‘A Bit Na Ta’ locates the – source of the sea – Blanche Bay, Rabaul – in the Tolai language of East New Britain. It is also the title of a project commissioned for the upcoming Queensland Art Gallery exhibition ‘No 1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016′. Comprising a music video installation and performance event, the project will feature newly commissioned songs by leading Australian and Papua New Guinean musicians including the celebrated George Telek. These will draw on the rich oral histories of the Tolai people, transposing into contemporary beats, personal stories of the period between 1875-1975.
Project leader, musician and producer David Bridie shares some views from the first week
Its been raining a lot in Rabaul… humidity drips, but people get on with what they have to do, as do we. I am in Rabaul for 6 weeks engaging with a whole range of Tolai musicians and filming and illuminating the stories that local historian Gideon Kakabin has noted as being important. Gideon is writing a book on the extraordinary history of Rabaul, finally told from a local Tolai perspective and is a key participant in the ‘A Bit Na Ta’ project.
The ubiquitous Simpson Harbour volcanoes are ever present.
During the week we have been down to Sulphur Creek via the eroded pumice roads of old Rabaul town with Melki, an ex-army man, who is the last of the Wup (fishing basket) makers. These fishing baskets work in a very simple way – the fish swim into them and get so confused they can’t get out. They look rather beautiful also, we will have one as part of the ‘A Bit Na Ta’ exhibition. In his outside wind haus, (shelter) Melki is in the process of building a new one.
Melki was in the army from the 1950s stationed at Manus, Vanimo and Wewak. He told a great story about when Tolai musician and songwriter George Telek’s father who was the leader of the Rabaul brass band. Telek senior died when George was two.
The next day we were joined by Garret Low, the son of Glen Low from the Barike band who passed away a few years back. Glen toured with Telek and I all over the globe, so it’s great to have Garret along as an audio assistant and an extra camera man. The wantok system at play.
We have set up a makeshift studio at Gideon’s house at Vunaulul. It works best when the neighbours aren’t blasting Bon Jovi or the man from the Haus Lotu is not mowing the grass! We’ve been having some great recording sessions at night when the heat drifts and the noises die down. Gideon suggested recording this Tumbuan Kinavai song called Oaga Na Pipi to open ‘A Bit Na Ta’… Basil from Nunga Nunga and his nephews Basil and Tobing came and sang this singsing tumbuna. We’ve been mucking around with background ambiences from Gideon’s recordings of kinavai ceremony at Matupit last year.
We also drove down to Gaulim in the Baining to meet with Lazarus whose wantoks (family) are the people making 20 pieces of Baining tapa cloth that will work as the textured screen for projections in the installation space in the exhibition in the Queensland Art Gallery. On the way we stopped at Tungnabarau near the old WW2 Japanese airport where the 4 missionaries were killed that sparked off the 6 day war between Talili and the missionary and trader George Brown. This will come into play tomorrow when we head to Mioko in the Duke of York islands to film and record a Tumbuan ceremony and start the writing process with the Gilnata Stringband. Drove back through Kokopo town, Gideon adamant that Rabaul should still be the centre of activity. I agree with him. Kokopo(Kopex) has a beautiful view down to the Duke of Yorks but its basically one very long strip that goes for 5 miles so you cant walk to places and of course it pails into mundaness compared to the ol jewel of the Pacific that was Rabaul with Mango and Casuarina Avenues in full bloom.
Garret and I are with Gideon for 6 weeks,. We have plans to record the Moab Stringband, Gilnata Stringband, The Matupit John Wesley Lotu choir, and George and I are coming up with a ‘A Bit Na Ta’ song and two old singsing tumbuna tracks, Mari nata and A tungu Nana.
We have been searching for a midi – the shell money grand necklace that the luluai, important figures wore back in the day. Lisa Hilli, our other collaborator has made one her self in Melbourne and has done important research into its significance and inherent power. It’s somewhat of a shame there is not one here in Rabaul itself.
Tamang came into the studio last night to record the tutupele (tinduk), a Tolai percussion instrument, kind of like a two note vibraphone but played in a unique fashion. The next week is full of boat trips… Duke Of Yorks, Watom Island and Tol Plantation.
Telek is still in Moresby after the Wantok launch. He gets back on Sunday.
Shall leave you with a photo of a bicycle in the water at Bita Paka, the site of the first action in WW1.
David Bridie, Project leader, musician and producer
‘No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016′ 15 October 2016 – 29 January 2017 The exhibition presents work by artists from Papua New Guinea created from the mid-1960s, through Independence in 1975, until today and focusses on the vibrancy of contemporary artistic expression, a direction that is unique in Australia. A key conceptual thread is the importance of the ongoing relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea with projects profiling ongoing creative relationships between communities and individuals.
‘No.1 Neighbour’ is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and through the Australian Government through the Australian Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
‘A Bit Na Ta’ locates the – source of the sea – Blanche Bay, Rabaul – in the Tolai language of East New Britain. It is also the title of a project commissioned for the upcoming Queensland Art Gallery exhibition ‘No 1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016′. Comprising a music video installation and performance event, the project will feature newly commissioned songs by leading Australian and Papua New Guinean musicians including the celebrated George Telek. These will draw on the rich oral histories of the Tolai people, transposing into contemporary beats, personal stories of the period between 1875-1975.
Project leader, musician and producer David Bridie shares some more views from his stay in Papua New Guinea
Over the past two weeks we’ve been travelling all around the Gazelle Peninsula and surrounds filming, recording, listening and talking (and chewing Buai). We are in a vain search for a kidolona pirpir-the full story of the past 100 years in Rabaul. This is of course an impossible task. But our historian Gideon Kakabin is passionate about the story needing to told from the Tolai perspective and that’s our pursuit.
George Telek has come up from Raluana to the studio here at Vunaulul and been in for four days of recording new songs especially for the project, ‘Boro’ and ‘Lili ram Kavavar’ and ‘a Bit na Ta’. He’s coming back again today. Yesterday Donald Lessy from Barike came and in played guitar on ‘Boro’ and is helping to sort out the musical and logistical arrangements the ‘Abot a Bitapaka’ Tolai choir song. Donald was a great friend of Glen Lows. Donald is quiet and unassuming, has a smoothness to his guitar playing and we’ve been friends for a long time but have never managed to work on a project together so that was a treat for both of us.
Last week we took the banana boat out to Mioko Island in the Duke of Yorks where we recorded the Gilnata Stringband’s new composition ‘Jack Emanuel’ about the murdered Australian District Commissioner. Gideon had explained the story to the legendary Alan Tobing who went away and wrote the song. We shot a film clip for Gilnata by the lagoon that featured a “varvalaruai” (an acted re-enactment of Jack Emanuel’s unfortunate death after a land dispute at Kabaira on the north coast) as well as recording the songs ‘Oscar Tammur’ and ‘Tutupele’. Gilnata have a history of telling oral history in their stringband songs and the Duke of Yorks style is totally different from the Tolai arrangements even though they are only ten miles away from each other. Miko offers unique vistas over to New Ireland and back to the volcanoes and whilst we were there massive storm blew on the north side of the island over the reef.
We ventured down to North Baining, to Ragaga Bay to Glen low’s block, Glen is buried there. We spent a lot of time sitting on his concrete tomb and chewing the fat. Glen accompanied Telek and I on tours for 15 years to the UK, USA, Solomons and Vanuatu and all round Australia. His son Gareth is the cameraman on this trip and is capturing minutiae, people and panorama with a unique eye. Kaul and Wagi from the Moab Stringband came down and in the varvalaruai tradition acted out old customs down in the mangrove swamps there-the working of abut (lime and clay applied to the face, tanget leaf necklaces, trading of tobacco and coconuts and the like). We recorded all sorts of bush and village ambiences helped because the house backs on to a big mangrove area and at night the insects and frogs create an all embracing sound-a symphony that Graeme Revell from SPK would have delighted in (Revell is a great Australian composer made a seminal electronica album sampling insect sounds!.)
Yesterday we recorded two beautiful old women from Wagi’s village, Bung Marum and Revie Kinkin in Bitabaur who sang an ‘Apinpidik’ for the project. Gideon found notes his mother, Lilak IaKaru had hand written in an exercise book from the 1960s when the Nilai Ra varden broke out from being “just” a women meeting group to joining with the warbete and the mataungan association to form the initial provincial government. In writing it reads, “nau meri i laik sanap wantaim ol man” (Its time for women to stand up and be equal to men) as well a disertation on the need for freedom from fear to be in the constitution. Lila passed away, she was a dynamo. Gideon, George and I look forward to working with curator Lisa Hilli working in ol singsing bilong meri na story bilong em (song of women’s stories). Last night we recorded the 95 year old Lasiel ToRavien (see picture below ) playing a range of Tolai garamut drum beats dressed in bilas. In amazing condition for his age, the recording was astonishing as Lasiel played a range of minamai ceremonial Tolai garamut beats that will feature in the soundtrack.
We have been photographing this classic old colonial text, Das Deutche Kolonial Buch, a 1900 book of all the German colonies around the world… frightening really. Gideon’s range of knowledge is a constant inspiration and for me working with George Telek in our 30th year of collaboration is rather special, especially on a project as comprehensive as this. Gideon made the long 5 hour boat trip down to Tol Pantation on the south coast with many descendants of the 2nd 22nd battalion (Lark force) of whom at least 150 were slaughtered having been left to defend Rabaul against the Japanese in 1942.Gideon said it was a very emotional journey with descendants looking for their father or uncles graves.
The volcanoes are always present and we’ve been filming them from a range of different angles. They of course look very different depending on the angle and proximity and their mood transforms Blanche bay. We’ve filmed and recorded sounds from the Namata ceremony at Matupit and will be at the Minamai in Bitabour next week when ten Tumbuans dance the strength of custom, song and dance in these occasions is wonderfully intense and dynamic. We look forward to Anslom and Moab coming into the studio over the next two weeks.
Themes for the a Bit na Ta installation are becoming more apparent, the Tumbuan Society and its inherent artistry of deception (Pidik na Pui), the oceans source, the volcanoes, gardens, the Vunutarai clan systems, the kivung (Tolai village based self-governance) the ‘Apinpidik’, ‘Malira’ and ‘Lili’ styles of song along with Tolai assertiveness in the face of wars, volcanic eruptions and the century long campaign to get their land back and retain it resurfacing constantly (The 6 day war, the Kokopo wars, the Navuneram Incident and the Matungan association etc). Gideon George and I, a whole host of other collaborators are swimming in music, art ,sound recordings, stories, photos and film. So many great songs to work with… there must be an album in this as well as the a Bit na Ta installation at No 1 Neighbour.
David Bridie, Project leader, musician and producer
‘No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016′ 15 October 2016 – 29 January 2017 The exhibition presents work by artists from Papua New Guinea created from the mid-1960s, through Independence in 1975, until today and focuses on the vibrancy of contemporary artistic expression, a direction that is unique in Australia. A key conceptual thread is the importance of the ongoing relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea with projects profiling ongoing creative relationships between communities and individuals.
‘No.1 Neighbour’ is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and through the Australian Government through the Australian Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.R Godfrey Rivers, England/Australia 1858–1925 / Under the jacaranda 1903 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 1903 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
A concentrated presentation of Australian collection highlights is on display during the Queensland Art Gallery’s Collection Storage Upgrade. This stunning salon hang includes everyone’s favourite — Under the jacaranda by R Godfrey Rivers.
The art storage capacity at the Gallery is being increased by 30 per cent with the construction of a new mezzanine level and modernised storage systems. As part of this upgrade, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries are currently closed. This space will be used to accommodate the Collection for the duration of the project, and is scheduled to reopen in September 2017. In the meantime, enjoy our Australian collection highlights in ‘Moving Pictures: Towards a rehang of Australian Art’
Queensland Day Tour Journeys North: Queensland Day reflections on the Collection 2.30pm Monday 6 June | QAG | Free
On Queensland Day, join Michael Hawker, Associate Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA for an introduction into the work on display in ‘Journeys North’ and gain behind the scenes insights into why the Queensland Art Gallery commissioned six photographers to produce a portfolio on the theme of community life in Queensland in the mid-1980s.
History of Queensland Day Queen Victoria was approached to consider establishing a separate Queensland colony based on Moreton Bay, Brisbane. The Queen gave her approval and signed the Letters Patent on 6 June 1859, now known as Queensland Day. She favoured the name Queensland over suggestions to call it Cooksland in honour of Captain James Cook.
On Queensland Day, what better day for Kerry Gillett to share her thoughts on Queensland’s favourite painting Under the jacaranda, and also one of Kerry’s favourite works in the Collection.
Asking me which is my Collection favourite is like asking me which is my favourite child. I have a favourite choice in each of QAGOMA’s four collecting areas. Like many visitors to the Gallery, I always pause to contemplate the beauty of R Godfrey Rivers’s painting Under the jacaranda 1903.
Richard Godfrey Rivers (1858–1925), an English painter educated at the Slade School of Art London, received a prize for landscape painting in 1883 and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London before immigrating to Australia in 1889. From 1890 to 1915, Rivers dominated cultural life in Queensland, as an artist, teacher, and advocate of the state’s first art gallery. Under the jacaranda is a visual record of the artist’s fundamental role in Brisbane’s cultural life during his time in Brisbane and Queensland’s growth as a state post-Federation. Ever since the large oil on canvas entered the Queensland Art Gallery Collection in 1903, it has remained one of the Gallery’s iconic artworks.
Rivers married Selina Jane, née Bell, in St John’s Cathedral in 1901. It is not surprising that Under the jacaranda, his most popular work, features his wife. The painting depicts the couple being served afternoon refreshments in the shade of a flowering jacaranda tree. Contemporary art critics at the time wrote that Rivers’s ‘paintings are strikingly vivid and harmonious’. The artistic composition of this gilt-framed beauty communicates the artist’s skills of landscape painting and portraiture, plus the image of respectability and gentility that Brisbane society aspired to as a newly federated state. The painting not only depicts the popular European tradition of ‘taking tea’ but also showcases his argument that painters who had studied in Europe needed to adapt their colour palette for both the intense sunlight sunlight and distinctive dark lines for shadows to highlight the magnificent violet-blue canopy.
Rivers’s jacaranda is believed to be the first jacaranda grown in Australia. The tree was blown over by a cyclone in 1979, but many jacarandas now growing in Brisbane are from the seeds and cuttings of this first jacaranda.
Some readers will know Under the jacaranda intimately, others less well, and for some it remains a treat to be seen. Next time you are at the Gallery, it is certainly worth visiting.
Kerry Gillett is an art historian and writer, and a Foundation member since 2010.
Moving Pictures: Towards a rehang of Australian Art 28 May 2016 – 6 Aug 2017 | QAG | Free
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.(l-r) Panelists Glenn Manser, Joshua Jones, Justin Nicholas, Danielle Renshaw and Simon Wright share their collecting experiences with Future Collective members and their guests, GOMA, 2016 / Photograph: Mark Sherwood
Recently, QAGOMA Foundation Future Collective members and their guests were treated to exclusive after-hours access to GOMA for a forum on public and private collecting perspectives. The group began the evening with a tour of acquisition highlights with Aaron Seeto, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, before enjoying a spirited conversation between art collectors: Foundation members Glenn Manser and Danielle Renshaw; Future Collective members Justin Nicholas and Joshua Jones; and Simon Wright, Assistant Director, Learning and Public Engagement, QAGOMA
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Aaron Seeto, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, gives the Future Collective a tour / Photograph: Mark Sherwood
The collecting bug bit me early in life and over the years I have traversed many interests in my collecting journey — from traditional hobbies of stamps and coins through to Australian art and decorative arts. It was comforting to know that the panellists shared many of my collecting experiences, including relentlessly chasing that must-have piece, parting with money that you really can’t afford to spend, and thinking responsibly about managing your collection. It was particularly enriching to hear Danielle and Glenn discuss their joy in gifting works to public institutions like QAGOMA.
