA, Canberra, June 2016.
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COMING SOON
Jonathan Jones (Wiradjuri & Kamilaroi peoples) revolution 2010–11, powder-coated steel, fluorescent tubes and fittings, electrical component. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Jonathan Jones, 2013. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
EXHIBITION LISTING AT THE NGA
TOURING EXHIBITIONS
DEFYING EMPIRE: 3RD NATIONAL INDIGENOUS ART TRIENNIAL
DIANE ARBUS: AMERICAN PORTRAITS
A major survey of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art through the work of thirty of today’s leading, mid-career and emerging artists. 26 May to 10 September 2017 Free
Exploring the raw edges of American life through the celebrated work of Diane Arbus and others. 7 July to 20 August 2017 @ Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery Free
RODEL TAPAYA: NEW ART FROM THE PHILIPPINES
SILVER AND GOLD: UNIQUE AUSTRALIAN OBJECTS 1850–1910
Exciting new talent Rodel Tapaya draws inspiration from Filipino folklore and contemporary events. 18 March to 20 August 2017 Free
Works from the NGA’s significant collection of colonial Australian decorative arts and design. 4 February to 25 June 2017 @ Western Australian Museum—Kalgoorlie-Boulder 21 July to 27 August 2017 @ Murray Bridge Regional Gallery Free
PIPILOTTI RIST: WORRY WILL VANISH REVELATION Experience the visceral, colour-saturated universe of this installation by acclaimed video artist Pipilotti Rist. 11 March to 20 August 2017 Free
FRANK STELLA: SAVING ABSTRACTION Visually powerful works by Frank Stella and master printer Kenneth Tyler. 19 November 2016 to 22 October 2017 Free
MEXICAN MODERNISM Modernist photographs inspired by the social and architectural milieu of Mexico. 14 April to 26 November 2017 Free
HYPER REAL From the work of the earliest Hyperrealists to their contemporary successors, this exhibition brings the human body into sharp focus. 20 October 2017 to 18 February 2018 Adult $25.00 | Children 16 and under free Concession $22.50 | Member $20.00 Audio guide hire $7 Book now at ticketek.com or 1300 795 012
DAVID HOCKNEY: A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW Explore the history of David Hockney’s printmaking practice through key works from the NGA’s representative collection. 10 November 2017 to 27 May 2018 Free
ABSTRACTION: CELEBRATING AUSTRALIAN WOMEN ABSTRACT ARTISTS A visually exhilarating exhibition revealing the contribution Australian women have made to abstract art. 21 May to 23 July 2017 @ Newcastle Art Gallery 15 September to 24 November 2017 @ Cairns Regional Gallery Free
RESOLUTION: NEW INDIGENOUS PHOTOMEDIA Contemporary photomedia by some of today’s leading and emerging Indigenous Australian artists. 9 June to 13 August 2017 @ Araluen Art Centre 26 August to 29 October 2017 @ Shepparton Art Museum Free
MAX AND OLIVE: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC LIFE OF OLIVE COTTON AND MAX DUPAIN The exceptional partnership between photographers Olive Cotton and Max Dupain. 12 May to 9 July 2017 @ Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Free
LIGHT MOVES: CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN VIDEO ART A selection of video art since its early days in the 1960s to now. 29 June to 27 August 2017 @ Mildura Arts Centre Free ARTONVIEW 90 WINTER 2017
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ALBERT NAMATJIRA
C O L L E C T I O N D I S P L AY
Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax and Kelli Cole delve into the late Gordon Darling’s love of the work of pioneering twentieth-century Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira, whose watercolours will be on display at the NGA from 15 July alongside the work of other Hermannsburg artists influenced by his legacy.
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A bruised ridge of hills. A scrub-mottled plain. White tree trunks
introduced to watercolour painting by Rex Battarbee, a non-Aboriginal
branching against a wash of sky. On the 23 August 1993, L Gordon
artist who was travelling though desert country with his friend John
Darling AC, CMG, acquired his first landscape watercolour by Albert
Gardner in 1932. At the time, Namatjira was working as a cameleer and
Namatjira. Two days later, he bought another. It was the beginning of
offered to accompany Battarbee on later painting trips in exchange for
an obsession that would lead to long-overdue critical recognition of
lessons. On their subsequent two-month expedition, Battarbee instructed
the legacy of the Arrarnta artist. From the beginning, Gordon admired
Namatjira in watercolour while Namatjira taught the older artist about
Namatjira’s confident technique. The artist’s adoption of a European-
his homeland. Battarbee was surprised at Namatjira’s aptitude, and the
style watercolour method offered audiences a familiar entry point
two stayed in touch through Pastor Albrecht, who ran the mission.
into unfamiliar country. But these luminous landscapes also expressed Namatjira’s deep connection with the Western Arrarnta Country for
his own at the Royal Society of Arts Gallery in Adelaide. The following
which he was a traditional custodian.
year, Namatjira had his first solo exhibition in Melbourne, and every
Namatjira made a remarkable contribution to both Australian art and
painting sold. Soon, private collectors and state and national galleries
Aboriginal art, being the first person to link ancient art with a European
all sought a painting by the artist. However, Namatjira’s success was
form. His personal relationship to ancestral land and cultural knowledge
eventually thwarted by the prejudices of an era in which Aboriginal
had been passed down over generations through song and ceremony, and
people were not recognised as citizens of the Commonwealth.
his connection to Country was embodied in his watercolours, many of
The restrictions and prohibitions on his attempts to build a life for
which depict his parents’ countries. His father’s ancestral lands spanned
himself within the pastoral industry and the accumulated injustices
the area around Mount Sonder (the sleeping pregnant lady) to Glen
he was subject to led to a chain of tragic events that ended in his
Helen Gorge in the MacDonnell Ranges. Further to the west lay his
untimely death in 1959.
mother’s Country, seen in his paintings of the red cabbage palms of Palm Valley, an ancient oasis echoing Central Australia’s tropical history. Art was an integral part of Namatjira’s life. Growing up on the Finke
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In 1937, Battarbee exhibited three of Namatjira’s paintings alongside
Gordon Darling knew this poignant story of Namatjira’s rise and fall, but it was his friend Dr Robert (Bob) Edwards, then head of Art Exhibitions Australia and one of the first Indigenous rock-art specialists,
River Mission at Hermannsburg (Ntaria), he began with pokerwork,
who gave him the idea of collecting the artist’s watercolours. Namatjira
burning flora and fauna and Christian motifs onto boomerangs,
had never been fully recognised, he told Gordon, and ‘there was no
spear-throwers and mulga-wood plaques sold to tourists. He was then
substantial collection in any public collection in Australia to preserve his
ALBERT NAMATJIRA
work for future study’. He felt that, if Gordon were to collect Namatjira’s art, it would be a unique collection that would appreciate the value of the artist’s work and highlight the importance of the Hermannsburg School. Recently recalling this early conversation, and in the light of Namatjira’s subsequent recognition in Australian art, Dr Edwards stated, ‘Posterity would always look to Gordon and the role he took in making Pages 10–11: Albert Namatjira (Arrarnta people) Mount Giles, MacDonnell Ranges, Central Australia 1945–58 (detail), watercolour Opposite: Haasts Bluff Range c 1948, watercolour Above: Ghost gum c 1948 watercolour Page 14: Illara Creek, Western James Range c 1945, watercolour
it possible’. Many watercolours were being offered at auction at the time, with Namatjira thought to have painted around two thousand works. In his Melbourne office, Gordon’s colleagues began flagging landscapes by Namatjira in the latest auction catalogues. Gordon’s wife Marilyn recollected how ‘his eyes would glint’ at the sight of post-it notes sticking out of the pages. Gordon initially bought ‘classic’
Page 15: Mount Sonder, MacDonnell Ranges c 1945–53, watercolour
Namatjira compositions: gum trees in a landscape. But, as he began
All works from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Gordon and Marilyn Darling. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
kangaroos through to the mature landscapes of the 1950s. ‘He just
collecting, he expanded his search to include early paintings of fleeing really grew to love them’, Marilyn says, ‘he started to become really interested in the big‑tree single gums … and then works that had water ARTONVIEW 90 WINTER 2017
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ALBERT NAMATJIRA
in them, which weren’t very many, and then rock faces. So I guess
Former NGA director Ron Radford was aware of Gordon’s long-term
we were looking to make sure we covered most of the categories of
plans to place his collection with a significant institution, and they
Namatjira’s work’.
discussed the idea of gifting a selection of watercolours to the NGA
In 1995, the couple shared a memorable stopover in Alice Springs
to celebrate its twenty‑fifth anniversary in 2008. These works formed
en route to Darwin, where Gordon was to open the exhibition Rainbow,
an integral component of the newly opened Indigenous galleries at
sugarbag and moon at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern
the NGA in 2010. Named in honour of the Darlings, to acknowledge
Territory. This was the first time they had visited the region, and
their long‑term philanthropic support, the immensely popular
the Araluen Centre’s curator Alison French had arranged to show
Gordon and Marilyn Darling Gallery of Hermannsburg Painting,
them Western Arrarnta works from the collection. Among these was
which Gordon always described as ‘a little jewel box’, says Marilyn,
Namatjira’s watercolour of Simpsons Gap, which was given greater
recognises Namatjira’s enormous contribution to twentieth-century
context after French treated them to a picnic at the site. This experience
Australian art. And soon, for a limited time, the adjacent gallery will show a
of the land and light gave a profound depth to Gordon’s understanding
representative selection of Namatjira’s lifetime of work alongside the legacy
of Namatjira’s art and, while he continued to collect watercolours, he also
he left behind in the generations of Hermannsburg artists that followed.
expanded his ideas toward supporting critical reappraisal of the artist. Recognising that the centenary of Namatjira’s birth was approaching,
In his later years, Gordon’s failing eyesight prevented him from seeing the detail of Namatjira’s delicate watercolours, and he relied
the Gordon Darling Foundation initiated The Albert Namatjira
on his prodigious memory to keep certain images in his mind’s eye.
Centenary Research Project with the aim of producing a publication
He spent his last three months in a care facility, requesting that six of his
and national touring exhibition that would reassess the art of this
favourite works accompany him to his suite, including one Namatjira
significant Australian. From 2000 to 2001, French was the Gordon
watercolour, Mount Giles, MacDonnell Ranges, Central Australia 1945–58.
Darling Author Fellow at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the
This wise, kind and generous man spent his final hours in the company
Australian National University. Her research resulted in the NGA’s highly
of another extraordinary visionary.
successful touring exhibition Seeing the Centre: the art of Albert Namatjira
The NGA is deeply grateful to Gordon and Marilyn Darling
1902–1959, accompanied by a generously illustrated scholarly catalogue.
for a further gift of another thirty-one Namatjira works, carefully
Seeing the Centre opened at Araluen in July 2002, with many of the
acquired since the original gift in 2008. In addition, under the terms
Hermannsburg artists and families in attendance.
of Gordon’s will, a substantial cash bequest will allow the NGA to
Despite being ‘tremendously attached’ to the watercolours, says Marilyn, Gordon was always ‘collecting to give them away’.
continue collecting works by Albert Namatjira and other artists of the Hermannsburg School.
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C O L L E C T I O N D I S P L AY
Emma Kindred explores some of the great figures and works of Australian Impressionism that will be part of a new collection display at the NGA in July, heralding the return of Arthur Streeton’s Golden summer, Eaglemont from the National Gallery, London, and the acquisition of a rare painting by Tom Roberts’s friend and colleague Charles Douglas Richardson, better known to us as a sculptor. All of the NGA’s major Australian Impressionist works will be hung together, offering an unprecedented opportunity to experience the depth and richness of the national collection.
