Margaret Tuckson’s Private Collection 14th – 31st January, 2015
Peter Maloney
(b.1953, WA)
Peter Maloney has been exhibiting since the late 1980s, at the Legge Gallery, Sydney, and more recently at Utopia Art Sydney. He was represented by Wessel & O'Connor, New York City, and has shown nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions. He was a Full-Time Lecturer in Painting at ANU from 2006 to 2013. Recent solo exhibitions: 2014 Peter Maloney: A Focus, Newcastle Art Gallery, NSW; 2009 Bodies in Trouble, Canberra Contemporary Art Space Gorman House; 2005 Gone Tomorrow, Canberra Museum and Gallery; 1998 Photographic Works, Photospace, Canberra School of Art; 1998 Is this the way to Round the World?, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. Recent group exhibitions: 2011 Artists’ Artists, Benalla Art Gallery, VIC; View of Outer Space from an Aquarium, Famous Accountants, Brooklyn, New York, USA; 2010 Lost Horizon, Exile Gallery, Berlin, Germany. Maloney’s work is included in significant public collections, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Canberra Museum and Art Gallery and Newcastle Region Art Gallery. Peter Maloney is represented by Utopia Art Sydney.
1. Red 1994 oil on canvas
$ 5,000 137 x 121.7cm
Provenance: Seance, 3-21 May 1994, Legge Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.4 Unique Number: 94/09/004
Robert Hirschmann
(b.1968, Narembeen, WA)
Robert Hirschmann completed his Diploma of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 1990. He has been represented by King Street Gallery, Sydney, since 1991.
2. Banis IV 1992 $ 750 mixed media on paper 39 x 35cm Provenance: King Street on Burton, 1992. (Banis is Pidgin for ‘fence’). Inspired by Wedderburn bush - he was staying with Roy Jackson at the time.
3. Untitled (Mt Jellore, Mittagong) 1990 $ 750 graphite & acrylic on paper 37.5 x 38cm Provenance: Robht Hirschmann, drawings 1990-1995, 36 Renwick St, Redfern, in association with King Street Gallery on Burton, 7-21 October 1995. Completed whilst Hirschmann was still at art school.
Michael Taylor
(b.1933, Sydney)
An eminent Australian artist, Michael Taylor received a Diploma in Painting from East Sydney Technical College in 1953. He exhibited at Watters Gallery from 1967-73. Taylor has participated in numerous international and Australian exhibitions, including the Biennale des Jeunes, Paris (1963); Contemporary Australian Painting, Los Angeles (1966) ; Australian Art Today, touring South-East Asia (1969); Ten Australians, touring Europe (1974/75); Third Triennale, Delhi, India (1979); Landscape and Abstraction, Nolan Gallery (1986); I had a dream, NGV (1996); more recently, Moist, NGA (2005), and Fireworks, touring QLD, NSW and VIC Regional Galleries (2005). His work is in the National Gallery of Australia, all State and numerous Regional Galleries. Michael Taylor is represented by Gallery 9, Sydney 4. Painting 1970 $ 5,000 oil on canvas 56 x 46cm Purchased by Tony and Margaret Tuckson from the exhibition Taylor – 70, Watters Gallery, Sydney, 21 Oct-4 Nov 1970, cat.no.11
Elizabeth Rooney
(b.1929, Sydney)
Elizabeth Rooney attended East Sydney Tech College in 1949, and though she held a solo exhibition of etchings there in 1953 she didn’t begin exhibiting her prints (she studied under Herbert Gallop but taught herself etching) until 1963. She was friends with both Klaus Friedeberger and Tony Tuckson. Later, Rooney helped set up Joy Ewart’s Art Centre at Willoughby, at first showing there and later with Artarmon Galleries. By 1976 Rooney had made about 240 prints in widely varied media. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Australia, UK, Italy, USA and South East Asia, including: 1958 National Arts Club, New York; 1966 Australian Prints, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC; 1968-69 British Print Biennale and many group exhibitions. She won the Mosman print prize in 1966. She is a Foundation member of the Sydney Printmakers Group (1961). Rooney has been a teacher at Willoughby Workshop Arts Centre, and the National Art School, East Sydney. Elizabeth Rooney is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Victoria. This abstract work is unusual in Rooney’s almost exclusively figurative oeuvre. 5. From Gladesville Bridge 1969 lithograph 2/6 31 x 50cm
$ 600
David Rankin
(b.1946, UK)
6. Fall of Rain 1974 acrylic on canvas 175 x 122cm David Rankin is a New York-based Australian artist who works in a variety of media. Rankin, who is self-taught, had his first exhibition in Sydney at Watters gallery at age 22.
$ 7,500
In the past 30 years David Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in Paris, Beijing, New York, Cologne as well as throughout Australia. He is represented in many of the world's leading collections and museums. Rankin represented Australia in the UNESCO Fortieth Anniversary Exhibition that toured the world's capitals. In 1983 he won the Wynne Prize. Recently, an English-German monograph on his work titled The Walls of the Heart: The Work and Life of David Rankin was published by US critic and art historian Dore Ashton. In 2005-2006 a major exhibition of Rankin’s art, curated by Dore Ashton, toured public galleries in Australia. In September 2013, a book by Dore Ashton on David Rankin's work titled David Rankin: The New York Years was released. Provenance: David Rankin, Paintings, 3-20 July, 1974, Watters Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.8
Jon Plapp
(b.1938, Melbourne; d.2005, Sydney)
Jon Plapp obtained a BA from Melbourne University in 1959. He left Australia in 1962 for further study in the United States, and obtained a PhD in psychology from Washington University, St Louis Missouri, USA, in 1967. It was at Washington University’s Department of Fine Arts, from 1966 to 1968, that Plapp began to study life drawing and painting. In 1968 he settled in Toronto, Canada, where he emerged as an artist. Through the David Mirvish Gallery, Plapp met New York painters Frankenthaler, Poons, Motherwell, Olitski and Dzubas, sculptor Anthony Caro, and Toronto painter Jack Bush. As a result of his exposure to these artists and their work, the New York school of postpainterly abstraction became the strongest influence on Plapp as he began to develop a professional identity as an artist. In 1976 Plapp shared a studio with Toronto painters David Bolduc and Paul Sloggett. Jon Plapp returned to Australia and settled in Sydney in 1977. Jon had regular solo exhibitions at Watters Gallery from 1979 until his death, as well as being involved in numerous group exhibitions. A thoughtful survey of his work, Elusive Meanings, was held at the Tasmanian Devonport Gallery and Arts Centre in 1995. The survey focused on Plapp’s geometric abstractionist works from a critical ten-year period between 1984 and 1994. Exhibited here are examples of different periods in Plapp’s output. Leaving Gotham Late, the earliest of the four works, is a vibrant collage on paper verging on the figurative from around 1981. Five years later, in Invent the Air, we can see that Plapp has found his voice in geometric abstraction; here is the grid, albeit fugitive, that became the overarching theme in his work, one that he was to work through in various colours and combinations for the rest of his life. Wahroonga is a collage assembled by Plapp while he and Richard McMillan were looking after Margaret’s house and dog in 1995. The trimmings were cut by Margaret of colour photos, mostly of works by Tony (probably for the Tuckson card index) but there are also trimmings of some family photos.
