Artonview 95 by National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018 Commissioning editor Eric Meredith Editor Irma Gold Guest contributors Wally Caruana, independent curator and art historian Djon Mundine OAM, curator, writer, artist and activist Contributors Sally Foster, Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator, Photography Eric Meredith, Senior Editor Anne O’Hehir, Curator, Photography Kirsten Paisley, Deputy Director Elspeth Pitt, Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture (20th and 21st Centuries) Lucina Ward, Curator, Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture Bianca Winataputri, Assistant Curator International Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts Advertising enquiries ArtonviewAdvertising@nga.gov.au Enquiries artonview.editor@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/artonview © National Galley of Australia 2017 PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au

CONTENTS 5

DIRECTOR’S WORD Nick Mitzevich

IN BRIEF

EXHIBITION LISTING

CURRENT MAJOR EXHIBITION AMERICAN MASTERS 1940–1980 Lucina Ward examines the development of the NGA’s collection of American art and the controversial purchases of Jackson Pollack’s Blue poles and Willem de Kooning’s Woman V

24 COMING MAJOR EXHIBITION LOVE AND DESIRE: PRE-RAPHAELITE MASTERPIECES FROM THE TATE Bianca Winataputri explores how the Pre-Raphaelites reflected the Victorian societal values of the time through depictions of the ‘fallen woman’

30 COMING EXHIBITION CALIFORNIA COOL: ART IN LOS ANGELES, 1960S–70S Shaune Lakin, Sally Foster and Anne O’Hehir investigate the way American artists of the 1960s and 1970s responded to the landscape of Los Angeles

36 CURRENT EXHIBITIONS POWER & IMAGINATION

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 ISSN 2208-6218 (Online) Designed by Kristin Thomas Printed by CanPrint, Canberra, on FSC and PEFC certified paper using vegetable-based inks FSC-C017269 | PEFC/21-31-41

Opposite: Ken Price Figurine cup III 1970 (detail), from the series Figurine cup, photo-offset lithograph, screenprint. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1973 Cover: Keith Sonnier Untitled 1969, glass sheets, fluorescent tubes and electrical cables. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1976

Elspeth Pitt considers the range of work included in a new exhibition that resists material convention in favour of idea, experiment and unabashed imagination

40 WATERCOLOURS BY HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES Eric Meredith introduces an exhibition of fine watercolours by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, which will be on display until 18 November 2018

44 TRAVELLING EXHIBITION NED KELLY Deborah Hart presents the travelling exhibition of Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series, and explores the origins of some of the most iconic paintings in the history of Australian art

50 COLLECTION FOCUS THE ABORIGINAL MEMORIAL Djon Mundine OAM recollects the genesis of the project that was to become The Aboriginal Memorial in a recent conversation with Wally Caruana

56 NEW ACQUISITIONS John Olsen, David Rosetzky, Girolamo Nerli, Martin Bell, Guan Wei, Dora Maar

CONTENTS

DIRECTOR’S WORD

The National Gallery of Australia has an extraordinary history of artistic

Opposite: Arshile Gorky Untitled 1944 (detail), oil and pencil on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1972

powerful and compelling works like The Aboriginal Memorial 1978–88,

programs, amazing exhibitions, strategic collection building and

which celebrates its thirtieth year in October, and Jackson Pollock’s Blue

important initiatives aimed at making the visual arts more accessible

poles 1952, which is currently in our major new exhibition American

across Australia, both physically and in the way that it approaches art as

Masters 1940–1980.

a means of understanding the world, of respecting different cultures and

In this issue of Artonview, we hear from the conceptual producer of

perspectives and of opening up new ways of seeing. I feel very privileged

the memorial, Djon Mundine (pages 50–5), while National Gallery curator

to be leading the National Gallery into its next chapter and look forward

Lucina Ward reveals how the our internationally distinguished collection

to building on this history.

of American art has been developed over decades (pages 14–23). Sidney

Caring for and shaping a collection as large and valuable as the

Nolan’s Ned Kelly series is another of our major works, although these

National Gallery’s is a particularly exciting prospect, and an extraordinary

iconic paintings are currently on an extensive national tour, giving

responsibility, as is finding new ways to share it with the nation and

audiences across the Australia the opportunity to share in Nolan’s

the world. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my

extraordinary conception of our most famous outlaw. Head of Australian

predecessor Dr Gerard Vaughan’s efforts in this regard and to thank him

Art Deborah Hart illuminates these works on pages 44–9.

for his many contributions to the Gallery and the national arts agenda over the past four years. Since arriving, I have been very please to see the Gallery full of so

Also in this issue, we look at major shifts in the visual arts of the 1960s and 1970s, which can be seen from different angles in our exhibitions Power & Imagination, on display now, and California Cool:

many happy people. Going by the number of visitors alone, this winter

Art in Los Angeles, 1960s–70s, which opens 6 October. We also introduce

has been the best the Gallery has seen for several years. This may be due

our summer blockbuster, Love and Desire: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces

in large part to the allure of the remarkable jewels on show in Cartier:

from the Tate, with a focus on the subject of the ‘fallen woman’ by

The Exhibition, which received 200,700 visitors in the short time it

assistant curator Bianca Winataputri on pages 24–9. And, of course, with

was on display, less than four months—well above what was expected,

every issue, we highlight select works that have been recently acquired

particularly for an exhibition spanning Canberra’s chillier months.

for the national collection.

Spring, however, is here and is an exciting time in Canberra.

Finally, I should note, if you haven’t heard already, that I’m not the

The floral festival Floriade is especially appealing for an avid gardener like

only new arrival in a governing role at the Gallery. Only a week after I

me. It’s a great celebration of the outdoors, of renewal and growth, which

started on 2 July, Ryan Stokes took up the position of Chair of our National

is something the Gallery is also celebrating through a number of its new

Gallery Council. He comes directly from the role of chair of the Council

smaller exhibitions and displays and with a big weekend of activities

of the National Library of Australia after six successful years and has

we’re calling ‘Flourish’. You can read about many of these activities in the

considerable experience in the media, finance and management sectors,

pages that follow. Visitors to Floriade might particularly appreciate the

which will contribute significantly to the Gallery’s ongoing growth.

watercolour landscapes of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales or our

I am looking forward to his input and advice and to the

ongoing Art Nouveau or Art Deco shows. Our contemporary Australian

contributions other Council members, Foundation directors and my new

galleries will also be showing works from the national collection that

colleagues on the staff here at the Gallery as we forge ahead with various

explore nature in fascinating and inventive ways. I should also note that the Gallery’s newly acquired Yayoi Kusama

initiatives, projects and partnerships that will advance the national collection in Canberra and around Australia. As Gallery members, you are

infinity room, which takes the humble pumpkin as its motif, will

our most dedicated audience. We hope you will continue to put your faith

be going on display before the end of November. Kusama’s work is

in this national arts institution and to support the growth of our national

admired internationally, and The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended

collection for years to come.

into the Heavens 2015 will become a destination piece for visitors

Nick Mitzevich

to Canberra and the National Gallery. In this, it will join particularly

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

IN BRIEF Earth and sky In September, the NGA will open a fascinating display in its Contemporary galleries featuring wide-ranging works that explore the celestial and terrestrial realms of existence. Coinciding with Canberra’s Floriade festival, curators have mined the contemporary collections for works underpinned by the scientific and cultural aspects of the botanical world, in particular Australia’s native flora. The complete suite of Christian Thompson’s Untitled series 2008— featuring the artist’s self-portrait adorned with native blooms, such as pink kangaroo paw, banksia and flannel flowers, among others—will be shown alongside his Black gum portraits of 2008. Delving deeply into the science and politics of pollen, Angela Valamanesh’s extraordinary plaster relief Airborne 2011, which reveals magnified pollen samples, will be also be displayed. And hovering overhead we will encounter the ragged terror of Fiona Hall’s Macromia splendens (Splendid cruiser) 2009–2011, a giant suspended dragonfly woven from camouflage fabric. For millennia, artists have been enchanted by the heavens.

Indigenous artists have a deep relationship with the sky and a number of key treasures from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art collection will be shown, such as the bark painting Garak IV

The artists featured in this exhibition examine the mystery of the night

(The Universe) 2004 by Gulumbu Yunupingu that was inspired by an

sky and its daytime incarnation. The display begins with one of the rarest

important ancestral story for the Yolgnu of north-east Arnhem Land.

prints in Australian art, Thomas Mitchell Livingston’s Chart of the Zodiac

Although Garak appears to be a literal representation of the Milky

c 1831, which is both a scientific document and a remarkable work of art.

Way, Yunupingu has stated that her art is about the entire universe.

This work provides a counterpoint to contemporary artists’ explorations

It represents all the stars that can be seen by the naked eye, and

of space, such as Janet Dawson’s tondo Moon at Dawn through a

everything that exists beyond any scientific expedition or estimation.

telescope, January 2000 2000.

In other words, all that can be imagined and all that cannot.

Spring screenings: ‘Artists and gardens’ 3, 10 and 17 October 6.30 pm Paul Grabsky’s ‘Exhibition on screen’—films that bring blockbuster art exhibitions from galleries around the world—returns to the NGA in Spring. Under the theme ‘Artists and gardens’, to coincide with Canberra’s Floriade Festival, the NGA will be screening three films in October, one film every Wednesday evening from 3 October. The first will be The artist’s garden: American Impressionism (2017), which takes us to some beautiful gardens and iconic locations in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France that inspired American artists. Screening on 10 October, the second film reveals the heart and soul of arguably the world’s most loved artist famous for his garden landscapes, Claude Monet. I, Claude Monet (2017) was shot on location at the very spots he painted and is tells Monet’s story through his own words. On 17 October, the final film, Painting the modern garden: Monet to Matisse (2016) explores how various contemporaries of Monet built and cultivated modern gardens to explore expressive motifs, abstract From top: Christian Thompson Untitled series 2008, Type C print. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2009; Still from I, Claude Monet (2017), directed by Phil Grabsky. Photo: David Bickerstaff Opposite: George Baldessin Pear – version number 2 1973, corten steel: 7 forms, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1973

IN BRIEF

colour, decorative design and utopian ideas.

Bookings at nga.gov.au/calendar

Baldessin’s pears return with friends Good news for those who have missed George Baldessin’s Pear—version number 2 1973, which, after many years at the NGA’s front entrance, was replaced with American artist Barnett Newman’s extraordinary Broken Obelisk 1963/67 earlier this year. On long-term loan from the Barnett Newman Foundation in recognition of the NGA’s significant twentieth-century American art collection, the obelisk serves as a beacon for the NGA’s current major exhibition American Masters 1940–80 (see pages 14–23). Baldessin’s pears are now in our Australian Garden, just outside the Gandel Hall, a perfect spot for a picnic with this old favourite. The Sculpture Garden also has two new additions: Australian artist Lisa Roet’s large bronze Orangutan foot 2007–08, given to the NGA by Richard and Jan Frolich in 2015, and Canadian sculptor Cal Lane’s shippingcontainer work Domestic turf 2012, a gift from the artist through Art Mûr. Orangutan foot is an example of Australian artist Roet’s insatiable yet infectious fascination with the traits we share with primates, while Lane’s Domestic turf re-imagines an industrial object as rococo fantasy. When first shown in the Biennale of Sydney in 2012, Domestic turf proved extremely popular with the public and was praised by critics. The NGA is very pleased to have these works on display for the first time here, particularly as spring is here. A great time to enjoy our Sculpture Garden.