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AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONISM
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At the close of the nineteenth century, London was the largest city in
within a contemporary artist’s studio. The device alerts us to the role of
the world and Australian artists such as Tom Roberts, Charles Douglas
the artist as maker and craftsman and to the legacy of academic training.
Richardson and Arthur Streeton continued to be drawn ‘home’ to the
provided Roberts with opportunities for immersion within a vital artistic
the National Gallery School in Melbourne during the 1880s sought to
community. His formal education was supplemented with sessions from
establish themselves in the artistic hubs of London and Paris, travelling
two masters of portraiture, John Everett Millais and George Frederick
with ambitions to advance their skills, gaining access to both recent
Watts, while his enthusiasm for the work of American James Abbott
developments in art and the bounty of European collections. The return
McNeill Whistler and the French plein-air painters was encouraged by
of artists such as Roberts from London and E Phillips Fox from Paris
exhibitions in the early 1880s. At the Royal Academy, he saw the work of
heralded significant periods of change within their artistic circles in
the naturalist painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, whose tonal realism and rural
Australia, influencing both their students and their peers.
subjects would greatly influenced his approach to landscape painting
From 1881 to 1885, Roberts undertook study at the Royal Academy Schools in London and travelled through parts of Europe, enjoying the
following his return to Melbourne. Roberts shared a studio with Richardson, and later with sculptor
brilliant sun and Moorish architecture of Andalusia for three months in
Bertram Mackennal, at 10 James Street in Haymarket. Richardson
1883. One of his earliest surviving canvases, The sculptor’s studio 1885 was
painted ‘The last of the flock’, an incident in Australia 1882 while also
painted at the end of his time in London. The model for the sculptor
studying at the Royal Academy. This is a new acquisition and will be
was friend and fellow student Harry Bates. One of the Academy School’s
on display for the first time. The subject pre-empts the elevation of
most celebrated students of the period, Bates received a gold medal
Australia’s sheep industry and pastoral life in nationalist works painted
and £200 travelling scholarship in 1883 for a small plaster version of a
by Roberts, Streeton and Frederick McCubbin over the following
bas‑relief sculpture, Socrates teaching the people in the Agora.
decades. As a young man, Richardson formed close associations
In The sculptor’s studio, Roberts positions Bates at work on a larger
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The central London location of the Royal Academy Schools
centre of the British Empire. A succession of artists who had trained at
with these artists, taking classes at the National Gallery School with
version of the relief. The textural modelling of the paint surface and
Roberts and McCubbin, with whom he successfully petitioned
restrained palette build upon a pattern established in his Spanish works
for the establishment of life-drawing classes at the school. In 1881,
such as Basking—a corner of the Alhambra 1883. Drawing on the Victorian
in common with Roberts, he travelled to London and enrolled in the
appetite for Greek and Roman subjects, Roberts sets the classical frieze
Royal Academy’s six-year course.
AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONISM
‘In Australia, Roberts, Conder and Streeton pursued a fashionably bohemian lifestyle of artists’ camps and sketching tours. Their aim was to engage the purity of the bush and pastoral districts, working within landscapes seemingly untainted by the encroaching modernity of developing cities.’ ‘The last of the flock’, the title drawn from a 1789 poem by English Romantic William Wordsworth, evokes the hardships endured by early settlers working in the Australian pastoral industry. The sheep farmer is presented as an ennobled figure strikingly silhouetted against the silvery mist of early morning. A shot dingo lies dead at his feet, observed carefully by a faithful collie. Crows descend on the slain sheep, while a single lamb turns his head to the farmer, bleating. The subject was well established in the European canon, and in 1880 the National Gallery of Victoria purchased Anguish c 1878 by Danish artist August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck. Acquired before his departure for England, Richardson would certainly have known this painting of a ewe standing protectively over the dead body of her lamb, surrounded by a threatening circle of black crows. On returning to Melbourne, Richardson exhibited three ‘important pictures’ at the 1889 Winter exhibition of the Victorian Artists Society to represent his eight years abroad. While a review in the weekly society paper Table Talk on 10 May noted a ‘strong interest’ in these Pages 16–17: Charles Conder Herrick’s blossoms c 1888 (detail), oil on cardboard. Purchased 1969
allegorical works, it was hoped he would ‘now turn his attention to a thoroughly Australian subject’. Yet the allegorical persisted. A number
Opposite: Tom Roberts The sculptor’s studio 1885, oil on canvas. Purchased 1972
of his landscape studies painted in and around Melbourne were
Above: Charles Douglas Richardson ‘The last of the flock’, an incident in Australia 1882, oil on canvas. Purchased 2016
wax reliefs such as Wind 1889. The following year, he exhibited the
All works in this feature are from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
included in the 9 by 5 impression exhibition alongside his bronze and celebrated bronze statuette The cloud 1890, the allegorical subject of which references Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem of the same name, which begins, ‘I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers / From the seas ARTONVIEW 90 WINTER 2017
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and the streams’. Employing a sinuous Art Nouveau line, the woman’s form curves over an upturned pitcher, pouring water over the ‘thirsting flowers’ at her feet. While Richardson, like Mackennal, explored allegorical figures in the pure space of sculpture, Conder and Streeton located them within recognisably Australian landscapes. Conder’s Hot wind 1889, completed in the same year he exhibited his celebrated ‘9 by 5’ impressions such as Herrick’s blossoms c 1888 and Riddells Creek 1889, is the most important of his allegorical compositions. It evokes the intense, bright light and searing heat of an Australian summer in drought. The bleached, shimmering tonality of the foreground and passages of parched cliff face announce the Antipodean location. In Streeton’s Ariadne 1895, a coastal landscape bathed in pure white sunshine is divided by a ribbon of brilliant blue. The calligraphic sway of trees frame the figure, with shadows reaching across the sand, suggesting a landscape in sympathy with the classical Greek narrative of forsaken love to which the title alludes. (The NGA is currently seeking donations toward the acquisition of Ariadne through its Members Acquisition Fund.) In Australia, Roberts, Conder and Streeton pursued a fashionably bohemian lifestyle of artists’ camps and sketching tours. Their aim was to engage the purity of the bush and pastoral districts, working within landscapes seemingly untainted by the encroaching modernity of developing cities. Roberts’s A Sunday afternoon picnic at Box Hill and Boat on a beach, Queenscliff, both painted around 1887, represent an escape from the modernising world and emphasise the importance placed on working outdoors to capture truth in nature. Boat on a beach presents a quiet, unaffected scene of a woman perched on the edge of a blue couta wedged above the reach of high tide. Horizontal bands of sand and the scrubby grass-covered hill lead our eye toward a pattern of wooden fencing rails and thicket of ti-trees. Streeton’s ‘Above us the great grave sky’ 1890 was painted during the last of two summers spent in the company of Roberts and Conder at Eaglemont, near Heidelberg. This twilight
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AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONISM
view looks across the valley and the Yarra River winding its way from
she shared a studio at Grosvenor Chambers on Collins Street where
the distant Dandenong Ranges. Two figures, reclining in the grass,
Roberts worked following his return to Australia. She joined McCubbin
contemplate the rising moon.
and Roberts on painting trips to Box Hill in 1886, producing quiet
It was also at Eaglemont that Streeton completed one of his most
atmospheric scenes of rural life. In A cabbage garden 1896, her palette
celebrated Impressionist landscapes, Golden summer, Eaglemont 1889.
has become bolder and the wind wisps that curl across the sky echo
When exhibited at the Victorian Artists Society’s Winter exhibition of
the harvest of these leafy rosettes in vibrant blue, green and violet.
1889, the Table Talk reviewer on 10 May applauded his ‘sense of colour’,
The painting reflects the influence of Jean-Francois Millet via the work
continuing, ‘He paints summer effects as if he loved the country, and had
of Fox, who also had a studio at Grosvenor Chambers. While painted
set himself to idealise even the most commonplace scenery’. In response
in Melbourne, the white bonnet of Sutherland’s female worker recalls
to the earlier studio viewing, the Table Talk reviewer on 26 April
Millet’s French peasants and, perhaps more directly, the work references
proclaimed it ‘an excellent illustration of the scenery around Heidelberg;
Fox’s 1889 painting of a cabbage field punctuated by the black and white
a long undulating plain, which, lying in all the glory of a warm sunny
of Breton women.
afternoon, appears as a stretch of golden meadow land, while in the
In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the development of
distance the purple shadows are fast creeping over the hills, and lurking
Australian art was played out both within Australia and in the artistic
in little patches among the hollows of the ground’.
centres of Britain and Europe. For those artists who began their careers
While Streeton was encouraged by the response, there was for artists
in Melbourne, whether they journeyed abroad or remained at home, the
of his generation a belief that success would be measured in Europe—
layered influences of Impressionism, Naturalism and Aestheticism saw
and the Royal Academy and Paris Salon remained the most significant
close attention paid to modern life. In a period that also witnessed the
markers of that success. Having already ‘hung on the line’ at the Royal
growth of nationalism in Australia, leading up to Federation in 1901,
Academy, Golden summer received a ‘mention honourable’ at the Paris
these layers were also bound to a distinctly Australian response to the
Salon in 1892. Five years later, at the age of twenty-nine, Streeton left
landscape. Alongside quieter notes of the allegorical and decorative,
Sydney for London with the aim of establishing himself in the artistic
history was declared in the present.
capital of the British Empire. Not all artists of the National Gallery School would venture abroad. Jane Sutherland, like her friend McCubbin, established her artistic practice in Melbourne and was actively involved in the Victorian Artists Society’s governing body and the male-dominated Buonarotti Club. One of the first professionally trained women artists in Australia,
Opposite, from top: Arthur Streeton ‘Above us the great grave sky’ 1890, oil on canvas. Purchased 1978; Charles Conder Hot wind 1889, oil on board. Sarah and Baillieu Myer Family Foundation, 2006 Above: Arthur Streeton Golden summer, Eaglemont 1889, oil on canvas. Purchased 1995
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DEFYING EMPIRE
C U R R E N T M A J O R E X H I B I T I O N
Tina Baum extracts from her introductory essay in the Defying Empire catalogue an overview of the thirty Indigenous Australian artists she has chosen for the highly anticipated third National Indigenous Art Triennial currently showing at the NGA.
ARTONVIEW 90 WINTER 2017
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The third National Indigenous Art Triennial, Defying Empire, marks the ongoing resistance and defiance by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people against colonisation and the British Empire from first contact until today. Responding to the theme of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum, one of the few times the nation came together in support of Indigenous people, the thirty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists featured in the exhibition commemorate this significant event through powerful that explore the ongoing effects of this complex colonial history along with issues relating to memory, identity, culture, politics, family and connections to Country. As Hetti Perkins says in series two of the ABC’s Art + soul, ‘Our art is a commemoration of our history, but it is also a celebration of our survival, and it is the legacy which we will, in turn, pass on to our children’. … Senior artisan Lola Greeno has transformed the long-held tradition of shell making to create personalised designs and patterns inspired by her maternal Elders. She uses the surrounding environment like a cultural palette of colours and materials to give energy and spirit to her contemporary works, while reinforcing Pakana presence and culture today. Ngarrindjeri master weaver Yvonne Koolmatrie also exudes this ancient memory as she continues to refine the weaving skills and techniques that have been handed down to her. She reinforces her connection to Country through the use of native materials to create innovative life-sized creatures, such as the echidna, as well as traditional bags, mats and recreations of Ngarrindjeri life. Ken Thaiday Senior, an artisan, performer and singer from the Torres Strait Islands, has always participated in Meriam Mer traditional teachings and has mentored countless younger Torres Strait artists. His ingenious engineering mind has produced some of the most remarkable dance machines seen to date. Likewise, Pedro Wonaeamirri, a singer, performer, carver and painter, personalises traditional Tiwi designs, and it is this knowledge that has given him the self-assurance to expand his artistic repertoire to create and develop his own unique, but identifiably Tiwi, style. Working on a larger scale and on canvas for this exhibition has enabled Wonaeamirri to further refine his intricate repetitive designs. … Dale Harding gives voice to the maternal side of his family, bringing to life stories of their indentured labour as domestics in central Queensland. His collaborative work with his mother, Kate, Black days in the Dawson River Country—Remembrance gowns 2016, shows the direct transfer of knowledge over the generations. His determined practice of reviving stories gives the often silenced female experience a stronger presence in contemporary conversations. Jonathan Jones reclaims and reinforces cultural and historical perspectives of events and place using inspiration from his surroundings, the teachings of his Elders and his research in archival and physical object records. His ability to loop the past with the present can be seen in his installation nguram-bang-dyuray (country-having) 2017, where the Wiradjuri presence is reinserted into historical drawings of townships in his Country.