My advice to new collectors is — don’t be afraid. Many of us visited galleries various times before summoning up the courage to approach the dealer; and often we began modestly, working our way up to bigger acquisitions as we grew more confident.
Here are a few tips that have worked well for me and for others:
1 | Get amongst it! I learned the most about art and antiques by visiting galleries and stores, and by meeting dealers and other collectors. Sure, dealers are interested in selling, but the best have a passion to share their profound knowledge. Also ensure that you do your own research — take a look at other pieces by the artist, read any books or reviews that you can get your hands on. That way, you’ll feel more comfortable with your pieces.
2 | Buy what you love, but take risks! Art is an investment both financially and emotionally. As it will hang on a wall in your home or office, I recommend you select things that interest you. Note I write “interest”, and not “like”. Certainly, buy works that you like, but sometimes the perennially rewarding artworks are those that push us out of our comfort zone.
3 | Have fun! Collecting is a journey and, as such, it is what you make it. It’s been an exciting one for me so far, and has enriched my life immeasurably. Visit galleries, bid at auctions, but most of all, enjoy the lifelong learning that collecting brings!
I look forward to seeing you at our extravaganza at GOMA, the Future Collective Revel 2016, on Saturday 23 July.
Timothy Roberts is a consultant in Australian art heritage, Vice-President of the Professional Historians Association of Queensland, and Councillor of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland. He is a member of the QAGOMA Future Collective and has been a Member of the QAGOMA Foundation since 2010.
Join QAGOMA’s newest and youngest supporters, the Future Collective, for the first gala at GOMA as we lower the lights for an extravaganza of contemporary art, cocktails, live music and culinary delights.
Enjoy exclusive access to our latest exhibitions after hours ‘Cindy Sherman’ ‘A World View: The Tim Fairfax Gift’
All proceeds of Revel 2016 will support the ongoing development of the Gallery through the QAGOMA Foundation.
When I was sixteen I spent countless hours haunting the art block at school. Lunchtimes were consumed turning my myriad of teenage anxieties and torments into artworks, many of which, even after several years, still make me cringe. It was one of these particularly angsty pieces that won me a place as a finalist in the Education Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Art in 2004. Finalists were awarded with a one week, all expenses paid trip to Brisbane to visit universities and galleries. The goal was to emerge us fully in the opportunities available if we chose to pursue visual arts at a tertiary level. As kids, many of us coming from small regional towns (myself from Mackay), we had no idea what was out there in the wider world.
Backstage Pass internship program 2016 Backstage Pass is a professional development opportunity for mid-career operational staff from regional Queensland art galleries
NOW CALLING FOR APPLICANTS To enquire email: regionaltouring@qagoma.qld.gov.au
I was inspired! After completing my secondary studies I decided to move to Brisbane to study photography at the Queensland College of Art. After graduating I worked in the industry for many years, mostly in photographic processing where I felt most at home mixing chemicals in dark rooms and wearing funky white gloves. When film usage began to decline I starting working with school photography and digital retouching companies. I loved working with children but photography wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I decided to take the plunge and go back to university. Two years later, with a Masters of Museum Studies under my belt I started the first day of my new career, and I had moved back up north!
I now work as the Education and Programs Officer for Townsville City Council’s Gallery Services which operates both Pinnacles Gallery and Perc Tucker Regional Gallery. As a part of my role I aid in facilitating visual arts education experiences in both galleries as well as organising extensive outreach programs within Townsville Region’s primary and secondary schools.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Jess Cuddihy giving a tour of George Gittoes: I Witness for students from St Margaret Mary’s College, March 2016
I applied for QAGOMA’s annual BackstagePass Internship program in 2015 and was delighted to find out I was successful. In early April 2016 I eagerly returned to Brisbane to start my two week placement. During my time at QAGOMA I worked with both the Learning and Public Programming Teams. Each day was a new and exciting learning experience and I could not have felt more welcome and accepted by the wonderful and friendly staff. I returned to Townsville filled with enthusiasm and passion and many, many pages of notes and ideas.
Without the opportunities afforded to me by my participation in either of these programs I would not be where I am today. Without the experience offered through the Minister’s Awards I would never have realised the multitude of avenues available in the arts industry. Similarly, my internship with QAGOMA has renewed my resolve and consolidated my love for my chosen career path. I plan on using the skills I have acquired to provide even better arts opportunities for my adopted home. The community in Townsville has been amazingly supportive in accepting me as one of their own and I have been so fortunate to meet so many wonderful people through my work. Today I’m no longer the socially awkward teen seeking refuge in the sanctity of an art room; through my work I am the person helping that teen realise their potential.
Jess Cuddihy is Education and Programs Officer at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery and Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville
Angela Bensted, Your Time Magazine visited the Gallery and joined one of our free Art and Dementia discussion-based tours designed for visitors living with dementia and their carer. Each tour takes approximately one hour and focuses on specially selected artworks.
There’s a tight group huddled around an artwork at the Queensland Art Gallery on a mid-week morning. Ten or so people sit on small camp chairs, listening intently, as a guide tells them about a painting, using it to spark memories and start a conversation.
Those in the front row all live with dementia. Those at the back care for them.
“Do you remember riding a bike?” volunteer guide Sandra asks the group.
“How did you learn?”
Whip-quick a man in front responds “by falling off”.
The gallery giggles.
This light-hearted group is on an art and dementia tour introduced by QAGOMA in 2014.
Debbie Brittain, Education Services Officer with QAGOMA, says “we want the galleries to be a place that’s safe and welcoming for everybody,” adding, there are also tours for vision-impaired and those who are hard-of-hearing.
The free monthly tours are taken by volunteer guides, a small group drawn from the 100-strong team serving the galleries and given special training.
The hour-long gatherings cover four artworks, starting with a short introduction to the piece but soon melting into a conversation directed from the front row.
“The tours don’t focus on learning about the art or the history behind it,” Debbie says. “The artworks are simply a trigger for memories. It gets the neurons firing.”
Debbie says a lot of consideration goes into choosing the right artworks.
“We don’t use works which are too busy, with too many colours, shapes and patterns,” she says.
Subject matter is also important.
“It might be a seascape which can trigger memories of a beach holiday and start a conversation about a shared travel experience,” Debbie says.
On today’s tour, the wag in the front row, Donald, is a first-timer and keeps the group entertained.
He listens intently as volunteer guide Sandra talks about a collection of Chinese-made European porcelain and then asks for a sample to take home.
Sandra gently explains the gallery’s no-free-samples policy, but he’s not deterred.
“So do you have a price? How much would that piece at the end set me back?”
Not all tour participants are as chatty as Donald.
One woman is in a wheelchair and although she watches intently, she says nothing.
But this doesn’t mean she’s absent.
Jan, the second volunteer guiding today’s group, describes another woman who sat mute for an entire tour, until something in the final artwork jolted her to start talking in long, complete sentences.
“You just never know how an artwork might affect people,” Jan says.
Carol has been bringing husband Reg to the monthly tours from the beginning and sees a real difference in his demeanor afterwards.
“He’s lighter when he gets home,” she says. “He can find more words.”
She says she enjoys the tours as much as he does.
“You learn so much more about something when you just sit still in front of it for a long time and talk about it with other people.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Allan Ramsay, Scotland 1713-1784 / Portrait of William Foster 1741 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 1978 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Today’s tour ends with a portrait painted by Scottish artist Allan Ramsay in 1741.
It shows an elegant young man leaning confidently against a dresser with scattered sheet music beside him.
Guide Jan asks the group, “If this artist could paint you, what sort of things would you like him to put in the picture?”
Janice, a retired school teacher, breaks through the confusion clouding her speech to reply, “I want to be painted standing tall and straight. I want to be in control.”
ACCESS To make a booking or learn more contact QAGOMA group bookings telephone 3840 7255 or email groupbookings@qagoma.qld.gov.au
Bookings in advance are required and are subject to availability and tour capacity. Bookings are by request for residential care and community groups.
Camille Serisier is a visual artist, her practice centres around her playful tableau of vibrant photographs, idea drawings, films and interactive installations. Through these ambitious and elaborate works Serisier uses the veil of playful absurdity to enact positive social change through storytelling. We asked Serisier to tell us how Cindy Sherman influenced her practice.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Cindy Sherman / Untitled #568 2016 / Dye sublimation print on aluminium / Courtesy: The artist and Metro Pictures
I first became aware of Cindy Sherman’s work when I was at high school. Alongside amazing artists like Tracy Moffatt, she was one of few females amidst a sea of male makers taught out of art history books. Since that time many important female artists from the past have thankfully been ‘rediscovered’ and ‘rewritten’ into art history, but for me and perhaps my generation, Cindy Sherman was one of few female artists accepted, recorded and promoted during her lifetime.
It was important to me to have works like Sherman’s to grow up with. I recently sat down with Paolo Magnanoli to discuss ways in which Sherman’s practice have influenced my own. Researching for the event I was reminded how much I have admired and referred to Sherman’s work over time. Right from the early film stills series to the present day society portraits her works have been a point of continual reference and reassurance. However, the engagement was not always conscious, sometimes just unavoidable. Her works are part of a powerful narrative within art history. They have become a prominent cultural reference, such that an image would pop up in a magazine or be cited in a text and I would have the opportunity to consider it in an easy, almost natural way. An all too rare circumstance.
There are a number of lessons I have learnt from Sherman. Foremost is that art by women doesn’t just have to be for women. Although there is content that is concerned with the feminine, or feminism, Sherman’s work transcends these issues. Her practice offers a broader access point for discussions about popular culture, in particular film, that frame concerns about gendered representation in society at large. In some ways, particularly in her violent centrefold series, her works seem to target a male audience.
I find this liberating. As a result, I have tried to speak to broader audiences in my work, even when that might seem unlikely given the subject matter. For example, I have been making a series about my experience of pregnancy (Venus of Brisbane, 2015-2016). Through these works I attempt to communicate with women who have been pregnant, as well as anyone who hasn’t, in order to initiate healthy discussions about female reproduction that have sometimes been shamed and silenced. The responses to these works have been intriguing. People of both genders have been repulsed by the premise of pregnancy as a subject for visual art. Many women that have experienced pregnancy voiced pleasure at being able to visualise a shared experience. Others have been outwardly curious about what they perceive as a taboo subject.
That some people found my pregnancy works grotesque is particularly interesting when thinking about the influence of Sherman’s work. Sherman’s work is masterful, but not always ‘pretty’. Her work with prosthetics and clowns, for example, is grotesque and disturbing. I feel this opened up avenues for female artists not only to depict unattractive subject matter, but also to be unattractive subject matter.
When I take photographs on my own, of myself, I am alone with the camera to explore the dimensions and potential of my representational and performative capacity. In my current series of works (Ladies of Oz, 2015-2016), I am making portraits of women from Australian history. I dress up and play out scenes from their lives amidst hand made scenery and props. The series explores ways in which women have contributed to Australian life, as well as the difficulties of representing women and history. I pose for the camera in ridiculous outfits and fake scenery, and generally embarrass myself for the sake of the narrative.
Unlike Sherman ‘grotesque’ is not a word I have often encountered when people describe my work. I have traditionally used a pastel palette and doused my subjects in humour as a way of easing the viewer into sticky territory they may not otherwise be comfortable enough to address (The Wonderful Land of Oz, 2012-2016). When I make interactive gallery installations, I attempt to engage all ages and genders in playful theatrical sets that question gendered narrative assumptions, for example, that a pastel landscape could appeal to any gender entertain a male or that a female could be a ship’s captain (Swan Song #7, 2015). Play and humour have always been elements I have admired about Sherman’s work. Even images that deal with sexual violence against women contain absurdity or black humour that make consideration of the subject somehow more bearable.
In this way artifice and illusion have been important tools for drawing out narrative for the viewer. I could ask for no better role model than Sherman, whose images often dance between believability and blatant deception. Sherman rifts off film, I analyse theatre in its various forms. Both mediums work with the basic premise that the viewer needs to accept the lie and get lost in the narrative. But like Sherman, I don’t want people to submit easily without asking whether the stories, the old black and white ones, the ones that repeat in various guises, wearing different attire, are the stories we agree with and want to perpetuate.
It is important to have people to look up to. Sherman’s work is being shown at GOMA, making it is an excellent time to visit the gallery and re/discover an inspirational icon.
Camille Serisier is a visual artist based in Brisbane, Australia. See her solo show Ladies of Ozat Spiro Grace Art Rooms during September 2016. Camille is represented by Spiro Grace Art Rooms.
Yesterday marked the close of ‘No. 1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016‘. This was a landmark exhibition, the first in Australia to exclusively explore contemporary Papua New Guinean art. The exhibition showcased Papua New Guinea’s vibrant art world for new audiences in Australia who are not often exposed to the rich artistic traditions just across the Torres Strait.
At the end of last year, the Lowy Institute hosted the fourth annual Australia-Papua New Guinea Emerging Leaders Dialogue at the Queensland Art Gallery to coincide with the exhibition. The dialogue is the flagship event of the Aus-PNG Network, an initiative run by the Lowy Institute’s Melanesia Program with the support of DFAT, designed to deepen the people-to-people links between the younger generation of Australians and Papua New Guineans.
The dialogue brought together 20 young Australians and Papua New Guineans from a variety of sectors for a multi-disciplinary conversation on priority issues in each country and across the bilateral relationship. The themes around art and culture were selected to take advantage of hosting the event alongside ‘No. 1 Neighbour’, and a number of the participants were artists, arts professionals and curators. They were joined by young professionals from a range of other fields including the law, development, sport, civil society and business. The diversity of the group made for rich conversation, with each participant bringing their own perspective to the issues. The dialogue focused on four key themes; the role of young people in leadership, alternative routes to economic empowerment, art and advocacy, and contemporary PNG-Australia relations.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Tolai singer and musician George Telek wearing a traditional Middi (shell collar) / Photograph: Courtesy David Bridie
Artists present included Papua New Guinean Jeffry Feeger, well-known for his performance painting, and Elisa Jane Carmichael, an Indigenous Australian artist whose work is inspired by her cultural identity and heritage. We were also joined by one of the artists featured in the exhibition – Lisa Hilli, of mixed Australian and Papua New Guinean heritage – who recreated a traditional necklace-style decorative piece of the Tolai, called the Middi, which is no longer worn. Legendary Papua New Guinean musician George Telek, also of Tolai background, wore the Middi she made for the exhibition at his performance on the opening weekend. Their contributions added weight and real-world insight to discussions around viable careers in the creative industries and how to enhance the people-to-people links between Australia and Papua New Guinea through the arts.
The arts provide a unique avenue for Australians to engage with and learn more about Papua New Guinea. Many of the works featured in ‘No. 1 Neighbour’ shed light on the complex relationship between Papua New Guinea and its former colonial ruler. Ruth McDougall, the Gallery’s Pacific Curator and the driving force behind the exhibition explored this element of the exhibition. Referencing a painting by Papua New Guinean artist Simon Gende of two figures engaged in battle with shield and spear, Leadership Tussle in Australia Rudd V Gillard 27.2.2012 demonstrates the strong knowledge of Australia in Papua New Guinea. Dialogue participants discussed the fact that the understanding of Papua New Guinea in Australia is not nearly as nuanced, lamenting the mainstream media’s often negative and stereotypical portrayal of Papua New Guinea.