Flourish Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 October Coinciding with Canberra’s favourite floral festival Floriade, Flourish will blossom all over the NGA precinct with events and activities. On Saturday, exclusive experiences will take place throughout the building, some in areas that are normally closed to the public. Visitors will have the opportunity to go on a behind-the-scenes tour in the conservation lab, curate your own exhibition inside a miniature gallery model, or you can even try your hand at writing a label for a work of art. Foodies will love the chance to cook and devour a sugary treat with our award-winning head chef in the NGA kitchen. The day will also include a screening of the acclaimed 2017 film The Square, a panel discussion with curators, regular gallery tours and a sunset jam with local musicians near the James Turrell skyspace. On Sunday, we celebrate the glory of the Sculpture Garden in spring and welcome our very special guests Dirtgirl, Scrapboy and Costa from Get Grubby TV, fresh from their appearance at Floriade. The day will also include a performance by local legends Mr Tim and the Fuzzy Elbows as well as creative making activities throughout the garden. There will be something to inspire the whole family. Bring a picnic to share under the eucalypts, or purchase food and drink onsite. Flourish will also celebrate Australian Indigenous art and culture by sharing stories, art making and performance and is possible with the support of Tim Fairfax in honour of Betty Churcher.

Find a full list of activities and booking information at nga.gov.au/calendar ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Early American film and video

A new display of early American film and video at the NGA features key works by Carolee Schneemann, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Martha Rosler and Nam June Paik, much of which has recently been acquired for the national collection. A significant aspect of American art of the 1960s and early 1970s tracks the rise of video. While avant-garde artists often used film to record events or performances, or to make work that borrowed from cinema, video technology offered revolutionary potential. The technology effectively decentralised media, making it possible for artists to make work independently and then distribute it widely. By 1960, America had become well and truly televisual: ninety per cent of households owned a television set, which for the most part kept them up-to-date with news of the world and new products that offered the promise of an improved and happier life. By the late 1960s, it was becoming possible for anyone to create television content. The first portable video recorders became commercially available around 1965, and Sony’s iconic Portapak was released in 1967. While expensive units cost around $1500, the Portapak meant that anyone could produce and immediately play back moving images on a magnetic tape. A lot of early video work used the body of the artist as its subject. In this way, the medium ideally supported both performance and the dematerialisation artwork that were such prominent features of contemporary American art during the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the Portapak significantly impacted on the course of performative practice at this time: no longer necessarily an ephemeral experience to be witnessed live, video made it possible for artists to perform directly for the monitor.

Resolution: New Indigenous Photomedia 27 October 2018 to 23 June 2019 This exhibition creates an experience of photomedia and Indigeneity that is physical, embodied and thought-provoking. It features work made since 2011 from across the country and brings together some of Australia’s most critically acclaimed artists, whose careers stretch back decades, with some of our most exciting emerging talent. Reflecting the diversity and dynamism of contemporary practice, many of the artists featured in Resolution work across a broad range of media—perhaps as few as one third identify as specialist photographers or photomedia artists. Similarly, they often possess complex cultural identities that complicate any straightforward categorisation of their work. The foundations of contemporary Indigenous photography were laid in the late 1980s with a generation of politicised and provocative artists who documented their experiences around the events of the Australian Bicentennial. The last thirty years has seen the emergence of artists who engage critically, thoughtfully and sometimes forcefully with the present and the past. They decide how they negotiate their way in the world, making work that reflects the challenging, hybrid nature of contemporary society.

IN BRIEF

Merce Cunningham Dance Residency And other American Masters programs Merce Cunningham was arguably the ‘American Master’ of contemporary dance. He formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1953 to trail-blazed new forms of abstract movement, bringing together visual arts and dance in novel combinations. Cunningham’s collaborations on costume and decor design with Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman and Roy Lichtenstein are well known, and works on paper from these projects are held in the NGA’s collection. Robert Rauschenberg was the company’s resident designer from 1954 to 1964 and Jasper Johns was artistic adviser from 1967. With support from the Embassy of the United States of America in Canberra, the NGA will host an international contemporary dance residency in association with its new major exhibition American Masters 1940–1980. Former Merce Cunningham Dance Company performer and now stager, Jamie Scott will remount Merce Cunningham’s pioneering repertoire with three Australian dancers, who will perform a range of solos, duos and trios on the final weekend of the residency. The NGA will also host an American Masters symposium Opposite, from top: Martha Rosler Semiotics of the kitchen 1975, video, black-and-white. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2018; Tony Albert Brothers (New York Dreaming) 2015, pigment inkjet print, stickers. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney Above: Andy Warhol Merce, from Merce Cunningham Portfolio 1974, stencil screenprint. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1979. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ARS / Copyright Agency

on 19 and 20 October, which will focus on minimalism and is made possible with the support of the Terra Foundation for American Art. A range of other public programs will further celebrate the NGA’s extraordinary twentieth-century American collection on show in American Masters, including lunchtime talks, art-making activities, film screenings and more such as ‘Friday Night Live’ on 14 September.

Bookings at nga.gov.au/calendar

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Spring ‘Out of the Box’ 11 September, 9 October and 13 November 12.45 pm ‘Out of the Box’ is held on the second Tuesday of each month in the NGA’s Collection Study Room. This public program invites different artists, curators or other gallery specialists to discuss aspects of the national collection in depth and breadth with our visitors, who have opportunity to directly engage with the NGA collection in close proximity. Spring talks include Sally Foster, Curator of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books, on the Merce Cunningham Portfolio of 1974; Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art, on the NGA’s Fiona Hall art and archive collections; and David Rosetzky, Contemporary Australian artist, in conversation with Photography curators Shaune Lakin and Anne O’Hehir about his work recently acquired for the collection. The program is free but bookings are essential.

Bookings at nga.gov.au/calendar

National Summer Art Scholarship 2019 Applications now open Spring at the NGA heralds the beginning of the application process for the annual National Summer Art Scholarship for students entering Year 12. Two students from each state and territory will be selected to come to Canberra for a week from 12 to 19 January 2019. Nathan, who participated in the 2018 program, said, ‘I’ve met new and incredible people that I now hold dear to me, who have changed me for the better … Now I realise that working in a gallery, if not the NGA, might be my calling’. Every year, sixteen participants are immersed in an environment that combines the breadth of the national collection with peer collaboration and supportive interaction with Australian artists and NGA staff. Connections between peers are nurtured to allow for increased understanding and reflection and to motivate them for the year ahead. Students are inspired to expand their vision of what is possible, their perceptions of themselves and their capabilities. The impact on each student and their community is hard to measure, but the experience ensures many students maintain contact with the NGA and become From top: Bruce Nauman Caned dance, from Merce Cunningham Portfolio 1974, planographic lithograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1979. © Bruce Nauman. ARS/ Copyright Agency; The 2018 National Summer Art Scholars with Angelica Mesiti’s work at the NGA, 15 January 2018. Opposite, from top: The exhibition Art Nouveau at the NGA, Canberra, July 2018; Jean Gabriel Prêtre (print after) Yellow collared parrot, male, from Voyage de la corvette 1833, engraving, hand-coloured in watercolour. The Wordsworth Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2010

IN BRIEF

lifelong supporters of the visual arts.

Find out more at nga.gov.au/summerartscholarship

Art Nouveau Between 1890 and 1910, Art Nouveau—the new art—was at its peak in Europe and America and was applied to art, architecture, graphic arts, interior design and the decorative arts. Prominent artists and designers of the movement looked to nature as a key source of inspiration, and sought to create beautiful images and objects. Inspired by the inexhaustible forms of the natural world, motifs derived from flora and fauna were often incorporated. The Art Nouveau style is richly decorative, typified by graceful organic forms, and curvilinear and undulating lines. Works in the Art Nouveau style are currently on display in the international galleries. The centre of the room is illuminated with a display of eight Louis Comfort Tiffany lamps. Seven of the lamps have been generously lent to the NGA by a private collector. Tiffany’s lamp

two volumes. Each delicately drawn botanical illustration of a plant is

designs are prime examples of the Art Nouveau style and embody his

followed by examples of it interpreted into an array of decorative designs

belief that art and everyday objects should be imbued with beauty

and motifs that have been applied to objects such as fabrics, ceramics,

sourced from nature.

wallpapers, furniture and metalwork.

A selection of prints from the publication La Plante et ses

The graphic arts flourished at this time, reaching a mass audience

applications ornamentals (Plants and their application to ornament)

and gaining widespread appeal through advertising posters, periodicals,

also reveals the almost endless decorative possibilities that can be derived

illustrative books and playbills. The International galleries display also

from nature. It was produced under the direction of Eugène Grasset,

includes posters created by celebrated artists Emmanuel Orazi and

a teacher, artist and pioneer of Art Nouveau, and contains 144 plates in

Alphonse Mucha that capture the spirit of Art Nouveau.

French connections A collaboration between the NGA and the Australian Print Workshop In 1975, Louis XVI—a keen geographer and a determined rival of Britain’s maritime supremacy—commissioned Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, to circumnavigate the Pacific. Reaching Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, only days after Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet had arrived to establish the first European colony in Australia, La Pérouse later set sail for New Caledonia and promptly disappeared. He and his ships were never seen again. This fleeting French connection to Australia, and the imaginative space opened up by La Pérouse’s disappearance, form the basis of a new body of contemporary work commissioned by the Australian Print Workshop. In May 2018, four artists—Martin Bell, Megan Cope, Gracia Haby and Louise Jenison—were invited to Paris to explore public and private collections relating to French exploration of Australia. Facilitated by the NGA, visits included private viewings at the Musée du Louvre to examine Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s engravings of Australasian botanical specimens cultivated by Josephine Bonaparte at Château de Malmaison; a session at Archives de Paris to pour over journals and watercolour topographies from the voyage of Nicolas Baudin; and an examination of contemporary retellings of colonial histories in exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, led by the Pomidou’s Deputy Director, Catherine David. Drawing from this rich period of research, the artists will make new work over the following year at the Australian Print Workshop in Gertrude Street, Melbourne.

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Contemporary Australian Architects Speaker Series 2018 5, 12, 19 and 26 September 6.00 pm Join us on Wednesday evenings in September for the annual Contemporary Australian Architects Speaker Series presented together with the ACT Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects and sponsored by BCA Certifiers. For the first time we will have an international speaker, Richard Hassell from the Singapore-based architecture practice WOHA. Their unique approach to tropical architecture and urbanism weaves landscape and community through porous structures. Other award-winning Australian architects who will be presenting are: Shaune Carter from Carter Williamson, who recently received three awards at the 2018 Inner West Council Built Environment Awards; David Welsh, from Welsh + Major, whose residential architecture projects have won many Australian Institute of Architects awards; and Dillon Kombumerri, Indigenous Senior Architect with the New South Wales Government, who has a passion for projects that improve the health, wellbeing and prosperity of Indigenous communities.

Bookings at nga.gov.au/calendar

James Fairfax’s legacy at the NGA The NGA welcomes the generous $1.2 million donation from the estate of the late James Fairfax AC for the refurbishment of our much-used James O Fairfax Theatre. The funds, pledged by the Fairfax family company Bridgestar, will provide improvements to the theatre to enhance the experience of all visitors through access, usability and technology. Regarded as one of the founders of the NGA, Fairfax was a member of the first governing Council from 1968 to 1974 and served again with great commitment from 1976 to 1984. Throughout his life, he remained in close touch with the NGA as a life governor, friend and benefactor. ‘His legacy has endured through gifts and donations, with artwork conservatively valued at $20 million as well as invaluable support for acquisitions and infrastructure’, said Gerard Vaughan, former NGA director. In addition to the $1.6 million for the theatre refurbishment, the estate has gifted works of art to the national collection, including William Dobell’s Study of Walter Magnus 1945 and John Olsen’s Boys and bicycle 1958 from James Fairfax as well as Charles Blackman’s The anteroom 1963, Gunter Christmann’s Untitled 1972, Charles Lloyd Jones’s Caretaker’s cottage c 1940, Godfrey Miller’s Landscape andante 1959–63 and Napier Waller’s Governor Macquarie crossing the Blue Mountains From top: Welsh + Major’s ‘Former No 4 Rocks Police Station’. Photo: Katherine Lu; Charles Blackman The anteroom 1963, oil, ink, pencil and canvas collage on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Bridgestar, 2017. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

IN BRIEF

c 1935 from Bridgestar.