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DEFYING EMPIRE
Page 22: Raymond Zada (Barkindji peoples) At Face Value 2013 (detail), digital media video. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2014 Opposite: Nonggirrnga Marawili (Madarrpa & Galpu peoples) Baratjula and Baratjula 2016, natural earth pigments and binders on wood. Courtesy of the artist and Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre Above: Yvonne Koolmatrie (Ngarrindjeri people) River Dreaming 2012, sedge rushes. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016
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Ray Ken’s paintings of his Country and cultural practice are embedded in tradition but also push contemporary boundaries. Ken is an artistic master who, along with other senior men at Amata, teaches kulata tjuta (spear making) to younger generations, ensuring that this cultural tradition is not lost. His collaborative works with younger artists are testament to the importance of sharing and passing on ancient cultural knowledge. … Tony Albert reinserts Aboriginal presence and voice by reusing found and recycled Indigenous iconography that was once seen as kitsch, disrespectful, racist and inappropriate. His installation The Hand You’re Dealt 2016 is a clever example of the repurpose mantra he uses as a subtle form of resistance against the dominant view of history and identity, further fuelling discussions on important issues. Brook Andrew is another political artist who ingeniously mines collections, archives and libraries then re-imagines the imagery, films and objects he finds, juxtaposing them into new narratives that relook at the colonial in a contemporary context, such as his large-scale work Beginning of the shape (Morphogenesis) 2016. His prolific practice shows his sharp intellect in exposing the untold and the reimagined through Below: Archie Moore (Kamilaroi people) Aboriginal Anarchy 2012, synthetic polymer paint. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2013 Opposite: Ray Ken (Pitjantjatjara & Yankunyjatjara peoples) Kulata Tjuta 2015, synthetic polymer paint on linen. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016
his Wiradjuri perspective. Megan Cope uses satire to offer a personal perspective of identity in The Blaktism 2014, her powerfully defiant filmic look at Aboriginality. The work shows her resistance to the restrictive government processes and classifications that determine who is and isn’t Indigenous in Australia today. Reko Rennie’s key work OA_RR 2017 is a visually mesmerising form of resistance. A 1973 Rolls-Royce Corniche becomes a moveable canvas, not only to apply the traditional designs of his Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/Gummaroi people but also as a vehicle to drive back on his grandmother’s Country to tell her poignant story through the accompanying film OA_RR 2017. … Multidisciplinary artist Archie Moore cleverly challenges and redefines Aboriginal classification in his photography installation Blood Fraction 2015. His revealing self-portraits show multiple sides of Aboriginal identity and invite you to get closer, not only physically but also socially to engage in deeper conversations about self. Through her contemporary works, Nonggirrnga Marawili challenges the conventions of traditional design while maintaining her identity, which is underpinned by her cultural surroundings and inner creativity. Marawili shows her connection to Country through the use of a minimal earth-pigment palette and the refined abstract designs on her barks and hollow-log poles. Rusty Peters reveals his identity and the strength and diversity of stories from his
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DEFYING EMPIRE
ARTONVIEW 90  WINTER 2017
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Kimberley region in his works, using natural ochres and materials harvested from his Country. As a senior artisan, he depicts his
responds to the exhibition theme by recreating her memories of her
Ngarrangkarni (Dreamtime stories) through stunning renditions
grandmother’s lounge room during the 1960s, a room that became
of the Kimberley landscape such as Darrajayin 2016. His cultural
an important place for gatherings and discussions about the 1967
practice helps to keep his ancestral memories visible for generations
Referendum. Through the use of new technologies, Clarke cleverly re-
to come.
affirms her family’s presence in a holographic time capsule.
Brian Robinson seamlessly merges his traditional Torres Strait art
Blak Douglas challenges stereotypes and the Indigenous presence
with pop culture references in works such as Picasso’s Lagau Minaral
through provocative, tongue-in-cheek satirical works. In his 2016 series
(Picasso’s island designs) 2017. His depictions of traditional ancestral
LUCKYCountry, the bold lettering of colloquial expressions such as ‘LOL’,
warriors alongside the DC and Marvel characters he identified with
‘easy as’ and ‘no worries’ encase photographs of the horrific treatment
as a child combine to break boundaries and stereotypes, revealing the
of Aboriginal people, reminding us of the moments of absurdity in our
different elements of his identity, heritage and interests.
shared histories.
Raymond Zada’s powerful work At Face Value 2013 highlights the
Julie Gough also reveals an aspect of Australia’s history that many
importance of recognising identity and diversity through morphing the
are unaware of, the massacre of Aboriginal people. Her powerful Hunting
faces of Aboriginal people from his community. His confrontational
Ground (Pastoral) Van Diemen’s Land 2016–17 shows early settlement
but revealing work racebook 2012 draws directly upon the vitriolic
paintings overlaid with the documented violent histories of those
hate and racist views in Facebook groups that have been closed down,
locations. This work is an important assertion that Tasmanian Aboriginal
showing another side to Indigenous visibility and perception that’s not
people are still on Country today.
widely exposed.
In her works, Sandra Hill shares the personal, emotive stories of her family and community. Her key work Double Standards 2015
… Sebastian Arrow has been given custodianship of his ancient
28
In Made from memory (Nan’s house) 2017, Maree Clarke directly
is a large light box recreating scenes of Australia through the vastly
teachings, designs and stories through his Elder the late Aubrey Tigan.
opposite lives of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the years
His stunning, intricately carved pearl shells are a reminder of the
prior to the 1967 Referendum. Reinserting Aboriginal presence within
ongoing cultural presence of his people in the Broome region of
the Australian flag overlay is a poignant reminder of the disparity
Western Australia.
experienced at the time.
DEFYING EMPIRE
‘Our art is a commemoration of our history, but it is also a celebration of our survival, and it is the legacy which we will, in turn, pass on to our children’
Jason Wing’s powerfully engaging and confronting work Captain James Crook 2013 is guaranteed to generate ongoing conversations about Australia’s colonial history. His courageous reinterpretation of Captain Cook in a balaclava references his role in the invasion of Australia and the after-effects that are still felt today. … Karla Dickens’s innate passion to highlight issues of injustice and history is paramount to her practice. Her significant installation work Assimilated Warriors 2014 directly references unnamed historical activists from the Aborigines Progressive Association and their role in creating awareness of Aboriginal rights. It was organisations like this that encouraged a rise of support across the country for the 1967 Referendum. Brenda L Croft uses the lens of her camera to focus on memory and politics around her Gurindji people and Country at Kalkaringi. Her 2014–16 series Wave Hill, Victoria River Country provides a stunning window into the lives of those in her community since the Wave Hill walk-off over fifty years ago. Her passion to reinvigorate this momentous event reminds the nation of its early successful protest movements by remote Aboriginal people. Fiona Foley juxtaposes politics with minimalist forms to give a simple but powerful version of our history. In her work Pontificate on This 2016, sixty-six smoking pipes indicate the number of clauses found in Western Australia’s Aborigines Act 1905, offering a stark but compelling reminder of the impact of laws on Aboriginal people prior to the 1967 Referendum.
Above: Brook Andrew (Wiradjuri people) Beginning of the shape (Morphogenesis) 2016, linen, synthetic polymer paint and spray, ink, foil, neon. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
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Left: Yhonnie Scarce (Kokatha & Nukunu peoples) Thunder Raining Poison 2015, glass, wire, metal armature. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016. This acquisition has been supported by Susan Armitage in recognition of the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum Opposite: Daniel Boyd (Kudjla & Gangalu peoples) Untitled (DOC) 2016, oil, charcoal and glue on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016
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DEFYING EMPIRE
Badu Island artist Laurie Nona investigates the complexities that occur around land and sea conservation management while maintaining
highlights the atrocities that have long been hidden and acknowledges the flow-on effects these acts have had on communities today. Vicki West revives and adapts traditional weaving techniques using
traditional cultural practices in his large, intricate printed works. In Kuikuig (Warup drum) 2013, he seamlessly merges his ancestral stories
the same materials as her Ancestors but in innovative ways. Woven
with contemporary views on the preservation of resources and cultural
out of bull kelp, her work kerliggener-leewunna 2017 is a recreation of
knowledge for future generations.
the nineteenth-century black wedding dress her grandmother wore.
…
West reminds us of the Tasmanian Aboriginal presence and ensures we Daniel Boyd’s practice offers an alternate view of Australia’s early
witness the resilience and revitalisation of her people and her ancestral
history. In his pointillist work Untitled (DOC) 2016, we witness Captain
cultural practice.
Cook’s re-imagined death at Hawaiian hands, years after ‘discovering’
…
Australia, thereby subverting the hero narrative in colonial history
Defying Empire celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art
painting. Boyd’s engaging works continue to expose the ongoing effects
practice, stories and achievements but does not shy away from Australia’s
Cook’s actions have had on this country.
complex histories. It reinforces and showcases our resilience, pride,
Yhonnie Scarce’s hand-blown glass installation Thunder Raining
diversity and strength and our ongoing connections to Country, family,
Poison 2015 is the result of her investigations into the nationally
community, culture and history. The artists in the exhibition have trawled
important story about the testing of nuclear bombs at Maralinga
the colonial cabinet of dated curiosities to demystify, to re-engage,
in the 1950s and 1960s. The work saturates the space within the
to inspire and to reinforce our resilience and, more importantly, our
gallery and provides an important platform to this significant event,
identity. From those who have fought for our basic right to be counted to
ensuring that we witness the untold tragedy of nuclear testing on
our modern-day warriors, and those yet to be seen in the future, keep up
people and Country.
the good fight. This is our moment now.
Judy Watson also looks to the past to inform the present through official records. Her perceptive vision and extensive research into massacres within Queensland and across Australia confirms what many Aboriginal oral histories tell. Her poignant work the names of places 2016
Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, 26 May to 10 September 2017, Free. Exhibition catalogue on sale, $39.95 @ the NGA.
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NGA Play Kelli Cole highlights the latest iteration of NGA Play, created in collaboration with Defying Empire artist Reko Rennie and now open to children of all ages.