7. Leaving Gotham Late 1981? $ 1,200 paper collage 50 x 75cm Provenance: Purchased from: Collage Exhibition, 9 – 26 September 1981, Watters Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.21
8. Invent the Air 1986 $ 7,500 PVA on canvas 122 x 162cm Provenance: Purchased from: One Sculptor, Six Painters, 17 June – 4 July 1987, Watters Gallery, Sydney
Patrick Heron
(b.1920, UK; died 1999, UK)
9. West Head Bush: Mini V 1990 gouache on Arches paper 25.5 x 32cm
$ 10,000
Provenance: Patrick Heron, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, 9-28 April, 1990, cat.no.20 This work was completed during the artist’s residency, referred to above, at the Art Gallery of NSW. Patrick Heron enrolled at the Slade, UK, at the age of 17, and held his first solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, London, in 1947. In WWII Herron registered as a conscientious objector, working as an agricultural labourer, then at Leach Pottery, St Ives, where he met Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and many other leading artists of the St Ives School. He was greatly influenced by the Georges Braque exhibition at the Tate, 1946, and visited the artist in his Paris studio in 1953. That same year Heron was included in the São Paulo Biennale in Brazil. He was a teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London. Patrick Heron visited Australia in 1967 and 1973, exhibiting at the Bonython Gallery, Sydney. He delivered the Power lecture in Contemporary Art entitled The Shape of Colour. He wrote, "There is no shape that is not conveyed to you by colour, and there is no colour that can present itself to you without involving shape". From November 1989 - February 1990, Heron was artist in residence at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where he produced six large paintings and forty-six gouaches, of which this is one. Writer Michael McNay called this body of work "...the final great breakout into ... freely executed paintings inspired by his new acquaintance with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney." (exhibition catalogue, Waddington Galleries, 2002) Several retrospectives of Heron’s work have been held: Wakefield City Art Gallery (1952); Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1968); Whitechapel Art Gallery (1972); Barbican Art Gallery (1985) and a major one at Tate Britain (1998).
Over 60 of Patrick Heron's paintings are held in public collections in Britain alone, many others in collections worldwide, including Ireland, Lisbon, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Toronto, London, Montreal, Vancouver, Tokyo, Carnegie Institute, Pennsylvania, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In Australia at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales. There are many books on Patrick Heron’s work.
Jon Plapp
10. Wahroonga Sept-Oct 1995 photographic collage 57 x 40.5cm
$ 1,500
Provenance: Collages: John Peart, Jon Plapp & Peter Poulet, Watters Gallery
11. Untitled 2003 acrylic on paper 38 x 67cm
$ 1,500
Towards the end of his life, Plapp was afflicted by Parkinson’s disease. While his handwriting suffered (see his signature on the back of this work) it is interesting to observe the control he was able to maintain while drawing or painting. The lines in this work are assured, each mark seems to be exactly where Plapp intended it to be.
Emily Kame Kngwarreye
12. Untitled (body paint) 1994 acrylic on canvas 86 x 56cm
(b.1910; d.1996)
$ 27,000
Emily Kame Kngwarreye began painting late in life. She grew up in a traditional way, learning about her father’s clan country, Alhalkere, a remote area north east of Alice Springs. Kngwarreye's first contemporary art was made in the late 1970's, in batik. However, it was in the summer of 1988/89 that she found her true medium, acrylic paint on canvas. She received the first CAAMA Fellowship in 1989, held the first of many solo shows in 1990, and was awarded the Australian Artists Creative Fellowship in 1992. Her work is now included in every major public, corporate and private collection in the country and increasingly abroad. In 1998 Kngwarreye's work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In the same year the Queensland Art Gallery curated a major survey exhibition Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Alhalkere: Paintings from Utopia. This travelled to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the National Gallery of Australia. In 2008, a major retrospective of Kngwarreye's work, Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, was exhibited at the National Museum of Art in Osaka and the National Art Centre in Tokyo. Emily Kame Kngwarreye is represented by Utopia Art Sydney Provenance: A New Direction, Utopia Art Sydney, 30 July-20 August 1994. This rare painting is from only the second set of six ‘body paint’ paintings Kngwarreye produced. Works from the first group went in to the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the MCA (gift of Ann Lewis), and many travelled to Venice for her exhibition there in 1998. Both the first and second of these series caused consternation at the time they were exhibited because of the shift they represented from her earlier, more decorative work.
Klaus Friedeberger
(b.1922, Berlin; arrived in Australia on the prison ship Dunera 1940; returned to UK, 1950)
The East Sydney Technical College – now the National Art School – experienced a legendary intake immediately after the Second World War. These were students whose courses had been put on hold for anything up to six years. It still seems a marvel that so many students of such future consequence could be in the same place at the same time. One of these was Klaus Friedeberger, another was Tony Tuckson. They became close friends. Terence Maloon has shown that both were convinced that abstraction was the ultimate goal of contemporary painting. Both were figurative painters and they both believed that you had to earn the right to paint abstract art by a thorough understanding of modern art. We have here good examples of early figurative paintings by Friedeberger. And, after a space of 40 years, some mature abstract work. As with Tuckson, the gentle inquiring qualities of the early work are nowhere to be found in the forthright work that results in the late abstracts. His work is in the National Gallery of Aust & the British Museum. Friedeberger lives and works in London.
Although Friedeberger had no children, before he married he shared a house with friends who did. It was a subject which would occupy him for the next twenty years. He wrote about this painting “Most importantly I was a child once, unlikely as that now seems”.
13. Untitled (still life) 1950 oil on masonite 40.5 x 68.5cm
Ken Searle
$ 1,500
14. Playing Children 1947 oil on canvas 73.5 x 94cm
$ 3,000
(b.1951, Sydney)
What excites Ken Searle’s interest most is the conjunction of people and place. His constant investigation of ways of portraying people and place (really people through place) has resulted in him becoming Australia’s greatest painter of urban environments. Brompton-Bowden (Art Gallery of South Australia), Newtown (Art Gallery of New South Wales), Ballarat (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery), West Geelong (Shell Collection), are examples. Searle has had over 30 solo exhibitions since he began showing his paintings in the mid 1970s. In 1975 he was in the important Ocker Funk exhibition which toured Victorian regional galleries. A celebrated chronicler of the suburbs and communities of Sydney’s south and inner-west, Searle has also portrayed the area around Papunya in the Western Desert where he worked as a consultant for four years. His most recent work is a commentary on the natural and made landscape of Botany Bay and the watercourse of the Cooks River and its tributaries. Searle is an active illustrator and designer of books, most recently Australians All: A History of Growing Up from the Ice Age to the Apology, with text by his long-term collaborator Nadia Wheatley.
15. Prospect Street 1978 oil on canvas 18 x 24.3cm
$ 600
Provenance: Paintings of Newtown by Ken Searle, 28 June-15 July 1978, Watters Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.33
Anne Wienholt
(b.1920, Leura, NSW)
16. Green Pear c.1997 oil on canvas 20.5 x 25cm
$ 900
The writer Lou Klepac wrote of Anne Wienholt’s “constant searching for the innocent vision of the unspoilt eye...