Find out more at nga.gov.au/giving

EXHIBITION LISTING

AT THE NGA LOVE AND DESIRE: PRE-RAPHAELITE MASTERPIECES FROM THE TATE From the Tate’s unsurpassed collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and other collections worldwide. 14 December 2018 to 22 April 2019

AMERICAN MASTERS 1940–1980 Examining how a generation of Americans reinvented modern art. 24 August to 11 November 2018

ART NOUVEAU Inspired by the inexhaustible forms of the natural world. From June 2018

ART DECO IN AUSTRALIA Stylish items from an age of jazz and flappers, glamorous fashion and design. 16 February to December 2018

BALNAVES CONTEMPORARY INTERVENTIONS Sarah Contos’s Nikola Tesla sends Theda Bara to Mars 4 May to 24 September 2018

PICASSO: THE VOLLARD SUITE A rare opportunity to see one of the twentieth century’s greatest suites of prints. 6 June to 24 September 2018

WATERCOLOURS BY HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES Celebrating HRH The Prince of Wales’s 70th birthday. 10 August to 18 November 2018

POWER & IMAGINATION

NED KELLY

Language, poetry, performance and film in art. 11 August 2018 to 28 January 2019

Sidney Nolan’s iconic paintings of the exploits of Ned Kelly and his gang. 3 August to 4 November 2018 @ Art Gallery of Western Australia 22 November 2018 to 17 February 2019 @ Murray Art Museum Albury

PERFORMING DRAWING Bringing together drawings, photographs and audiovisual works from the collection. 1 September 2018 to 20 January 2019

CALIFORNIA COOL: ART IN LOS ANGELES, 1960S–70S Highlighting the way American artists responded to the promise of LA in the 1960s and 1970s. 6 October 2018 to 24 February 2019

TOURING EXHIBITIONS RESOLUTION: NEW INDIGENOUS PHOTOMEDIA Recent photomedia by some of Australia’s leading and emerging Indigenous artists. 27 October 2018 to 23 June 2019

ARTISTS’ FACES AND PLACES A fascinating display of portraits of artists and their studios. 22 October 2018 to 10 February 2019

DIANE ARBUS: AMERICAN PORTRAITS Powerful allegories of postwar America by photographer Diane Arbus. 16 July to 30 September 2018 @ Art Gallery of South Australia

DEFYING EMPIRE: NATIONAL INDIGENOUS ART TRIENNIAL Contemporary art responding to the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum. 28 July to 11 November 2018 @ UQ Art Museum

THE NATIONAL PICTURE: THE ART OF TASMANIA’S BLACK WAR Curated by Prof Tim Bonyhady, working with Dr Greg Lehman. 17 August to 11 November 2018 @ Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

SILVER AND GOLD: UNIQUE AUSTRALIAN OBJECTS 1850–1910 Works from the NGA’s significant collection of colonial Australian decorative arts and design. 11 October 2018 to 9 December 2018 @ Bundaberg Art Galley

PICASSO: THE VOLLARD SUITE A rare opportunity to see one of the twentieth century’s greatest suites of prints. 10 November 2018 to 28 January 2019 @ Art Gallery of South Australia

NGA .GOV.AU ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

CURRENT MA JOR EXHIBITION

Lucina Ward examines the development of the NGA’s collection of American art and the controversial purchases of Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles and Willem de Kooning’s Woman V.

AMERICAN MASTERS 1940–80

ARTONVIEW 95â&#x20AC;&#x201A; SPRING 2018

American Masters 1940–1980 highlights the strength of the National Gallery of Australia’s holdings of American art. The collection, featuring ‘destination’ works, such as Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles 1952 and Willem de Kooning’s Woman V 1952–53, is large, important and often provokes comment: why is it that an art museum, newly formed and freshly conceived in Australia in the 1970s, should represent the visual culture of another country—albeit a close ally and dominant cultural force—in such a comprehensive and ambitious way? Why was so much emphasis given to the acquisition of masterworks and how are these considered in the context of the larger collection? And what, after all, does this say about art, museums and social–cultural politics then and now? There are museological precedents, of course, other institutions around the world that reflect history in comparable ways. The French national collection at the Louvre displays the art of other countries acquired by royal collectors and during the Napoleonic wars. The approach of the National Gallery in London, and its aggressive purchasing of Italian Renaissance and pre-Renaissance works of art in the 1850s and 1860s, prompted consternation in Britain, Italy and further afield. The National Gallery in Washington likewise contains substantial groups of European old masters, many of which were purchased by modern financiers and industrialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By contrast, the (then) Australian National Gallery, in the early days at least, was largely funded through public monies. The role of inaugural director James Mollison in the initial development of the American collections, and the motivations for the Gallery’s acquisition program prior to its opening are relevant here. As Mollison explained: ‘The 1970s were expansive years for Australia. Our ambitions were high, reflecting the confidence of Australia at the time’. The idea that a new national gallery should collect anything other than the art of Australia came relatively late in the institution’s conception: originally, from the first decades after Australia’s federation, it was intended as a portrait gallery. This broadened in the 1960s, when the National Art Gallery Committee of Inquiry was set up to examine the functions of the future national gallery. The resulting

‘THE 1970S WERE EXPANSIVE YEARS FOR AUSTRALIA. OUR AMBITIONS WERE HIGH, REFLECTING THE CONFIDENCE OF AUSTRALIA AT THE TIME.’

‘Lindsay Report’ of 1966 concluded that the museum should also represent the art of the Pacific, South and Southeast Asia, and the ‘art of the twentieth century on a worldwide basis’. It included a proviso that could be used to justify an encyclopaedic collection; broader≈purchases were thus possible. In April 1973, the Acquisitions Committee put to the government an extraordinary bid for $5 million for acquisitions, of which almost half should be earmarked for purchases of ‘international art of the modern period’. The Gallery received $4 million. At that moment, it had one of the largest acquisition budgets in the world—certainly it was the richest museum without a building. Some of the most important acquisitions of American art date to this period. Indeed, during the financial year July 1976 to June 1977, Mollison was reporting the plan ‘to propose to the Council next year that we complete our representation of American art of that period’. In particular, he was concerned:

AMERICAN MASTERS 1940–1980

Page 15: Willem de Kooning Woman V (detail) 1952–53, oil and charcoal on canvas. Purchased 1974. © The Willem de Kooning Foundation, New York. ARS/Copyright Agency Above: The NGA’s international art galleries in 2008, showing (from left) Mark Rothko’s Multiform 1948, Willem de Kooning’s Woman V 1952–53, Colin McCahon’s Victory over death 2 1970 (partially obscured), Pierre Soulages’s Painting, 222.0 x 175.0 cm, 23 July 1979 1979, Hans Hofmann’s Pre‑dawn 1960, Soulages’s Painting, 195 x 130 cm, 6 August 1956 1956 and Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles 1952. Opposite: The opening of the Australian National Gallery, October 1982. Photo: William Yang All works in this feature are from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

ARTONVIEW 95â&#x20AC;&#x201A; SPRING 2018

with the generation around 1950/55, the pop artists, minimalists

focused on the Gallery. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, in approving the

and conceptualists. We are not after a large collection but I would

purchase—then necessary for acquisitions of more than $100,000—wrote

like to see [during his annual trip overseas] everything of real

across the submission ‘buy it and disclose the price’. Mollison had, quite

consequence that is on the market at the present time …

understandably, counselled against revealing the price, pointing out

In the 1940s and 1950s, when American art came to new prominence on

potential to lead to inflated sums for works of art offered and brought

the world stage, Jackson Pollock gained notoriety as a leader of the group

unwanted publicity. The purchase price of US$2 million (then equivalent

of artists variously known as action painters, Abstract Expressionists or

to A$1.3 million) set a new record for Pollock and was, at the time, the

the New York School. In the postwar period New York displaced Paris

most expensive American painting ever sold. Thus the Gallery’s emerging

as the centre of the global art world. Taking cues from European Dada,

collection made global headlines.

Surrealism, Expressionism and Geometric Abstraction, a new generation

The treatment of Blue poles, misinformation about Pollock’s

of artists in America challenged local traditions to reinvent modern art.

working methods, and sensationalism over the approach to and

Abstract Expressionism was considered the first art movement specific

priorities for building the collection set a pattern. The purchase of

to the United States, and Pollock’s drip paintings, as well as being

Willem de Kooning’s Woman V was equally mulled over in the press

technically radical, were regarded as quintessential representations of

and much criticised: through it we see not only the various negotiations

freedom and individuality. By the 1950s and early 1960s, these ideas were,

that brought major works to the attention of the director and, in turn,

in turn, influencing artists—and being picked up by art galleries and

the Acquisition Committee, but gauge the range of attitudes to art,

museums—further afield.

and abstract art in particular, in Australia.

The scandal of the purchase of Pollock’s Blue poles is well known.

that it conflated distinctions been value and dollar amounts, had the

Woman V—one of a group of six paintings depicting abstracted

Most negotiations for acquisitions unfolded discreetly, with few becoming

female figures, variously seated, standing or, in the case of Woman V,

the subject of media and public scrutiny; politicians, generally, expressed

a three-quarter view wading in water—was shown at the artist’s solo

an opinion that such business was best left to the experts. But when

exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, in March 1953. At the time

speculation about the ‘capture’ of Pollock’s last major drip painting

de Kooning had attracted the consternation of his fellow painters, as well

in private hands reached the Australian media, attention was firmly

as the ire of critics, for ‘betraying’ the ideals of abstraction. Woman V

AMERICAN MASTERS 1940–1980

THE PURCHASE PRICE OF US$2 MILLION (THEN EQUIVALENT TO A$1.3 MILLION) SET A NEW RECORD FOR POLLOCK AND WAS, AT THE TIME, THE MOST EXPENSIVE AMERICAN PAINTING EVER SOLD. THUS THE GALLERY’S EMERGING COLLECTION MADE GLOBAL HEADLINES.

was regarded as one of the artist’s most important paintings outside a museum collection and the purchase was promptly approved by the Acquisitions Committee; by mid-March the director was writing to inquire about making payment in two instalments. However, in response to a question by the vendor’s agent about publicising the acquisition, Mollison responded: I regret [to inform Richard Gray] that it is our policy to work discreetly in acquiring works for our collection. Our Prime Minister is also Minister for the Arts and I felt embarrassed for him when the Opposition in the Australian Parliament attacked him over a period of many weeks over our acquisition of Blue poles. Indeed the news media in this country have only now been diffused by the acceptance of this painting by a large section of the Australian public. I must therefore ask you not to give any publicity to our acquisition of this painting and certainly not to release any details of the price paid. The director inspected the painting in June 1974 and duly reported to the Prime Minister that it is ‘in perfect condition and of superb quality’. To the Prime Minister, in a memo of August 1974, BEW Kelson of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet pointed out that the Gallery’s first priority, the Australian collection, was now virtually complete for the projected opening in 1977–78.

Jackson Pollock, Blue poles 1952, oil, enamel and aluminium paint on canvas. Purchased 1973. © Pollock-Krasner Foundation. ARS/Copyright Agency

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Criticism of expensive acquisitions is always a probability—

not only the best of Australian art but also worldwide contemporary art,

particularly if the art is recent or contemporary and is foreign.

primitive art, and the finest masterpieces of earlier periods’.