The NGA has been working with contemporary Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/
shape, progresses the artist’s narrative further and upends the intention
Gummaroi artist Reko Rennie to create an innovative, exciting,
of camouflage to conceal, aiming instead, Rennie says, ‘to amplify …
interactive and educational experience within the new NGA Play space.
my identity and to stake my claim to a luminous, commanding form
This engaging environment encourages people of all ages, including
of cultural visibility’. Marked with the iconography of the Kamilaroi,
parents, carers, children and young adults, to immerse themselves in activities that will challenge their understanding of Australian Indigenous art, culture, identity and history. From a young age, Rennie was consumed by American culture and developed a strong passion for graffiti art, which he now channels into his paintings, installations and major public projects. ‘In the mid 1980s in Footscray in Melbourne’s western suburbs,’ he says, ‘I was already listening to hip-hop and break-dancing. Like many other kids who were born in the 1970s, the book Subway art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant was my inspiration to start writing and doing graffiti’. Equally, he draws on his Kamilaroi heritage, using the symbolic diamond shape that can be found painted on shields, engraved on sacred carved trees and throughout other Indigenous cultural practices such as sand drawings. The diamond is an important symbol for the Kamilaroi and for many other south-east Australian Indigenous peoples, yet it seems to complement Rennie’s bold contemporary designs for the fastpaced urban landscape in which he lives and works. His recent work OA_RR 2017, a functioning 1973 Rolls-Royce painted with a camouflage design incorporating the traditional diamond 32
DEFYING EMPIRE
the Rolls has been taken from the hands of the oppressor and placed into those of the oppressed. And the power and sovereignty this luxury car once embodied returns to the Aboriginal people who, like his grandmother, were forcibly removed from Country and placed into unpaid domestic servitude on pastoral stations. Now sitting in the NGA’s foyer as part of the third National Indigenous Art Triennial, Defying Empire, Rennie’s OA_RR is in clear view of NGA Play, where his recent photographs of Country are projected within the space alongside his striking culturally inspired designs for the urban environment. The two typically incongruous settings seamlessly combine: the urban landscape in which Rennie grew up and the picturesque landscape of his grandmother’s Country. The newly ‘Rennie-vated’ NGA Play is free for all the family, offering an inviting and enlightening environment in which to explore Indigenous culture, history and identity with your children. We have plenty of fun activities planned over winter and spring and a whole gallery to explore while you’re here. NGA Play, 13 May to 13 December 2017, Free.
‘I was already listening to hip-hop and break‑dancing. Like many other kids who were born in the 1970s, the book Subway art, by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, was my inspiration to start writing and doing graffiti.’
Opposite: Reko Rennie with his work Always Was Always Will Be 2012 on the T2 building in Sydney. Photo: Søren Solkær Right and below: Reko Rennie (Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/ Gummaroi people) OA_RR 2017, three-channel high-definition film. Courtesy of the artist and blackartprojects
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HYPER REAL
C O M I N G M A J O R E X H I B I T I O N
Hyper Real ARTONVIEW 90 WINTER 2017
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Discover seven artists from the NGA’s upcoming major exhibition Hyper Real, representing the work of practictioners who were among the first to produce hyperrealist sculptures in 1960s through to artists that are creating radical new visions today. DUANE HANSON 1925–1996, United States of America As early as the 1960s, Hanson began to work on life-size human sculptures made from casts of live models in fibreglass and polyester resin. Using real clothes, wigs and other accessories, he produced illusions of everyday life. Together with John DeAndrea, he presented the first hyperrealistic sculptures to a broader audience at the exhibition Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany, in 1972. From the outset, Hanson chose to concentrate on questions of social identity. From the late 1960s, his work focused increasingly on representations of the working class and of the socially marginalised. By staging his works, he implies a sense of narrative, giving added life to them and confronting the viewer with questions about the nature of the human condition.
Duane Hanson Two workers 1993, bronze, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories. © Estate of Duane Hanson/VAGA. Represented by Viscopy. Photo: Axel Thünker, Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik. Courtesy of Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and Institute for Cultural Exchange, Tübingen
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HYPER REAL
ZHARKO BASHESKI
CAROLE A FEUERMAN
born 1957, Macedonia
born 1945, United States of America
Basheski graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia,
In addition to Duane Hanson and John DeAndrea, Carole A Feuerman
in 1988 and became Professor of Sculpture there in 2010. His work
was one of the first American artists to turn to the hyperrealistic
deals with the uncertainties and the challenges of human existence.
depiction of the human body in the 1970s. After completing her artistic
He portrays people in emotional situations that go far beyond the
training, she began working in bronze, resin, steel and marble. Recently,
normal, and the large scale of his work heightens the impact on the
she has increasingly focused on monumental bronze sculptures destined
viewer. The fact that a lot of his sculptures are oversized makes them
for public spaces. From the very beginning, she was fascinated by the
seem unassailable, although, paradoxically, also more vulnerable,
theme of ‘water’ and of the portrayal of an idealised life in inner balance.
hesitant and consumed by doubt. His work makes it apparent that
In addition to life-sized and larger-than-life-sized figures, she has focused
there is a direct connection between a person’s inner life and his or her
on torsos wearing swimming costumes and swimwear accessories as
external appearance.
well as other body parts that appear to be so randomly placed that they unexpectedly, but insistently, invade the viewer’s space.
Zharko Basheski Ordinary man 2009–10, polyester resin, fiberglass, silicone,hair. © Zharko Basheski. Courtesy of the artist and Institute for Cultural Exchange, Tübingen
Carole A Feuerman General’s twin 2009–11, oil on resin. © Carole A. Feuerman Consigned by Galerie Hübner & Hübner. Courtesy of Institute for Cultural Exchange, Tübingen
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SUN YUAN AND PENG YU
RONNIE VAN HOUT
born 1972 and 1974, China
born 1962, New Zealand
Unconventional and slightly perturbing materials such as live animals,
As a child growing up on poultry farm in rural New Zealand, van
human fat and machinery seem the unlikely media of two artists
Hout became obsessed with UFOs and the existence of extraterrestrial
who began their artistic practices studying oil painting at the Central
life. While this interest, which directly conflicted with his Catholic
Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The duo rose to prominence as
upbringing, has passed with age, van Hout remains preoccupied with a
individual artists in the late 1990s before establishing a collaborative
need to question our daily reality, usually with dark comedic inflection.
partnership in 2000. Their large-scale installations engage with some of
Initially studying film in the early 1980s, he received a Masters of
the most compelling and complex topics of the moment, from plastic
Fine Arts from RMIT University in Melbourne in 1991. Exhibiting
surgery to terrorism and border control. Highly provocative, Sun and
regularly from 1981 onwards, he has explored the self-portraiture genre
Peng push us to the edges of our moral boundaries, exploiting universal
throughout his career, using himself as the subject and material. His
fears and anxieties to challenge accepted social and political constructs.
twisted, self-deprecating and oddly humorous doppelgangers reveal something of the fragmented, disfigured and alien inner self of this master of existential slapstick.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu Old people’s home 2007 (detail), electric wheelchairs, fibreglass, silica gel. Courtesy of the artists
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HYPER REAL
Ronnie van Hout Sitting figure I 2016, painted polyurethane on polystyrene, clothing, wig, cast epoxy, resin fibreglass, stainless steel plinth. Courtesy of the artist and STATION, Melbourne
AES+F
PATRICIA PICCININI
established 1995, Russia
born 1965, Sierra Leone
Originally formed in 1987, the AES Group comprising conceptual
Piccinini, who studied economic history and painting, is an Australian
architects Tatiana Arzamasova and Lev Evzovich and the multi-
artist who creates intermediary beings out of silicone and plastic that
disciplinary designer Evgeny Svyatsky began exhibiting internationally
are either half animal and half human or combinations of the cyber-
in 1989. In 1995 the Russian artist collective expanded its name and
technological and the human. At first glance, these hyperrealistic
cohort with the addition of photographer Vladimir Fridkes. International
deformed figures, with their hairy body parts and their sticky inside-
recognition and acclaim followed with the debut of Last Riot at the
out bits, seem sinister and inaccessible. The artist, however, imbues
52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, and, since then, monumental, immersive
her crossbred beings with a sense of human dignity, rendering them
video installation has come to define the group’s aesthetic. AES+F
accessible to the viewer. Her work poses fundamental ethical and moral
render speculative, often dystopic, realties in striking tableaus that
questions about the value of life and explores definitions about what
exist at the intersection of photography, video and digital technologies.
might constitute life at the very boundaries between nature, technology,
The collective’s grand visual narratives create dialogues across temporal
birth, creation and death.
and geographic spaces, disrupting the linearity of established knowledge systems, requiring audiences to reflect upon the values and vices of contemporary culture.
Hyper Real, 20 October 2017 to 18 February 2018, see page 9 for ticket prices. An exhibition catalogue will be on sale. Biographies on Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Ronnie van Hout and AES+F written by Bianca Hill. Others courtesy of the Institute for Cultural Exchange, Tübingen, and translated from German by Mark Henshaw.
AES+F Inverso mundus 2015 (detail), HD-video installation. © AES+F | ARS New York. Courtesy the artists, MAMM, Anna Schwarz Gallery and Triumph Gallery
Patricia Piccinini The welcome guest 2011, silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, taxidermied peacocks. © Patricia Piccinini. Courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
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MEXICAN MODERNISM
EXHIBITION
Australian photographer Grant Mudford left Australia in 1974. Having trained with the great photographer of Australian space, Max Dupain, and established a successful commercial practice in Sydney, he travelled to the United States with support from the Australia Council. He spent the next three years making a series of road trips around America, often travelling with his girlfriend at the time, British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. Driving, and frequently sleeping in, a 1971 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper, he photographed America’s built environment, focusing on its southern and western states. He brought to these places a photographic approach he had developed in Australia, where he had studied architecture and, since 1972, exhibited his highly formal views of the urban and rural landscapes. This approach characterised the constructed world in terms of flatness, spatial compression and ambiguity between positive and negative space. Mudford’s highly ‘two-dimensional’ photographic approach seemed ideally suited to the architectural experience of the American southwest, where he established a permanent base in 1977 alongside other
Mexican modernism
Australian photographers such as Graham Howe and Christine Godden. At the time, he was probably Australia’s most widely published and exhibited international photographer, with his work regularly exhibited alongside leading contemporaries such as William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore and Jan Groover. Many of Mudford’s best pictures from this period make a virtue of the south-west’s harsh light, prosaic street signage and resolutely geometric architecture. While he maintains a successful career as an
Shaune Lakin discusses Australian Grant Mudford’s photographs of Mexico, which are currently on display at the NGA with other modernist photographs of the country that span decades and show how a place’s particular social and architectural milieu can inspire great work.