(She) stalks reality for this elusive quality. It is a difficult pursuit because we are all more or less drowned in stereotyped ideas about what our eyes see ...” Wienholt was a prize-winning student of William Dobell and Frank Medworth at East Sydney Tech 1938-41, where she studied with Margaret Olley. In 1944 Wienholt won the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship, sailing for America before the end of the war. She studied in New York with Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo and Japanese-American draftsman Yashuo Kuniyoshi. In Paris, she studied with the printmaker Stanley William Hayter. In the US, and to a lesser extent in Australia, Wienholt is known as a sculptor, showing at Irving Sculpture Gallery, 1984; David Jones Gallery, 1989; Greenhill Galleries, Adelaide 1990, and at Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney, where she is represented. Selected group shows 1999 Merioola and Beyond, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane; 1988 Gift to the Gallery, S.H. Ervin Gallery; 1986 Merioola and After, S.H. Ervin Gallery; 1985 Australian Prints, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; 1980 Redding Museum, California and San Jose Art Centre, California; 1949 National Print Annual Exhibition, The Brooklyn Museum; 1943 Contemporary Art Society exhibition, Victoria; 1941 Australian Aboriginal Art and Its Application, David Jones Gallery, Sydney. Collections: National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, Mornington Peninsula Arts Centre, Victoria. Provenance: this work may have been bought from Wienholt’s studio in Larkspur, California.
Patricia Moylan (b.1950, UK)
17. Chateau de la Loire one 1997 acrylic on reverse of Perspex 19 x 24cm
$ 500
Patricia Moylan paints on the reverse of Perspex. First applied are dots and squiggles that will become light on leaves, ripples on a pond, sunlight caught on a fence post and so on. Then other levels are applied, carefully observed and giving meaning to the previous level. By working in reverse of the usual way each level is fixed, unalterable, by the next level, and we become aware of the levels in the landscape and, mysteriously, aware of insight and imagination lurking in those levels. Moylan attended the National Art School, Sydney, 1968-72, and first exhibited her work at Watters Gallery in 1975 in the important Ocker Funk exhibition, which toured Victorian regional galleries. She has exhibited at Watters Gallery regularly since. Provenance: Small Landscape Paintings, 7-24 July 1999, Watters Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.10 Unique Number: 99/14/010 This painting is of Nantes, where Moylan and her young family lived for a year in the late 1990s. On their first morning she woke to this view across the river from where they were staying. It was early and the weather was the typically wild winter common to the Loire Atlantique. These are, ironically, ‘modern chateaux’ – high rise apartments – ones she came to know well during her time in this part of France.
Klaus Friedeberger
18. Corn on the Cob (1949?) pencil & watercolour on paper 34.5 x 25.5cm washed and de-acidified, remounted in original frame 2013
Kitty Kantilla (Kutuwulumi Purawarrumpatu)
$ 600
(b. c.1928, Melville Isle; d.2003)
19. Untitled $ 6,000 acrylic on paper 38 x 56cm Kitty Kantilla is the most acclaimed Tiwi artist of her generation. As a young girl, Kantilla watched her father paint his jilamara (design) on faces, bodies and objects, and experienced Pukumani ceremonies. Kantilla went on to perform her own kinship songs and dances, carving and painting tutini and painting designs on the bodies of close relatives to disguise them from mapurtiti (malevolent spirits of the deceased). Her earliest works were tutini (grave poles) and figures carved from ironwood using only a tomahawk, chisel and mallet; bark paintings, and tunga (bark baskets). Instead of using the Tiwi painting comb (pwoja), Kantilla painted with a fine stick of coconut palm frond. She experimented with ochre on paper and painted large-scale canvases, moving from the black background preferred by many Tiwi artists, to experiment with expanses of colour and white ochre over a white background. In 2000 Kantilla was included in the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, Art Gallery of SA, and the National Gallery of Victoria Collection, Venice. A major retrospective of her work was shown at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales 2007-08. Her work is in most major collections.
Joseph Mudjidell
(b.c.1966, working 1990s, north-eastern Western Australia)
20. Untitled 1994 acrylic on canvas 90 x 60cm
$ 1,500
Joseph Mudjidell, the son of Matti (Bridget) Mudjidell, was born near Lake Gregory, an inland drainage lake situated in north-eastern Western Australia between the Great Sandy Desert and the Tanami Desert.
In the Tjukurrpa (Dreamtime) a snake travelled from Lake Gregory along Sturt Creek to visit a snake that lived there. It then returned to Lake Gregory. In this painting Joseph Mudjidell has shown Walmatjarri women sitting down around their camp fires eating the bush foods they had gathered during the day. The bush foods included karnti (bush potato), tjirrilpatja (carrot) and kumpupatja (tomato). Provenance: Margaret Tuckson bought this in 1994 from the respected Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation in 1987. It is located in the small Indigenous community of Wirrimanu (Balgo). cat.no. 232/94
Richard Larter OAM
(b.1929, London; arrived Australia 1962; d.2014, Canberra)
21. Portrait 14/9/1975 pencil & ink on paper 37 x 27cm
$ 1,000
Fellow artists stand in awe of Richard Larter’s prolific output, and at the range of technical possibilities that he has turned to his advantage; in some cases with such particular brilliance that it seems no one could emulate him. He was early on cast as a Pop Artist and this has been substantiated by his inclusion in 2007 in the exhibition Andy and Oz: parallel visions at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA, and his strong presence in Pop to Popism currently at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. But he involved himself in many areas beyond Pop Art. For instance, in the 1970s he became involved with Super 8 films, an activity resulting in exciting ‘underground movies’ here and overseas. He, with his wife Pat, made a number of such movies but one, which he thought of as a process work, has received most recognition. It was called ‘Portrait’ and was filmed in 1975 and 1976. In it he did portrait shots of Pat twice a week for a year. An extremely fascinating film resulted. ‘Portrait’ was the only work by an Australian in the 1977 exhibition Illusions and Reality curated by John Stringer – fresh from New York – at the Art Gallery of South Australia. ‘Portrait’ was projected onto a large screen all through the major retrospective ‘Richard Larter’ at the National Gallery of Australia in 2008. Many pen and ink drawings of Pat, like the one in this exhibition, seem products of his mind-set at the time he was filming ‘Portrait’. Larter’s work is in the National Gallery, all State Galleries and many other important collections. In 2002, the Museum of Modern Art at Heide in Victoria organised a retrospective of his figurative work which was followed by a full retrospective in 2008 at the National Gallery of Australia. Provenance: Drawings (group show), 19 November -6 December 1975, Watters Gallery, Sydney
Joe Frost
(b.1974, Sydney)
22. Suburban Scene 1999 graphite on paper 15 x 12cm
$ 500
Since his first exhibition over 10 years ago, Frost’s reputation has grown steadily. Much of his work investigates areas around Sydney’s foreshore and the people inhabiting it. He constantly experiments with new ways of expressing what his investigations bring to light. Frost is an informed and interesting artist, writer and teacher. His thoughtful openness has endeared him to students of all ages. Although he is still young - he was born in 1974 - Frost taught at the College of Fine Arts for 9 years, has taught Drawing Techniques at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and has been teaching at Sydney’s National Art School since 2003. Provenance: Paintings and Drawings, Legge Gallery, Redfern, 22/2-11/3/2000, cat.23 Unique Number: 00/04/023 This drawing is of houses in Denistone, Sydney, near to where Frost grew up. In it he reduces a treed suburban space to fairly simple forms, the gestural lines describing more of a feeling than a worked-out visual thought.
Banduk Marika
(b.1954, Yirrkala, north-east Arnhem Land)
Banduk Marika was the first Yolngu printmaker. In 1979 she moved to Sydney, beginning a successful career in printmaking in 1983. Her linocuts and screenprints adhere to the pictorial traditions of her clan, and include the stories of Djankawu, the Wagilag Sisters creation story and the Turtle Hunters. The techniques she uses to cut linoleum are similar to those used in the layered application of dhulang in bark painting and the incision of designs on wood sculptures in north east Arnhem Land. The Tucksons met the Marikas on their 1959 trip to Yirrkala. There is a photo of Tony with Wandjuk, Banduk’s brother, in the book Tony Tuckson, p.14.