But if the Gallery fails to seek the best it is unlikely to develop a distinctive character and style, its role as an educator and developer of standards of taste and appreciation will very likely be diminished

could have had Woman V for less. A great many letters, for and against the

as well as its prospects of achieving a stature to command national interest and pride, and international regard. [Furthermore] the design of the building to house the Gallery’s collections is seen by a number of overseas authorities as one of the outstanding conceptions of its kind …

acquisition, were sent to both Mollison and various ministers including the Prime Minister. One, from Margaret Christiansen of Raglan, Queensland, strongly opposed the purchase as ‘untimely and outrageous’ at a time when Australia was ‘suffering great unemployment, is economically a mess and inflation running rife …’. In response, Mollison explained that ‘if the Australian National Gallery were able to open its doors tomorrow it

That month, with rumours circulating, the Interim Council of the

would present an exhibition that every culturally aware Australian would

National Gallery issued a press statement confirming the purchase of

view with pride’ and that ‘successive governments have approved policies

Woman V for US$850,000 (then AU$650,000) noting, too, the painting

and authorised expenditure on this project in the belief that this great

was recommended by the Gallery’s former Acquisitions Committee

nation was ready for the establishment of a great National Gallery’.

and approved by the Prime Minister. The painting, as experts then

Then all hell broke loose. The press reported the purchase, with one source claiming the Gallery had paid too much and with harder bargaining

Some objections probably had more to do with the style of

(as now) believed, shows de Kooning ‘at the peak of his powers’ and

Woman V than its subject matter. De Kooning had been inspired

was understood to have been ‘sought actively by at least two other

by historical sources as diverse as Mesopotamian female figurines,

international museums’. The statement described how, after a period of

Rembrandt’s Woman bathing in a stream 1654 and magazine pin-ups.

hard and extensive negotiation, the painting had been acquired at ‘fair

The artist had worked on the series of paintings over an extended period,

market value’ and would ‘occupy an important place in the Gallery’s

following a frustrating period of artistic inactivity, experimenting and

worldwide contemporary collection’ alongside works by Pollock, Gorky,

abandoning several versions. He made key changes to Woman V: the

Louis, Kenneth Noland, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler and others.

figure’s arms were originally at her sides, like Rembrandt’s woman who

The Gallery reasserted its ‘firm intention to continue developing the

lifts her skirt to clear the waters, but de Kooning changed them to clasp at

already fine Australian collection’ and, by way of justifying the purchase,

her waist. Many viewers reacted to the figure’s staring eyes and gleaming

reminded readers that its leaders had ‘made clear their intention’ to

teeth: this woman is fierce, unlike the typical nudes or female forms in

develop an ‘institution of international stature with collections embracing

art, and appeared relentlessly contemporary.

AMERICAN MASTERS 1940–1980

Left: Morris Louis, Beta nu 1960, synthetic polymer paint on unprimed canvas. Purchased 1972. © 1960 Morris Louis Below: Louise Bourgeois C.O.Y.O.T.E. 1941–48, painted wood. Purchased 1981. © The Easton Foundation. VAGA/Copyright Agency

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Requests to exhibit and borrow the painting followed, just as they had for other much-publicised acquisitions: Blue poles had toured Australia (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide) in 1974 but the costs of the tour had been substantial. All agreed it desirable, whenever possible, for the public to see the Gallery’s acquisitions—and that, as a national body, its acquisitions should be shown on an ‘Australia-wide basis’—but these ideals were often compromised by the lack of appropriate venues at the time, as well as the peculiarities specific to a single-work show. In addition to Blue poles and Woman V, American Masters celebrates the impact of subsequent artists such as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Chuck Close, Donald Judd, Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois, among others. Works of art acquired for the National Gallery of Australia provide art lovers in Australia, and those who see them overseas, with a focus point that no spiritual icon, consumer item, selfie backdrop or art historical footnote will ever satisfy. The collection will continue to provoke, engage and provide enjoyment long into the future. And much of this is due to Mollison’s life being uneventful, as he commented recently with characteristic self-deprecation, except for the fact of ‘buying art for the country’.

This article is an edited extract of Lucina Ward’s essay ‘Our ambitions were high’ in the NGA’s new book American Masters 1940–1980, available at the NGA Shop. American Masters 1940–1980 is free, supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, and complemented by an exciting program of events: see https://nga.gov.au/americanmasters/ American Masters 1940–1980 24 August to 11 November 2018 Join the conversation #AmericanMasters 22

AMERICAN MASTERS 1940–1980

Above: Sol LeWitt Wall drawing no 380 a–d 1982, pencil, India ink and colour ink washes. Purchased 1987. © Sol Lewitt Opposite: Chuck Close Bob 1970 , synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Purchased 1975. © Chuck Close Right: Bruce Nauman The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths (Window or wall sign) 1967, neon tubing with clear glass suspension frame. Purchased 1978. © Bruce Nauman. ARS/Copyright Agency 7

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

LOVE AND DESIRE: PRE-RAPHAELITE MASTERPIECES FROM THE TATE

COMING MA JOR EXHIBITION

Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate Bianca Winataputri explores how the Pre-Raphaelites reflected the Victorian societal values of the time through depictions of the ‘fallen woman’.

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Page 24: Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Beloved (‘The Bride’) 1865–66, oil on canvas. Tate, purchased with assistance from Sir Arthur Du Cros Bt and Sir Otto Beit KCMG through the Art Fund, 1916. © Tate Left: William Holman Hunt The awakening conscience 1853 (detail), oil on canvas. Tate, presented by Sir Colin and Lady Anderson through the Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1976. © Tate Opposite: John Everett Millais Ophelia 1851–52, oil on canvas. Tate, presented by Sir Henry Tate, 1894. © Tate

Throughout art history, we have witnessed the evolving and contested

It was at this time that the fallen women exerted a peculiar fascination for

representation of women as subject matter. Perhaps the most popular

nineteenth-century artists, writers, poets and social critics, and perhaps

and critical among them is the male gaze, with women as the object of

received its characteristic formation in the circle of the Pre-Raphaelites.

male desire and imagination. The artistic practices of the Pre-Raphaelite

London in 1848, were opposed to the teachings of the Royal Academy.

lens. From Madonnas to victimised and sexualised women to the femme

They rejected the ideals of High Renaissance and admired, instead, the

fatale, the works of the Pre-Raphaelites reveal Victorian conceptions

works of the ‘primitives’, the artists before Raphael. The Brotherhood’s

of women, love and desire. Among these representations, the most

key principle was truth to nature, truth to subject matter. Adhering

recognised and debated subject was the ‘fallen women’.

to this belief, they consciously created art that spoke to the social

The term ‘fallen’ in the Victorian period is associated with a

conditions of their time. Their works are layered with meaning,

woman who gave in to seduction, whose innocence was tainted and

encouraging viewers to read the painting as they would prose, or a

whose virtue was compromised. But behind this secular imagery are

poem. Likewise, the Pre-Raphaelites approach to the subject of the

the major social problems of nineteenth-century England: hunger,

fallen women holds many layers reflecting the highly complex Victorian

disease and prostitution, all of which were exacerbated by the industrial

conception of women.

revolution. This was a time when young rural women moved to the city,

The Pre-Raphaelites, a secret society of young artists founded in

Brotherhood in the late nineteenth century can be observed through this

William Holman Hunt’s The awakening conscience 1853 depicts

looking for opportunities to provide for their families, only to find that the

a gentleman and his mistress. Intended to be ‘read’, the painting is

harsh economic reality meant that for many of them prostitution was the

suffused with symbolic elements that portray the mood of the scene and

only way to survive. ‘Fallen’ is also associated with women who failed

foreshadow the fate of the kept woman. The cat toying with a bird under

to meet familial expectations to marry for social and financial security.

the table and the tangled yarn in the corner of the room symbolise the

LOVE AND DESIRE: PRE-RAPHAELITE MASTERPIECES FROM THE TATE

woman’s plight and desire to break free, while the man’s discarded gloves

sexual chaos. The fallen woman had a double reading for the mid-

on the carpet suggest that prostitution is the likely fate of the cast-off

Victorian imagination, one that is both repellent and fascinating,

mistress. Indeed, the fallen woman is front and centre in this painting.

triggering both pity and loathing.

In 1854, the Pre-Raphaelites’s most powerful supporter, art critic John Ruskin, wrote to the Times, ‘the very hem of the poor girl’s dress,

Hunt’s visual cues also present a realistic account to the economic factors involved in a woman’s fall from virtue in the mid-nineteenth

at which the painter has laboured so closely, thread by thread, has story

century. As William Rathbone Greg stated in the 1850 Westminster

in it, if we think how soon its pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and

review, ‘poverty is the chief determining cause which drives women into

rain, her outcast feet failing in the street’.

prostitution in England as in France’. For much of the social conditions

The awakening conscience touches on a moment common to many

in this period, the fallen women as prostitutes were moving in and out of

fallen-women narratives as she looks back to an irrecoverable state of

the practice, dictated by their family’s financial needs. In The awakening

innocence. The bewildered woman, in a state of half-dress, rises from the

conscience Hunt depicted the fallen woman through a rather sympathetic

lap of her lover and gazes into the sunlit garden beyond. We see only the

lens, capturing her struggles and dilemma. He focused on the hope

image of the garden in the mirror behind her, signifying the woman’s

for redemption instead of a righteous sense of punishment for the

lost innocence. Through the layering of the mirror in the composition,

fallen woman.

Hunt’s figure becomes an emblem of the multiplicity of discourses

Poverty as a cause of suicide was also recognised in the nineteenth

which had built up around female sexuality in mid-nineteenth-century

century. For some women the constant struggle to survive, which can

England. JB Bullen, in her 1998 book The Pre-Raphaelite body, observed

likely be understood as leading to prostitution, was a fate worse than

that the female body had become the site of ‘moral panic’ and dilemma,

death. Cases of women’s suicides were prevalent in 1850s London.

sitting in-between purity and corruption, familial responsibility and

R Thompson Jopling’s 1852 survey, Statistics of suicides, reveals that

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

one of the most common methods of female suicide was by drowning.

theme also explores aspects of women falling out of love and desire:

prominently seen in John Everett Millais’s Ophelia 1851–52. The work

the unrequited love, the isolated ‘cursed’ woman, and the woman

depicts a scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet in which Ophelia—driven

who gives up everything for love. John William Waterhouse’s Lady

out of her mind after her lover murders her father—falls into a stream

of Shalott 1888 depicts the culmination of these fallen women.

and drowns.

Inspired by Tennyson’s poem of the same title, the story follows

The Pre-Raphaelites artists were inspired by poetry, literature,

a cursed woman who lives isolated in a tower on an island called

myths and folk stories. Ophelia’s death scene was recreated by numerous

Shalott. She sees the outside world only through its reflection in a

artists in the nineteenth century, aligning the literary character with the

mirror, until one day she glimpses the reflected image of Lancelot

social conditions of that time. Shakespeare’s Ophelia was regarded as a

and cannot resist looking directly at the charming knight. The mirror

model figure for the Victorian stereotype of the fallen ‘mad’ woman—a

cracks and the curse comes upon her. The punishment results in her

woman who fell out of love and whose inevitable fate was to drown

drifting in her boat downstream to Camelot, but she dies before she

herself. Art Historian Kimberly Rhodes comments in her 2008 book,

reaches it. The interpretation of the Lady of Shalott as a fallen woman

Ophelia and Victorian visual culture, that the Victorian iconography

is characterised by her decision to leave her state of grace in order to

of the character is evoked in ‘depictions of fallen women lurking

satisfy her desire for Lancelot.

about the bridges and riverbanks of London planning their deaths by

Diverting from the social tragedy of the fallen women, the

The representation of suicide, and of the drowning woman, is most

The poem’s popularity was attested to its embodiment of the

drowning’. The frame for Millais’s Ophelia follows the form of a bridge,

Victorian conception of women and its correlative attitude towards

suggesting the moral meaning and painful consequences of ‘falling’ in the

the home. It was conceived that staying at home was the only place for

feminine realm.

the ideal woman who was virginal, spiritual and maternal. The threats

LOVE AND DESIRE: PRE-RAPHAELITE MASTERPIECES FROM THE TATE

Opposite: John William Waterhouse The Lady of Shalott 1888, oil on canvas. Tate, presented by Sir Henry Tate, 1894. © Tate Right: Arthur Hughes Fair Rosamund 1854 (detail), oil on cardboard. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, gift of Miss Eva Gilchrist in memory of her uncle PA Daniel, 1956

of moving outside the safety of the home, where sacred values could not be preserved, seems to be the backdrop to every Victorian fallen woman. In Lady of Shalott, Waterhouse chose the moment when the Lady leaves her island, echoing the journey of the fallen woman leaving home. The artist’s lavish use of nature, poetically sets the tragic and melancholic mood of the scene. The crucifix and three candles in the prow of the boat signal a funereal tone, and the single leaf that has fallen into her lap tells her story: she is the ‘fallen leaf’, dying for the sake of love and desire. As these three paintings show, the subject of the fallen women is layered with various settings and poetic readings but was never far from the reality of nineteenth-century English society. If art is

Love and Desire: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces

a product of its time, a result of the social, political and religious

from the Tate

context in which it was made, the themes that populate most of the

14 December 2018 to 22 April 2019

Pre-Raphaelite paintings are inevitably a reflection of the hardships of their society in the midst of urbanisation. The Pre-Raphaelites were contemporaries of their time, intimately depicting a vastly changing society in their works evident in the dwelling popularity of the

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fallen women.