Esteemed journalist and long-time PNG commentator Sean Dorney argued the same in his 2016 Lowy Institute Paper The Embarrassed Colonialist, writing that the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea has deteriorated in the 41 years since independence. Although our countries’ colonial pasts still colour the bilateral relationship, dialogue participants emphasised that we cannot shy away from these kind of complex themes. This may lead to uncomfortable conversations, but will enable a stronger and more honest relationship between our two nations. These dynamics demonstrate the importance of fostering and maintaining strong people-to-people links to ensure a mutual understanding, but in particular understanding of Papua New Guinea in Australia, does not deteriorate in the years ahead.
You can find a summary of the discussion and the recommendations from the dialogue in the Outcomes Report. The Lowy Institute would like to thank DFAT for its continued support of the Aus-PNG Network and GE for coming on board as the principal sponsor of the Emerging Leaders Dialogue for a second year.
Jonathan Pryke | Research Fellow and Director of the PNG Network, Melanesia Program Lowy Institute Anna Kirk | Research Associate, Melanesia Program Lowy Institute
When the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) opened in a new building at South Brisbane in 1982, the contrast with the first art gallery established in Queensland could not have been more marked.
The Queensland National Art Gallery was established in 1895, occupying a room on the first floor in the Brisbane Town Hall.1 It was truly a modest space and the gallery’s collection comprised a mere ‘twenty-four pictures, one marble bust, seventy engravings, [and] twenty-seven pieces of Doulton ware’.2
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Gallery opened in 1895 in the now demolished Brisbane Town Hall building in a large upper room placed at the disposal of the Trustees by the Municipal Council / Reproduced courtesy: John Oxley Library, Brisbane
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The opening display in the Queenslander, 13 April 1895 | Lagging well behind Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales, Queensland’s National Art Gallery opened more or less permanently to the public for the first time on Friday afternoon, 29 March 1895. The modesty of this exhibition makes an interesting comparison to the opening of Brisbane’s lavish new Cultural Centre on the city’s South Bank. Hung not in a costly new building complex but given temporary quarters in the upstairs room of the Town Hall, the Collection consisted of a curious mixture of Old Masters and contemporary works and included both copies and originals / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
This room quickly became cramped and in 1905, the Queensland Government offered the Gallery a large room on the third floor in the recently completed Lands and Survey Offices (later Lands Administration building) in George Street. Although it provided more space than the room in the Town Hall, it still had limitations as an art gallery. The room was not easily accessible by the public and soon became cramped as the collection expanded.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.On 18 December 1905, the Gallery reopened in a purpose-designed room the length of the third floor above George Street in the recently completed Executive Building where it remained until 1930. During construction it was known as the New Lands and Survey Offices. The renamed Lands Administration building is a four-storey building occupying a site bounded by George Street, Stephens Lane, William Street and Queens Gardens. The building currently forms part of the Conrad Treasury Casino and houses a five star hotel. The form and scale of the building complement the former Treasury Building and the former State Library located nearby. The building was designed by the Queensland Government’s chief architect Thomas Pye in the Edwardian Baroque style. The building was initially intended as offices for the Queensland Government’s Lands and Survey Departments, when finished and occupied in 1905 as the Executive Building, accommodating both the Lands and Survey Departments and offices of the Premier and Executive Council | Reproduced courtesy: John Oxley Library, Brisbane / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.‘The Queensland National Art Gallery — Entertaining the visiting Premiers and their friends’. The Queensland Art Gallery Collection in the former Queensland Government Executive Building, 1907 / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Queensland Art Gallery Collection in the former Queensland Government Executive Building, 1916 / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
The Gallery moved again in 1930 when the Concert Hall in the Exhibition Building on Gregory Terrace was renovated for use as an art gallery. The Brisbane Courier noted that
the new gallery is symmetrical in form, and adequate provision has been made for modern methods of lighting. There is a great amount of wall space, and, perhaps, for the first time, all the State’s art treasures will simultaneously be open for public inspection.3
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Exhibition Building’s Concert Hall provided the Gallery’s premises from 1930 to 1974. The Old Museum was originally called the Exhibition Building and Concert Hall. It was built in 1891 for the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association after Brisbane’s first exhibition building, which had occupied the land, was destroyed by fire on 13 June 1888. The new exhibition building was designed by the architect George Henry Male Addison (1857–1922). The style of the building may best be described as progressive eclecticism. In 1899, the Exhibition Hall became home to the Queensland Museum, with the museum remaining in the building until the museum’s relocation to the Queensland Cultural Centre in 1986 / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.G H M Addison, Australia 1858-1922 |(Architect’s drawing of Exhibition Building, Gregory Terrace) c.1890 | Pen, ink and gouache on light-brown heavy smooth paper | Gift of Herbert S. Macdonald 1958 / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Exhibition Building when it was occupied by the Queensland Art Gallery from 1930 / Reproduced courtesy: John Oxley Library, Brisbane
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Exhibition Building was occupied by the Queensland Art Gallery until 1974 | Reproduced courtesy: The Courier Mail / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
The Brisbane Courier also claimed, rather optimistically, that the Exhibition Building provided an ‘almost ideal home’ for the Gallery.4 It may have been suitable for a period, but the limitations and inadequacies soon became apparent. Within a decade the government decided to move the Art Gallery to the Supreme Court buildings when new courts were built. World War II intervened and planning was put on hold.
Criticism of the suitability of the Exhibition Building for an art gallery were continually expressed by art critics and connoisseurs.5 In 1947 art critic Clive Turnball complained ‘the glaring light is wholly unsuitable for the display of pictures, and the drab walls induce an atmosphere of despair’. He despaired that ‘obviously nothing can be done with this lamentable place’.6 The Queensland Government was aware of problems and throughout the 1950s and 1960s considered sites for a new gallery. 7 Yet no firm decisions were forthcoming.
The government was finally galvanised into action when art critic and historian Professor Bernard Smith visited the Gallery and told the Courier Mail that ‘one only has to be inside this gallery—even for 24 hours—to see that art in this institution is in a pretty sorry position’.8 These very public disparaging comments prompted an immediate response from the government. Within two days, the acting Premier, Gordon Chalk, announced an investigation into the future of QAG.9 In January 1969, Cabinet approved the establishment of the QAG Site Committee.
A site at South Brisbane was selected but acquisition of the land took more than three years to finalise. A planning brief was prepared by a committee appointed in July 1971, and was chaired by Roman Pavlyshyn, Assistant Under Secretary in the Department of Works.10 The report was comprehensive and included recommendations on space requirements, costs, method of planning and construction and a detailed planning brief. The committee concluded a building of 140 000 sq feet (13 000 m²) for an estimated cost of $4.5 million was required.11
A competition was held to select an architect for the design of the new gallery. The winner of the competition, Robin Gibson and Partners, was announced on 16 April 1973.12
While progress on the design and development of the art gallery continued, in the early 1970s, conditions in space occupied by the art gallery in the Exhibition Building were rapidly deteriorating. In March 1974, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Leon Trout, wrote to the Minister for Education and Cultural Activities about major problems with water leaks during the floods in January 1974, and also fire hazards due to faulty wiring.13
Following a report from the Department of Works, the Government decided to act and close the gallery. Temporary premises were obtained on the fifth and sixth floor of the MIM building, Ann Street. The Art Gallery remained there until the opening of the new gallery in 1982.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Postcard highlighting the Australian School Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery, M.I.M. building / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Gibson began working on the detailed design for the art gallery but the program was delayed when the Queensland Government announced in November 1974 that the project was to be significantly enlarged to a Cultural Centre incorporating as well as the art gallery, a performing arts centre, museum and library. In the expanded scheme, the art gallery was still the first stage to be constructed. Stage 1 was divided into four components.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Construction of the Queensland Art Gallery at South Bank began August 1978, this photo taken 11 June 1979 / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Construction proceeded according to schedule and the Art Gallery took possession of the building in March 1982.
The design and planning of the Art Gallery followed closely the original principles enunciated in the Planning Brief of 1972.
The main entrance is located on the south-eastern corner and is readily identifiable from the main plaza and the Victoria Bridge. From the main foyer, the most prominent and striking aspect of the interior is immediately apparent—the Water Mall. The Water Mall functions as the main orientation element both externally and internally and assists in making the organisation of the gallery comprehensible to the visitor, as well as giving a special Queensland sub-tropical character to the building. The Water Mall also serves as a parallel reflection of the river. The main foyer also provides visual connectivity to the multi-level galleries.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Raoul Mellish (Director 1974-1987) with Queensland Art Gallery architect Robin Gibson. Construction of the Queensland Art Gallery on South Bank, South Brisbane began in 1977 / Photography: Richard Stringer / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Architect Robin Gibson described the design intent for the Art Gallery.
It is a place where the walls and barriers of the gallery are broken down, where there is a constant source of interchanges between the art world and the public—a living gallery—a place of subtle and changing light values where the ultimate experience of the confrontation between the viewer and the art work can be realised.
To create this, walls, have been placed to promote the flow or change the course of the viewer’s itinerary so that, as one traverses the gallery, spaces will reveal the subtle variations of the display.14
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Peter Paul Rubens, Flanders 1577-1640 / Young woman in a fur wrap (after Titian) c.1629-30 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 1980. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
The Art Gallery was opened by the Premier of Queensland, the Honourable Joh Bjelke- Petersen on 21 June 1982. As part of the opening function, the Deputy Premier, the Hon. Llew Edwards unveiled an acquisition Young woman in a fur wrapby Peter Paul Rubens, made possible through a gift by the Foundation. As part of the opening celebrations five international exhibitions were opened at the gallery which attracted more than 50 000 visitors in the first ten days.16
The success of the Art Gallery was not only evident in the public reaction but in the acclaim by art critics. In 1983, the Art Gallery won the Sir Zelman Cowan Award for Public Buildings, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ highest award for public buildings.
The building unquestionably transformed QAG. It contained all the prerequisite facilities for a modern art gallery with proper storage facilities, offices and laboratories. Importantly, the building provided a significantly increased capacity to exhibit more of the permanent Collection and also temporary exhibitions which was the catalyst for major changes in the Gallery and its reputation as a State Gallery. From the outset, the Gallery began actively expanding its permanent Collection and also established a program of a wide range of exhibitions. The new building allowed QAG to enter into loans of highly important and valuable work, which brought pride and international cultural exemplars to Queensland.
This is an extract from the Queensland Cultural Centre Conservation Management Plan (published 2017), prepared by Conrad Gargett in association with Thom Blake, Historian and heritage consultant. Thom Blake researched and wrote the chapters on the history of the Cultural Centre and revised statement of significance. The individual building’s architecture, the site’s setting, landscape and fabric were investigated by Luke Pendergast with principal support by Robert Riddel. Alan Kirkwood and Peter Roy assisted with advice on the design approach and history of the planning and construction of the Cultural Centre.
Endnotes 1 Brisbane Courier, 30 March 1895. 2 Brisbane Courier, 21 August 1896. 3 Brisbane Courier, 30 October 1930. 4 Brisbane Courier, 30 October 1930. 5 Sunday Mail, 27 October, 1946. 6 Quoted in Peter Marquis-Kyle, Old Museum Building conservation management Plan, 2000, p. 27 7 Cabinet Decision No 2145, 12 January 1960, QSA ID 961664. 8 Courier Mail, 14 November 1968. 9 Courier Mail, 16 November 1968. 10 The other committee members were: AE Guymer, Director General of Education; Sir Leon Trout, Chairman of the Board of Trustees; AJ Stratigos, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees, James Weineke, Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, Professor GE Roberts, Professor of Architecture, University of Queensland; Peter Prystupa, Supervising Architect, Department of Works. (New Queensland Art Gallery Steering Committee, ’Queensland Art Gallery Report’, March 1972, QSA Item ID 961664. p. 2) 11 Land acquisition, site works and a car park were estimated at 2.5 million, Ibid, p 6. 12 Courier Mail, 17 April 1977. 13 Courier Mail, 2 April 1974 14 Courier Mail, 21 June 1982. 15 QCCT Annual Report, 1982, p. 9. 16 QAG Annual Report,1981-2, p 7.
Since the Queensland Art Gallery opened in 1982, the Cultural Centre has evolved into the arts and culture centrepiece of the state. The Gallery and the Cultural Centre is architecturally significant and demonstrates the evolution of modern landscape architecture in Queensland. Having recently entered the Queensland Heritage Register, we look at the many proposals to get to where we are today.
Throughout the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the major Queensland cultural institutions were accommodated in a range of facilities throughout Brisbane: the Queensland Museum and the Queensland Art Gallery in the Exhibition Building on Gregory Terrace, the State Library in William Street while performing arts companies utilised a variety of venues including the concert hall in the Exhibition Building, Her Majesty’s Theatre, and the City Hall (from 1928).
The idea to amalgamate two or more of the key cultural institutions in Brisbane was first proposed in 1889 when, the Queensland Department of Works held a competition for the design of a museum, art gallery and library. The competition was won by Charles McLay who proposed an imposing neoclassical building on a site in Wickham Terrace above Central Railway Station. Tenders were called for the project in March 1891 just as the government was facing a financial crisis and construction did not proceed.1
The idea of a cultural centre was again canvassed in 1927 when Raymond Nowland, architect and town planner, addressed the Town Planning Association of Queensland on the development and beautification of North Quay. Nowland proposed an ambitious scheme that involved removing unhappy structures fronting the Brisbane River and replacing them with an enlarged public library and an art gallery.2 Nothing eventuated but in 1934, Nowland re-visited the concept when working as a senior architect in the Department of Works. He was responsible for a scheme involving the redevelopment of Wickham Park fronting Turbot Street. Nowland proposed an ambitious project of three new public buildings: a dental hospital, art gallery and public library. The Courier Mail enthused about this ‘Civic Cultural Centre’, claiming that ‘at last a Queensland Government has been brought to recognise the State’s need of a national public library and a national art gallery worthy to bear those names, and to admit, also, some responsibility for repairing a long neglect of public cultural facilities in Queensland ‘s capital’.3
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Wickham Park aerial view with proposed Dental Hospital, Art Gallery and Public Library, 1938 / QSA Item ID328720
The Dental Hospital was built (completed in 1941) but not the art gallery or library. They would have to wait.
As Brisbane emerged from war-time restrictions on construction and public works projects in the later part of the 1940s, attention turned to major civic improvement schemes including beautifying the city and cultural facilities. In 1948 a scheme was proposed to move the Supreme Court buildings further east along George Street and create a square with an art gallery and new state library.4 In the following years, the Lord Mayor, Alderman Chandler, proposed a scheme of creating a wider tree-lined Albert Street from the City Hall to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens and that ‘the Art Gallery and Conservatorium should be housed near the gardens, as well as an opera house and library’.5 Again, these schemes remained but dreams.