23. Djanda, Waterhole and Bush Turkey Footprints 1985 linocut print 1/20 21 x 61cm Provenance: Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney
$ 600
Both art and politics have played an important part in the Marika family's lives. It was their involvement in the historic Gove Land Right Case that led to the passing of the first land rights legislation in Australia. It was due to Wandjuk's advocacy as Chairman of the Australia Council's Aboriginal Arts Board that the Council established the Aboriginal Artists Agency (AAA) in 1976 specifically to monitor unauthorised reproductions and obtain royalty payments for Aboriginal artists. In 1993 Banduk Marika was involved in one of the most successful cases regarding Indigenous copyright in Australia. In a landmark decision, the Federal Court ruled in favour of the artists and awarded the largest award for an infringement of an Australian artist's copyright. Banduk Marika’s work is in many important collections, including National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery and The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, USA. In 1985 she exhibited at Rex Irwin
Gallery, Sydney, from where this work was purchased. Group exhibitions include: Art and Aboriginality, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, U.K (1987); Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition, National Gallery of Australia (1989); Tagari Lia: My Family, Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Australia, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, UK( 1990); Aboriginal Women's Exhibition, Art Gallery of New South Wales (1991); Crossroads-Towards a New Reality, Aboriginal Art from Australia, National Museums of Modern Art, Kyoto and Tokyo (1992); New Tracks Old Land: An Exhibition of Contemporary Prints from Aboriginal Australia, touring USA and Australia (1992/3); Power of the Land, Masterpieces of Aboriginal Art, National Gallery of Victoria (1994).
24. Miyapunuway Narrunjan 1985 linocut print 3/20 30 x 47.5cm
Luurn Willie Kew
$ 600
(b.1930, Nyirla, WA)
25. Ngila Pomely Rockhole 1985 acrylic on canvas (unframed) 75 x 52.5cm
$ 900
Willie Kew has the bush name Luurn, after the Creation Kingfisher spirit that made the ancestral waterhole at Nyirla, an important ceremonial site where the artist was born, near Well 38 along the Canning Stock Route, WA. Luurn Willie Kew migrated with other countrymen into the Fitzroy Valley where he worked as a stockman on the cattle stations. When her retired he lived at the community at Wangkatjungka near Christmas Creek station. Here he began painting, focusing on the creation story of his home country. Kew painted this for Margaret for her 80th birthday, when he himself was 80 years old.
Ian Bettinson
(b.1956, England; arrived Australia 1981)
Bettinson, who studied at the Bradford College of Art, UK, 1973-75, and the Wimbledon School of Art, London, (Hons) 1979, started exhibiting in Australia in 1983. His work is in many important collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Art Gallery of Western Australia. In both 1987 and 1989 Bettinson was awarded the Wynne Prize. His work toured in the Inaugural 1987 MoĂŤt and Chandon Exhibition. In 2001 he held a regional gallery exhibition in France curated by Marcell Bonnaud, Exhibitions Director at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in 2003 he won the Inaugural Country Energy Art Prize for Landscape Painting.
26. Flame I 1995 acrylic on paper 13.8 x 19cm Provenance: Ian Bettinson, Landscape Garden, Watters Gallery, 7-25 May, 1996
$ 900
Klaus Friedeberger
27. Untitled 1990 $ 1,500 ink and collage on paper 37.5 x 37.5cm Provenance: Painted especially for Margaret, inscribed on the front For Margaret, with love from Klaus and Julie, London, May, 1990. “Living with Art”, Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Abbotsleigh Girls’ School, Sydney, 22/3/14-3/5/14
Ian Bettinson
28. Lion Island XII 2002-03 acrylic on paper 18 x 25cm
$ 900
29. The King II 1984 oil stick on paper 24.5 x 34cm
$ 900
Provenance: Ian Bettinson, Sculpture and Paintings, Watters Gallery, 26 Feb-15 March, 1986 Inscribed: Dear Margaret, my best wishes, love Ian.
30. The Kings I 1983 $ 900 oil stick on paper 22 x 29.5cm Provenance: Ian Bettinson, Sculpture and Paintings, Watters Gallery, 26 Feb-15 March, 1986 Inscribed: For Margaret, with very best wishes, love Ian.
Roger Crawford (b.1949, Melbourne)
31. City Space No.2 2002 acrylic on hardboard 29 x 21cm
$ 600
On leaving the National Art School in 1973 Roger Crawford banded together with Tess Horwitz, Paul Saint and Narelle Jubelin to launch First Draft. In those days one never missed the exciting exhibitions at First Draft, the best example of an artist-run space in Sydney. Crawford investigates ideas in depth and over considerable time. These ideas lead him into unusual materials and intriguing formats that are always visually captivating. Crawford teaches at the National Art School where, because of his sympathetic insights, he is very popular with students. Roger Crawford is represented by Watters Gallery, where he has shown since 1986. Provenance: (un)furling, 16 Sept-11 Oct,2003, Watters Gallery, cat.no.24 Unique Number: 03/17/024 This work is an exploration of abstraction within the city space. Relentless construction and demolition results in shapes – buildings - emerging and receding; the static is placed in an ongoing dialogue with motion. This work is not based on any particular city but rather on the sensation of change within a CBD. Crawford is concerned here with unexpected relationships of form and space set within abstraction though gleaned from the world proper.
Jasper Legge
(b.1968, Sydney; d. 2010, Perugia, Italy)
32. Icicle 1999 oil on canvas 26 x 31cm
$ 600
Jasper Legge did not go to art school, rather he came to painting through his own compulsive natural ability, under the occasional mentorship of close friends, in particular the painters Derek O’Connor and Ian Bettinson. Legge started exhibiting his abstract paintings at Watters Gallery in the mid 1990s while he was director of Legge Gallery. As Joe Frost noted: “ ... his earliest paintings showed, in a very pure way, the struggle to turn paint into image. Their laboured surfaces and compressed pictorial space revealed real intensity and also a certain frustration, a sense of being hemmed in. Over time, though, his work evolved; without losing its unschooled strangeness, it grew clearer in its representation of an elevated imagined space.” Provenance: Blue Sky, 4-29 April, 2000, Watters Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.20.
Lydia Burak (nee Tippakilippa) (b.1937, Bathurst Island, NT)
33. Body Design acrylic on canvas 30 x 39.5cm
$ 200
Since her youth, Lydia Burak has made traditional baskets, painstakingly woven from the dried fronds of the pandanus. She has a rare specialist knowledge of the naturally occurring dyes used for colouring. In the late 1980s, Burak took up carving ironwood, making tungas (bark baskets, for which she has won prizes) and bark painting. Exhibitions: (1994) Tiwi Art: Tradition & Change, Tandanya, Adelaide; (1996) Munupi Tiwi Exhibition, Hong Kong; (1998) Walonia Exhibition, Florence, Brussels, The Netherlands, Copenhagen; (2000) Islands in the Sun, National Gallery of Australia; Muwiyati Mantawi – Sharing With My Friends, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra; Tayikuwapi – All Together, Mossenson Galleries, Perth; (2004) Yirringirripwaja, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; (2005) Woven Forms: Contemporary Basket Making in Australia, Object Gallery, Sydney; Recent Tiwi Paintings and Sculpture, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; (2010) Munupi Arts, Hogarth Galleries, Sydney; (2011) New Work from the Tiwi Islands, Art Equity, Sydney, NSW. Burak’s work is in the collections of the Museum & Art Gallery of the NT and the Museum of Victoria. “This design is painted on our bodies for ceremony” Lydia Burak Provenance: Purchased from Munupi Arts & Crafts Association, Melville Island in 2006. The art centre was established in 1989 to support local Tiwi artists. cat.no.299-06. Certificate available.