#lovedesire ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Shaune Lakin, Sally Foster and Anne O’Hehir investigate the California Cool exhibition and the way in which American artists of the 1960s and 1970s responded to the landscape of Los Angeles—a place of myth, abstraction and materiality.

Art in Los Angeles, 1960s–70s 30

CALIFORNIA COOL: ART IN LOS ANGELES, 1960S–70S

COMING EXHIBITION

ARTONVIEW 95â&#x20AC;&#x201A; SPRING 2018

Pages 30–1: David Hockney John St Clair swimming (detail) 1972, from a portfolio Twenty photographic pictures, Type C colour photograph 1970–75, chromogenic photographs. Purchased 1979. © David Hockney Above: John Baldessari Throwing three balls in the air to get a straight line (Best of thirty-six attempts) 1973, offset lithographs. Purchased 1981. © John Baldessari All works in this feature are from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

CALIFORNIA COOL: ART IN LOS ANGELES, 1960S–70S

‘The artist has blossomed in the West because [s]he can be free’

For a period during the 1960s and 1970s, the centre of American art

appeared to reflect the newness and shininess of the city’s architecture,

shifted from New York to Los Angeles. The psychological force that had

its cars and freeways, and its way of life. Popular culture and critical

underwritten New York’s ascendancy as the postwar global art centre was

discourse argued that the city’s vast ‘nebulousness’ and horizontality

replaced in the country’s ‘second city’ with a new American aesthetic,

represented a new kind of urban experience, one that was both

one that personified the look and the aspirations of the American dream.

unprecedented and that would lay the ground rules for cities to come,

As the critic Arthur Secunda put it in Arts Magazine in 1966, ‘The artist

and that was embodied in the work of the young artists who inhabited

has blossomed in the West because [s]he can be free’. California Cool

the place.

draws on the NGA’s outstanding collection of international prints and

As the art critic Barbara Rose wrote in Art in America in 1966, ‘the

photographs to show how the freedom of the American West gave rise to

brilliantly sunny, palm-studded, DayGlo-spangled Los Angeles landscape

some of the most important and influential art of the postwar period.

inspires an art quite different from that made in reaction to New York’s

Before then, LA had been considered a cultural backwater whose

frigid lofts and littered slums’. Similarly, Artforum’s John Coplans (one of

contribution to American cultural life was limited to suburban sprawl and

the earliest regular commentators on LA art) wrote in 1964 that the work

Hollywood cinema. But in the early 1960s, it became the nucleus for a

reflected the ‘vulgarity … of Los Angeles, the new shiny surfaces that call

young generation of artists drawn to the promise and opportunity offered

attention to themselves, very different from the pattern of worn-down or

by the west coast’s eternal sunshine, expansive space and gleaming

dirty surfaces of a big Eastern urban environment’. Whether by intention

artifice. Just as the city experienced massive expansion, as America’s

or effect, the work of artists such as Ruscha, Vija Celmins, Larry Bell,

postwar prosperity saw its great west—and Southern California in

Joe Goode and David Hockney—with their images of swimming pools,

particular—positioned at the centre of the country’s new military and

sunsets, palm trees and seemingly unlimited space—seemed to speak

post-industrial economies, a generation of young artists (the Los Angeles

about a place where the sun always shone brightly until it set over the

avant-garde) developed around the Venice coffee houses, the galleries

Pacific Ocean, and where the car and the suburban home offered the

on La Cienega Boulevard, and the art schools that provided the training

promise of unlimited opportunity for all.

ground for what remains some of America’s most significant artists. Indeed, many of the artists who came of age in and around LA at

Related to this, LA was a place of great technological and creative innovation during the 1960s and 1970s. This is reflected in the

this time—Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari and Bruce Nauman—are among

entrepreneurial practices of Ken Tyler and his peers at the printmaking

the most significant contemporary artists working today. Nauman

workshop Gemini GEL, which became a centre for the medium in North

rigorously disrupted many of the conventions upon which artistic

America in the 1960s. In drawing attention to the prominent place of

practice had, until the 1960s, been based. Like Baldessari and Ruscha—

printmaking and photography in the thinking of the artists working in

alongside others that made up the scene, including Wallace Berman,

LA, California Cool indicates something of the significance given to both

Robert Heinecken and Ed Keinholz—Nauman’s ‘expansive’ practice

technological innovation and the democratic potential of the multiple

refused to be tied down by medium or genre in a way that—reflecting

(an artwork, such as a print, that is not unique and usually produced

the freedom of which Secunda wrote—opened up artistic practice in LA

in an edition) to LA’s emergence as an art centre. As in the case of Ken

to a whole new set of possibilities, and pointed the way towards new

Tyler’s highly innovative work at Gemini GEL, and with so many of the

creative practices.

artists working with photomedia, it becomes possible to see in LA a

The work of many of the artists working in the city reflected its modernity, a place that was considered to be a harbinger of the future: if America’s east (especially New York) was dying under the weight of

new relationship to the art object that posed tremendous and ongoing challenges to existing hierarchies and conventions. California Cool highlights some of the ways American artists

urban decay and blight, then LA was pitched as the gleaming model for

responded to both the promise and the hard truth of life in contemporary

civilisation’s future. The ‘LA Look’—the highly refined, pristine surfaces

America. For many of the artists included in the exhibition, Los Angeles

that can be found in much of the work produced there at the time—

was simultaneously a place of myth and abstraction, and of materiality—

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Left, from top: Jo Ann Callis Black sun picture #1 and #7, from the series Black sun 1976, gelatin silver photographs. Purchased 2018 Opposite: John Divola Zuma #25, from the series Zuma 1977–78, chromogenic print. Purchased 1980

CALIFORNIA COOL: ART IN LOS ANGELES, 1960S–70S

of material pleasures, certainly, but also a place where chaos, alienation

region that had been subject to centuries of Hispanic colonial influence.

and risk sat just beneath the surface. Often fantastical images of sunshine,

And for people from across the Asia–Pacific region, Southern California

sex and unrestricted movement sit alongside those laying bare the reality

represented throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a place

of life in contemporary America—a place of increased alienation, where

of work and opportunity that—with its climate and geography—was

the myths of democratic opportunity and potential rubbed up against

comfortably familiar. To this end, California Cool includes the work of

economic and social inequity, loneliness and civil unrest. In the work

Christine Godden, Graham Howe, David Sanderson and Grant Mudford,

of photographers John Divola and Jo Ann Callis, for example, the myths of sunshine, unlimited opportunity and open space quickly give way to feelings of loneliness, excess and entropy. California Cool is not simply interested in LA as a place of fantasy or disappointment. As the artists in the exhibition demonstrate, the city was never just a repository for mythologies, the final destination for all those east coast Americans seeking a new life and the personal benefits— health and vitality, material opportunity, greater ‘Americanisation’—said

four Australian photographers who travelled to California during the 1970s to live and work. Their inclusion demonstrates how during the postwar period LA became a magnet for artists from Australia and beyond who were looking to develop practices and careers in a place that was at the centre of artistic innovation and energy.

California Cool: Art in Los Angeles, 1960s–70s

to emerge from the migration west. For the Latino communities, whose

6 October 2018 to 24 February 2019

presence in Southern California predated that of non-Latino whites from

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America’s east, the area represented the northern-most point of a cultural

#californiacoolNGA ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

CURRENTÂ EXHIBITION

POWER AND IMAGINATION

Elspeth Pitt considers the range of work included in a new exhibition, Power & Imagination, which resists material convention in favour of idea, experiment and unabashed imagination.

Power & Imagination considers the work of artists who expanded the

LOOK AT ANY WALL IMAGINE A RECTANGLE WITHIN THIS

parameters of art in the 1960s and 1970s. Employing language and poetry,

RECTANGLE … IMAGINE FULL POCKETS FULL BELLY WARM BED

film and video, performance and bodily gesture, these artists emphasised

BEING IMPORTANT LOOKING BEAUTIFUL FEELING HEALTHY

idea and experience over fixed material form.

FEELING WEALTHY BEING SOMETHING BEING WANTED

In their 1968 essay ‘The dematerialization of art’, Lucy Lippard and John Chandler observed that ‘the studio is again becoming a study. Such a trend appears to be provoking a profound dematerialization of art, especially of art as object, and if it continues to prevail, it may

BEING LOVED BEING NEEDED BEING HEEDED HEAVEN … THE PICTURES IN THIS EXHIBITION ARE FREE CLOSE YOUR EYES ENQUIRE WITHIN

result in the object’s becoming wholly obsolete’. With this in mind,

MacPherson’s elimination of the material image may seem extreme

Power & Imagination gathers together works of art that are carefully

to some, but by positioning the imaginative act within the viewer’s

suspended between dematerialisation and transformation, appearance

mind and appealing to his or her concealed desires, the resulting work

and disappearance.

of art becomes inseparable from life. For Lippard and Chandler, this

Paul Partos’s Black screen 1968–69, for example, while vast,

was another key precept of conceptual art—that the viewer’s ‘sensuous

substantial and materially overwhelming on approach, is gradually

identification’ and ‘envelopment’ in a work should become inseparable

revealed as a delicate and refracting surface that entices one to peer,

from his or her everyday surroundings.

or pass through it. Miriam Stannage’s Insurance on a painting 1974,

In this same vein, other artists placed their bodies at the centre

makes literal incisions into the creamy span of the canvas. Joan Jonas’s

of their practice. Gunter Christmann’s painting Berliner haut (Berliner

Disturbances 1974, is a lyrical, filmic study of the phenomenological

skin) 1974, suggests an intertwining or equating of flesh with paint. Bruce

qualities of the image, in which reflections of the artist and her friends

Nauman’s studio experiments and performances including Flesh to white

in pools of water are continually split and dispersed: figures are glimpsed

to black to flesh 1968, and Manipulating a fluorescent tube 1969—shot

as abstracted shimmers, inverse and wavering; shadows glide beneath

in real time and with the absence of any narrative—oscillate between

water; mirror images are broken.

clinical observation and disquieting obsession. Giovanni Anselmo’s

A late example of conceptual art, Robert MacPherson’s Little pictures for the poor 1983 eliminates the material image altogether,

Entrare nell’opera (Entering the work) 1971, breaks down the barrier between artist, art and environment entirely: the blur of the landscape he

entreating the viewer to summon images from the interior of his or

is held within is the work of art, and he—breathing, feeling, seeing—is its

her mind:

ecstatic heart.

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Retreating from the production of material objects fixed in time and space arguably allowed conceptual artists a license to move more fluidly between historical timeframes and attendant ideologies. Dennis Oppenheim’s material experiments are pantheistic in nature, the interactions between flesh, rock and flora captured in a range of arcane performances including Rocked stomach 1970. Bas Jan Ader’s film I’m too sad to tell you 1971 portrays the artist weeping for an unknown reason— an act made more mysterious by his subsequent disappearance at sea in 1975 while making the related work In search of the miraculous. Richard Long’s Wood circle 1976, comprising ninety pieces of sun-bleached wood, appears as an esoteric gesture, an offering, a vestige or semblance of language drawn directly from the earth. Attesting to the idea that conceptual art is a key touchstone for contemporary practice, this project exhibition includes a suite of new performance and publishing works by emerging and mid-career artists including Agatha Gothe-Snape, Brian Fuata, Alex Hobba, Spence Messih and Archie Barrie. Bonita Ely will also lead a daylong artist workshop based on her recent work at Documenta 14 on Sunday 2 September.