architectural photographer today, his personal photographs since the 1970s have been concerned with a belief in the fundamental incompatibility of photography and architecture: one is spatial, the other concerned with flatness. His personal practice seeks to unpick this disparity and to find equilibrium between photography and the built environment. These questions, or motivations, also framed his experience of Mexico, which he photographed in 1976 on a trip with Rhodes that was intended to stretch from Los Angeles to Central America. Travelling through San Diego, they drove down the length of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula to La Paz, then zigzagged across mainland Mexico, visiting Saltillo, Guadalajara and Mexico City before stopping at the ancient city of Cuernavaca. Sickness prevented Mudford going any further south, and his Central American journey was, in the end, confined to just four weeks. But despite his relatively brief visit, he took a number of significant pictures in Mexico. These include his most widely published and collected photograph, Mexico 1976, a detail of a road sign (‘MEX’) standing next to an adobe structure on the Baja California Peninsula. As exemplified by this photograph, he took great pleasure in the highly geometrical nature of Mexico’s vernacular architecture, which seemed to provide him with the ideal surface, or form, with which to examine the incongruity of photography and architecture, and to find equilibrium between the two. ARTONVIEW 90 WINTER 2017
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MEXICAN MODERNISM
In another photograph taken on the Baja California Peninsula, Baja Mexico 1976, the contours of an adobe wall run alongside the edges of the photograph, suggesting an analogy between the picture and the highly rendered surface of the monolithic wall. A corrective lens completely flattens out the fence line and brutal facade of an adobe-inspired home in Mexico 1976, 3, epitomising what Mudford recently described to me as photography’s very particular ‘powers of abstraction and illusion’. These are not ‘architectural photographs’, which tend to position photography as secondary to the built environment, but pictures intended to confuse the distinctions and hierarchies that exist between the two practices. Mudford is part of a succession of modernist photographers who travelled to Mexico, including Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Paul Strand and Henri Cartier-Bresson. And the earlier work of these photographers, particularly Weston, informed his experience of the country. ‘Throughout my road trips, including Mexico,’ he recounts, ‘I would often read Edward Weston’s Daybooks’. Weston’s published diaries detail his experience of Mexico and the people he met while living in the country during the 1920s. For him, the country galvanised a radically new aesthetic, one that was about photographically capturing what he described in the Mexican periodical Forma in 1928 as, ‘the quintessential quality of the object or element in front of my lens’. Like Weston, Mudford found readymade abstractions in the vernacular architecture of Mexico. As he wrote in 1977, when the British journal Creative Camera featured a selection of his Mexican and American photographs, ‘The objects, structures, signs, etc depicted in these photographs transcend their familiarity with their environment to become, I believe, magnificent iconic monuments to the spirit and art of man’. A selection of Mudford’s Mexican photographs is currently on show at the NGA for the first time alongside some of the pictures by Weston that inspired them as well as Mexican photographs by Modotti, Strand and Cartier-Bresson and the great Mexican modernist Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Also included are photographs by another Australian, Anton Bruehl, who travelled to Mexico in 1932 and whose photographs there found a formal directness—a frontality—that places them among his most successful. Mudford, who was unaware of Bruehl’s work when he was in Mexico, similarly discovered in Mexico’s social and architectural landscape a set of conditions that enabled some of his best work—photographs that establish a formal and conceptual trans-Pacific connection between Australia, the west coast of America and Mexico. Mexican modernism, 14 April to 26 November 2017, Free. Page 40: Grant Mudford Mexico 1976, 4 1976 (detail), gelatin silver photograph Opposite, from top: Mexico 1976 and Mexico 1976, 3 1976, gelatin silver photographs Above: Baja Mexico 1976 1976, gelatin silver photograph All works from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1977
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MARK HILTON
A M E R I C A N F R I E N D S O F T H E N G A
Mark Hilton John Thomson spoke to Australian artist Mark Hilton about his experience of New York as a recent recipient of the AusArt Fellowship offered by the American Friends of the NGA.
New York began to attract Australian artists as it emerged as a major
Hilton has enjoyed some success in Australia, exhibiting at the MCA
international art hub after the Second World War. The infamous Chelsea
in Sydney, and the NGV in Melbourne, and showing with Sydney’s
Hotel was a kind of informal and dissolute artist residency for the likes of
Darren Knight Gallery. In New York, however, he can be anonymous (at
Brett Whitely and others. Today, Australian artists are voyaging to the city
least for the time being), and anonymity provides an opportunity for
in ever-increasing numbers. With J1 visas in hand, they are finding New
him to change course, try new things or, as he says, go with ‘a fluidity
York as accessible as the traditional magnet of London.
of ideas and a flexibility in exploring them’. In Australia, he felt he was
Mark Hilton is an Australian artist who has been based in the city for a couple of years now. He was recently awarded a fellowship through the Australian American Association to support his residency at the
on a project-led conveyor belt but, in New York, process is a big part of his practice. Now he can take risks or, as he puts it, ‘embrace the cactus’. It can be
ISCP, International Studio and Curatorial Program. Housed in a large
a prickly place, a tough city to be emergent. But it can also be energising
old warehouse in East Williamsburg in Brooklyn, the ISCP is now the
and supportive, where people appear to want you to succeed. Its art
leading New York artist residency after the demise of both the PS1 studio
scene can be overwhelming and, at times, opaque. It is a global art centre
program in Long Island City and the well-loved Greene Street Studio in
yet often feels like a village, one that wants to keep artists coming and
Soho, which had been a base for Australian artists since the seventies.
staying to ensure it maintains its edge over other creative capitals.
Hilton is known for his keenly crafted figurative drawings that
It’s also a village with a strong sense of its own taste. Abstract
take inspiration from religious art, cartooning, history painting and
Expressionism still casts a shadow here. Painting, sometimes raw and
advertising, among other sources. These genres address their audiences
gestural, is very popular, despite many pronouncements over the years
very directly, giving his work a visual clarity. This head-on quality is
of its demise. Hilton’s work has seen a turn toward paint, abstraction
undercut by emotional, sometimes painful, narrative twists and turns.
and expression. He studied painting at the Victorian College of the Arts,
His drawing practice is often projected into a range of other media,
but then took up pencil and paper. In New York, he has taken up the
including sculpture, light boxes and, recently, with his Half Flush series,
brush again. His paintings are based on semi-figurative sculptures and
a pack of playing cards.
drawings he has been making that call to mind the expressionist bent of
Like his compatriots before him, he felt compelled to make the move
jazz and American modernist painting of the early 1900s. The city was an
from Australia. But how is expatriatism experienced by artists today, with
important influence on both art forms. More than just subject matter, its
text and images shared globally and instantly and with the difference
electric energy and dissonant sounds were integral to their forms.
between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ collapsing? For him, New York is a place of
The idea of an emotional or intuitive link between the artist and the
experience and transformation. And it was in his studio, here, at ISCP,
mark he or she is making has been widely critiqued. Yet Expressionism
that we caught up to discuss the city’s influence on his recent work.
is a movement that is seeing a reassessment among younger artists here,
Artists use New York residencies in different ways: some work hard
and Hilton, too, has seen it seep into his work. He is applying the hand
in the studio, some pitch themselves into the city’s art world, some
movements he uses in his drawing and sculpting to his new paintings,
see as much art as they can, others try to do everything at once. Hilton
and his renewed interest in colour is adding a touch of drama.
has been at work in the studio, but he has also been seeing a lot of art.
The city has changed him and his work, but not in a stereotypical
Recent shows by artists Sarah Morris and Vija Celmins have stirred his
way. New York is brash and loud, but his subject matter has become
thoughts about a painting’s surface. Morris’s work is all blunt flatness
more mysterious, personal, interior. He is developing what he calls a
and sharp lines, while Celmins’s paintings have textures so deep that
‘more private language’. His transparent style has been replaced by one
Hilton says he ‘could fall into them’. His experiences of these works are
that is more refracted: ‘It is now more about the journey, about the line,
powerfully visceral.
the mark, than the blurb. I feel this is the city talking to me’.
Mark Hilton in his Brooklyn studio, 2017. Photo: Ece Gürleyik
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JAMES ERSKINE
DONOR
James Erskine Simon Elliott interviews James Erskine, a gallerist, art collector and pioneer of sports marketing in Australia, about what drives him to be a leading Australian arts philanthropist. A long-time supporter of art and artists, James’s passion for giving to art institutions Australia‑wide began in 2009, when he and his wife, Jacqui, donated to the NGA Antony Gormley’s maquette for his world‑renowned Angel of the North.
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‘I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and coming out was Robert Redford and Lauren Bacall ... they were just chatting away and asked me what I liked and what I didn’t like.’
Simon Elliott: James, you originally purchased the life-sized maquette for Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North from White Cube gallery in London in 1997, a year before the towering twenty-metrehigh sculpture went up at Gateshead. Were you drawn to this work because of your links to growing up in the north of England? James Erskine: I was brought up in a little place called Birkdale, which is sandwiched between Liverpool and Blackpool, and my parents, and their parents, were in the textile business. So, when I saw it at White Cube, the Gormley maquette, with its rusting steel man with aeroplane wings for arms, reminded me of the region’s industry and the industrial type of scenes of North West England that LS Lowry painted, which I knew from my childhood. But I also just thought it was a beautiful thing. And it was a way of raising money for getting the main sculpture up at Gateshead, which has had a real effect on that whole area over the past twenty years. It has given everybody a real sense of pride in where they come from. That, I think, is something that art does. It’s no different from a football team like Manchester United or Liverpool. Simon: So you bought this two-tonne sculpture in London but you live in Sydney. James: Well, it’s the one smart thing I did. I realised it weighed as much as a Range Rover, so I said to Jay Jopling at White Cube, ‘Listen, you’ve now got to deliver it to my back door in Sydney’. It’s a funny story, getting it to my garden on Sydney Harbour. It had to come by barge at high tide, but the guy’s crane didn’t work well enough. The sculpture was too heavy, so he left it, literally, on the beach. I said, ‘You can’t just leave it there. The sea is going to come up and lap at it’, and he said, ‘Mate, it’s not going to wash away!’ Simon: And it took pride of place in your garden, where it was much loved by you and your family for almost a decade. What then made you to think of it coming to the NGA in Canberra? James: Well, I know Charles Curran, who was then the chairman of the NGA Foundation, and he asked if he could bring Ron Radford around. Ron, whom I did not know, was then the director of the NGA. They arrived wearing suits, and I was just out of my swimming pool, which was funny! They asked me if I had ever thought about donating. They were the first people that ever asked me, and I said to Ron, ‘What do you want?’ Of course, the Angel of the North was on their list, and my wife and I said, ‘You can have it!’ I have to say it’s been a pleasure dealing with the NGA. You feel like part of the family. It’s really nice seeing the work in another place with lots of people getting enjoyment from it. I’ve certainly been here a few times and seen people painting and drawing the Angel of the North and kids flying around it like planes. I think that’s all part of art, you know.
Previous pages: James Erskine with Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North (life-size maquette) 1996 in the Sculpture Garden at the NGA, Canberra, March 2017. Opposite: Brian Blanchflower Canopy XXIX— Palimpsest (Humankind) 1992, acrylic with powdered pumice, oils and chalk on acrylic ground on laminated hessian. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of James Erskine, 2017. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
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JAMES ERSKINE
Simon: Just going back to where it started. You began collecting at a young age. You were around seventeen or eighteen. Is that right? James: When I used to go from home to school at Epsom College, which was a British public school, I had to go via London. My aunt who lived there liked art and she would take me to art galleries. Obviously, when I was seventeen or eighteen, I couldn’t afford much. Then my grandfather bought me a Lowry painting for about five hundred quid, instead of buying me a Mini for my twenty-first birthday, and that was actually a
very sensible move. It sort of kicked on from there. And, yes, I still have that Lowry painting! Then, when I started medical school, I would wander in to
You still get to enjoy it. But, you know, there’s also no point giving art that isn’t of great value to the nation. You want to give the best things. That’s the whole idea of
galleries and buy the odd thing, and they let me pay it off every year,
going into institutions. You get to see really great art. People come here,
or something, because they knew I was poor and a medical student.
they come to the NGA, to see Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles. And, I must
Then I left medical school and got into the sports business, which meant
say, the fact that Blue poles went to London for the Royal Academy’s big
I had to do a lot of travelling. I would play golf, because you can play
Abstract Expressionism exhibition enhances the work. It was the star of
golf by yourself, and I would wander around art galleries and befriend
the show. There’s the national gallery of this country doing something
people. I remember on one Sunday, I went to the Museum of Modern
for another country, in one of the great cities of the world. I think that’s
Art in New York and coming out was Robert Redford and Lauren Bacall.
great, and it’s something we should be proud of as a nation.