The idea of locating the art gallery near the Botanic Gardens continued to be canvassed in the 1950s. To celebrate Queensland’s centenary in 1959, a proposal was submitted to Cabinet for the construction of a new gallery on a site near Government House at Gardens Point. The government responded enthusiastically and the Premier announced that a world-wide competition would be conducted for the design of the complex. The scheme quickly expanded into not only an art gallery but also a multi-purpose hall with seating for 1500 patrons for use for musical and dramatic presentations.6 This building was to be known as ‘Pioneers’ Hall’. The complex would be funded by a mix of public donations and government assistance. A committee was established comprising prominent identities associated with the arts and chaired by the Premier. Problems, however, soon emerged with the proposal. First, the Brisbane City Council announced in April 1959 that it was considering extending George Street through to the river for a new bridge at Gardens Point. Consequently, the area of land for the proposed Cultural Centre would be curtailed. Secondly, potential art-loving benefactors were concerned that their contributions would be devoted to the ‘Pioneers Hall’ and not a new art gallery. After the euphoria surrounding centenary celebrations had subsided in 1959, the scheme was eventually abandoned.
Another site in the Brisbane CBD soon emerged as the possible location for a Cultural Centre. The Brisbane Municipal Markets had operated from a site fronting Roma Street since 1881 and in 1960, the Market Authority decided to relocate to a new site at Rocklea. A range of uses for such a prime site were soon forthcoming, including a proposal by the Brisbane Women’s Club that it be reserved for a ‘Cultural Centre, together with a self-governing Art Gallery with adequate car parking facilities provided’.7 The State government commissioned the architectural firm, Bligh Jessup Bretnall and Partners, to prepare a master plan of the Roma Street precinct. The plan included a new State Gallery and Centre for Allied Arts located on the market site.8 While the government endorsed the plan and the location of an art gallery on Roma Street, the Brisbane City Council, who by this time had responsibility for the former market reserve, opted for a park.9 The council’s view was that a cultural centre was best suited in the Botanic Gardens as it had aspirations of developing a new botanic gardens at Mount Coot-tha.10 So like all previous proposals for a cultural centre, the Roma Street site had been abandoned by the end of 1968.
Within the Department of Works, however, the concept was still alive. The need for a new art gallery was a priority, but in late 1968, Roman Pavlyshyn, senior architect in the Works Department wrote to David Longland, the Director-General of the Works Department suggesting that the gallery ‘should be part of a complex of buildings dedicated to cultural purposes, including an opera and drama theatre and the Queensland Museum’.11 Longland pursued the idea with his Minister, Max Hodges, who then raised the matter with the Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Hodges urged that a Select Committee be established to examine the need for a cultural centre, investigate the most appropriate site, and recommend methods of financing.12 The Premier then referred the matter to the Treasurer, Gordon Chalk. Although in general agreement with the concept, Chalk maintained that a new art gallery was a ‘matter of urgency’.13 Chalk was concerned that establishing such a committee would potentially delay for several years a new art gallery.
A NEW ART GALLERY
From its beginnings in 1895, the Queensland National Art Gallery had occupied a succession of spaces in various public buildings. From 1930, it had been accommodated in the former Concert Hall in the Exhibition Building on Gregory Terrace. These facilities were less than adequate and the Board of Trustees lobbied the Queensland government over an extended period for a purpose-built gallery. Finally in November 1968, the Board convinced the government to act.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. The Queensland National Art Gallery opened in 1895 in the now demolished Brisbane Town Hall building in a large upper room placed at the disposal of the Trustees by the Municipal Council / Photograph: State Library of Queensland
In November 1968, prominent Australian art critic and historian Professor Bernard Smith visited the Gallery and told the Courier Mail that ‘one only has to be inside this gallery— even for 24 hours—to see that art in this institution is in a pretty sorry position’.14 The Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Sir Leon Trout, agreed. He asserted ‘the gallery is hopeless’ and publicly supported Smith’s claims that art in Queensland was ‘weedy and malnourished, and in a sense, suffering from cultural rickets’.15 These very public disparaging comments prompted an immediate response from the Government. Within two days, the acting Premier, Gordon Chalk, announced an investigation into the future of the Queensland Art Gallery.16 In January 1969, Cabinet approved the establishment of the Queensland Art Gallery Site Committee.17
The committee examined twelve possible sites, and then reduced the number to three for more detailed consideration: Holy Name Cathedral site, Fortitude Valley; Brisbane City Council Transport depot, Coronation Drive; and Riverside Drive, South Brisbane.18 The committee agreed that the site at South Brisbane bounded by Melbourne and Grey Streets and the Brisbane River was the most suitable and in every way it appeared to be the most viable:
It was the Architecturally-preferred site; The Brisbane City Council would be making a valuable contribution; It was the site which would do most for the City of Brisbane; There was potential for use of a similar block on the other side of Melbourne Street for cultural facilities.19
Some of the land was already in public ownership—State and Brisbane City Council—but a substantial number of privately owned allotments had to be acquired for the project. This became a lengthy process and some owners objected to the valuations.
Not until most of the land had been acquired did the government appoint a Steering Committee to provide a comprehensive report on the various requirements of the new Art Gallery, ‘sufficient to form the basis for the preparation of the design and for the development of planning and construction documents for the new building’.20 The committee was appointed in July 1971 and was chaired by Roman Pavlyshyn, Assistant Under Secretary in the Department of Works.21 Pavlyshyn was the principal author of the report and went on to play an influential role not only in the development of the Art Gallery but also the Cultural Centre.22
The report was comprehensive and included recommendations on space requirements, costs, method of planning and construction and a detailed planning brief. The committee concluded a building of 140 000 sq feet (13 000 m²) at an estimated cost of $4.5 million was required.23 The report alluded to the possibility that the site could be used to accommodate other cultural activities. The committee recommended that a two-stage architectural competition be held to select an architect for the design of the new gallery.
The planning brief was concise but thorough. It emphasised ‘that the gallery should be an active and human place to which the visiting public will be attracted to participate in the enjoyment of the facilities provided by the gallery’. The brief, also noted, rather presciently, ’that it is possible that the future activities and requirements of the gallery may call for facilities which cannot be foreseen at present’.24 Significantly, the Planning Brief not only addressed issues such as functional requirements, the site and town planning issues, but also focused on desired design criteria. They included the following principles:
It is desirable that the building itself should be of the highest possible standard of architectural design. This does not mean that it should be either monumental or pretentious in character. It should be a building of its time incorporating the best techniques and materials available within the economic limits of the project.
A public gallery is a symbol of artistic and cultural development. It should have human qualities and attractions of a kind which encourage people to visit the collection, and to take pleasure in being in a place where the artistic achievements of the community are effectively but unostentatiously displayed for their enjoyment.
More informality should be the keynote which should also take advantage of the subtropical climatic conditions which prevail in Brisbane. The site on the Brisbane River selected for the building, suggests that it should be outward looking to take advantage of the views of the tree-clad hills which form the setting for the city of Brisbane. The gallery will be seen to great advantage in views from across the river and from other vantage points in the city.
The fine, Mediterranean-like quality of the Brisbane climate is such that a building, light in colour, but carefully modelled to give interesting effects of light and shade might be most suitable…
The landscaping proposals for the site should be an integral part of the total design. Courts for the display of sculpture and shaded areas for rest and relaxation should be included. The paving, lighting and furnishing of these areas to the relationship of the building and its setting to the river are all matters of particular design importance.25
The design principles also addressed issues of space, volume and scale. The planning brief stressed that the ‘relationship of the exhibition spaces or galleries to each other is of great importance’ and that ‘areas linking the display galleries should be attractively arranged, where possible, with views outside the building to provide contrast and to avoid museum fatigue’. The brief highlighted the importance of access and circulation, stressing that ‘it is of the greatest importance that a major public building of this kind should have an appropriate address’ and that ‘the main public entrance should be clearly identifiable and attractively designed’.26
The planning brief submitted in March 1972 was a key document in the successful design and development of the art gallery, due to its clarity, vision and understanding of the context and requirements for a modern art gallery. It was accepted by Cabinet and approval given to proceed with the project.27
THE COMPETITION
As recommended by the Steering Committee, a two-stage design competition was conducted. The assessors panel consisted of Sir Leon Trout, Chairman of the Queensland Art Gallery Board of Trustees, Roman Pavlyshyn, Assistant Under Secretary, Department of Works, and Stanley Marquis- Kyle, representing the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. The first stage was to invite ten firms on the register for Queensland government work with the Works Department to participate in the competition. These firms were all well respected Brisbane-based architectural firms.28 The first stage closed in November 1972 and the names of the three firms proceeding to the second stage were announced in the following month. They were:
Bligh Jessup Bretnall and Partners; Robin Gibson and Partners; and Lund, Hutton, Newell Paulsen. The second stage closed on 1 March 1973 and the winner of the competition, Robin Gibson and Partners, announced on 16 April 1973.29 The assessors concluded that the ‘winning design exhibits great clarity and simplicity of concept and relates admirably to the environment and site’.30 Gibson later commented to the Steering Committee for the new Art Gallery that in ‘developing the design to final completion it was necessary to keep in mind the original basic design philosophy’ that had been articulated in the Planning Brief.31 Gibson began working on the detailed design for the art gallery but the program was delayed when the question of a cultural centre re-surfaced as a definite project.
RE-EMERGENCE OF A CULTURAL CENTRE SCHEME
While the art gallery project had been the focus of the government’s attention, the plans for a cultural centre were not entirely abandoned. In March 1971, Allan Fletcher, Minister for Education and Cultural Activities submitted a proposal to Cabinet for the acquisition of two blocks at South Brisbane for the State Library and Museum. Fletcher had the support of the Brisbane City Council, but the proposal was rejected.32 By early 1974, the emergence of a range of issues coalesced to bring the need for a cultural centre at South Brisbane to the government’s attention.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. G H M Addison, Australia 1858-1922 / (Architect’s drawing of Exhibition Building, Gregory Terrace) c.1890 / Pen, ink and gouache on light-brown heavy smooth paper / Gift of Herbert S. Macdonald 1958 / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Just as much as a new art gallery was a priority, it had become increasingly clear that a new museum, state library and a state-of-the-art performing arts centre was also needed. In 1973, the Board of Trustees of the Queensland Museum had commissioned a feasibility study on the re-development of the Queensland Museum as the conditions in the Exhibition Building were less than adequate.33 The study investigated a range of sites and recommended a site within Albert Park with a building of 216 000 sq feet (19 565 m²) floor area.34 This study provided a compelling argument for a new museum. Similarly, the State Library, occupying a building erected in 1879 with extensions in 1959, was in urgent need of additional space, not only for the collections but also for users. The Works Department commissioned Robin Gibson and Partners to undertake a feasibility study to demonstrate how the existing building in William Street could be extended.35
Although the state government did not own or operate a major performing arts venue, the sale of Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1973 was cause for grave concern about the future of the performing arts in Brisbane. The building had been the main venue for opera, ballet and dramatic performances since 1888. The new owners intended to demolish the building and re-develop the site.36
In February 1974, Alan Fletcher the Minister for Education and Cultural Activities, submitted to Cabinet a proposal for the acquisition of a site for a performing arts centre. Unlike the previous occasion when he sought Cabinet approval for land for a new library and museum, on this occasion approval in principle was given to investigate the question.37 The suggested site was at South Brisbane to the north-west of the Art Gallery site. Two months later, the Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen announced that ‘Brisbane may get an Arts Centre’. In a media release he said the centre could incorporate the Queensland Art Gallery, the Queensland Museum, a concert hall and facilities for live theatre, ballet and other performing arts. The Premier said he had asked the Coordinator General to undertake a feasibility study into the planning and financing of the centre.38
The member for Chatsworth, WD Hewitt, expressed his concerns in a speech in the Legislative Assembly in September 1974. He commented:
It is obvious that Brisbane needs a cultural centre and that urgent attention must be given to this matter…Recognising that Her Majesty’s Theatre is presently under the threat of the wrecker’s hammer, I submit that some action must be taken to fill the vacuum that its closure would cause.39
Hewitt surprisingly would not wait long for an answer, the Treasurer, Gordon Chalk, had engaged Robin Gibson and Partners to assist in the development of a brief and prepare sketch plans and a physical scale model Cultural Centre at South Brisbane.
Chalk announced his presented scheme to the public on 14 November 1974 as part of the Liberal Party policy launch for the State election in the following month. Chalk said the complex would comprise a museum equal to any in Australia; an outstanding art gallery; a performing arts centre; a new public library; and restaurant’.40 On the day of the announcement, Chalk unveiled in his office a model of the complex prepared by Robin Gibson and Partners. The Courier Mail declared that leading figures in the arts community were unanimous that this was an ‘imaginative and exciting project.’41
The initial plans and scale model of the Cultural Centre differed in some key elements from what ultimately eventuated on the site. The general location of the principal four buildings was as finally determined. However, the 1974 model was distinguished by triangular and trapezoidal building forms, unlike the later simpler rectangular expressions. The gallery was diagonally aligned to face Melbourne Street and the river and stepped to a plaza. An overhead walkway over Melbourne Street linked the two parts of site.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Model of the Cultural Centre, c. 1977 with more detail than shown in the 1975 model / Photograph: Richard Stringer QPACA
Chalk presented his proposal for a Cultural Centre at South Brisbane to Cabinet on 18 November 1974.42 The submission outlined the current needs of the various cultural institutions and the advantages of an integrated and coordinated complex. Co-locating an art gallery, museum, library and performing arts centre would mean the sharing of car parking facilities, restaurants, mechanical services and some staff resources. In addition, the close proximity of the institutions had the ‘potential for much needed interaction’. The total cost for the Cultural Centre including land acquisition, car parking and site works was $45.4 million.43
Cabinet agreed to the project and the following immediate action:
(i) Acquire the necessary land as urgently as possible (ii) Establish a body for the Performing Arts Centre (iii) Establish a coordinating and planning management body for the overall cultural complex.
The question remained—would this be the scheme that came to fruition? The Courier Mail editorialised that ‘Queenslanders understandably have become cynical after 79 years of promises…[and] there is nothing like an election to get things moving’.44 But in this case they did.
This is an extract from the Queensland Cultural Centre Conservation Management Plan (published 2017), prepared by Conrad Gargett in association with Thom Blake, Historian and heritage consultant. Thom Blake researched and wrote the chapters on the history of the Cultural Centre and revised statement of significance. The individual building’s architecture, the site’s setting, landscape and fabric were investigated by Luke Pendergast with principal support by Robert Riddel. Alan Kirkwood and Peter Roy assisted with advice on the design approach and history of the planning and construction of the Cultural Centre.