Power & Imagination 11 August 2018 to 31 January 2019 Join the conversation #power&imagination

Page 36: Giovanni Anselmo Entering the work 1971, gelatin silver photograph. Purchased 1980 Page 37, from left: Aleks Danko Power & Imagination c 1975, photographic reproductions. Gift of Daniel Thomas, 1980. © Aleks Danko From top: Alex Selenitsch raingold 1969, screenprint, printed in blue and yellow ink, from two screens, Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund, 2005. © Alex Selenitsch; Miriam Stannage Insurance on a painting 1974, oil, synthetic polymer paint, paper adhesive tape, metal staples, wax crayon on canvas. Purchased 1976. © Miriam Stannage Opposite: Gunter Christmann Berliner haut 1973, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant, 1982 All works in this feature are from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

POWER & IMAGINATION

ARTONVIEW 95â&#x20AC;&#x201A; SPRING 2018

by The

WATERCOLOURS BY HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES

Prince of Wales

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Eric Meredith introduces an exhibition of fine watercolours by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, which will be on display until 18 November 2018.

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

WATERCOLOURS BY HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES

Page 40: From Moru Kopjes across Serengeti Plain, Tanzania 1997 Page 41: Kilphedir Pool on River Helsdale, Sutherland 2015 Opposite, clockwise from top left: Ben Arkle, Sutherland 1991; Looking towards the Coyles of Muick from the south side of Loch Muick 1991; Ngorongoru from Hugo Hill, Serengeti Plains, Tanzania 1997; Tinzenhorn from Wolfgang, near Davos, Switzerland 1992; Rufiji River from Mbuyuni Camp, Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania 1997; Balmoral 1991 All works in this feature are watercolour and from the collection of HRH The Prince of Wales. © AG Carrick

The tradition of watercolour painting became widespread during

The limited materials and equipment required for his chosen

Queen Victoria’s long reign from 1837 to 1901. The prestigious Royal

medium allow him to take up the pencil and brush whenever inspiration

Watercolour Society was founded in 1804 and was soon followed by an

strikes. His work, he says, is a particular form of ‘photograph album’.

alternative ‘New Society’ in 1807, which later became the Royal Institute

You might say that much of it follows the British-traveller tradition of

of Painters in Water Colours. Although the latter was founded in response

sketching watercolours while abroad, recording, in his words, ‘what

to the former’s membership and exhibiting rules, both advocated for

infinite beauty and delight there is in the details of God’s creation’ and

watercolour to be recognised as a medium for serious artistic expression.

then sharing it with those back home. However, as Ward points out,

And, under Queen Victoria both received royal warrants in the early

‘it is not just a matter of recording … but of examining, taking in and

1880s. Of course, Queen Victoria is well known to have studied and

considering the visual world’, all of which The Prince of Wales does

worked in the medium, a tradition her great-great-great grandson

admirably and without pretence.

The Prince of Wales carries on today. The Prince turns seventy in November this year, and the NGA is

Much of his work on display at the NGA demonstrates his sensitivity and respect for the world around him. His patient observation shows in

celebrating with a small show of thirty of his accomplished watercolours

his treatment of his subjects, perhaps most markedly in the works that

from 1991 to 2016. The Prince has been painting his entire adult life,

include some architectural element in the landscape. Not surprisingly, the

around fifty years. Although he finds time to paint only during holidays

most ‘finished’ works are those of subjects with which he is most familiar

and sometimes during official tours abroad—and, only then, when his

and has undoubtedly painted time and time again over the decades—such

diary allows. In a 1991 book of his watercolours (a book he agreed to

as Balmoral Castle and the various sites and lochs nearby as well as

publish not to make his stake as an artist but to raise funds for The Prince

Highgrove, his residence.

of Wales’s Charities Trust) he writes, ‘My sketches are, by necessity and

These works, which seem to colour The Prince as a realist, are

probably intention, immediate and very amateur’. Although, as his friend

balanced, however, by a more lively selection of his sketches painted

and teacher the artist John Stanton Ward CBE notes in the same book,

during trips to Switzerland, Morocco, Tanzania and Greece. In these,

‘The Prince is an amateur in the best sense of the word—as were many

he seems more ready to embrace the spontaneity that the medium

of our best architects and painters. He works for the love of it; seriously,

affords the artist-traveller— with the possible exception of his painting

modestly, with much thought as well as appetite’.

of the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, which has an

In the book, The Prince shows that he understands well this

architectural element to slow his eye. Still present in these paintings

quintessential British medium as well as his own limitations in pursuing

of many different parts of the world, however, is his determination to

it. He writes, ‘to paint well in watercolour is far more difficult than it

stop and look and to convey something of that ‘inner’ sense of texture

looks, requires the acquisition of technical skills born of endless trial

he is compelled to share through the delicate and evocative medium

and error and is much assisted by a liberal helping of innate talent’.

of watercolour.

Of course, theory and practice are two very separate things, and practice, The Prince writes, ‘is something of which I am rather short!’ He displays a remarkable modesty or, perhaps more accurately, a resolute and honest self-reflection—which many artists take years to develop, if at all. He expresses, however, that common impulse among artists: ‘an

Watercolours by HRH The Prince of Wales 10 August to 18 November 2018 Join the conversation #HRHwatercoloursNGA

overwhelming urge … to convey that “inner” sense of texture …’

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Deborah Hart presents the travelling exhibition of Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series, and explores the origins of some of the most iconic paintings in the history of Australian art. 44

NED KELLY

TRAVELLING EXHIBITION

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

In 2018, the National Gallery of Australia is embarking on an extensive travelling exhibition of Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series to make these works accessible to audiences across the nation. It is fitting that the tour should commence some seventy years after they were first publicly exhibited, in April 1948, in the little-known Velasquez Gallery in Melbourne. Nolan’s Ned Kelly series is a complex, layered story set in the Victorian landscape that centres around a nineteenth-century bushranger and his gang who were on the run from the police. Landscape is a key element in the paintings—as Nolan said, ‘it began in the landscape and

Pages 44–5: Bush picnic (detail) 1946

ended in the landscape’. The series also depends upon a loosely threaded

Above, clockwise from left: Constable Fitzpatrick and Kate Kelly 1946; Morning camp 1947; The encounter 1946; Death of Sergeant Kennedy at Stringybark Creek 1946. Purchased 1972

but vital dramatic human narrative that has its catalyst with Constable Fitzpatrick and Kate Kelly 1946 in the domestic arena of the Kelly family home where a fracas occurs, and ends with The trial 1947, in a Melbourne courtroom where Ned Kelly is sentenced to death. The marriage of a feeling for the environment and human drama imbues these paintings with meaning and poetic resonance. While the legendary aspect is informed by social history, some of the paintings are embellished by Nolan’s lively imagination.

NED KELLY

Opposite, clockwise from left: Quilting the armour 1947; Death of Constable Scanlon 1946; Glenrowan 1946; Mrs Reardon at Glenrowan 1946 All works in this feature are enamel paint on composition board and from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Sunday Reed, 1977 unless otherwise stated

Nolan painted the majority of these works in glossy enamel-like

police having absconded from the drudgery of guarding supplies as part

paint on the dining-room table at Heide, the home of John and Sunday

of his military service the previous year. While in the army he had soaked

Reed in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen. The Reeds had a great library,

up the scintillating colour and light of the blue and gold landscapes of the

including up-to-date art journals from Europe which provided great

Wimmera which informed some of the Kelly paintings. However, close

inspiration for Nolan. He was deeply interested in European modernism

observation also reveals that the landscape across the series is actually

and also in local history. As an artist profoundly intrigued by myths and

remarkably varied.

legends, he sought to find abiding stories of his own place with which

The Kelly paintings were not created in the order in which

he was able to connect. In the 1940s, he found just what he was looking

they were initially exhibited. Instead, words extracted by Nolan from

for in the Kelly story. Nolan sought to inform himself; reading the report

nineteenth-century records helped him to bring some sense of order

on the Royal Commission on the Police Force in Victoria, issued in 1881,

to the first public exhibition of these works at the Velasquez Gallery.

as well as JJ Kenneally’s The Inner History of the Kelly Gang and their

Looking across the grouping as they were shown in 1948 (and are largely

Pursuers, 1929. He also travelled to what would become known as ‘Kelly

shown to this day), there is a fascinating trajectory. Even though some of

country’ with the writer Max Harris.

the paintings are less crucial than others in determining the sequence,

Personal and familial ties enter the story. Remarkably his

Nolan was very clear that he wanted the group to start with Landscape

grandfather, William Nolan, had been involved in the hunt for the Kelly

1947—a muddy environment, all moody and low-key tonalities—to set

gang in the Victorian countryside. There was also some sense of personal

the scene. In an interview with Elwyn Lynn in 1983, he gave his personal

identification for the young adventurous artist Sidney Nolan with Kelly

interpretations, providing telling insights into his thinking, albeit with

as a ‘rebel reformer’ and an outsider on the run. Before the Second World

the benefit of distance and hindsight. ‘I wanted a clear ambiguity because

War ended, he was something of an outlaw himself, in hiding from the

this was the tranquil scene for the subsequent violence.’ Not all the

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paintings are equally crucial to the narrative. Some are indicative of small incidents in the records that caught Nolan’s robust imagination. These quiet non-events are interspersed with the dramatic occurrences. There are gentle works of pure fabrication, like Quilting the armour 1947 of Ned’s sister Margaret ‘quilting the armour to protect a precious head done with tenderness and love, while a peaceful world goes about its life’. It is the one work that gives a feeling for small rural communities involved in subsistence farming at the time. Then there are those key works that convey a sense of the violent drama that unfolded, like Death of Constable Scanlon and Burning at Glenrowan, both painted in 1946.

HE BROUGHT TO THE VISUAL RE-TELLING A BROAD EMOTIONAL UNDERTOW—OF VIOLENCE, FEAR AND FLIGHT; COURAGE, DESPERATION AND BRAZEN FOLLY; LOVE AND ANGUISH.

It is precisely this alteration in the pacing—from quiet to dramatic, from quirky, seemingly irrelevant incidents to totally life-changing episodes— that give the series its dramatic, filmic qualities. Fact and fiction intermingle. Certainly in real life, Ned Kelly only wore his bulky armour near the end of the drama, but for Nolan it becomes a vital, symbolic device from beginning to end. The helmet is like a frame within the frame. The visor within the helmet is another viewfinder—a slot to be seen through, or filled with emotive colour and eyes askance. The stark pared back, black square of the helmet was a stroke of brilliance. It did not appear without precedent but came out of earlier works, including the simplified head in Boy and the moon 1939– 40. It also finds resonances with Kasimir Malevich’s famous Black square 1915, although Nolan remarked that the squares he saw in the work of László Moholy-Nagy were actually more relevant at the time. There were also other sources, but in the end it was the way that Nolan made this image his own, in this context, that endures. As he said to Elwyn Lynn: ‘This is Kelly the defiant. I put Kelly on top of his horse in a particularly orderly manner. I wanted an air of perfect authority. It looks simple but I wanted the maximum feeling of space, so the cloud appears through the aperture in the mask’. This Ned Kelly image captured the public imagination in ways that few others in the history of Australian art have done. For many it has subsumed the image of the real armour and stands perennially for Kelly himself. In his visual account of the Kelly saga, Nolan recognised the complexity of the events that had no easy answers. He brought to the visual re-telling a broad emotional undertow—of violence, fear and flight; courage, desperation and brazen folly; love and anguish. The Kelly series has been exhibited numerous times internationally, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. This current tour around Australia will undoubtedly inspire many visitors to engage afresh with the potency of this still remarkable group of paintings, and to debate and contemplate the resurrection of a story that will never die.