I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my God’, and they were just chatting away and asked me what I liked and what I didn’t like. Simon: Now you manage your own gallery in Sydney, Liverpool Street Gallery, as well as sports stars through your business Sports and Entertainment Limited. Your twin passions of art and sport, do they crossover? Is there a parallel? James: I think there is a parallel. First of all, if you’re a great sportsman, even in a team sport, there’s lots of isolation so you have to be
Simon: That’s the philanthropic side of you talking, the side that wants to share great art with everyone. So what are your future plans around art collecting and philanthropy? James: Well I’m still going to collect because I’m at the stage where I’m looking for the next wave of young artists, and I think they need support. That’s what I want to do. I have a lot more giving to do. When I give, I feel like I’m doing the right thing. I feel quite proud when I’ve donated something. I can come to the
unbelievably disciplined and selfish with your time, because you have to
National Gallery of Australia and see the Tony Tucksons I gave a few
do all this training and eat well. And artists, even successful artists, are
years back next to Jackson Pollock’s amazing Blue poles and I think,
in the studio by themselves a lot of the time and have to have that same
that Tuckson, it’s a bloody good painting! I’m glad it’s here, and it was
level of selfishness and discipline because they know they have a show
actually taken off my walls.
in three months. When that painting they’ve worked on for so long goes up on the wall, they basically get judged. It’s the same in sport. All their training leads to one big moment, in a swimming pool or on the tennis court or whatever, with everybody watching. So, there’s a loneliness in sport, and there’s a loneliness in art. Simon: Your taste in art seems broad. It includes figurative work but has a strong lean towards abstraction, and Australian art. I’m thinking particularly of the works you’ve given to the NGA over the years by John Olsen, Tony Tuckson, Karl Wiebke, Paddy Bedford and, most recently, Brian Blanchflower and Ildiko Kovacs. Did you know the combined value of these gifts is an astonishing six million dollars? James: I didn’t know that, but can I have them back?! Simon: No! (Laughs). But share with us what moves you to purchase a work of art and, on the other end, to then give works to institutions like the NGA? James: Everyone thinks I’ve got some sort of game plan when it comes to buying art. I haven’t at all. I have just bought what I like and what I could afford. I’ve owned works by artists from Frank Auerbach to Gerhard Richter to Philip Guston, all these serious international artists, but you can put a great painting by an Australian artist next any of them and it absolutely works. There are a lot of very, very good artists in Australia, and I think it’s important that our institutions are collecting and showing them. In terms of giving, as you know, I said the Angel of the North would be part of the first batch. And, of course, I’ve carried on from there. It’s not about the monetary value and I do think that the Government’s Cultural Gifts program is very, very good. What’s important is, if an institution really wants it, and you don’t want it that much, then let other people enjoy it. You can always go to the institution you’ve given it to and see it.
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PA R T N E R S H I P
Artmed welcomes ACT Health support Frances Wild talks to ACT Health’s Professor Walter Abhayaratna, Clinical Director of Medicine, and Ian Thompson, Deputy DirectorGeneral, Canberra Hospital and Health Services, about the NGA’s Artmed program and its impact on the medical profession. Frances Wild: In a new five-year partnership with ACT Health, the NGA has extended its Artmed program beyond its collaboration with the ANU Medical School to include professional development sessions for trainee physicians at Canberra Hospital. Walter, can you explain for our readers what sparked your interest in incorporating the visual arts into the Physicians-in-Training program?
way they describe and talk and communicate in terms of their
Walter Abhayaratna: As you are aware, there is a Physician
objectives with Artmed is to improve our clinicians’ interpretation of
Training Council in the Canberra Hospital that is responsible for trainee physicians, whose previous experience is very scienceorientated. That’s an issue. They’re limited, in some respect, in their exposure. They’re very technical in their nature, but medicine is a very human science, and medicine is something that we still like to teach our trainees. The simplest thing we wanted to attain with the Artmed program is to improve visual diagnostic and communication skills. Frances: I’d like to share a quote by the highly regarded Canadian physician William Osler, who once said, ‘Get the patient in a good light, use your five senses. We miss more by not seeing than we do by not knowing. Always examine the back. Observe, record, tabulate, communicate’. Could you both discuss this quote, bearing in mind that observation is the first learning objective of the Artmed program?
they’re experiencing. Walter: What impresses me most is when a clinician is listening to their patient and sees a change. That change in the patient’s gesticulations or their facial expression means something. One of our that meaning. They’ve observed something, now they have to see what it means. It may mean the patient doesn’t understand. It may mean the patient is scared. There’s nothing spoken. It’s a facial expression. It’s a cue. Doctors need to be able to pick up on that cue and then change tact with their conversation, and they have to be able to communicate their observations back to the patient in an effective and constructive way. It’s the diagnostic skill, yes, but then it’s the humanism in medicine. We can deliver medical care to you, but we’re also delivering holistic care, where we include empathy and compassion because we’re picking up your cues. I think the Artmed program here is geared towards honing those skills.
it’s been understood that the ability for doctors to communicate
Frances: You’re not only thinking back to that textbook or the training you’ve had, but you’re also there with them in the moment. In what ways, then, do you think the NGA provides the right setting for your trainees to explore and develop these core clinical skills of observation and interpretation? What’s the difference? What can we do in here that you can’t in the hospital?
and interact with their patients is a very important element
Walter: Well, first of all, it’s a beautiful environment. Many of the works
Ian Thompson: I’m happy to kick off on this one. As Walter has already indicated, it’s both a technical and a social and interpretive skill that’s being taught, and that needs to be developed and honed throughout a medical practitioner’s career. For a very long time,
of what it is they’re doing. That’s, in part, what that quote is talking about. The other point it makes is being able to see the whole patient, from both their physical appearance and their emotions—the
50
general wellbeing, their outlook on life and any actual symptoms
ACT HEALTH
of art are iconic, but I think the building is also an icon, a national icon. It’s something that we’re very proud of in Canberra, and we wanted to partner with that, as an organisation in ACT Health. Secondly, it’s a safe environment. It’s geared towards learning, and one thing that we
Ian Thompson and Professor Walter Abhayaratna in the Asian art gallery at the NGA, Canberra, February 2017.
need in a learning environment is psychological safety. There are, though,
the conventions and stylistic elements that the different art traditions
as you know, some people who come here and they feel vulnerable
entail, what it’s actually communicating becomes clearer. Treating
because they’re in an unfamiliar environment, but that’s also part of the
someone from a different cultural background—who, like all of us,
process. It’s new experiences. Everything’s a little bit raw. I think that
comes with his own particular social norms and modes of interaction,
is also very good for learning. That and having two very skilled NGA
hesitations and anxieties in being unwell or being in a hospital
educators who are instructing them through the process. I’ve watched
environment and so on—requires a strong understanding of how those
that process and it’s a thrill to see training medical professionals come
influences affect the way they will interact with a doctor and describe
out of their shell.
what it is they’re experiencing.
Frances: Other program objectives include exploring the human condition, enriching empathic skills and enhancing cultural and social awareness. Can you highlight how these objectives can be met in an Artmed session?
Walter: One of our aims, too, is to foster collaboration. Collaboration is
Walter: Part of taking care of someone’s overall health includes being empathic, includes being aware of their values and using that value set to then design a treatment management program. I think Artmed allows people to be able take it out of medicine, explore those emotions with art rather than with a patient in front them. It’s sometimes not so easy to be clear about the humanistic side of medicine in front of a patient. You can explore these things a lot better in a setting like the gallery. Ian: Yes, very definitely. Art is, of course, a human expression. So, if you think of an interaction between a doctor and their patient as a human experience, and a communicative experience, it is very much a parallel
one of the most important things because medicine is very much a group effort, a multi-disciplinary effort. In fact, collaboration is one of our core values in the care of patients. We are hoping that the Artmed process is going to foster collaboration between trainees. Ian: Adding to that, I’ve had the experience of an Artmed session and there’s that very important point of vulnerability Water mentioned earlier. That’s the point you look at something and say, ‘I just don’t get it’. Being able to do that in an environment like this might be embarrassing, and people will feel uncomfortable, but the difference between that and standing in front of a patient and saying, ‘I don’t get it’, being prepared to and accepting of that then seeking help from others, is an absolutely essential skill.
that you’ve got there with what it means to approach a work of art.
Frances: How then do you think this benefits health outcomes for the Canberra community?
The other thing is that the most important information is not necessarily
Ian: We’ve touched on it, but one of the things, very definitely, is
the most obvious information. It’s about really engaging and connecting with someone to draw out what they’re experiencing and, ultimately, to make an evaluation. Again, there’s an obvious parallel with the process of interpreting a work of art. With regard to cultural diversity, it’s common experience that when you approach a work of art from another culture for the first time it appears to be odd, foreign. But, as you get to know it and learn some of
improving the patient experience. Having a doctor who’s encouraging and open to hear more from a patient and who’s capable of responding to a patient’s particular background and concerns will, ultimately, contribute to better health care. And, subsequently, the community is more supportive and appreciative of the health system they have available to them. I think that’s largely where the outcomes are being delivered.
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The Artmed experience ANU medical student Matthew Franklin shares his experience of the NGA’s ongoing Artmed program in collaboration with ANU Medical School.
Medical students are a ‘curious’ bunch of people in at least two senses
The program then led me and another medical student, Jess,
of the word: ‘inquisitive’ and ‘strange’. We are also in the incongruous
to extend our engagement with the NGA through our medical
position of meeting high expectations while overcoming self-doubt and
research projects. Every medical student at the ANU must undertake
inexperience. The natural reaction is often to overcompensate, forcing
a research project in the first two years of the degree. These projects
an appearance of self-confidence and professionalism without the
are highly varied, from biochemical laboratory analysis at one end of
foundations of competency true experts can fall back on. Art offers an
the spectrum to art as research at the other. I initially undertook my
excellent opportunity to lower this facade and just try to be ourselves and
project with the vague idea of investigating mental wellbeing through
can actually be seen as a vital part of our medical education.
the vast collection of Indigenous art at the NGA. Then, after two years
The majority of us who took part in the Artmed program that ran
of research, many hours at the NGA and interviews with curators,
over four weeks at the NGA in early 2015 had no prior experience in
I landed upon investigating Indigenous identity and its impact on
the visual arts. I had studied nothing but science and maths for six
wellbeing. This proved to be an endlessly broad and complex topic, but
years prior to entering my medical degree. Art interpretation had been
the contemporary works I analysed taught me about the challenges and
far from my mind, but we were eased into it through the program
triumphs of Indigenous people in modern Australia and, ultimately, for
by firstly trying to get to grips with describing what we saw before
the better, changed the way I see Australia.
being introduced to some of the basic tools of art analysis such as
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Matthew Franklin in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander galleries at the NGA, Canberra, December 2016.
Art is intrinsically human, as varied and diverse as the people who
form and shape. Finally, we put to use these tools and what we had
create it. As medical students, we must learn to understand people
learned by presenting to our peers a work of art we had chosen from
from all walks of life to avoid becoming detached prescribers whom
the NGA’s collection. Each presentation was insightful, entertaining
our patients feel worse for having seen. This understanding comes
and often surprising, using a mixture of technical analysis and personal
more naturally to some than others, and I say this without knowing
reflection. For me, they were a highlight of the program, as they
yet into which category I fall. Viewing art, for me, is as much about
offered unexpected insights into each other as well as the artists we
self‑reflection as it is about understanding the artist’s intentions,
were researching.
and I think this holds true for how we approach each other.
ACT HEALTH
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NEW ACQUISITIONS
PHILIP WOLFHAGEN Philip Wolfhagen’s A litany of vapours 2007 is one of the great achievements of contemporary painting in the first decade of the twenty-
revealed him to be a painter of increasing complexity and depth.
first century. Arguably the most significant painting he has undertaken
As Terence Maloon described the artist’s work when it was on show in
to date, it comprises seven panels depicting cloud formations as they
the major survey Illumination: the art of Philip Wolfhagen at the Drill Hall
arc and billow over the landscape. The humble cloud is a thing of great
in Canberra:
beauty for Wolfhagen, worthy of contemplation and exploration in its own right, just as it was for British romantic painter John Constable, whose life and work have long inspired the Tasmanian artist. A litany of vapours suggests the transient nature of weather patterns and their effect on the earth. Yet, in the interplay of light and dark and variously radiant clouds from one panel to the next, Wolfhagen reminds us that these most apparently evanescent natural phenomena can convey tremendous dramatic presence and evoke a sense of poetry and music. Having grown up in the Tasmanian midlands, Wolfhagen studied at the Tasmanian School of Art and subsequently attended the Sydney College of the Arts in 1990. He returned to his home base in Longford, Tasmania, in 1995, where his family has lived for generations. When he was painting the work, he was thinking about climate change a great deal, which informed his choice of a title, a ‘chant-like iteration on the beauty of the world as we’ve known it’. He is an intensely painterly painter, and the medium of paint itself, and what occurs in the layering and glazing processes, is an ongoing fascination. He continually pushes and dissolves the boundaries of figuration and abstraction and, as with A litany of vapours, encourages the viewer to move in close to attain a sense of the paint quality and to step back to view the whole.