Putli Ganju (b.1974, Ganju tribe, Jharkand, east India)
34. Kissing Snakes, 1994 mud, ochre, glue on paper 71 x 56cm
$ 900
Putli Ganju was born in the remote jungle village of Saheda, east India. She was taught by her mother, and paints in the local Ganju style. Since 1995 she has been a member of the Tribal Women Artists’ Co-operative in Hazaribagh. Ganju paints wild elephants, tigers, deer, peacocks, pairs of snakes and hunting scenes. Her Sohrai mural “Hunting
Scene”(6’x 12’) is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and ‘Animals”(same dimensions) in the collection of the Australian Museum, Sydney. Ganju was one of four tribal women who, in March 2000, painted 14 murals in a month-long residency at the Australian Museum, Sydney. In September 2003 her work was exhibited at the Heinrich Boll Foundation, Berlin, and at the Volkerkunde Museum, Heidelberg. She exhibited at Hogarth Gallery, Sydney (1995-98); Casula Powerhouse, Sydney (1996-97); Bathurst Regional Gallery (1998); Nexus Gallery, Adelaide (1998); Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London (2000, 2002); Bellevue Gallery, Berlin (2001); Therese Dion Gallery, Montreal (2001); Kassel Art Gallery, Germany (2002), as well as in Stuttgart, Sweden and across India. Provenance: Back to the Walls, Djamu Gallery, Customs House, Circular Quay, 2000. The exhibition was in protest against mining in the upper Damodar Valley, eastern India, and its effects on the lives of local women. Djamu Gallery, an initiative of the Australian Museum, Sydney, hosted a series of exhibitions on indigenous culture until it closed in 2000.
Timothy Akis
(b. c.1944,Tsembaga village, Simbai Valley, PNG; d.1984)
35. Untitled 21.3.75 lithographic print 29/80 74.5 x 55.5cm
$ 300
Timothy Akis’s work consists mostly of pen and ink drawings, and batiks inspired by PNG’s wildlife. Whilst working as an interpreter on a plantation in Simbai Valley in the 1960s he made sketches as a means of communicating complex ideas to visiting anthropologists trying to identify plants and animals. Brought to Port Moresby, Akis was encouraged to work in the studio of Australian artist Georgina Beier. In six weeks Akis produced a large number of drawings, 40 of which were exhibited in the University Library in 1969. He was only the second PNG artist to show there. Later, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Akis divided his time between subsistence farming in Tsembaga Village in Madang Province and Beier’s studio, where he continued making drawings and screenprints. He regularly exhibited work in the National Art School, Port Moresby, and held a number of overseas exhibitions, including in USA, UK, Switzerland, Australia and the Philippines; posthumously in France (Musée des Confluences, Lyon, 2000), Germany and again in Australia. The Australian Museum, Sydney, identified Akis as the first contemporary Papua New Guinean artist, observing that his drawings emerged outside of any artistic tradition, either indigenous or western. “They are utterly original, fresh, delicate and personal.” Examples of Akis's artwork were reproduced in the inaugural issue of Ulli Beier' Kovave: A Journal of New Guinea Literature. The Star Bulletin (PNG) described Akis as having had "a major influence on the nation's art as [he] demonstrated how indigenous culture could be reflected in contemporary art forms." A copy of this print is in the collection of the AGNSW, who held a display of Akis’s work in 2014.
John Peart
(b.1945, Brisbane; d. 2013, Wedderburn, NSW)
In all serious art originality presupposes origins, presupposes sources and influences. In Peart’s case these are wide reaching and encompass not only the visual arts but also other art forms - and not only Western culture but also Eastern art and philosophy. Over arching and all pervasive is Australia itself, its light and landscape. For those under the spell of his work its fascination is endlessly unfathomable. Peart has had over 50 solo exhibitions, including a retrospective of his work that toured NSW in 2004. His work is in most major Australian public collections.
36. Dawn – Dusk XXVIII c.1986 monotype on paper made by the artist 48.5 x 69cm
$ 2,600
Provenance: John Peart, an Exhibition of Monotypes, 9-26 July 1986, Watters Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.14, Unique Number: 86/16/014 A monotype is created by an artist painting onto a hard, smooth surface and transposing the image onto paper under the slow, constant pressure of the etching press. Essentially it is a process whereby a painting is pressed onto paper. The earliest monotypes date from the 1640s when Giovanni Benedetto printed compositions he had drawn into ink spread on incised metal plates. Since then artists have periodically rediscovered the technique – Rembrandt, Degas, Matisse and Picasso used monotypes. John Peart made this monotype at Whaling Street Studios, North Sydney.
Roy Jackson
(b. 1944, London; arrived Australia 1959; d.2013, Sydney)
37. Nightmusic II 1987 acrylic & pastel on paper mounted on canvas 62 x 81cm
$ 8,900
Roy Jackson studied at the National Art School, Sydney, and in London at the Sutton Art School and Wimbledon College of Art 1961-65, from which he received a National Diploma in Design. He exhibited at Watters Gallery from 1984-1996, prior to that at Mori Gallery and in later years at Martin Browne Contemporary and Defiance Gallery, Sydney. Jackson’s work is in many collections, notably that of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Hamilton, New Zealand. In 2013, Terence Maloon and Sioux Garside curated Roy Jackson 1963-2013 at the Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra, in the catalogue of which Jackson is referred to as “ ... one of the most distinctive abstract painters in Australia. Roy Jackson’s early days coincided with the impact of American abstract expressionism in Australia but unusually for an artist of his generation, he was more affected by Europeans such as Dubuffet, Klee and the Cobra painters, and by the Australians Ian Fairweather and Tony Tuckson.” “From the very beginning, his art has been characterised by a feeling of openness that retains the pulse of its making. In an era when ecological awareness has become paramount, his most sensitive and poetic response to the observed environment – which unfolds through a marvellously variegated and fluid graphic language (abstracted “writing”, textures, patterns, rhythms and the shifting depths and intervals between marks) – has come to seem crucially relevant, not to say authoritative because of its elemental beauty. For him, a drawing or painting is a vibrating field of energy and the pursuit of wholeness is a constant preoccupation.” T. Maloon, 2013. Provenance: Watters Gallery.Roy Jackson 1963-2013, 27 Sept-3 Nov, 2013, ANU Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra
John Davis
(b.1936, Ballarat; d.1999, Melbourne) John Davis was an important Australian sculptor and pioneer of environmental art who exhibited regularly in Australia and overseas, particularly in Japan and the US. His first solo exhibition was held at Strines Gallery, Melbourne in 1969, and his first show at Watters Gallery was two years later in 1971.