Ned Kelly Art Gallery of Western Australia: 3 August to 4 November 2018 Murray Art Museum Albury: 22 November 2018 to 17 February 2019 Join the conversation

Opposite, from top: Ned Kelly 1946 and The trial 1947

#NedKellyNGA

Above: The defence of Aaron Sherritt 1946

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

COLLECTION FOCUS

The genesis of the

ABORIGINAL MEMORIAL Djon Mundine OAM, the conceptual producer of The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88, recollects the genesis of the project that was to become The Aboriginal Memorial in a recent conversation with Wally Caruana, who was the curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the NGA at the time.

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

‘The Aboriginal art achievement is the great art achievement in Australia to date. Ever since European settlement of the continent, we have seen many styles develop and many fine artists emerge, but the total white achievement doesn’t really equal the black achievement … The values, spiritual, moral … that Aboriginal art represents, are values that really aren’t touched upon by most other artists in this country. This Memorial I believe is the single most important Aboriginal work, apart from the great series of paintings on the rock faces throughout Australia.’ James Mollison, in Here’s my hand: a testimony to an Aboriginal memorial, a film by Michael Edols, 1988

The idea for the Memorial had its origins in a number of things. First and foremost it emerged from the method of curating I developed in the first years of living in the north, in Arnhem Land, in the late 1970s. It was a time of growing interest in Aboriginal art, however Aboriginal art was, by and large, still treated as a curiosity, and even as tourist art. Commercial galleries and ‘art’ shops would order bark paintings, sculptures and other art objects in bulk—say, fifty bark paintings, twenty sculptures … Art was treated as a homogenous whole, without differentiation by style, artist or subject, et cetera. I wanted to present art as I had seen it presented in public galleries and private fine art galleries

Above: The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88, natural earth pigments on wood. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased with the assistance of funds from National Gallery admission charges and commissioned in 1987

where the emphasis was on individual artists, tracking the stylistic

Page 50, from left (details): Dorothy Djukulul (Ganalbingu people) Geese/tortoise/skull/bones; George Milpurrurru (Ganalbingu people) Skulls, bones, bones in basket; Djardie Ashley (Rittharrngu people) Lungumarr and rarrk; David Malangi Daymirringu (Manharrngu people) Water python, tortoise, diver ducks, eel tailed catfish, waterlily bulbs

innovative license, just as in ceremonies that go back thousands of years,

All hollow logs in this feature are part of The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88, installed at the NGA, Canberra

have specific words for ‘trunk’, ‘branches’, ‘limbs’ etc. The concept that

THE ABORIGINAL MEMORIAL

developments in their paintings. What I discovered working at Milingimbi and Ramingining, is that while artists worked in age-old traditions, they emphasised their own individual style. Each had their own innovation and influences from the outside are allowed; an environment ever changing—in a state of flux, however subtle. Then I thought of the Aboriginal symbolism associated with trees. Ramingining is in the centre of a huge forest that stretches over most of Arnhem Land. Trees are described in terms of the human body; people trees contain the spirit of something is not a New Age idea, rather it is

people’s reality that forms part of their cosmology. People have personal

practice. The idea excited me and I commenced conversations with

totemic associations with specific species of trees. I was absorbing this

the eight leading male artists at Ramingining who were my confidants

way of looking at the world and I was continuously attending large

and teachers. Around this time, one of the senior artists, a ritual elder

important religious ceremonies that drew people from hundreds of miles

and a close friend, Paddy Dhathangu, brought me a video tape that had

away. Around one thousand people would be present at the conclusion

belonged to his son who had passed away. It was journalist John Pilger’s

of a ceremony. This showed me that people were very committed to their

documentary, The Secret Country, made in 1985. Paddy and I watched

religious beliefs and the artistic expression associated with ritual—those

it together.

long-held and long-developed styles of artistic expression across all art forms, ages and genders. That gave me the idea of creating a sacred forest, a spiritual forest.

Pilger spoke about growing up on the Hawkesbury River unaware that Aboriginal people had lived there. Later he discovered that the local people had waged a war against the colonial British, but all of them had

People harvest the forest, they alter it every day, cleansing it by fire to

died ‘to the last man, woman and child’ defending their country. What

burn off all the dead wood and debris in the dry season. And forests

I liked about Pilger’s approach in the documentary is that he allowed

are inundated with waters of the wet. So the forest is a series of binary,

the ‘first voice’—he had Aboriginal people talking about colonial history,

complementary symbols, it embodies everything: the idea of divisions of

unmediated by non-Aboriginal interpretations. Pilger further stated in

a society, and its unity; the so-called moiety system of dhuwa and yirritja.

the documentary that, from a white person’s observation, it was amazing

The designs artists painted onto hollow log coffins used in bone burials in

that although in every city, town and village in Australia there was a

Arnhem Land were identical to those painted on participants’ bodies in

memorial to those who died defending this country, curiously, overseas,

ritual performances.

there were none to Aboriginal people who died defending their lands at

Then it was a matter of how many of these painted hollow logs should constitute the forest. With the bicentenary looming, two hundred

the beginning of the colony up to the present day. That’s when the whole idea for the Aboriginal Memorial gelled.

seemed an appropriate number, to celebrate the last two hundred

I asked Paddy, David Malangi, George Milpurrurru, Dorothy Djikulul,

years of Aboriginal life, but also thirty thousand plus years of artistic

Djardie Ashley, Nellie Ngarruthun, Jimmy Wululu and a few others ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

what they thought of that. They replied by telling stories of massacres that had happened early in the twentieth century, in their father’s and mother’s time, in the Ramingining area, around the Arafura Wetlands, and near Gatji Lagoon, and how cattlemen tried to exterminate all Aboriginal people in the area. These stories were never part of any official white history. However, a number of these stories were first written down by local people as part of the bilingual education program at the Ramingining school. These, too, were stories in the ‘first voice’. Around this time I also started to put together artists’ biographies, in which they spoke about working as labourers in the air force or the army—they were participants in Australia’s history as fully as anyone else. But they were also aware of the killings of Aboriginal people right across the continent, and especially the south-east, since the arrival of Captain Cook. Now that the senior artists were prepared to participate in the project, my thoughts turned towards the actual layout of the sacred forest. I wanted to show how the land is laid out in terms of species and ancestral beings. I began with the idea of the mouth of the Glyde River that flows from the wetlands into the Arafura Sea. As much as a forest is about connections between people, a river is a metaphor for a cosmology, of how the world works. Many ceremonial song cycles start with storms approaching, rivers flowing. Rivers shape the land and the way natural species and people live within it. So I used the mouth of the river as a path into the forest, and thought about which people lived on the left bank, or right. Then it dawned on me that if I were to work with the major artists only, there would be several clan groups in the area who would not be represented in this spiritual forest. The range of family connections, the ritual collaborations between dhuwa and yirritja moiety members demanded that all the groups be included. So, in an Aboriginal sense, these decisions emerged from a consensus on how the project would work. I also talked to other people outside the community about the project: balanda (non-Aboriginal) artists, art centre managers, teachers and curators. All were very encouraging and offered to contribute to something they saw as having great integrity. These discussions helped refine my ideas in terms of the physical and conceptual aspects of the project. One the most important people I discussed the project with was Nicholas Waterlow, director of the Bicentenary Biennale of Sydney, who wanted to place the installation into this most important exhibition. I thought that although a significant number of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists were boycotting the bicentenary events, being absent wasn’t going to make the strong protest needed. In his catalogue essay, Waterlow would describe The Aboriginal Memorial as ‘the single most important piece in the exhibition’. The first hollow logs were painted by David Malangi and his son Neville Gulaygulay in 1986–87. They were huge, and painted in a stripes that represent the ebb and flow of the tides. Eventually other artists joined in. Philip Gudthaykudthay, George Milpurrurru, Jimmy Wululu … The trouble was that these artists earned a living from the sale of their bark paintings, but the Ramingining Art Centre had no surplus funds

THE ABORIGINAL MEMORIAL

to cover payments for their work on the Memorial. I was getting bank overdrafts to pay the artists, but that was stressful. Telstra gave us some sponsorship, and Gary Foley and Chicka Dixon at the Aboriginal Arts Board made a contribution. Then I met the printmaker and activist Chips Mackinolty in Darwin who suggested I approach James Mollison, the director of the Australian National Gallery to support the project. So I approached Wally Caruana who arranged a meeting with James. I was stunned by James’s reaction. He realised the significance of the Memorial straight-up. He took it as a major statement about Aboriginal art. I was really humbled by that. He more or less made the decision on the spot to, in effect, commission and acquire the Memorial for the National Gallery. And realising my dilemma in wanting to pay the artists as they created the painted logs, James agreed that the Gallery would pay half the cost of the project up front, the balance to be paid on completion. Some of the people I had consulted on the project suggested the Memorial ought to be installed in the Gallery’s sculpture garden, and allowed to deteriorate as painted hollow logs do in traditional practice. I was against this idea: to me it could symbolise a loss of interest in Aboriginal issues, a sort of disappearance of Aboriginal people. I wanted the opposite, to show that Aboriginal culture had not only survived two hundred years of European settlement, but that it was alive, strong and enduring. And that memorials are really only erected by a recovering, resilient society to reinforce the memory of those people’s sacrifice. Again, I was astounded by the Gallery’s agreement to exhibit this monumental installation on a permanent basis. Which other art gallery in the world at the time would have taken such a leap of faith? I am pleased that the Memorial has been on permanent display since 1988, from the Sydney Biennale where it was first shown, before it went to the National Gallery, and then during 1999–2000 on a tour of Europe to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover and the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The Memorial is a living thing. What I would like to see happen in the future is to hold an annual ritual event to honour the Indigenous dead that the Memorial represents. Perhaps every NAIDOC Week or Sorry Day (or even the ACT’s Reconciliation Day) a local Ngunnawul/Ngambri person and a Ramingining person could honour what the Memorial stands for in song.

This article is an edited transcript of a conversation between Djon Mundine OAM and Wally Caruana in June 2018. Djon is a member of the Bandjalung people of northern New South Wales.

Opposite, from left: Jimmy Wululu (Gupapuyngu people) Honey, catfish, long necked tortoise; Paddy Dhathangu (Liyagalawumirri people) Warratjara palm tree; David Malangi Daymirringu (Manharrngu people) Water python, tortoise, diver ducks, eel tailed catfish, waterlily bulbs

If you enjoyed this article, you may be interested in: NGA Annual Lecture: Djon Mundine 11 October 6.00 pm Aboriginal Memorial Anniversary Symposium 12 to 13 October 2018 nga.gov.au/whatson

Above: Loading The Aboriginal Memorial onto aircraft and the Darwin barge in Ramingining on their way to the Biennale of Sydney, 1988. Photos: © Jon Lewis

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

NEW ACQUISITIONS John Olsen Over six decades, John Olsen has contributed a practice of considerable vitality, anchored by a metaphorical and experiential approach to place. Dingo country 2016 epitomises this sense of metaphor. The form of the landscape appears zoomorphic, like a dingo, as the title suggests. He has long relished the fact that the local environment is not pristine but rather scrubby country that is dynamic and embodies an animistic quality. Taking an aerial perspective, the composition of this work is remarkably inventive, as the land is pared back in an ocean of blue. Dingo country was one of several works made during the decline and eventual passing of the artist’s wife, Katharine. It was a distressing time but, rather than accede to a melancholic palette, Olsen found refuge in the glowing colour and beloved themes of his life’s work to date. Dingo country possesses his characteristic energy, the rambunctious lines that wave, hum, dot and scribble down the canvas. It also confirms Olsen’s uncanny eye as a colourist, the startling contrast of soft vibrant blue and tarnished gold earth adding to the animation. This engaging painting, which demonstrates a newfound clarity, an elegance and a relative economy of form, proves that Olsen (now in this ninetieth year) is an artist who continually seeks variant means to reveal and evoke the poetry of the vast and varied Australian landscape. The painting is a gift from Olsen to the NGA in honour of Gerard Vaughan’s time as director of the NGA. The national art collection focuses predominantly on earlier works by Olsen, so this generous gift is both