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Wolfhagen’s art over the past two and a half decades has
NEW ACQUISITIONS
Tasmanian painter Philip Wolfhagen’s landscapes establish a midpoint between sweeping Romantic panoramas and flinty abstractions. His motifs, glowing in suggestive darkness or suffused with a mid grey-and-blonde radiance, relate to the far-Southern latitudes of Australia. Substantial in scale and richly impastoed, they relate equally to postminimal painters like Brice Marden and Sean Scully and to post-Fred Williams and post-Colin McCahon Australasian landscape.
Wolfhagen makes a bold statement in A litany of vapours, akin to a fugue in music, where the intensity gradually builds. Although the waxy, dense paint, at times applied with a palette knife, recalls Gustave Courbet’s paintings, close observation reveals a rich layering and glazing of the surface. Early in the evolution of this work, following a visit to Washington, Wolfhagen recalled in his journal that he was ‘spellbound’ by the late paintings of Jackson Pollock, ‘especially up close where you can peer back into the painting … I really want to make my painting do this’. In the course of working on A litany of vapours, he expressed his engagement with the varying intensities of the parts in relation to the whole. At times he felt an emotional response to the panels, as though they were living beings.
Left: Philip Wolfhagen A litany of vapours 2007, oil and beeswax on linen. Purchased with the assistance of the Foundation Gala Dinner Fund, 2017 Below: Philip Wolfhagen in his studio.
On 17 August 2007, he noted: After the agony of yesterday (struggling with the cloud ‘crest’ of panel III) today the pleasure of glazing dry work … I realise that I feel very different emotions about each panel—almost like people: some agreeable, some difficult … I have had to heighten drama occasionally in order for the sequence to work formally … [as in] the brooding heart of the work (panels III, IV and V) with their abstract qualities … the best paint handling I think I have achieved. They really must be viewed from close up and at a distance for the dramatic complexity to spring to life.
Taking an overview over the seven panels of A litany of vapours, we have a sense of the drama of the building weather system of cumulus clouds over Ben Lomond. While this view is expansive, the clouds, in a painterly sense, are not distant from us but brought close up. As we look intently, we find that each panel is quite distinctive, each has a presence of its own and each floats at different distances, allowing more or less blue sky into the picture. The horizon of the earth, with vistas of shadowy deepblue mountains in the distance, is low and dark, heightening the luminosity of the clouds. While the painting is about vapours, these clouds feel substantial. They reorientate our perspective as earth dwellers. To be surrounded by them is akin to floating in the cloud-space, immersed in the phenomena of climate and environment, absorbed in a space where nature and poetic vision are as one. Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art
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JUDITH WRIGHT Enigmatic and ethereal, Destination 2012–13 is a series of installation works about the journey of Judith Wright’s infant daughter through life and death to an imagined afterlife. It wrestles with vulnerability and the role that imagination and memory play in our lives and relationships with others. In 2016, Wright’s son donated to the NGA the final five stages of the series, which follow the infant’s eventual drift into the intangible afterlife. The series was shown in its entirety in the exhibition Judith Wright: desire at the QUT Art Museum in 2014. In the catalogue for the exhibition, author Megan Williams summed up the underpinning narrative of the work: ‘Wright’s deft touch carefully nurtures a delicate balance between disclosing just enough, but never revealing too much. However, it is impossible to discuss her work without acknowledging a great personal tragedy she suffered many years ago—the loss of an infant daughter—as it has been the point of departure, and return, for her art over ten years’. Wright is a great assembler of the disparate and discarded elements of life, and these she subtly fuses to create an atmosphere of otherworldliness. She does not simply create new objects from her materials but seeks to create new space. A core subject of that new space is the shadows cast by her creations, the drama of which harks back to her days as a ballet dancer. These looming shadows allude to Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave and to the work of Pliny the Elder that tells how the daughter of an ancient Greek potter traced her lover’s shadow on a wall to preserve his memory. Destination is an important gift to the NGA and plays a significant role in the development of our collection of contemporary Australian installation and sculpture. Lara Nicholls, Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Above: Judith Wright Destination (I) 2013, calico, brass bugle, metal, wood, plaster. Gift of Peter Wright, 2016. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Opposite, from top: Mortimer Menpes Portrait of an old lady: Rembrandt c 1906, Hentschel Colourtype Process with painted papier-mâché frame. Gift of Jane Morgan, 2017. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program; Kathleen Sauerbier Zinnias 1931, oil on canvas. Gift of Norman Feather, 2016. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
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NEW ACQUISITIONS
MORTIMER MENPES Mortimer Menpes spent his life flouting a tenuous line between fact and fiction. Adelaide born, he left for London in 1875, at the age of nineteen, where he transformed himself into a Renaissance man, a notorious celebrity and one of the most prolific artists of the late nineteenth century. His exquisitely decorated home in Cadogan Gardens became a centre for London’s artistic and social elite, and it was from there that he produced his most contentious and ambitious body of work, Series of Great Masters, painted and published from around 1900 to 1909. For the series, he intended to duplicate one hundred famous works by old masters such as da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rubens and Velasquez, which were to be reproduced in a book and as individual pieces. An obsessive innovator, Menpes created his printed imitations using the revolutionary Hentschel Colourtype Process, a three-colour, half-tone photographic printing technique able to generate exacting reproductions. The results were perhaps too successful, with the project verging on forgery—a position Menpes and his publisher did little to redress, with both parties purposefully obscuring the distinction between copy and fake. In a bid to absolve himself of any perceived wrongdoing, Menpes donated thirty-eight oil-painted reproductions (likely all that he ever completed) to the Australian Government in 1911, banishing them to the other side of the world. On first glance, and even after a second look, you can be forgiven for mistaking the NGA’s recent acquisition of Menpes’s Portrait of an old lady: Rembrandt c 1906, for Rembrandt’s 1634 original Portrait of Aechje Claesdr. The printed facsimile, replete with gilded papier-mâché frame, is one of few extant examples of Menpes ill-fated foray and a reminder of the implicit and persistent belief that high European culture was the only real culture. Bianca Hill, Curatorial Assistant
KATHLEEN SAUERBIER In November 2016, loyal Masterpieces for the Nation Fund supporter Emeritus Professor Norman Feather donated a rare early still life by South Australian modernist Kathleen Sauerbier. The work, Zinnias 1931 is typical of the artist’s still-life painting practice. It is painted in her loose and confident style, which was sometimes at odds with the more conservative elements of the South Australian art world at the time. Zinnias were a popular choice of flower for still-life painters of the early twentieth century, as their colours are bold and their structure well defined. The NGA holds a painting of zinnias by Hans Heysen, for instance, although, interestingly, he represented the establishment she was occasionally at odds with. Her first solo exhibition, at the Royal South Australia Society of Arts in Adelaide in 1934, sold well, although the reviews were derisive, given that conservative critics were yet to be exposed to international modernism. Like her fellow South Australians Dorrit Black and Margaret Preston, Sauerbier brought back the modernist principles she learnt while studying in Europe. In 1937, she married and moved to Melbourne and did not hold another solo exhibition for fifty years. The gift of this painting provides the NGA with an opportunity to build our collection of works by this important yet largely overlooked pioneering modernist artist. Lara Nicholls, Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture ARTONVIEW 90 WINTER 2017
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NGA LIFE AUSTRALIA NOW: BERLIN 2017 Assistant Director (Exhibitions and Collections) Adam Worrall visited Europe in March, where he finalised negotiations with one of Berlin’s newest museums, the mE Collectors Room, to present a major new exhibition of select works from the NGA’s world-renowned Indigenous Australian art collection. As part of the Australian Government’s Australia Now: Germany 2017 program, Indigenous Australia: masterworks from the National Gallery of Australia will showcase for audiences in one of Europe’s major cultural hubs two centuries of work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. See page 8 for more on this exciting new exhibition.
RODEL TAPAYA AND PIPILOTTI RIST Filipino artist Rodel Tapaya visited the NGA in March for the install of his first solo Australian exhibition Rodel Tapaya: new art from the Philippines, which is on display until 10 September and for which the NGA commissioned a major new triptych (featured on the cover of our autumn issue of Artonview). While here, he joined curator Jaklyn Babington in a fascinating public discussion about his work, particularly his extraordinary triptych, which makes a pertinent comment on the environmental impacts of religious and other civil conflicts in the Philippines. Opening at the NGA a week earlier, on 11 March, was Pipilotti Rist’s installation Worry will vanish revelation, which was purchased last year with the support of
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NGA LIFE
the NGA’s Foundation Gala Dinner Fund. The Foundation Gala dinner is an important annual fundraising event, and it was particularly wonderful to have the supporters of this acquisition returning after a year to enjoy for themselves the experience of this immersive and captivating work.
CHINESE STATE VISIT As part of a recent state visit, Madame Cheng Hong, the wife of the Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, joined NGA Director Gerard Vaughan and Council member Jason Yeap on a tour of our galleries on 24 March. She was particularly interested in our display of Australian landscape paintings, given that she teaches English literature in Beijing and is well informed about the relationship between painting and literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain and about theories of the sublime and the picturesque. This led to a very interesting discussion about John Glover and Eugene von Guérard in the context of colonial practice. The history behind the NGA’s The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88, one of our premier works of art, was another highlight of the tour, as was our major exhibition at the time, Versailles: Treasures from the Palace. We are optimistic that fruitful and interesting interactions such as this will lead to more contact between the NGA and art institutions in China.
ASIAN ART PROVENANCE UPDATE The NGA’s commitment to researching and publishing its findings on the provenance of its vast Asian art collection remains firm. In April, we confirmed that four Indian sculptures, which had previously been identified by the NGA’s Asian Art Provenance Research Project as having suspect or insufficiently documented provenance, have been reported as stolen and are subject to investigation. A press release detailing the works was distributed immediately, and we are working closely with the Indian High Commission. The findings of our provenance project are regularly published on our website and the media will continue to be updated as information becomes available.
TRAVELLING EXHIBITIONS TO REGIONAL AREAS We have had great feedback regarding two of our exhibitions that started touring Australia’s regional venues this year. Silver and gold: unique Australian objects 1850–1910 opened at Kalgoorlie-Boulder Museum in Western Australia in January and Abstraction: celebrating Australian women abstract artists opened at the Geelong Art Gallery in Victoria at the end of February. Both have reported good attendances and received positive reviews from their visitors. These shows, and others such as Resolution, Max and Olive, Light moves and the forthcoming Diane Arbus, reach far beyond Canberra, strengthening our ties to the broader Australian community by bringing art from around the world to people’s backyards.
RECONCILIATION ACTION PLAN As we are now celebrating National Reconciliation Week 2017 (27 May to 3 June), it seems a good time to announce that work is underway at the NGA to create and commit to a Reconciliation Action Plan. RAPs, for short, are frameworks for organisations to express and realise their vision for reconciliation and to improve cultural awareness and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment, retention and procurement. The NGA has a strong record in these matters, particularly with its ongoing Indigenous Leadership programs, which are supported by our committed Indigenous Art Partner Wesfarmers Arts. A working group of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff will steer the project, as this significant undertaking is a responsibility shared by all Australians. To find out more about reconciliation and about the philosophy and research behind reconciliation action plans, go to Reconciliation Australia’s website, reconciliation.org.au.