An exponent of Arte Povera, Davis famously developed a new mode of site-specific art at the Mildura Sculpture Triennial in the early 1970s. His most influential work, Tree Piece, was made by encasing the trunks of several growing trees on the banks of the Murray River with papier maché, mud, latex, coiled string, plastic cling wrap and twigs bound together. This impermanent work was allowed to weather and rot away. It was a breakthrough which lead many sculptors to reconsider the fate of outdoor works and whether the fabrication of art might in some way adversely impact on the environment. Davis represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, Indian Triennale, 1978, and Osaka Triennale, 1992. Important solo exhibitions include a survey show at the National Gallery of Victoria, 1978; Heide Park and Art Gallery in 1988; Cheney Cowles Museum, Washington, USA, 1994, and a survey show at The Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, 2010. His work is represented in the Australian National and State Galleries and most Regional Galleries. In 1988 Sculpture of John Davis by Ken Scarlett was published by Hyland House. 38. Nomad No.13 1993 $ 1,500 eucalyptus twigs, paper, Bondcrete and bituminous paint approx 17 x 43cm Provenance: John Davis: Evolution of a Fish, Watters Gallery, 15 June-3 July 1993 Living with Art, Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Abbotsleigh Girls’ School, Sydney, 22/3/14-3/5/14 Davis used fish in his work as a symbol of human movement, and relationships with others and the environment. As a consequence many take the title ‘Nomad’ or ‘Traveller’.
Guy Warren OAM
(b. 1921, Goulburn, NSW)
Guy Warren has been influential in the Australian arts community for over 60 years as a teacher, designer, administrator and painter. Along with Klaus Friedeberger and Tony Tuckson, Guy Warren is another of the talented artists who studied at East Sydney Technical College under the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Training Scheme after WWII. He went on to study in London at the Chelsea School of Art in the 1950s. From 1994-2006 Warren was Director of the University of Wollongong Art Collection and received an Honorary Doctorate in 1998. He was also a formative influence at the University of Sydney’s Tin Sheds. Guy Warren’s work is in the Parliament House Collection, Canberra; National Gallery of Australia; Contemporary Art Society Collection, London, UK; The Deal Collection, Dallas, USA; The Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; Art Gallery of New South Wales; National Gallery of Victoria; Queensland Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Art Gallery of South Australia; Art Gallery of Tasmania and many others. Warren has had over 50 solo exhibitions, and participated in nearly 60 group shows in Australia, Brazil, USA, Taiwan, Poland, and New Zealand. Warren is represented by Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney
39. Untitled 1987 gouache & crayon on watercolour paper 76 x 56.5cm
$ 2,200
In the late 80s Warren and Bert Flugelman bought a place at Jamberoo, south of Sydney. The winged figure is both Icarus and a hang-glider - a flying man (Flugelman translates from the German into ‘wingman’). It is a work about taking risks. The female figure is a fern-type woman/goddess, again from Jamberoo and the surrounding rainforest, but here relating to Warren’s interest in the author James Lovelock’s Gaia theories, popular when Warren was in the UK. We are grateful to freelance curator Glenn Barkley for his insights into Guy Warren’s work.
Vivienne Ferguson
(b.1962, Sydney)
40. Untitled 1990 collage of mixed media on watercolour paper 29 x 21cm
$ 600
Vivienne Ferguson began exhibiting regularly in 1989. Her abstract paintings, which sometimes consist of extremely minimal gestures on a white background, have an expressive strength that is in no way denied by the gentle brush marks that clothe them. Indeed, her control of the medium is such that her precisely controlled gestural marks feel spontaneous, full of light and freedom. Provenance: Common Sense, Oct 3-Nov 17, 1990, King Street Gallery on Burton, cat.no.27 This collage, one of about 10 Ferguson produced in 1990, is made from found objects. Rather than having started with particular landscapes in mind Ferguson worked intuitively on these collages, the materials themselves (tissue paper, string) determining the form that each image took. Ferguson is represented by Watters Gallery, Sydney.
Ken Searle
41. Cemetery (St Stephens) 1978 oil and pencil on canvas 25 x 18cm
$ 600
Thomas Gleghorn OAM
42. Untitled 1960 gouache on paper
(b.1925, UK; arrived Australia 1929)
$ 5,000 75 x 100cm
An engineer by training, Gleghorn started painting at the age of 24 under the guidance of William Dobell, and though he was without any formal training he went on to win around 30 major awards from 1957-1973. Gleghorn held about 20 solo exhibitions in Sydney (Macquarie Galleries), Adelaide (Tynte) and Newcastle (Von Bertouch). He is considered one of Australia’s leading artists. As well as being director of the Blaxland Galleries, Sydney, from 1958-60 Gleghorn became well known as a teacher in Sydney and Adelaide and was head of the Art School in Canberra from 1968-69. References to his work are included in most major texts on Australian art. Thomas Gleghorn is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, most State and many Regional Galleries.
John Peart
43. Pink Painting for Margaret 1986 oil & acrylic on masonite 30.5 x 41cm (a gift for Margaret)
$ 2,500
Provenance: John Peart, Recent Work, 29 April-16 May 1981, Watters Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.27 Unique Number: 81/09/027
44. Collage III 1980 collage on watercolour on paper 22 x 11cm
$ 800
Mirabel Fitzgerald
(b.1945, London; arrived Australia 1951)
Mirabel Fitzgerald works primarily with printmedia and works-on-paper. She was educated at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London, 1965, and MFA (research) COFA, UNSW, 1997.
Fitzgerald has exhibited regularly since 1965 in solo and group exhibitions in the UK, Australia, Europe, Thailand and China. Recent solo exhibition: (2012) Looking North, Depot Gallery, Danks Street. Group exhibitions: (2012) Love 6th International Artists Book Triennial, Vilnius, Lithuania; (2007) Works on Paper Award, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery; (2006) Sydney Prints: 45 Years of the Sydney Printmakers, SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney. Fitzgerald lectured at Sydney College of the Arts from 1979 until her retirement in 2006. Her work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Northern Territory Gallery, Tasmanian State Gallery as well as regional and university collections. 45. Map without a key 1990 Conté crayon & pastel on Arches paper 75 x 110cm
$ 750
Provenance: Clearing a Space, Marking out a Territory: Mirabel Fitzgerald, Drawings & Prints, 3-28 July 1990, King Street Gallery on Burton, Sydney
Chico Monks
(b. 1978, Terania Creek, NSW)
Chico Monks graduated from Southern Cross University in 2001. “Art has been the vehicle through which I learn to understand and accept my identity. I use imagery with indigenous reference and I have taught Aboriginal art education for 5 years as part of my journey in learning to understand and accept my Aboriginal heritage. I also think of my linear painting as maps/journeys documenting discovery in general but also specifically referencing my recent travels to Europe and the U.K. where I was able to rediscover my Scottish heritage. These linear inscriptions of space/time and landscapes of both bush and city are the basis of my current work´ Chico Monks, 2008 Solo exhibitions: Robin Gibson Gallery, 2006-08; 2004 C venues, Edinburgh, Scotland. Group exhibitions: 2008, Identity, Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW; 2007, Christmas Show, Solander Gallery, Canberra; Retrospect Galleries, Byron Bay, NSW; 2005 Invite Only, East Coast Sculpture Prize; 2001, East Coast Sculpture Prize, Ballina, NSW; 2001 Lismore City Art Prize, NSW; Reconciliation Art Award, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW; Southern Cross Art Award, Ballina, NSW.