Endnotes 1 Brisbane Courier, 2 October 1889, 7 November 1889, 25 March 1891. 2 Brisbane Courier, 27 February 1927. 3 Courier Mail, 13 November 1934. 4 The Sunday Mail, 14 March 1948. 5 The Sunday Mail, 30 October 1949. 6 Australian Institute of Architects, ‘Application for entry of a State Heritage Place, Queensland Cultural Centre,4 August 2014′ww, p. 22. 7 Proposed use of former Municipal Markets Reserve, 15 January 1969, QSA Item ID961644. 8 Bligh Jessup Bretnall and Partners, Plan for Redevelopment of Roma Street Area City of Brisbane, Department of the Co-ordinator General of Public Works, Brisbane, 1967; Courier Mail, 11 January 1967. 9 Courier Mail, 16 November 1968. 10 Australian Institute of Architects, Application, p. 23. 11 Pavlyshyn Memoirs. 12 Minister for Works and Housing to Hon. Joh Bjelke-Petersen, 10 January 1969, QSA Item ID957244. 13 Gordon Chalk to Hon. Joh Bjelke-Petersen, 21 February 1969, QSA Item ID957244. 14 Courier Mail, 14 November 1968. 15 Ibid. 16 Courier Mail, 16 November 1968. 17 Cabinet decision No 12536, 14 January 1969, QSA Item ID541022. 18 Queensland Art Gallery Site Committee, ‘Proposed Art Centre Site Investigation’, March 1969, QSA Item ID 961664. The initial sites considered were: Exhibition building site; Albert Park, Old Markets Roma Street, Botanic Gardens, Central Railway Station, block bounded by Wharf, Adelaide and Ann Streets, Holy Name Cathedral, Isles Lane, Treasury Building, Lower Edward Street, Riverside Drive near Victoria Bridge, Brisbane City Council Transport depot Coronation Drive. 19 Ibid., p. 2. 20 New Queensland Art Gallery Steering Committee, ‘Queensland Art Gallery Report’, March 1972, QSA Item ID961664. 21 The other committee members were: AE Guymer, Director General of Education; Sir Leon Trout, Chairman of the Board of Trustees; AJ Stratigos, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees, James Weineke, Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, Professor GE Roberts, Professor of Architecture, University of Queensland; Peter Prystupa, Supervising Architect, Department of Works. (New Queensland Art Gallery Steering Committee, ’Queensland Art Gallery Report’, March 1972, QSA Item ID961664. p. 2). 22 Although Pavlyshyn is not specifically identified as the author, it is clear from other reports he wrote and also the minutes of the Steering Committee on 26 October 1971, that he was responsible for drafting the text on which the committee then provided comment (Minutes of Steering Committee, 26 October 1917, QSA Item ID601046). 23 Land acquisition, site works and a car park were estimated at $2.5 million, Ibid, p. 6. 24 New Queensland Art Gallery Steering Committee, ‘Queensland Art Gallery Report’, March 1972, QSA Item ID961664, Appendix C, p. 4. 25 Ibid., pp. 7-8. 26 Ibid., p. 9. 27 Cabinet decision No 16829, 21 March 1969 QSA Item ID601046. 28 These firms were: James Birrell and Partners; Bligh, Jessup, Bretnall and Partners; Consortium of Codd, Hopgood and Associates, HJ Parkinson and Associates, Blair M Wilson; Conrad, Gargett and Partners; Cullen, Fagg, Hargraves, Mooney and Cullen; Fulton, Collin, Boys, Gilmour, Trotter and Partners; Robin Gibson and Partners; Hall, Phillips and Wilson; Lund, Hutton, Newell, Paulsen;and Prangley and Crofts (Under Secretary, Department of Works, 15 August 1972, QSA Item ID601046). 29 Courier Mail, 17 April 1973. 30 The Australian, 17 April 1973. 31 Minutes of the Steering Committee for the new Queensland Art Gallery, 10 January 1974, QSA Item ID601046. 32 Architects Institute of Australia, Submission, p. 24. 33 Fulton, Collin, Boys, Gilmour, Trotter & Partners, Feasibility Survey Re-Development of Queensland Museum, 1973, QSA Item ID315623. 34 A total of 17 sites were considered and three short-listed: Albert Park, Woolloongabba Rail Yards and Toowong East (currently bush-land between Old Mount Coot-tha Road and Birdwood Terrace). 35 Plans, State Public Library feasibility study, QSA Item ID121879. 36 Courier Mail, 28 June 1973. Her Majesty’s Theatre was finally demolished in 1983 and the Hilton Hotel and Wintergarden Shopping Centre built on the site. 37 Cabinet decision No 20057, 5 February 1974, QSA Item ID569765. 38 Media release, 28 April 1974, QSA Item ID569765. 39 Queensland Parliamentary Debates, 11 September 1974, p. 720. 40 Courier Mail, 15 November 1974. 41 Ibid. 42 Cabinet decision No 21481, QSA Item ID541022. 43 Ibid. 44 Courier Mail, 16 November 1974.
The QAGOMA and ABC Radio National GOMA Talks collaboration is now in its sixth year and continues to explore important issues, inspired by art.
Art speaks to us all in different ways. It perplexes, provokes, alarms and amuses. Fundamentally, though, art ought to spark a conversation. Wander around QAGOMA at any given time and you can eavesdrop on a multitude of conversations and exchanges between patrons, triggered by the exhibits and artworks. For around half of its ten years, GOMA has hosted annual GOMA Talks forums, featuring artists, writers, intellectuals and commentators. Moderated by ABC Radio National (ABC RN) presenters, the forums enhance selected GOMA exhibitions, expanding on their themes and the ideas they raise. From the beginning, ABC RN has been an enthusiastic partner in the GOMA Talks collaboration, which provides many hours of stimulating radio conversation based on the well-attended events.
Art can be a wonderful springboard for political, philosophical and social debates. Since 2011, major QAGOMA exhibitions such as the ‘Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’, ‘21st Century’, ‘Harvest’ and ‘Cindy Sherman’, among others, have provided the basis for invigorating and provocative conversations on diverse topics, from Australia in the ‘Asian century’ to contemporary food culture, to the environment and other challenges besetting society in the twenty-first century.
In 2016, Cindy Sherman’s collection of disquieting large-scale photographs formed the basis of several feminism-themed GOMA Talks events. So popular were these forums that the audience overflowed into a separate room, with many having to watch the proceedings via a live feed. Sherman is the model in her artworks; however, the characters she portrays are anyone but her. The works raise refreshing questions: what image are women expected to conform to today, and what exists beneath the disguise? The jumping-off point for a particularly interesting GOMA Talks session was: ‘Is the digital world the new “feminist frontier”?’
Prominent online feminist activist and writer Clementine Ford has recently drawn attention to the misogyny, abuse and sexism that can make the internet a hostile environment for women. The currency of the topic prompted the Gallery’s GOMA Talks coordinators to bring together a panel to explore the issue, including academic Dr Emma Jane; US-based writer, video game reviewer, podcaster and ‘YouTuber’ Alanah Pearce; Dr Nicholas Suzor, a law and digital media researcher at Queensland University of Technology (QUT); and artist and author Dr Melinda Rackham.
Former journalist Emma Jane was once a high-profile and self-proclaimed ‘riot grrrl, third wave feminist [and] gonzo’ columnist, who wrote under the name of Emma Tom in the 1990s. She quit journalism after having a child, in part because of the regular online abuse and rape threats she received via email. She told the GOMA Talks audience: ‘. . . the threats of sexual violence [were] not just directed at me but [also] at my child. They named her. I couldn’t handle that’. Reading out a threatening and sexually explicit email she received back in 1998, she said it was striking how similar it was to the type of online abuse prevalent today on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. These days, the Sydneybased academic focuses her research on ‘e-bile’, cyberbullying and online misogyny.
Alanah Pearce also spoke of unsolicited harassment: ‘[The abuse] varies a lot. People complaining there aren’t boobs in videos that I’m in [or . . .] someone threatening to rape me with a cactus’. Such abuse is ‘crazy common’, says Emma Jane, who added:
The United Nations put out a report last year that pulled together a lot of research in this area and found that 73 per cent of women and girls had experienced [abuse] personally, or witnessed it [. . .] Women are 27 times more likely to be abused or harassed online than men. It’s part of the daily experience of using the internet, while female, for most of us. And it is particularly bad if you also happen to be a female of colour.
All of this points to cyberspace having serious governance problems, according to Nicholas Suzor. The way online and social media spaces are governed, he argues, ‘doesn’t really seem to align with the values we might have’, noting: ‘this is a really complex space. The platforms that provide the social spaces where we communicate are private organisations. We don’t get a lot of say in how they’re governed’.
Melinda Rackham, who made use of the internet in its nascent years, said that, for her, ‘the world wide web [. . .] replicates the real world’ and how women are treated generally, and added: ‘the web is just a constructed space like any other social space where women are constantly harassed’.
This year will mark the sixth year of the GOMA Talks series. While the ABC is still, relatively, the ‘new kid on the block’ in South Bank’s cultural precinct, we’ve been keen to make the most of the potential cultural and creative synergies the location offers and look forward to continuing to air important topics through the GOMA Talks forum. In so many ways, the relationship between QAGOMA and ABC RN is an obvious one: both are cultural institutions that bring together the cerebral, the emotional and the aesthetic. In these strange times in which we live, art, ideas and intelligent conversation are more important than ever.
Paul Barclay is presenter of ‘Big Ideas’ on ABC Radio National, which broadcasts the GOMA Talks series.
Hrafnhildur Arnadóttir, also known as Shoplifter or Shoppy, is an Icelandic visual artist based in New York. She experiments with everyday materials, predominantly her preferred medium of hair which she manipulates to explore both the familiar and the abject. In exploring the symbolic nature of hair, Shoppy discusses cultural definitions of narcissism and beauty. She also explores links between personal adornment and identity, and vanity and pride.
GOMA Talks returns during ‘Sugar Spin: you, me, art and everything‘ for a conversation on pleasure, gratification and meaning in art and life. Across two events, join special guest panellists and ABC Radio National hosts Sarah Kanowski (Books and Arts) and Paul Barclay (Big Ideas).
Can art make us happy? | 6.30pm Thursday 2 March 2017 | Hosted by Sarah Kanowski | Free
Contemporary art can be seen as a form of entertainment, yet our experience of art goes beyond simple delight. Can pleasure and meaning co-exist in art, and what does this mean for today’s art museum?
Join Michael Breakspear, Group Leader, Systems Neuroscience Group, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute; Prof. A. C. Grayling, Master of the New College of the Humanities, London; Kylie Legge, Founding Director, Place Partners; and Mark Pennings, Senior Lecturer, Creative Industries Faculty, School of Creative Practice, Visual Arts, Queensland University of Technology.
Guilty pleasure | 6.30pm Thursday 9 March 2017 | Hosted by Paul Barclay | Free
Self-gratification is generally frowned upon in favour of higher, more morally robust pursuits. Yet, self-indulgence plays a leading role in many aspects of our lives. Where do these instincts toward pleasure-seeking originate from, and can they be good for us?
Join Hrafnhildur Arnadóttir (aka Shoppy), ‘Sugar Spin’ artist; Dr Brock Bastian, ARC Future Fellow, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne; Elizabeth Willing, artist; and Dr Nicholas Carah, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland.
View the live stream of GOMA Talks and share your feedback and questions to the panel using the twitter hash tag #GOMAtalks or SMS 04 888 TALKS (82557).
Even though they did not discuss their work with each other, North American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) and Australians Margaret Preston (1875–1963) and Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984) shared a passionate curiosity for the natural world, and each worked within the emerging transcultural discourse of Modernism. Their respective early training in traditional representational techniques gave way to an enthusiasm for the new art, just as abstraction was debated across Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century. The vocabulary of colour and abstraction is common to both their artistic developments and professional successes. Equally significant is their will to express a specific sense of place, especially the familiar colours of their natural surroundings. O’Keeffe, Preston and Cossington Smith painted with conviction, creating a distinct and identifiable art separate from European Modernism, one evocative of its origin.
The Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, present ‘O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism’, which explores the intersection of three remarkable modernist painters who each used colour and abstraction to create a distinct, identifiable art.
OPENING WEEKEND CELEBRATIONS AT QAG
KEYNOTE PANEL DISCUSSION 11.00AM | Cinema A, GOMA | Free Saturday 11 March Join exhibition co-curators as they examine the parallel lives and practices of these three pioneering artists, and reflect on how each artist forged a bold and original approach to modernism. Special guests include Cody Hartley, co-curator and Senior Director, Collections and Interpretation, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Lesley Harding, co-curator and Curator, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria; Dr Kyla McFarlane, Acting Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, QAGOMA (Host); and Denise Mimmocchi, co-curator and Curator, Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales
CURATORS’ WALKING TOUR 1.00PM | Gallery 4, QAG | Ticketed Saturday 11 March Join Dr Kyla McFarlane, Acting Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, QAGOMA, in conversation with Jason Smith, Director, Geelong Art Gallery, for a walking tour of the ‘Making Modernism’ exhibition. A valid ‘Making Modernism’ exhibition ticket is required to attend this program
TOUR –AUSTRALIAN MODERNISTS 11.30AM | Gallery 4, QAG | Ticketed Sunday 12 March Co-curators Lesley Harding, Curator, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Denise Mimmocchi, Curator, Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, reflect on the particularly Australian style of modernism revealed in the work of Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith. A valid ‘Making Modernism’ exhibition ticket is required to attend this program
PERFORMANCE – THE COLOUR OF MUSIC 12.30PM | Watermall, QAG | Free Sunday 12 March The Bentley Strings Trio will perform a repertoire of songs inspired by the works of O’Keeffe, Preston and Cossington Smith. O’Keeffe, Cossington Smith and Preston are connected through their experimentation with synthetic colour and music analogies. Each believed that abstract art shared the qualities of music, and throughout their careers were influenced and inspired by music.
When Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) moved to New York in 1918, she joined a passionate group of artists (including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and John Marin) known as the Stieglitz Circle, represented by photographer and avant-garde gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. He encouraged them to respond to European Modernism using their unique knowledge of the urban and industrial characteristics of the United States to make a distinctive ‘American modern art’. During the 1920s, the Stieglitz Circle concentrated their efforts on abstraction and New York skyscrapers.
By the 1920s, O’Keeffe, Preston and Cossington Smith were living and working in cosmopolitan locations, but also explored the natural environments nearby, expressing these in strong colours and to the very edges of the canvas, each with a different approach. As well as the urban scenes encouraged by Stieglitz, O’Keeffe pursued the countryside and foliage of upstate New York’s Lake George, known for its summer storms, where she spent part of each year with Stieglitz (whom she married in 1924). There, she painted Storm Cloud, Lake George in 1923.
Art Gallery of New South Wales curator Denise Mimmocchi describes the composition as a ‘foreboding vitalist force’.1 O’Keeffe’s radically monochromatic palette reduces all identifying features of the landscape except the precise and recognisable horizon line of a distant mountain. By contrast, Preston’s fiery red petals advance and vibrate against the green foliage in the shallow pictorial space of Australian Coral Flowers 1928, defying national boundaries as a modern image in both colour and composition and activating a vibrant and radiant plane. As Heide Museum of Modern Art curator Lesley Harding writes, Preston’s still-life paintings were ‘a “laboratory table” upon which her converging interests in Western Modernism, Eastern art and colour theory might be tested’.2
Different again is Cossington Smith’s Trees 1927, with its field of intense, choppy brushstrokes of saturated colour, articulating the feeling of being among the flowering trees around her home and studio in Turramurra, just north of Sydney. The vitality of Cossington Smith’s touch adds to the drama of the dense brush conjured by this impenetrable composition. Each of these artists expressed local light and colour even without representing it, establishing individual strategies for evoking the specificity of place. Each moved toward abstraction by reducing details in a condensed space, hovering at the surface of her canvas.
To the questions of how to express local cultures, traditions and surroundings, O’Keeffe, Preston and Cossington Smith applied their European-based training and cosmopolitan appreciation for Modernism. They resolved the oppositional forces of abstraction and location by using similar compositional techniques, distilling and simplifying the shapes they observed into a shallow, flattened pictorial space that denied narrative, all while emphasising locally identifiable motifs, colours and subjects. They each contributed to revolutionising the viewer’s passive experience, pushing us into the active role of interpreting forms that emerged from the paint. Their discrete efforts brought them into the global discourse of twentieth-century Modernism.
Carolyn Kastner is Curator at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and one of the organising curators of ‘O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism’.