NEW COUNCIL MEMBER On 31 March, we welcomed Helen Cook to our Council and the NGA family. Her appointment was announced by the Minister for Communications and the Arts. She is a former chair of the Art Gallery of Western Australia Board and brings considerable business experience to her new role with us. Her background in the arts,
strong addition to the Council, and we look forward to her input on not only the issues we currently face at the NGA but also the broad range of matters on which we work. Find out more about our Council at nga.gov.au/aboutus.
NEW APPOINTMENTS In April, Alison Wright was appointed Assistant Director, Engagement and Development, which oversees a broad portfolio that includes marketing, communications, digital engagement, information and communication technology, membership, development and our Foundation’s activities. Until her appointment, Alison had been Assistant Director (Brand and Marketing) at
FAREWELL TO SIMON ELLIOTT Our Assistant Director (Curatorial and Educational Services) for many years, Simon Elliott recently left the NGA to return to his home city of Brisbane to join QAGoMA as their Deputy Director. Simon has given ten years of outstanding service to the NGA and he will be missed. The QAGoMA position is a great opportunity for him and a recognition of the skills and experience he has developed in senior positions in the museum profession over the years. We all joined together at the NGA in March to thank Simon for his great contribution to life here and to wish him well for his important new role in Brisbane.
the NGA since 2015, and she brings a wealth of experience at a senior leadership level in Australia and internationally to the position. Her proven commitment and enthusiasm for the NGA is something we all share, and her vision for the new portfolio is energetic and aspirational, as we continue to explore new strategies for fundraising and digital engagement in particular.
From opposite left: Pipilotti Rist’s Worry will vanish revelation 2014, installed at the NGA, Canberra, March 2017; Rodel Tapaya and Jaklyn Babington in conversation at the NGA, Canberra, 18 March 2017; NGA Council member Jason Yeap and NGA Director Gerard Vaughan greet Madame Cheng Hong and her entourage at the NGA, Canberra, 24 March 2017; Simon Elliott with the NGA’s sixth-to-eighth century Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, November 2015.
The NGA also welcomed Dr Emma Kindred as our new Curator of NineteenthCentury Australian Art. Emma’s principal period of expertise is from the late eighteenth century to the Federation-era, and she has had considerable experience working in public institutions, including the National Maritime Museum and the Australian War Memorial.
marketing and finance sectors make her a
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SPONSORSHIP AND DONATIONS PRIVATE DONORS The NGA acknowledges the support of its many private donors and recognises, below, their donations made between 8 October 2016 and 21 March 2017. You have our thanks.
1967 Referendum Fund John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert-Jones AO D Ray Cook and Diane Cook Colin Hindmarsh and Barbara Hindmarsh Neil Hobbs and Karina Harris Claudia Hyles David Paul Ray Wilson OAM in memory of James Agapitos OAM
Asian Art Bequest of Pamela Hughes
Australian Art Sandra Barber Lyndell Brown Danielle Creenaune Marilyn Darling AC and the late L Gordon Darling AC, CMG James Erskine and Jacqui Erskine Norman Feather George Gittoes Anne Gray Charles Green Pam Hallandal Kay Lanceley Jane Morgan Jim Pavlidis David Poole
Cézanne Watercolour and Drawing Fund Joanna Capon Jason Parkinson Imants Tillers Susan Wyndham
Cultural gifts Marilyn Darling AC
Decorative Arts and Design D James Schick and Robert Schick, courtesy of Helen Drutt-English
Exhibition Patrons: Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time The Aranday Foundation
Exhibition Patrons: Versailles: Treasures from the Palace Paula Fox AO
Foundation Board Publishing Fund John Schaeffer AO and Bettina Dalton Ray Wilson OAM
Foundation Fundraising Gala Dinner Fund 2017 Philip Bacon AM
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SPONSORSHIP AND DONATIONS
Julian Beaumont OAM and Annie Beaumont Sandy Benjamin OAM and Phillip Benjamin Tony Berg AM and Carol Berg William Blinco and Annette Blinco William Bowness AO Kay Bryan Ann Bryce Andrew Buchanan PSM and Kate Buchanan Robyn Burke and Graham Burke Julian Burt and Alexandra Burt Robert Cadona Terrence Campbell AO and Christine Campbell Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Michel Carriol and Julie Carriol Maurice Cashmere Michelle Coe Norman Cohn and Suzanne Cohn Philip Colbran and Esther Colbran Rear Admiral Ian Crawford AO, AM (Mil), RAN (Retd), and Cathie Crawford James Darling AM and Lesley Forwood Vivienne Fried John Gandel AO and Pauline Gandel Richard Griffin AM and Jay Griffin Andrew Gwinnett and Hiroko Gwinnett Peter Hack Fiona Hayward Tom Hayward and Fiona Martin-Weber William Hayward and Alison Hayward Jennifer Hershon Sue Hewitt Sinclair Hill AM, OBE, and Wendy Hill Meredith Hinchliffe John Hindmarsh AM and Rosanna Hindmarsh OAM Claudia Hyles D Helen Jessup Simon Kessell and Julie Kessell Gail Kinsella Carol Lovegrove and D Frederic Lovegrove D Peter Lundy RFD and D Maureen Bremner Robyn Martin-Weber Peter Mason AM and Kate Mason The Hon Justice Carmel McLure AC, QC Robert Meller D Cathryn J Mittelheuser AM Ron Murray AM and Pamela CannonMurray Allan Myers AC, QC, and Maria Myers AC Marylyn New William Nuttall Geoffrey Pack and Leigh Pack Loyd Perin D David Pfanner and D Ruth Pfanner Dug Pomeroy and Lisa Pomeroy Kenneth Reed AM Ralph Renard and Ruth Renard Gina Rinehart Penelope Seidler AM Geoffrey Smith Ezekiel Solomon AM
Lou Westende OAM and Mandy Thomas-Westende Geoffrey White OAM and Sally White OAM Rhonda White AO and Terry White AO Lyn Williams AM Dennis Wilson and Tauba Wilson Ray Wilson OAM Jason Yeap OAM
General donation Lenore Adamson Margaret Anderson Donna Bush and Glenn Bush
Heather B Swann Nervous Fund Arthur Roe
Hermannsburg Fund Marilyn Darling AC and the late L Gordon Darling AC, CMG
Japanese Art Fund Andrew Gwinnett and Hiroko Gwinnett
Ken Tyler Print Collection Fund Kenneth Tyler AO and Marabeth CohenTyler
Masterpieces for the Nation 2016 D Patricia Clarke Wendy Cobcroft Michael de Burgh Collins Persse MVO Jo-Anne Flatley-Allen Avril Hetherington James McCauley and Doris McCauley Rosemary Miller Helene Rey Raoul Salpeter and Roslyn Mandelberg
Masterpieces for the Nation 2017 Graham Barr and Heloise Barr Sue Dyer
Members Acquisition Fund 2015–16 Karenza Warren
Members Acquisition Fund 2016–17 Dorothy Anderson Michael Askew and Debra Askew D Lynne M Badger Christopher Baker and Kerri Hall Suzanne Baker-Dekker Prof Jeffrey Bennett and Ngaire Bennett Susan Binning Noel Birchall Lynne Booth and Max Booth Prof Phillip Braslins Margaret Brennan and Geoffrey Brennan Ian Bruce John Bruce and Barbara Bruce Colin Byrnes Annette Byron Robert Cadona Alexander Cairns and Robyn Cairns D Berenice-Eve Calf
Shirley Campbell and Colin Campbell Yvonne Campbell Maureen Chan Christine Clark Christine Clough Wendy Cobcroft Margaret Cockburn Bruce Cook Graham Cooke Natalie Cooke Janet Crane Merrilyn Crawford Ann Crewe Andrew Dale Anne De Salis Robyn Dean and Phillip Dean Kay Devers Jacqueline Di Fronzo Douglas Dias Lauraine Diggins Robyn Duncan Julia Ermert and Rupert Ermert Brian Fitzpatrick Edward Fleming Philip Flood AO and Carole Flood D Noel French and Freida French D Peter Fullagar and Helen Topor Roy Garwood Lindsey Gilbert Michael Gillespie and Nicole Gillespie Mary Gleeson Maryan Godson and Richard Godson Karen Greenfield Sybil Griffiths Karen Groeneveld Peter Grove Aileen Hall William Hamilton Jill Hanson and John Hanson John Harrison and Danielle Kluth Colin Hill and Linda Hill Gordon Hill and Pamela Hill D Marian Hill Claudia Hyles William Reid and Judith Reid D Victoria Jennings Elaine Johnston David Kennemore and Rosemary Kennemore Di Knight Paul Kriedemann and Jan Kriedemann Robyn Lance Naomi Landau Diana Laurie and Rob Laurie AM Diana Letts Chris Lindesay and Janette Lindesay Janelle Lumsden Jill Mail Hugh Major Bruce Marshall and Robin Coombes Ian McCay Anthony Moore Andrew Moorhead Neil Mulveney Catherine Murphy and Christopher Murphy
Heather Nash in memory of Bill Nash Diana-Rose Orr Robert Oser and Agie Oser Beth Parsons Robert Pauling D David Pfanner and D Ruth Pfanner John James Price Anne Prins Raymond Rampton Tom Reeve and Mary Jo Reeve Marie Riley and Barry Riley The Riley family Peter Rossiter and Linda Rossiter Jennifer Rowland Annette Searle John Shaeffer AO and Bettina Dalton Judith Shelley and Michael Shelley Rosamond Shepherd Anne Simington Carolyn Spiers David Stanley and Anne Stanley Janine Studdert Lynette Swift The Taylor-Cannon family Rodney Teakle Margot Tredoux and Terry Strong D Shirley Troy Jenny Van Vucht and Niek Van Vucht Brenton Warren Wendy Webb Angela Westacott Peter White and Anne White Jean Williams and Alex Williams Andrew Williamson Zandra Wilson Richard Wootton and Prudence Wootton
CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPS Principal Partners
Community Partner
Major Partners
Accommodation Partner
Supporting Partner
Media Partners
NGA Research Library Fund Bequest of William Stenhouse Hamilton
NGA Staff Travel Fund
Indigenous Art Partner
Judith Rogers and Andrew Rogers
Pacific Art Brett Graham George Nuku
Paul Bangay Garden Fund Beck Family Foundation Andrew Fox Katrina Fox Paula Fox AO Susan Rothwell Architects
Photography Lyndell Brown Jon Cattapan Virginia Coventry Charles Green
Rotary Fund
Corporate Members
Contemporary Art Partner
Aesop Brassey of Canberra Canberra Airport Canberra Symphony Orchestra Clayton Utz Eckersley’s Art and Craft Forrest Hotel & Apartments Hyatt Hotel Canberra Murrays SMS Management & Technology
Hotel Hotel
Beverage Partner Kronenbourg
Signage Partner Flash Photobition
Rotary Club of Belconnen
Tom Roberts Louis Abrahams Fund Kerry Stokes AC and Christine Simpson Stokes
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Tracey Moffatt at the 57th Venice Biennale Comparing notes on Gordon Bennett and Daniel Boyd Revisiting the birth of the Western Desert art movement Issue 298 / May 2017 artmonthly.org.au
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[1]‘Daily Rituals’ with Alyssa McClelland. Shot in Creative room 105 by Lee Grant.
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[2]‘Borrow Tomorrow’ exhibition by Luke Chiswell at the Nishi Gallery. With Michael Lenaghan shot at Lake George by Arnad Hajdic.
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