David Rosetzky Things always look good in the work of Melbourne-based David Rosetzky, but there is often a mysterious undercurrent that renders things strange. He spent much of the 2000s developing a body of now important video works that examined the relationship of movement, sound and subjectivity. Recently, he has returned to the photographic print to create montages in the spirit of Florence Henri, Lucia Moholy, Man Ray and Max Dupain. One of the catalysts for this was the death of his father, a graphic designer who was greatly influenced by the Bauhaus aesthetics of the 1920s and 1930s. Like the work of the avant-garde photographers who have inspired him, Rosetzky’s recent black-and-white photographs use highly experimental, chance-based darkroom processes—doubling and double exposure, montage and overprinting—to create images of great complexity and dynamism. A number of the works recently acquired by the NGA, engage with today’s progressive notions of gender and sexuality as fragmented and shifting. In Karlo, for instance, a bearded man is shown in double exposure with flowers. This portrait creates a new ‘in-between’ space, one that Rosetzky reflects ‘isn’t tied down to one representation or reality’. This account of contemporary identity has been folded into the making of the photograph itself, evoking a palpable, if slightly ineffable, sense of intimacy that mirrors the darkroom processes used. It is a wonderful example of the innovative and exceptional way that contemporary photomedia artists are resuscitating the rich history of analogue, or darkroom, photography. Anne O’Hehir, Curator, Photography

NEW ACQUISITIONS

significant and timely—particularly as the NGA is currently seeking contributions towards the acquisition of another, larger and very recent Olsen work, Towards Lake Eyre 2018, for this year’s Masterpieces for the Nation Fund (nga.gov.au/giving). Elspeth Pitt, Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture (20th and 21st Centuries), and Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art

Girolamo Nerli In honour of Gerard Vaughan’s directorship of the National Gallery of Australia (2014–2018), Philip Bacon AM has given to the NGA this fascinating painting of Apia, Samoa 1892 by Giralamo Nerli. The artist announced the intentions of his trip in the Samoa times of 27 August 1892, saying, ‘It is the intention of this gentleman to reproduce, Opposite, from top: John Olsen Dingo country 2016, oil paint on linen. Gift of the artist in honour of Gerard Vaughan’s directorship of the National Gallery of Australia, 2018. © John Olsen/Copyright Agency; David Rosetzky Karlo 2017, gelatin silver photograph. Purchased 2018. © David Rosetzky/Copyright Agency Below: Girolamo Nerli Apia, Samoa 1892, oil on canvas. Gift of Philip Bacon in honour of Gerard Vaughan’s directorship of the National Gallery of Australia, 2018. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

principally in oils, some of our magnificent scenery, and also to make some portraits of the Samoan natives, which he proposes to exhibit at the Sydney Exhibition’. Upon arrival, he made contact with the Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived there with his family. Nerli’s famous portrait of Stevenson, now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, was painted during his stay, and has become the most widely recognised image of the author. Nerli also painted a number of watercolour sketches in Samoa that show Robert Louis Stevenson’s house, and the road leading to it. Apia, Samoa is one of the few paintings by Nerli depicting the landscape and villages around the township. Nerli arrived in Samoa on 12 August 1892, and soon became a regular visitor at the fine two-storey home of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, set among the hills of Apia. According to the artist’s widow, he had twenty-seven sittings with the author, and the two men became firm friends. Stevenson is best known for his books, Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. When the artist arrived, Stevenson was in the midst of a great creative outpouring, and he wrote and published many books during this year. Nerli stayed for thirteen weeks during which time he made a number of watercolour sketches—now in the Hocken Library in Dunedin and the Writer’s Museum in Edinburgh. The son of an aristocrat, Girolamo Nerli was born in Siena in Italy in 1860, and trained at the Florence Academy prior to migrating to Australia in 1885. He established a studio in Melbourne with Ugo Cattani who had accompanied him to Australia. He soon moved to Sydney where he began to exhibit with the Art Society of New South Wales and mixed with many of the Australian Impressionist artists. Like Stevenson, he was a consummate traveller, and from 1889 he moved freely between New Zealand and Australia where he regularly exhibited. The majority of Nerli’s Samoan subjects were purchased by Lord Guthrie and bequeathed by him to the City of Edinburgh in 1926, thus works of this subject by the artist are rare. Indeed this is the first painting of this period by Nerli to enter the NGA collection and we are especially grateful to Philip Bacon AM for making this acquisition possible. Lara Nicholls, Curator, 19th-Century Australian Art

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Right and opposite (detail): Martin Bell An Australian Landscape 2016–17, ink on seventy-five sheets of paper. Purchased 2018. Photos: Andrew Curtis. Images courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries Below: Guan Wei Cloud B#3 2012, bronze. Gift of the artist, 2018. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

Guan Wei Guan Wei is an artist who masterfully brings awareness to social and environmental issues, exploring themes of immigration, colonisation and blurred boundaries of cultural identity. Born and raised in Beijing, he first travelled to Australia in 1989, after the events at Tiananmen Square shocked the world. Today, he regularly travels back and forth between his studios in Beijing and Sydney, and his practice draws on his personal experiences and socio-political awareness of both cultures, often with satirical effect. Cloud B#3 2012, a recent gift from the artist to the NGA, is a fine example of Guan Wei’s practice and continues his earlier 2009 ‘Cloud’ sculptures, which are arguably more light-hearted than his overtly political works. In Cloud B#3, the familiar fleshy and faceless character who appears throughout Guan Wei’s oeuvre holds aloft a cloud in his right hand and adopts a dynamic stance. His body appears to buckle under the immense weight of the cloud. For the artist, the cloud is a symbol of liberty, but it is also a metaphor for thought and action in the world. A weightless object by nature, it has become a burden for the figure as he struggles under its pressure. In traditional Chinese imagery, the cloud is a sign of uncertainty, a symbol of freedom as well as change. With the cloud’s amorphous shape, however, we are left to wonder what thought or action weighs so heavily on someone that balancing it on an outstretched limb becomes such a precarious task. Cloud B#3 captures Guan Wei’s characteristic humour and great humility while also alluding to the greater issues that underpin his broader practice. Rebecca Blake, Curatorial Assistant, Australian Art

NEW ACQUISITIONS

Martin Bell A stormtrooper, a babushka doll, a Viking, Mickey Mouse, Barbie and an

Bell pieced together An Australian Landscape over two years, like

alien. These are just some of the disparate characters that populate

a large patchwork quilt. It began with road trips around Victoria and to

Martin Bell’s chaotic, post-Internet dreamland An Australian Landscape

Cairns, during which he produced intricate drawings of the landscape.

2016–17. Displayed like a contemporary tapestry, Bell’s ambitious large-

Over time, he added architectural structures gleaned from historical

scale drawing is assembled from seventy-five paper panels. Building on

references, including the Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s imaginary prisons

realistic foundations, this fantastical panorama features images from

and Vitruvius’s principles for aqueducts, and grounded them in an

pop culture, nostalgic childhood references and Bell’s imagination.

integrating pattern. He then colonised the landscape with recognisable

It is a visual narrative referencing current consumer culture and is

toy figurines, cartoons and comics, with the resulting work opening up

simultaneously hopeful, humorous and menacing.

as an epic, oversized narrative. Yvette Dal Pozzo, Curatorial Assistant,

His anachronistic amalgamation of images, ranging from

Australian Prints, Gordon Darling Graduate Intern

prehistoric to the imagined future, replicates the present-day experience of drowning in visual media. This reflection of contemporary society is also firmly rooted in Australian visual history. The idyllic landscapes of Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin have been invaded by a parade of fictional figures, and the iconic vocabulary of gum trees, weatherboard houses, concrete sidewalks and station wagons is uncannily placed against a zigzagged monochrome background. The toy figurines confined in this surreal suburbia act out scenarios of violence, heroics, cowardice, love and fear. What initially appears light-hearted, on closer examination, to be a scathing satirical view of humanity. Bell reinterprets these traditional scenes for a modern Australian audience, abandoning distinctions between high and low culture and disregarding the barriers of time. In a 2013 Broadsheet interview, he spoke of his interest in having ‘everything existing at once and [looking] at the dialogue between the past, present and future’. The complex figurative composition recalls the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch as well as the decorative vignettes of eighteenth-century Toile de Jouy. The work also builds on his recurring exploration of childhood, memory and objects, expanding the scope of his critically acclaimed series Skull Gully II.

ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Dora Maar The NGA has recently acquired a group of five photographs by the great Surrealist photographer Dora Maar. They join an exceptionally rare print of her most famous photograph, Portrait of Ubu 1936, already in the national art collection. The group includes another of her most widely published images, Puppet hanging on a palisade c 1934, an unnerving and entirely surrealist image of a marionette hanging from a clapboard fence. The other four remarkable surrealist street photographs were taken in London, Paris and Barcelona. Maar travelled throughout Spain and the United Kingdom in 1934, taking pictures of street life that often drew attention to the disparities, and paradoxes, that line the everyday experiences of the poor and the wealthy. Reflecting her progressive political position, Maar’s street photographs often focused on the working poor, and the way that their experience of the street could be infused with a strange, melancholic beauty. Her street photographs were often concerned with how seeing is part of the public experience—a blind man sings, naively rendered portraits being sold by a legless man stare out at passers-by, two young girls create a human ladder to peer over a fence, a sandwich man (eyes closed) becomes an object of absurd spectacle for everyone around him. Maar brought to surrealist photography a range of important innovations. Chief among these was the way she incorporated surrealist strategies into her successful commercial practice, which included fashion photography and advertising, and her development of a very particular form of surrealist street photography in which she found the uncanny in moments of the everyday. Indeed, while she made full use of the surrealist toolbox in the darkroom (using photomontage and collage, double exposure, fragmentation), it is her strange, often poignant street photographs that may well come to define her most significant contribution to Surrealism and to the history of avant-garde photography. Maar studied painting and photography in Paris in the late 1920s, when she became associated with many members of the Parisian avantgarde, including Yves Tanguy, Paul and Nusch Eluard, Man Ray and Brassaï (with whom she shared studio in 1931). She was also closely involved with the various Surrealist groups active in Paris during the mid 1930s. She maintained close connections with the movement’s leader, Andre Breton, as well as renegade Surrealists such as Georges Bataille, with whom she had an affair in 1934. But, as is the case with many women artists, we have often seemed more interested in who Maar knew than her work per se. Indeed, few great women artists have suffered this fate as much as her. Maar’s career as a photographer was thrown off course when she met Pablo Picasso in 1936, with whom she was romantically involved until 1946. This relationship had a terrible impact on her, both personally and professionally, not least because he convinced her to leave behind photography and return to painting. She was also the subject of Picasso’s famous Weeping woman series of 1937, an association that has long overshadowed her work as an artist. Over the last decade or so, however, we have started to more fully appreciate Maar’s contribution to the history of photography and to Surrealism. This process of reappraisal is reinstating Maar as one of Surrealism’s most significant and innovative photographers. Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator, Photography

NEW ACQUISITIONS

From top: Dora Maar Puppet hanging on a palisade (Marionnette accrochée a une palisade) c 1934 and not titled (Posters, London) 1934, gelatin silver photographs. Purchased 2018

A CIVILISATION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

CITY+EMPIRE

Opens 21 September NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA, CANBERRA nma.gov.au/rome MAJOR PARTNERS

PROGRAM PARTNER

SUPPORTING PARTNER

The presentation of this exhibition is a collaboration between the British Museum and the National Museum of Australia. Marble statue head thought to be of Messalina, Italy, 55–65 CE. ©Trustees of the British Museum. ARTONVIEW 95 SPRING 2018

Photo: Minna Gilligan

WORLD CLASS ART

‘Unfurling’ by Andrew Rogers

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Kyoato, Japan

No one travels like Australians And no one takes us to the world like Qantas

Kyoato, Japan

No one travels like Australians And no one takes us to the world like Qantas