Endnotes 1 Denise Mimmocchi, ‘Georgia O’Keeffe: Storm Cloud, Lake George 1923’, in Lesley Harding and Denise Mimmocchi (eds), O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism [exhibition catalogue], Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria, 2016, p.68. 2 Lesley Harding, ‘The modern art of painting flowers: Reinventing the still life’, O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism, p.17, quoting Margaret Preston, Aphorism no.46, in ‘92 aphorisms by Margaret Preston and others’, in Sydney Ure Smith and Leon Gellert (eds), Margaret Preston: Recent Paintings, Art in Australia, Sydney, 1929, n.p.
‘Making Modernism’ is at the Queensland Art Gallery from 11 March to 11 June 2017, and is accompanied by an exhibition publication, available from the QAGOMA Store.
The exhibition is presented by the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, in partnership with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, and supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Gordon Darling Foundation.
Learning staff are travelling to five regional communities to deliver digital storytelling workshops with secondary students and regional arts education roundtables with arts educators. The first round of host venues include: Cairns Regional Art Gallery, Pinnacles Gallery Townsville, Gladstone Art Gallery and Museum, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery and Dogwood Crossing, Miles will co-facilitate the program between 13 March and 5 May 2017. The new initiative, named ‘Art as exchange’ aims to better connect arts learning at QAGOMA with the work of arts educators across Queensland’s arts learning eco-system. Ebony Russell, Head Of Faculty – Visual & Dramatic Arts, St. Patrick’s College, Townsville, is one such innovator, who has taken the time to share one of the many success stories that are coming out of Queensland communities.
‘Distance’ and ‘isolation’ are words I often hear when people describe living in North Queensland. Indeed, we are many hours away from the capital city and the state galleries, where so many arts opportunities occur out of our reach. Although we are faced with these obstacles, in my past two years of teaching in Townsville I have seen my students thrive on their engagement with a multitude of rich cultural opportunities available to them – in both local and regional touring programs, including Flying Arts workshops, Wearable Art Townsville and cultural events, not to mention Strand Ephemera and Umbrella Studio.
In 2016, St Patrick’s College travelled to the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF), to take part in a comprehensive program involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and artists from right around the country. Soon after, I visited the Torres Strait and met Cr. Laurie Nona at the Badu Art Centre. We had seen his large scale printmaking on exhibition at KickArts gallery during our visit to CIAF. My students were very impressed with the sheer scale of his work and the intricate patterning in his designs. Nona’s unique signature marks and Badu printmaking tradition of incorporating family totems and seasonal island stories were long remembered after the trip was over.
When our education officer from the Townsville City Council’s Gallery Services contacted me and offered our students an opportunity to work on an exhibition of printmaking, I immediately thought of contacting the Badu Art Centre to see if Nona was interested in being our Artist-in-Schools. As part of the outreach program at Townsville City Galleries, the Artist-In-Schools program organises artists to work with students for these exhibition outcomes. Funds are used to employ artists who transfer skills to both students and teachers, encouraging the development of visual arts. Students are introduced to the Gallery environment, and are able to view their works on display.
Fortuitously, Nona was available and offered to run a two-day weekend workshop with our students in Townsville. This workshop was planned, with its intended outcome being a collaborative large-scale print. Students were able to interact with Nona and learn about his culture and stories through the unique visual language of his prints, which present a dynamic depiction of the living culture in existence on Badu Island. Nona encouraged the students to create a ‘Fingerprint’, representing themselves and their Country and to explore mark-making and to develop a symbol to represent their place, home, past and future. With a diverse school community that includes a strong boarding population, the creative collaboration enabled these young artists to connect to Country and to each other whilst reflecting on and celebrating their diverse backgrounds.
Regional students may miss out on some opportunities, but with the assistance of Townsville City Galleries and the Artists-In-Schools outreach program, alongside generous and munificent artists like Cr. Laurie Nona, our students have had the world come to them. This has provided a wonderful opportunity to engage in the visual arts, which are central to identity, place and belonging. The outcome of this collaboration is a marvellous expression of a unique and continuing tradition.
Ebony Russell is Head Of Faculty – Visual & Dramatic Arts, St. Patrick’s College, Townsville
‘A Bit Na Ta’ locates the – source of the sea – Blanche Bay, Rabaul – in the Tolai language of East New Britain. It is also the title of a project commissioned for the upcoming Queensland Art Gallery exhibition ‘No 1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016’. Comprising a music video installation and performance event, the project will feature newly commissioned songs by leading Australian and Papua New Guinean musicians including the celebrated George Telek. These will draw on the rich oral histories of the Tolai people, transposing into contemporary beats, personal stories of the period between 1875-1975.
Project leader, musician and producer David Bridie shares some more views from his stay in Papua New Guinea
Over the past two weeks we’ve been travelling all around the Gazelle Peninsula and surrounds filming, recording, listening and talking (and chewing Buai). We are in a vain search for a kidolona pirpir-the full story of the past 100 years in Rabaul. This is of course an impossible task. But our historian Gideon Kakabin is passionate about the story needing to told from the Tolai perspective and that’s our pursuit.
George Telek has come up from Raluana to the studio here at Vunaulul and been in for four days of recording new songs especially for the project, ‘Boro’ and ‘Lili ram Kavavar’ and ‘a Bit na Ta’. He’s coming back again today. Yesterday Donald Lessy from Barike came and in played guitar on ‘Boro’ and is helping to sort out the musical and logistical arrangements the ‘Abot a Bitapaka’ Tolai choir song. Donald was a great friend of Glen Lows. Donald is quiet and unassuming, has a smoothness to his guitar playing and we’ve been friends for a long time but have never managed to work on a project together so that was a treat for both of us.
Last week we took the banana boat out to Mioko Island in the Duke of Yorks where we recorded the Gilnata Stringband’s new composition ‘Jack Emanuel’ about the murdered Australian District Commissioner. Gideon had explained the story to the legendary Alan Tobing who went away and wrote the song. We shot a film clip for Gilnata by the lagoon that featured a “varvalaruai” (an acted re-enactment of Jack Emanuel’s unfortunate death after a land dispute at Kabaira on the north coast) as well as recording the songs ‘Oscar Tammur’ and ‘Tutupele’. Gilnata have a history of telling oral history in their stringband songs and the Duke of Yorks style is totally different from the Tolai arrangements even though they are only ten miles away from each other. Miko offers unique vistas over to New Ireland and back to the volcanoes and whilst we were there massive storm blew on the north side of the island over the reef.
We ventured down to North Baining, to Ragaga Bay to Glen low’s block, Glen is buried there. We spent a lot of time sitting on his concrete tomb and chewing the fat. Glen accompanied Telek and I on tours for 15 years to the UK, USA, Solomons and Vanuatu and all round Australia. His son Gareth is the cameraman on this trip and is capturing minutiae, people and panorama with a unique eye. Kaul and Wagi from the Moab Stringband came down and in the varvalaruai tradition acted out old customs down in the mangrove swamps there-the working of abut (lime and clay applied to the face, tanget leaf necklaces, trading of tobacco and coconuts and the like). We recorded all sorts of bush and village ambiences helped because the house backs on to a big mangrove area and at night the insects and frogs create an all embracing sound-a symphony that Graeme Revell from SPK would have delighted in (Revell is a great Australian composer made a seminal electronica album sampling insect sounds!.)
Yesterday we recorded two beautiful old women from Wagi’s village, Bung Marum and Revie Kinkin in Bitabaur who sang an ‘Apinpidik’ for the project. Gideon found notes his mother, Lilak IaKaru had hand written in an exercise book from the 1960s when the Nilai Ra varden broke out from being “just” a women meeting group to joining with the warbete and the mataungan association to form the initial provincial government. In writing it reads, “nau meri i laik sanap wantaim ol man” (Its time for women to stand up and be equal to men) as well a disertation on the need for freedom from fear to be in the constitution. Lila passed away, she was a dynamo. Gideon, George and I look forward to working with curator Lisa Hilli working in ol singsing bilong meri na story bilong em (song of women’s stories). Last night we recorded the 95 year old Lasiel ToRavien (see picture below) playing a range of Tolai garamut drum beats dressed in bilas. In amazing condition for his age, the recording was astonishing as Lasiel played a range of minamai ceremonial Tolai garamut beats that will feature in the soundtrack.
We have been photographing this classic old colonial text, Das Deutche Kolonial Buch, a 1900 book of all the German colonies around the world… frightening really. Gideon’s range of knowledge is a constant inspiration and for me working with George Telek in our 30th year of collaboration is rather special, especially on a project as comprehensive as this. Gideon made the long 5 hour boat trip down to Tol Pantation on the south coast with many descendants of the 2nd 22nd battalion (Lark force) of whom at least 150 were slaughtered having been left to defend Rabaul against the Japanese in 1942.Gideon said it was a very emotional journey with descendants looking for their father or uncles graves.
The volcanoes are always present and we’ve been filming them from a range of different angles. They of course look very different depending on the angle and proximity and their mood transforms Blanche bay. We’ve filmed and recorded sounds from the Namata ceremony at Matupit and will be at the Minamai in Bitabour next week when ten Tumbuans dance the strength of custom, song and dance in these occasions is wonderfully intense and dynamic. We look forward to Anslom and Moab coming into the studio over the next two weeks.
Themes for the a Bit na Ta installation are becoming more apparent, the Tumbuan Society and its inherent artistry of deception (Pidik na Pui), the oceans source, the volcanoes, gardens, the Vunutarai clan systems, the kivung (Tolai village based self-governance) the ‘Apinpidik’, ‘Malira’ and ‘Lili’ styles of song along with Tolai assertiveness in the face of wars, volcanic eruptions and the century long campaign to get their land back and retain it resurfacing constantly (The 6 day war, the Kokopo wars, the Navuneram Incident and the Matungan association etc). Gideon George and I, a whole host of other collaborators are swimming in music, art ,sound recordings, stories, photos and film. So many great songs to work with… there must be an album in this as well as the a Bit na Ta installation at No 1 Neighbour.
David Bridie, Project leader, musician and producer
‘No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016’
15 October 2016 – 29 January 2017
The exhibition presents work by artists from Papua New Guinea created from the mid-1960s, through Independence in 1975, until today and focuses on the vibrancy of contemporary artistic expression, a direction that is unique in Australia. A key conceptual thread is the importance of the ongoing relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea with projects profiling ongoing creative relationships between communities and individuals.
‘No.1 Neighbour’ is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and through the Australian Government through the Australian Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.R Godfrey Rivers, England/Australia 1858–1925 / Under the jacaranda 1903 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 1903 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
A concentrated presentation of Australian collection highlights is on display during the Queensland Art Gallery’s Collection Storage Upgrade. This stunning salon hang includes everyone’s favourite — Under the jacaranda by R Godfrey Rivers.
The art storage capacity at the Gallery is being increased by 30 per cent with the construction of a new mezzanine level and modernised storage systems. As part of this upgrade, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries are currently closed. This space will be used to accommodate the Collection for the duration of the project, and is scheduled to reopen in September 2017. In the meantime, enjoy our Australian collection highlights in ‘Moving Pictures: Towards a rehang of Australian Art‘.
Kerry Gillett shares her thoughts on Queensland’s favourite painting Under the jacaranda, and also one of Kerry’s favourite works in the Collection.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Installation views of ‘Moving Pictures: Towards a rehang of Australian Art’, Queensland Art Gallery / Photography: Natasha Harth
Asking me which is my Collection favourite is like asking me which is my favourite child. I have a favourite choice in each of QAGOMA’s four collecting areas. Like many visitors to the Gallery, I always pause to contemplate the beauty of R Godfrey Rivers’s painting Under the jacaranda 1903.
Richard Godfrey Rivers (1858–1925), an English painter educated at the Slade School of Art London, received a prize for landscape painting in 1883 and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London before immigrating to Australia in 1889. From 1890 to 1915, Rivers dominated cultural life in Queensland, as an artist, teacher, and advocate of the state’s first art gallery. Under the jacaranda is a visual record of the artist’s fundamental role in Brisbane’s cultural life during his time in Brisbane and Queensland’s growth as a state post-Federation. Ever since the large oil on canvas entered the Queensland Art Gallery Collection in 1903, it has remained one of the Gallery’s iconic artworks.
Rivers married Selina Jane, née Bell, in St John’s Cathedral in 1901. It is not surprising that Under the jacaranda, his most popular work, features his wife. The painting depicts the couple being served afternoon refreshments in the shade of a flowering jacaranda tree. Contemporary art critics at the time wrote that Rivers’s ‘paintings are strikingly vivid and harmonious’. The artistic composition of this gilt-framed beauty communicates the artist’s skills of landscape painting and portraiture, plus the image of respectability and gentility that Brisbane society aspired to as a newly federated state. The painting not only depicts the popular European tradition of ‘taking tea’ but also showcases his argument that painters who had studied in Europe needed to adapt their colour palette for both the intense sunlight sunlight and distinctive dark lines for shadows to highlight the magnificent violet-blue canopy.
Rivers’s jacaranda is believed to be the first jacaranda grown in Australia. The tree was blown over by a cyclone in 1979, but many jacarandas now growing in Brisbane are from the seeds and cuttings of this first jacaranda.
Some readers will know Under the jacaranda intimately, others less well, and for some it remains a treat to be seen. Next time you are at the Gallery, it is certainly worth visiting.
Kerry Gillett is an art historian and writer, and a Foundation member since 2010.
Now in its third year, QAGOMA’s youngest supporter group, the Future Collective are putting their combined might behind Australian artists and investing in the development of the Gallery’s Collection. The group met at GOMA last month to discuss all things commissioning and hear from the artist they voted to commission two new works by in 2016, Helen Johnson. We asked Future Collective member, Kamillea Aghtan to reflect on the event.
On our way into GOMA we pass the fibrous form of Judy Watson’s Tow Row, which weaves a silent reminder in bronze of the Kurilpa Point’s history as a sacred meeting site along the banks of the Brisbane River. A short moment later Geraldine Barlow, Curatorial Manager, International Art, takes us on a journey: past Carsten Höller’s interactive helices of steel, Left/Right Slide 2010; through the slicing sheets of light which inhabit Anthony McCall’s Crossing 2016; down a sugary forest of Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir’s rainbow-bright Nervescape V 2016; and over eighty voluptuous ‘breaststupas’ composing Noon-nom 2016 by Pinaree Sanpitak. And finally, we settled attentive at our destination for the evening: a conversation with the artist of the Future Collective’s nominated project, Helen Johnson.
The thread that ties all these artists together at QAGOMA is commission. Each has been asked to consider a particular space and time at the Gallery, and to produce a work that intimately interrelates with it. Helen Johnson’s artwork, yet to be realised, is only the second project to be supported by the pooled funds of the Gallery’s newest supporter group, the QAGOMA Future Collective. It promises to open up a unique conversation – one which carefully considers QAGOMA’s Collection as well as its own place in it, and which responds to two much-loved works owned by the Gallery: Vida Lahey’s iconic Monday Morning 1912 and A M E Bale’s Leisure moment 1902.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Vida Lahey, Australia 1882-1968 / Monday morning 1912 / Oil on canvas / Gift of Madame Emily Coungeau through the Queensland Art Society 1912 / Collection: Queensland Art GalleryImage may be NSFW. Clik here to view.A.M.E. Bale, Australia 1875-1955 / Leisure moments 1902 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 1973 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Helen cuts a modest figure under the auditorium lights but she fills the room with her subject matter. She has spent days carefully researching QAGOMA’s Collection in the Gallery’s Research Library narrowing the scope of her endeavour down to these two works and investigating their unspoken contexts. In conversation with Dr Kyla McFarlane, Acting Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, Helen helps us approach some of the beautifully detailed works which feature in her most recent exhibition at the Institution of Contemporary Arts, London and in The National: new Australian art, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her paintings there, a mélange of images often inspired from archival sources, are juxtaposed, layered and mapped in order to expose different narratives of colonisation, politics and society barely hidden under the glossy surface of sanctioned history.