46. Dry Desert Landscape 2005 wood, steel & paint 46.5 x 24 x 15cm Provenance: given to Margaret in 2005
$ 1,100
Richard McMillan (b.1944, New York; arrived Australia 1977; d.2006, Sydney)
Richard McMillan majored in English at Syracuse University, NY, but was drafted into the Vietnam war before he could complete his degree. He finished his studies in 1969 and worked at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, then the Fine Arts Museum in Boston. That year he moved to Toronto with Jon Plapp (see below), where McMillan worked at the David Mirvish Gallery. In 1983 Richard McMillan became editor of Australia’s Art Network magazine. McMillan and Plapp met Margaret Tuckson at Watters Gallery in 1977. Richard and Margaret became close friends, working on the catalogue of Tony Tuckson’s artworks together for many years. McMillan received a Master of Fine Art from the University of NSW in 1997 for his thesis on Tuckson’s drawings. 47. Untitled spray paint, pencil, newsprint collage on paper
$ 500 81 x 53cm
Peter Maloney
48. From the floor of 7 South 1989 oil stick, pastel & graphite on paper 73 x 55.5cm
$ 900
Provenance: Legge Gallery: A Preview, 7-24 Feb 1990, Watters Gallery, Sydney This drawing and painting come from a very interesting period in which Maloney was making marks with an almost electrically inspired vigour. Rapidly laid down lines were made in quick response to one another. The sense of urgency they impart is quite mesmerising and although they could appear to be related to energy found in the natural world, such as lightening, they were actually very much products of a life lived within a city, replete with all the ecstasies, disappointments and heartaches that that environment can bring.
Klaus Friedeberger
49. Dark Inside 1987 oil on canvas 71 x 71cm
$ 3,000
Provenance: Gallery 202, London, 1990 (later called the Eva Jekel Gallery)
Colin Lanceley AO (b.1938, NZ; arrived in Australia 1940)
50. A glimpse of the navel 1963 watercolour and collage on paper
$ 5,000 54.5 x 37cm
Colin Lanceley came to prominence as an Annandale Imitation Realist with two other painters, Mike Brown and Ross Crothall, in 1961. He subsequently travelled to Europe, becoming associated with the Marlborough Galleries, establishing a London reputation. Twenty years later he returned to live in Australia. Since 1962 he has held exhibitions in UK, Australia, NY and Europe, including a solo print exhibition at the Tate, London, 1976; a large survey exhibition at the AGNSW in 1987, and again in 2001. Monographs on his work were written in 1973 and 1987, and in 1998 a film on his work, directed by Andrew Saw, was made for the ABC. Lanceley was included in the 1983 Perspecta, and the Sydney Biennale of 1986. He was on the board of the National Gallery of Australia from 1995-99. Lanceley’s artwork is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, most State, many Regional Galleries, and in overseas collections including the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; MOMA, NY; Los Angeles County Museum and the Guggenheim Museum, NY. Provenance: Hungry Horse Gallery, Sydney, October 1963, cat.no.21; “Living with Art”, Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Abbotsleigh Girls’ School, Sydney, 22/3/14-3/5/14 This is an example of the anti-formalist work which gave the Annandale Imitation Realists their notoriety.
Tony Oliver
51. Untitled 1995 acrylic on wood veneer
$ 750 43 x 16cm
Tony Oliver has been involved in the art world since the early 1980s. In 1982 he met the artist Andy Warhol in New York and invited Warhol to show his work at his gallery, Reconnaissance, in Melbourne. In 1994 he curated Reversals: Philip Guston/Tony Tuckson at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney. Oliver went on to become involved with Indigenous art, in particular with the career of painters Paddy Bedford and Freddie Timms. He was the founding director of Jirrawun Aboriginal Art Corporation in the Kimberley. Tony Oliver became a friend of Margaret through his friendship with Watters Gallery and his deep admiration for Tony Tuckson’s artwork. Tony Oliver has lived with his family in Vietnam since 2007.
Chico Monks
52. Complex Environment 2002 acrylic on hardboard 80 x 60cm Provenance: Monks’ first exhibition, Curious Cafe, Bondi Junction, October 2002
$ 700
Sumana Viravong
(b.1974, Laos; arrived Australia 1978)
53. Untitled I 1996 $ 200 acrylic, charcoal & enamel on paper 20 x 14cm Sumana Viravong left Laos with her family, reaching the Nong Khai refugee camp, Thailand, in 1975. After having arrived in Australia they settled near Campbelltown in 1986. Viravong completed a B.A. majoring in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Western Sydney in 2000. She returned to Laos for the first time during her undergraduate study and was inspired to learn more about Lao language and literature. She obtained a Diploma in Education and began teaching in 2001. Sumana Viravong was a partner of the late artist John Peart, both were friends of Margaret Tuckson. Provenance: The Easter Show, Hidden Valley Gallery, Bodalla, NSW, 30 March-21 April 1996, opened by Margaret Tuckson.
Theresa Byrnes
(b.1969, Sydney)
54. Little Manganese No.165 c.1998 acrylic on canvas 40.7 x 30.3cm
$ 600
Theresa Byrnes began exhibiting in 1986. She has been included in many group exhibitions and has held over 25 solo shows, including: (2001) Cristianne Nienbar Contemporary Art, NYC; (2006) Saatchi & Saatchi, New York and (2008) Sydney, (2008); (2014) Janet Clayton Gallery, Sydney. As a young adult Byrnes was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia, a rare neuro-degenerative disease. Despite being wheelchair-bound for twenty years, Byrnes has not let her condition diminish her output. Her drive to create has led her to her current home in New York where she regularly produces performance art to some acclaim. In 1996 Byrnes was awarded Young Australian of the Year. Provenance: Theresa Byrnes Studio and Gallery, cat.165, 1-8th April, 1998
Nancy Puruntatameri
(b.1971, Tiwi Islands)
Nancy Puruntatameri lives at Pularumpi (Garden Point). Her work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
55. Warnta etching, printed in brown ink 24/30
Elizabeth Leszczynski
$ 350 9.5 x 9.5cm
(b.1950, Canada)
56. Untitled 1985? monotype from a lino block 13.5 x 15cm
$ 250
Elizabeth Leszczynski was educated in Ontario, USA where, in 1971, she held her first exhibition. In the mid 1980s she exhibited in Australia at Realities Gallery, Melbourne. In 1985 she held a show at her studio in Alexandria, Sydney, from where this work was purchased Elizabeth Leszczynski’s work is in the collection of Art Bank, Canada. Provenance: An Australian Series: works on paper, paintings and drawings, Alexandria, 29 Nov-8 Dec 1985
Kay Lindjuwanga
(b.1957, Arnhem Land, NT)
Kay Lindjuwanga comes from a significant family of artists. Her father, Peter Marralwanga, was an influential pioneer of bark paintings, and two brothers are also renowned painters. An widely acknowledged artist since the early 2000s in her own right, for years Lindjuwanga co-signed works with her husband, John Mawurndjul. She paints barks, lorrkon (hollow logs), mimih carvings and produces etchings such as this. Mardayin, translated as ‘history law’ or ‘sacred law’, centres around the songs, dances, paintings and sacred objects which relate to the actions of wangarr (ancestral) beings in creating the land and the order of the world. Dilebang is regarded as one of the most dangerous and sacred sites in Arnhem Land.
57. Mardayin at Dilebang etching 18/20 25 x 19.5cm
$ 600
Kay Lindjuwanga is the winner of the 2004 Telstra Bark Painting Award. Her work was included in the Crossing Country exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2004. She is represented in the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia. She is represented by Annandale Galleries, Sydney.
John Mawurndjul
(b.1952, Arnhem Land, NT)
John Mawurndjul is highly regarded internationally. He uses traditional motifs in innovative ways to express spiritual and cultural values. Mawurndjul grew up with only occasional contact with non-indigenous people. He currently lives a traditional lifestyle at an outstation near Maningrida. He was tutored in rarrk, a traditional painting technique using fine cross-hatching and infill. During the 1980s he began producing larger and more complex works, and in 1988 won a Rothman’s Foundation Award. Since then he has been included in major exhibitions in Australia and overseas. In 2000, Mawurndjul was one of eight individual and collaborative groups of Indigenous Australian artists shown in the Nicholas Hall at the Hermitage Museum, Russia. His work was the subject of a major retrospective in Basel, Switzerland and in Hanover's Sprengel Museum (2006). In 2007 John Mawurndjul, was shown at the Cornice Art Fair, Venice, Italy. In 2003 he became the first Aboriginal artist to win the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Prize at the National Gallery of Victoria. He is in most major Australian collections and many major international ones, including John Kluge collection Virginia USA; Kaplan/Levi collection Seattle, USA. He was one of eight artists to represent Australian Indigenous art at the Musée de Quai Branly, Paris, in 2006. He is represented by Annandale Galleries, Sydney
58. Mardayin Design etching 14/20 25 x 24.5cm
$ 600
Visually, in Mawurndjul's recent works, fine cross-hatching dominates the surface of the work; it encrypts various secret meanings. The direction of the cross-hatching changes constantly and unpredictably. Mawurndjul’s recent work has centred on more abstract Mardayin themes, a ceremony he was initiated into early in life with connections to important places in his clan lands.
Michael Herron
(b.1966, Sydney)
59. Towards Campbelltown 4.7.01 graphite on paper 30 x 30cm
$ 450
Michael Herron has been painting and drawing for 30 years, and an art teacher since 1994. He studied at Meadowbank TAFE, then City Art Institute 1986-88. Herron exhibited with Tim Olsen Gallery 2005-10. He was in the 2010 Kedumba Drawing Award, the 2012, 13, 14 Parliament House Plein Air Painting Prize and Utzon’s Opera House at the SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney, in 2013. Herron met Margaret Tuckson in 1993 when he and his wife camped on Janet Mansfield’s property at Gulgong for a week-long ceramics event. They fired kilns together over the ensuing years. Provenance: Obscure Origins, Ewart Gallery, 19 October – 3 November 2001, cat.14 Towards Campbelltown was drawn en plein air in bushland behind Woodford in the Blue Mountains, looking down toward Campbelltown. It is a scene the artist looks at every day.
Chris Langlois (b.1969, Sydney)
60. Afternoon Shadow 1991 oil on canvas 40 x 50cm
$ 1,500
Langlois graduated from the University of Newcastle in 1990. He showed at Legge Gallery, Sydney from 1992-2000. He is currently represented by Olsen Irwin. In 2012 he exhibited at Amelia Johnson Contemporary, Hong Kong. The exhibition Everything and Nothing – Chris Langlois’ Landscape Paintings, was held at the Newcastle Regional Gallery in 2002; and in 2013 Chris Langlois: Points in Time at the Manly Art Gallery and Museum, and then the Gippsland Art Gallery. Langlois’ work is in the Bendigo Art Gallery, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Maitland Art Gallery, Artbank and AMP among others. Provenance: Purchased from the exhibition Chris Langlois: Paintings, 4-22 February 1992, Legge Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.4 Unique Number: 92/02/004 Long before becoming known as a precise realist artist, Langlois used thick paint in a bold, intuitive way, still observing natural forms but using them more as a starting point for painterly investigation. This landscape is typical of his work in the early 1990s when he showed at Legge Gallery, Sydney.
Elisabeth Cummings
(b.1934, Brisbane)
61. Harbour at Night 2000 oil on board 28.5 x 28.5cm
$ 7,500
Elisabeth Cummings is one of Australia's most respected living artists. From 1953-57 she attended the National Art School, Sydney, going on to teach there from 1969–2001. In 1961 she studied with Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg. Cummings has won, among others, the Fleurieu Art Prize, The Portia Geach Portrait Prize, The Mosman Prize, and The Tattersalls Art Prize, and is represented in many public collections, including National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Gold Coast City Art Gallery and Art Gallery of New South Wales. Luminous: Landscapes of Elisabeth Cummings was shown at the SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney, in 2012. Elisabeth Cummings is represented by King Street Gallery, Sydney This painting is one of a small series of work Cummings has done based on boating around Sydney Harbour with her son and his wife.
Jumaadi
(b.1973, Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia)
62. Morning by the window 2009 $ 1,100 acrylic on canvas board 30.5 x 40.5cm Provenance: Rain rain, come again, 19 Jan-6 Feb, 2010, Legge Gallery, Sydney, cat.no.10 Jumaadi is an artist of astonishing versatility. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, puppets seem to pour out of him. He emigrated from Indonesia in late 1992, settling in Sydney where he began his professional life and personal journey as an artist. Jumaadi has a strong background of community-based, educational projects in Indonesia, and has been offered many residencies. He exhibits widely internationally, predominantly in Asia, though this year his work was included in shows in Latvia, London and USA. In 2013 he participated in the 5th Moscow Biennale. His artworks are influenced by his experiences growing up in rural East Java; their most pervasive subject matter is love.
Ildiko Kovacs (b.1962, Sydney)
63. Untitled 1993 bitumen paint, oil pastel, graphite on paper 22.2 x 29cm
$ 1,500
Ildiko Kovacs completed her studies at the National Art School in 1980. Her work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the World Bank, Washington, USA among others. She has been in many significant exhibitions, including in 2013 Vibrant Matter, TarraWarra Museum of Art; 2012 Roads Cross: Contemporary Directions in Australian Art, Flinders University Art Museum, and Volume 1 MCA Collection, MCA Sydney. Kovacs was included in the Wynne Prize AGNSW 1994-96, 98, 99-02; Sulman Prize 1998,00 and the Archibald Prize, 1998. Ildiko Kovacs is represented by Martin Browne, Contemporary, Sydney Provenance: Purchased from an exhibition at the artist’s studio, 1993
Euan Macleod (b.1956, NZ)
64. Untitled 7/3/91 pastel on paper 27 x 39cm
$ 1,100
Euan Macleod left New Zealand to live in Sydney in 1981, the following year he had his first solo exhibition at Watters Gallery. Since then he has held over 100 solo exhibitions. Compelling insights into Macleod’s work are to be found in the recent, beautifully written book by Gregory O’Brien, “Euan Macleod: The Painter in the Painting”, Piper Press, 2010. Macleod’s work has been included in over 500 group exhibitions here and overseas, including the 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2008 Wynne Prize; the 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001 Sulman Prize and he was winner of the 1998 Archibald at the AGNSW. Macleod’s work is in all State and most Regional Galleries, as well as in overseas collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Provenance: Works on Paper Fair, 17-20 July, 1997, State Library of NSW, Sydney In the early 1990s, when his children were young and the family went on many holiday excursions, Macleod produced a number of crayon drawings. They were done en plein air, often around Sassafras Gully in the Blue Mountains. A number were, like this, of his eldest daughter Bridget, playing in or near water. While some drawings were developed into larger works this medium and size suited Macleod well in a period of life when his children demanded much of his time.
Guy Warren OAM
65. Sun 1 1976 watercolour on paper 55 x 76cm
$ 2,200
This work was made after Warren’s time at the Tin Sheds, when he worked through the ‘end of painting’. As a consequence he began to produce large, stained canvases culminating in him running them through a washing machine. This most interesting period in Warren’s work saw him produce incredibly thoughtful paintings which have a sense of exploration, as if he is attempting to rebuild a visual language. Warren may have been working in his studio at the time in Balmain, informing the work’s visual aesthetic.
WATTERS GALLERY 109 Riley Street, East Sydney NSW 2010 Phone: (02) 9331 2556 Hours: 10am-5pm Tuesday & Saturday; 10am-7pm Wednesday, Thursday & Friday www.wattersgallery.com info@wattersgallery.com