In 2015, the QAGOMA Future Collective voted to support the Gallery’s purchase of five compelling and challenging photographs from emerging Perth artist Abdul Abdullah’s ‘Coming to terms’ series 2015, which were displayed in ‘The 8th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT8), an exhibition viewed by over 600,000 visitors. The Future Collective’s 2016 decision to support a commission of Johnson’s work was no less daring. We don’t know what forms will be depicted in the two large-scale, double-sided hanging canvases that the artist will produce, or what messages or stories. It is like a test of faith between us, and a thrum of excitement grows in the room, redoubling between artist and Future Collective members, as we realise the depth of influence and inspiration that can emerge between works in the Gallery’s Collection and Helen’s practice.
Our decision to fund a project by the Melbourne-based female artist was also very much in line with one of the group’s driving motivations – to support exciting contemporary Australian art and artists as they gain their footing and momentum, and hopefully to provide a midway launching platform during their ascendancy. Before the close of the conversation, Helen thanked the Future Collective for enabling her the opportunity to create works for QAGOMA and explained what it means to her as an artist at this point in her career. By this time, of course, we feel equally privileged to be right there with her – sharing her ambitions, hopes and creative futures. This may have been a daring Future Collective investment, but its pay-off in artistic passion and possibility feels nothing short of immediate.
Kamillea Aghtan is the Director, Finance & Operations, Westan Australia Pty Ltd and a member of the Future Collective. She also works as an independent scholar in Brisbane and has published on regulatory and sensual ethics in a variety of platforms including academic journals, books and blogs.
Future Collective member Rosemary Willink shares some thoughts on her Collection favourite — Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus garden 1966/2002.
Yayoi Kusama is everywhere right now. By this I mean she is the subject of large retrospective exhibitions worldwide and her work is captured, circulated and seen by millions of people every day on social media. So why choose a work from the Collection that has most likely already been ‘liked’ by everyone?
For three years I had the pleasure of working in the Queensland Art Gallery building, designed by architect Robin Gibson, AO (1930–2014), and recently placed on the Queensland Heritage Register. From my vantage point, I could peer down into the Watermall, a particularly challenging space to exhibit artworks. More than the logistics of installing precious works of art over water, the space itself — its visual logic of filtered light and coarse concrete surfaces — places its own demands on the works displayed.
Huang Yong Ping’s Ressort 2012, the serpent spiral, faced this challenge head on through its menacing scale and sense of movement, while Ai Weiwei’s chandelier sculpture Boomerang 2006 emanated an incandescent glow that, on its own terms, measured up to the Watermall.
For this reason, I’ve selected Kusama’s Narcissus garden 1966/2002 as my favourite Collection work. Narcissus, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is ‘a beautiful youth who rejected the nymph Echo and fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. He pined away and was changed into the flower that bears his name’. Comprised of approximately 2000 mirrored balls, the work is shaped by both the currents and the limits of the water. Clusters and constellations are formed, reflecting the building’s architecture back onto itself from an infinite number of angles. Not unlike the myth, there is a dreamy yet sinister aspect to the work — it mesmerises at the same time that it forces one to look away. Narcissus garden has appeared in other gallery spaces, but the challenge and metaphor of the iteration in water make it my favourite.
So I admire this work from a safe distance — a distance that allows me to consider and reflect on the expanding role of architecture in art or, indeed, architecture as art.
As we countdown to the opening of the Australian Collection reimagined from 10.00AM Saturday 30 September, we take a look at Wiilliam Dobell’s The Cypriot 1940, a portrait of his friend Aegus Gabrielides which is a strange and complex painting with an equally intriguing history. The Queensland Art Gallery’s painting is the last of six known portraits of Gabrielides done by Dobell over a period of several years.
In general Dobell is best known for lively and apparently spontaneous paintings, either small, rapid, sketch-like studies or larger bravura portraits. In The Cypriot, however, the outcome of so much preparatory study is not a finished portrait done with the well-rehearsed but brisk confidence of a first sketch; this is a painting in which every detail of the composition and nuance of the sitter’s character is minutely considered. The gradual evolution of the image into the intense final portrait may reflect the changing circumstances of the relationship between the two men, as well as the developing aspirations of the artist to create a portrait of enduring psychological power.
Dobell first painted Gabrielides in 1934. In this early version, the sitter meets the viewer’s gaze in an open way, hands on his hips, giving the portrait a slightly cheeky air. This reasonably straightforward recording of the man’s features was to culminate, six years later, in one of the most penetrating individual studies in Australian art.
The strength of Dobell’s best portraits lies in his determination to understand and, if necessary, to exaggerate details of the sitters’ appearance which distinguish them as individuals. It was this aspect of his art which, in the celebrated court case over his Archibald prize-winning Portrait of an artist (Joshua Smith) (private collection) in 1943, caused him to be branded a caricaturist. The brooding image of The Cypriot, however, is anything but a caricature. It is a severe, hieratic portrait which reveals more directly than any of his other works how much Dobell gained from the observation of old master paintings. It marks an important transitional point in the development of his technique from the relative sharpness and clarity of the more thickly worked, coarse-grained London paintings of the 1930s, in which paint was applied almost directly from the tube, to the feathery surfaces that came to distinguish his later work in Australia.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.William Dobell in his studio with Portrait of an artist (Joshua Smith) in 1943 / Photograph courtesy: Betty Churcher / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
Dobell admitted that his art was generally rather at odds with twentieth-century Modernism. However, in The Cypriot it is possible to find, in embryo, the personal mannerisms of strong colour, the flurry of light brushstrokes and the bodily distortions (qualities he brought to his art from preparatory studies) with which Dobell would strive to make his work progressive.
All the studies for The Cypriot were made in London, presumably from the sitter. Back in Sydney, away from Gabrielides, this image of the man in a chair, impressed on Dobell’s memory from repeated depictions, could be manipulated according to his imagination. Dobell’s progress towards the final portrait is particularly well recorded in the preliminary versions he brought home from London. They allow us to see the finished picture taking shape and offer a glimpse into the artist’s private laboratory.
The starting point is a classically stable triangular composition, with the sitter placed symmetrically and looking directly at the viewer with a rather matter-of-fact expression, seated in a tall, button-tufted Victorian armchair. The chair-back rises above his head beyond the picture-frame. The transformation of the subject from a familiar waiter to a glamorous courtier was achieved through fairly subtle modifications. The upholstered chair was evidently of the rococo-revival design, its back topped with a circular curve that made a halo shape around the head of its occupant. This is how it appears in the first, 1934, version. In the final portrait, the pyramidal composition is destabilised by emphasising the vigorous outward thrust of the man’s bent elbows and repeating it in other details. The sitter seems taller, and he occupies the chair with greater authority. The shape of his hair is made to rhyme with the shape of the chair-back and the angles of his elbows. This exaggerated side-to-side lunge is charted like a seismographic movement by the pattern on his tie, and the jagged lines are combined with circles to create a frenetically unsettling design (although the gaudy, wide neckties of the 1940s make this detail plausible).
The strong outward movement of drapery folds and stripes in the shirt is interrupted and made more complex by buckled armbands, making the garment slightly reminiscent of a Renaissance doublet. The hands, which were originally placed at the same level, are enlarged and positioned asymmetrically, so that the hand on the right is advanced forward, is larger and lower, and hangs above the bottom edge of the painting like a claw. Dobell increased the arch of the sitter’s brows and deepened the shadows around his eyes. The fixed gaze and haughty pose seem rigidly frozen, yet the composition generates a force that pushes outward from the frame. The acanthus spirals, which spin like Catherine wheels on the ends of the chair’s arms, are a dramatically amplified variation on the relatively demure neo-rococo tendrils copied from the actual chair in earlier versions. These whorls of paint, and the urgently scribbled lines running down the necktie, are abstracted from the real motif.
Appropriately for the ‘Greek’ subject, the single greatest influence on this painting seems to have been the Renaissance artist El Greco, whose work provided a prototype for the highly charged variant on the classical formula of triangular portrait composition. The Cypriot is very similar to El Greco’s glowering portrait of the head of the Spanish Inquisition, Portrait of the Grand Inquisitor Don Fernando Niño de Guevara (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), painted in Toledo, Spain, in about 1600, a suitable subject for Dobell to use as a model for his darkly evocative character study. El Greco’s Portrait of Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino c.1610 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) would have been another obvious stylistic source for The Cypriot.
Of course, The Cypriot is also a picture of someone who seemed to Dobell to be interesting and perhaps attractive because of his foreignness. Gabrielides may have represented a kind of exoticism to Dobell. When he painted the final portrait back in Sydney, where Southern European faces were uncommon before postwar immigration, The Cypriot evoked a distant cosmopolitan world left behind in London, the world of great museums and old master paintings that had sustained the young artist.
As well as the paintings and drawings that have approximately the same composition as The Cypriot, in 1936 Dobell painted a picture of Gabrielides known as The Sleeping Greek (The Art Gallery of New South Wales). In this painting of the man’s head in extreme close-up with the brown upholstered chair as a background, Dobell captured him completely unaware, like a wild animal in repose. Dobell’s fascination with this natural sensuality is a recurring aspect of the small, brilliant character studies he made of other London personalities.
It is very possible that Dobell and Gabrielides were lovers. No other individual sat so often for Dobell, in the intimacy of his flat, over such a long period (at least four years). The closeness of their friendship is evident from the fact that Dobell was asked to be one of seven best men at the Greek Orthodox wedding of Gabrielides. In fact, Dobell went to the ceremony but did not participate, instead sitting at the back of the church, and knowingly or otherwise casting an inauspicious omen over the marriage by destroying the important numerical composition of the rites. Soon after this he returned to Australia. The exact nature of their relationship, and how Dobell regarded Gabrielides when finally he painted him from memory, can only be a matter for speculation. Much later, during an interview in the early 1960s, Dobell characterised his leading sitter as ‘dignified’, but also as a ‘coward’.
Despite being so well documented, The Cypriot remains an enigma. It is a completely uncharacteristic, even somewhat bizarre work. The sitter’s ambiguous expression is ultimately indecipherable. This is, of course, one of the reasons why it is such a successful portrait.
The Australian Collection reimagined brings together art from different times and across cultures, we trace narratives of geography — as country, as landscape, as the place we live and work — and we share stories of traversal and encounter, of immigration, colonisation and the expatriate experience. After 120 years of building the Collection, there are many stories to tell; in doing so, we acknowledge that we live in a country with a complex history.
stay connected Sign up to the qagoma blog for collection and program updates
Timothy Morrell
Extract from Brought to Light: Australian Art 1850-1965, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1998
Feature image detail: William Dobell’s The Cypriot 1940
As we take a reimagined view of the Australian Collection, we revisit Sidney Nolan’s painting Mrs Fraser and its captivating story before it returns on view. In 1947 Nolan spent an extended period in Queensland, including several weeks in Brisbane and on Fraser Island (formerly known as Great Sandy Island). In Brisbane’s John Oxley Library he read, among other things, accounts of the shipwreck of the English brig, the Stirling Castle, off the south-east Queensland coast in 1836. Nolan was intrigued by the story of Mrs Eliza Frasers survival after the wreck, her captivity (or salvation) by local Aborigines and her controversial return to England.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Portrait of Mrs Fraser, page 117 of John Curtis Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle, George Virtue, London, 1838. Collection: QAGOMA Research Library
This spectacular colonial narrative of the displaced gentlewoman, made vulnerable to both the material primitivism and the perceived sexual savagery of ‘native’ life, proved an ideal source for Nolan. It continued the project he had begun a couple of years earlier with the ‘Ned Kelly’ series, in which he merged motifs from popular culture with modernist aesthetics; and it provided him with imagery which allowed for some personal blood-letting.
And in this sandy forest
a ganger takes a part
of a sprig with a flower
and wears it in his hat,
wears it all day,
a wave to memory setting him apart. Barrett Reid, Fraser Island, looking west 1
Nolan had left Melbourne for Queensland in early July 1947. Specifically, he fled the ‘huge emotional climate’ of Heide, the home on the banks of the Yarra River he had shared with art patrons John and Sunday Reed for eight years.2 It has become acceptable now to openly acknowledge that Nolan and Sunday Reed were lovers and that he lived with the couple in a passionate and ultimately harrowing ménage à trois for almost a decade. For a long time, however, the domestic details of this intensely influential period of his personal and working life were excluded from commentaries on his work. Inserting Sunday Reed back into the picture enables us to observe the symbiotic relationship between Nolan’s Eliza Fraser and the woman who has recently been termed his ‘monstrous muse’.3
Mid-1947 was an opportune moment for Nolan to heed the call of the culturally influential Australian Geographical Walkabout Magazine to ‘know his country’.4 The dynamic atmosphere of crisis and creativity that had been so much a part of wartime Melbourne was on the wane. The Contemporary Art Society, the formal structure used by the Reeds to promote ‘modernist’ art practice in Melbourne, had (temporarily) ceased operations, and other core members of the Heide ‘group’ were dispersing — Albert Tucker left for Europe; his estranged wife Joy Hester was living with Gray Smith in Sydney. In 1945 Nolan’s younger brother Raymond had drowned while on secondment with the navy in Cooktown, North Queensland, and the artist declared that he needed to make an investigative pilgrimage to the site, to pay tribute to his brother and to find out as much as he could about the incident for the sake of his parents. In this way, Nolan was able to initiate what would eventually become his permanent exile from Heide. Needless to say, he arrived in the north (after his first trip in a plane) with plenty of emotional baggage on board.
In Brisbane, Nolan stayed with the precocious young poet Barrett Reid (who had been the youngest contributor to the modemist aesthetics journal, Angry Penguins) and it was with Reid that he made the trip up the coast to Fraser Island.5 Nolan first heard of Fraser Island from his friend Tom Harrisson, a former British army major who trained parachute commandos there during the war. His descriptions of the island’s exotic beauty had been one of the factors that enticed the artist north. On arrival, Nolan was not disappointed:
No wonder Harrisson was impressed … Ninety miles long and 30 miles wide … it covers a lot of country. Strange coast line, medium sized cliffs covered in small thick scrub, but the most impressive part is the way in which great cliffs of sand make a pattern against the scmb … The size of the island has rather taken me back.6
At this time most of Fraser Island was a Forestry Commission reserve and travel to the area was restricted. The island’s Indigenous owners, the Ngulungbara, Batjala and Dulingbara peoples, had long since been forcibly resettled and the atmosphere in the loggers’ camps, where Nolan and Reid were accommodated and where they socialised, was relentlessly male and more than a little eccentric — images of the hard-working, hard-drinking timber workers sporting wildflowers in their hats would creep into the work of both Nolan and Reid after this trip. Everywhere in the surrounding landscape the historical spectre of Eliza Fraser, naked and cowering in the mangrove swamps and merging into the rainforest, became a focus for Nolans powerful and bitter imagination.7
The great achievement of Nolans art during this decade (but perhaps never after with the same astonishing effect) was to relate the landscape, that key signifier of ‘Australianness’, to the concept of modern life. He accomplished this with a degree of menace and vernacular confidence that astounded the likes of the influential art historian and taste maker Sir Kenneth Clark.8 Nolans work of the 1940s features a single theme in a recurrent trope — the outsider set against an environment which resists occupation. The artist explored these ideas in three famous series which deal with historical characters given mythic status by the cultural claims made on their behalf — the outlaw Ned Kelly, the failed explorers Burke and Wills, and the amoral, unreliable widow Eliza Fraser.
When Nolan turned his attention to Mrs Fraser he was thirty years old, absent without leave from the army (he would be dishonourably discharged the following year) and miserably, angrily in love — at an emotional and artistic crossroads. Even the normally reticent Sir Sidney Nolan later admitted that this combination was an ideal genesis for a new and riveting series of works:
With these ghosts as his familiars, Nolan settles back, his eyes lost in a reverie of assessment and recalls the displacements of Eliza Fraser … ‘I’d painted her as someone who’d turned in her convict rescuer; she is called a traitress… In 1947 she was of interest to me because she was bound up with an emotional state I was in.’9
Mrs Fraser
Nolan’s initial group of twelve paintings on the adventures of Eliza Fraser were first exhibited at the Moreton Galleries, Brisbane, in February 1948. In these works Nolan grappled both with the exotic, new landscape, its lush vegetation and brilliant blue lakes, and with the Fraser legend, which told (in various permutations) how the survivors of the Stirling Castle shipwreck were captured, stripped and enslaved by the island’s original inhabitants. The ‘modernist’ content of the exhibition provoked the usual conservative backlash in the local press, despite a catalogue introduction by critic Clive Turnbull pronouncing Nolan to be ‘the most interesting of all the younger Australian painters.10 Only two works sold — one, Fraser Island, to the poet Judith Wright, who conducted a spirited defence of Nolan in the Courier-Mail. However, the most startling and successful painting in the series, Mrs Fraser 1947, was not for sale. Indeed, it remained in the artist’s estate until 1995, an indication of its status for Nolan as a raw and private signifier.11
Mrs Fraser is one of Nolan’s most disturbing works. A submissive, faceless female is placed on all fours in a mangrove landscape made impenetrable to her view. She is collecting wood for her captors’ fire, and the sticks are scattered in her path like bones thrown out for a dog. The painting is cut across by a low horizon punctuated by three tall palms, testifying, with the intense, unclouded sky, to the vivid tropical geography she so desperately inhabits. Two of the sentinel palms extend up beyond the picture frame, reasserting the endless perspective stretching above and over her, and emphasising her imprisonment in the foreground. The taut skin of her figure is painted with touches of yellow, white and blue, a cold and grisly palette. Nolan plays his favourite technical hand — he builds a narrative out of abstract shapes and spatial ambiguity.
In this depiction of Eliza Fraser, Nolan appears to have been particularly inspired by a 1937 account of the convict John Graham’s experiences, written and illustrated by Robert Gibbings. (In some versions of the tale, Graham was the convict who rescued Eliza Fraser and led her to freedom.) Nolan borrows from John Graham (Convict)1824 — An Historical Narrative both the compositional device of the painting (as in the reproduced etching) and the overall pathos of the subject:
It was a source of continual ridicule that when gathering firewood she was compelled to bend down and collect it with her hands instead of just picking up the sticks with her toes as she went along … Twice daily they plastered her hair with gum, fixing in it the teeth and bones of animals and fish; twice daily they rubbed fish oil into her skin and painted her body with clay.12
Nolan focuses attention on Mrs Fraser as abject victim. Her body is harshly lit at the centre of an oval format and she is offered to the spectator as if through the sharp, personal viewpoint of a telescopic lens or, as Jane Clark has suggested, ‘down the barrel of a gun’.13 Nolan used this framing device on several other occasions, as in his adaptation of the oval-shaped convention of the historical, family portrait in Portrait of Barrett Reid 134714 Later, he made the subjective intent of this pictorial manoeuvre explicit in a studio photograph, taken in London in 1957, in which he pointedly glares at Mrs Fraser through a pair of binoculars.
There is no doubt that what we are being coaxed to witness here is a vision of humanity forced down the evolutionary scale; more precisely, a woman of ‘culture’ descends, too hastily, into ‘nature’. This is the kind of ‘primitivism’ made famous by the Euro-American avant-garde, a highly sexualised account of transgressive aesthetics. When Willem de Kooning’s first ‘Women’ series was introduced to New York critics in the early 1950s, the images were greeted with lurid excitement. For supporters like Artnews critic Thomas Hess, de Kooning had wrestled ‘his girl’ on to the canvas and shown her who was boss. A similar feverishness afflicts some of the critical forays around Mrs Fraser:
her plight arouses not pity but the sense of her openness to sexual assault. She is a woman liable to be taken from behind, like the women in some of the Pompeiian wall paintings, with no preference and no certainty on the part of the taker as to which passage is being penetrated. She would spit and snap like a female dingo, without offering resistance.15
This, then, was Sunday Reed’s punishment — to be characterised as the savage nymph. She was so ambitious for Nolan, though, that one senses she would not have objected too strenuously to her identification with this withering masterpiece.16
And what of the real Eliza Fraser, whoever she might have been? By the time she had returned safe, but probably not all that sound, to England, several versions of the story (including her own) were appearing in the popular press as far away as the United States.17 Nothing could expose what Jim Davidson has called the ‘soft underbelly of imperialism’ as vividly as tall tales about white women held captive in the wilderness.18 Over the past 150 years, there have been many more recountings of the legend, few of which match in even the basic details. Eliza’s cultural interpreters have ranged from filmmakers, to librettists, to feminist historians. Her manifestations in the more contemporary reconstructions of the story cast her as everything from ribald temptress to complex class heroine.19
Too many have claimed a piece of her, to trust any single version of her ‘history’; the accretions of paint, legend, gossip, analysis, film and music are too dense to see through. But if half the stories are true — if she really did give birth to a child ‘born drowned’ in a long boat, up to her waist in sea water, surrounded by terrified and useless men; if, when taken into captivity by the rightfully suspicious and curious local tribes, she was forced to suckle their children with the milk her body doggedly produced for her own lost baby; and if, on her return to ‘civilisation’, she was treated with the prurience and morbid fascination that we have been educated to expect of nineteenth-century audiences — then it seems quite logical that she would be shrill in her demands for a free ride for the rest of her life.20
It is likely that Sidney Nolan changed his mind about her too. In interviews towards the end of his career Nolan made explicit his sense of connection with Eliza Fraser and her arduous, long-deferred journey home.21 He had returned to the Fraser legend for a further two series in the mid- 1950s and early 1960s. The final images, such as Mrs Fraser and convict 1962-64 (used as the cover image for Patrick White’s acclaimed historical adaptation of the subject, A Fringe o f Leaves, first published in 1976), feature an increasing lyricism; the medium and format change and the works become larger in scale. In this group of works, Eliza Fraser and her convict lover are battered and weathered, but they have endured. No longer alien, or separate, they are made of the same stuff as the landscape itself. They almost seem to belong.
Endnotes 1 Barrett Reid, ‘Fraser Island, looking west’, In Making Country, HarperCollins Publishers, Sydney, 1976, p.106. 2 For the most up-to-date account of the relationship, see Dear Sun: The Letters of Joy Hester and Sunday Reed, ed. Janine Burke, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1995, pp.17ff. 3 Burke (ed.), Dear Sun, p.28. 4 M. E. McGuire discusses the Influence of Walkabout on Sidney Nolan and Australian Modernism In general in his article ‘Whiteman’s Walkabout’, Meanjin, vol.52, no.3, Spring 1993, pp.517-25. 5 Nolan visited Fraser Island on two occasions, in late July 1947 and again in October 1947. 6 Sidney Nolan, in a letter of 30 July 1947, quoted in Jane Clark, Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and Legends. A Retrospective Exhibition 1937-1987 [exhibition catalogue], National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1987, p.91. 7 Jane Clark, p.90. 8 Sir Kenneth Clark visited Sydney in 1949, during the time that he held the position of Slade Professor at Oxford University. He sought out Sidney Nolan and bought a painting from him, leaving a deep impression on the young artist. For an account of this visit see Brian Adams, Sidney Nolan. Such Is Life: A Biography, Hutchison Australia, Hawthorn (Vic.), 1987, pp.103-105. 9 Nicholas Rothwell, ‘Nolan: The artist in exile begins his long journey home’, Weekend Australian, 15 July 1989, Library press cuttings, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. 10 Clive Turnbull, Introduction, in Paintings by Sidney Nolan [exhibition catalogue], Moreton Galleries, Brisbane, 17-28 February 1948, unpag. 11 The painting was exhibited as cat. no. 2, under the title ‘Urang Creek’. See Paintings by Sidney Nolan [exhibition catalogue]. 12 Robert Gibbings, John Graham (Convict)1824 — An Historical Narrative, Faber & Faber, London, 1937, p.81. 13 Jane Clark, p.91. 14 Nolan also used an 1871 photograph of the revolutionary French poet Arthur Rimbaud as a compositional source for his painting of Reid. For a reproduction of the original photograph see Jane Clark, p.38. 15Sidney Nolan Paradise Garden, ed. Robert Melville, R. Alistair McAlpine, London, 1971, p.7. 16 The final break with Sunday Reed did not come until after Nolan’s marriage to Cynthia Reed (John Reed’s
sister) in 1948. At Christmas 1947, Nolan presented one of the Fraser Island series to Sunday Reed (Lake Wabby) as a Christmas gift. 17 See Kay Schaffer, ‘Eliza Fraser’s trial by media’, Antipodes, vol.5, no.2, December 1991, pp.114-19. 18 Jim Davidson, ‘Beyond the Fatal Shore: The mythologization of Mrs Fraser’, Meanjin, vol.49, no.3, Spring 1990, p.450. 19 For comprehensive overviews of Eliza Fraser’s use as a cultural icon see Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact: The Eliza Fraser Stories, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1995, and Chris Healy, ‘Eliza Fraser and the impossibility of postcolonial history’, in From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997, pp.160-89. 20 On her return to England (so the legend has it) Eliza Fraser sold her story to passers-by in Hyde Park, and was continually asking for public funds in compensation for her trials. 21 Rothwell, ‘Nolan: The artist in exile begins his long journey home’.
The Australian Collection reimagined brings together art from different times and across cultures, we trace narratives of geography — as country, as landscape, as the place we live and work — and we share stories of traversal and encounter, of immigration, colonisation and the expatriate experience. After 120 years of building the Collection, there are many stories to tell; in doing so, we acknowledge that we live in a country with a complex history.
stay connected Sign up to the qagoma blog for collection highlights
Lynne Seear
Extract from Brought to Light: Australian Art 1850-1965, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1998
Dale Harding graduated from the Queensland College of Art in 2014, yet his opportunities and achievements since speak to a much longer practice, indeed a ‘cultural continuum’ to which he is connected through country. His artwork includes wall murals, sculpture and installations which are an exploration of the political histories and presence of his family and his Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples and their network of cultural sites spread across the central Queensland sandstone belt.
This year, aged 35, he has been included in documenta 14, the 11th Gwangju Biennale, Defying Empire at the National Gallery of Australia and The National in Sydney. The first book on his work, Dale Harding: Body of Objects was published by Griffith University, and a wall painting by Harding is an integral part of the conceptual rethink of the Queensland Art Gallery Australian art reimagined permanent display, launched 30 September. Some of the works Harding has produced this year are collaborations between Harding and his family, particularly mother Kate Harding, uncle Milton Lawton, and cousin Will Lawton.
Louise Martin-Chew met with Harding and found out what he gained from this incredible year and what he plans to do next. This is an extract from the interview published in Art Guide Australia.
Louise Martin-Chew | Your work has attracted attention since very early in your artistic career. Yet you didn’t start studying art until you were in your early thirties. What did you do prior?
Dale Harding | I had great advice from a couple of teachers at school, which was to get your 20s out of your system and then go to art college. I was quite conscious of that and I kept my hands and mind busy, working in the paint industry with commercial house paint sellers, and making art at night.
LMC | Your family connections to country are strong and you view your work as an artist and researcher as an extension of this cultural continuum. How is this made manifest in your practice?
DH | I gathered the language and concept of cultural continuum from fellow artist Warraba Weatherall and his family, and their discussions around cultural practice and repatriation. It has allowed me to frame what I do as one stream in my family’s continuation of cultural practice. Everything I make springs from a discussion with family. We are all moving in the same direction with the other family members who are also makers.
LMC | Where do you hope this direction will take you?
DH | We are maintaining a sense of who we are in ourselves and growing that in each other and particularly in the young people who are around. Times are constantly shifting in the way in which we are seen as a family and cultural unit as Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples and in the larger network as a community.
LMC | Your country includes Carnarvon Gorge, and a large area of cultural sites in central Queensland, with a legacy of some 20,000 years of Indigenous occupation. Is that daunting?
DH | It is daunting in the sense of approaching it with a very profound respect, reverence and care. Sometimes that respect, reverence and care, and wanting to do the right thing, has petrified my hand. But it is not daunting in the sense of claiming culture. I do that now so as not to undermine or diminish or trade on the cultural practice as practiced by previous generations, and how we do it now for ourselves and continue what they have given us as well.
LMC | This year you have had incredible opportunities both national and international. Yet it is only four years since you graduated. How does the academic process impact your work?
DH | I’ve been conscious for some time of senior practitioners like Judy Watson, Julie Gough and Fiona Foley. These artists have led research-based arts practices around an artwork, and bringing that to life has been influential. The academic framework supports that and a depth of enquiry that I really enjoy.
LMC | Your wall painting/installation for the Queensland Art Gallery is part of the new hang of the reimagined Australian collection. What shaped your decisions about this work?
DH | I’ve been sharing with curator Bruce McLean, who is from the Wierdi people of the Birri Gubba nation of Wribpid in central Queensland, around material choices. The use of Reckitt’s Blue in this wall painting springs from some of our discussions. Reckitt’s Blue is antiquated and known for being a laundry whitener. It has many different histories, including its introduction to Indigenous painting in the Carnarvon palette in the mid 19th century, and it remains visible on historic clubs and shields. I have used it sprayed on the wall to form a composition that is referencing, more than imitating or copying, the lineage of a long landscape format along a plaster board wall at the Queensland Art Gallery.
LMC | It includes motifs that are different to the traditional Aboriginal objects (boomerangs, woomera, spears and shields) in your previous work. What informed it?
DH | In many ways it is a notional shift in the way I was working, although with each work my family could speak about its intent in five different ways on five different days. It is the same with the Queensland Art Gallery painting. The water story of Carnarvon tells that the rain that falls from there ends up ultimately in Brisbane’s Moreton Bay. The painting speaks of abstraction and registers of the body over generations, using my body. Warraba Weatherall has lent his support in the making of this work and it is a register of our two bodies on the wall in that space. The imagery is a move away from material culture. This time, I have used a shovel from the Taubmans paint factory.
LMC | Griffith University Art Museum director Angela Goddard described you as ‘the man of the moment.’ What will be next?
DH | This year has been a year of discussion, discussion shared with curators and artistic directors and other artists. I start to see the beauty of the year in the genuine discussions and generosity shared with me. I can’t frame it well enough. If there had been a fire in the middle of the space in which we were sitting, there could have been no less warmth.
Simpson Harbour, Rabaul, Papua New Guinea / Photograph: David Bridie
Wup under construction, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea / Photograph: David Bridie
Melki, East New Britian, Papua New Guinea / Photograph: David Bridie
Lazarus, Gaulim, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea / Photograph: David Bridie
Bita Paka, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea / Photograph: David Bridie
