MICHAEL GLASHEEN | DRAWING ON THE LAND : GARIGAL COUNTRY

MICHAEL GLASHEEN | DRAWING ON THE LAND : GARIGAL COUNTRY 1

Michael Glasheen photography | Juno Gemes

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Michael Glasheen I Drawing on the Land: Garigal Country Paintings, Drawings and Works on Paper, 360 Virtual Reality Benefit Exhibition Curated by Juno Gemes and Adrian Newstead 27 - 30 June 2020 Cooee Gallery 326 Oxford Street Paddington NSW 2021 Mick Glasheen has been a pioneering force in the fields of experimental film and interactive media since the late 1960s. For the past 25 year s, living on the Nor thern Beaches, Glasheen has drawn and painted the Hawkesbur y sandstone landscape of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park with a vision of creating ar t that becomes an immer sive 360 degree experience - inviting the viewer to experience original large-scale drawings of major Garigal rock engraving sites in a totally original way.

Just prior to the opening of his exhibition, Garigal Countr y Drawing on the Land at Manly Ar t Galler y and Museum on Friday 6th September 2017 Mick had a fall and broke his leg. While recovering from this, he had several small strokes.

With typical resolve and determination, he is recovering and with the suppor t of The Compassionate Circle of Mick’s friends and family he has been able to return home to his studio in Newpor t with 24-hour care. During this time we have seen vast improvements in his health.

The purpose of this Benefit Exhibition is impor tantly to raise urgently needed funds to suppor t Mick Glasheen’s rehabilitation and, vitally, to enable him to stay at home, keep him out of Residential Aged Care, and to help finance the extra ser vices he requires and deser ves.

All income from sales of ar tworks will suppor t this purpose.

Acknowledgements: This exhibition was curated and collated in a fast moving month-long collaboration by the following group of friends; Deep thanks to Adrian Newstead and Mirri Leven from Cooee Ar t Galler y for their par tner ship in this exhibition.

Special thanks to our Exhibition Team: Tony Edye, Aline Channer y Barber, James Ricketson, Jeni Thornley, Lopsang Chopel, and also from Mick’s Compassionate Circle of Friends and Family for their practical assistance.

For catalogue texts our thanks to Katherine Rober ts - Senior Curator of Manly Ar t Galler y and Museum, Dr Marie Geissler, Annie Kelly and Stephen Jones.

Greg Weight kindly drove from McMaster’s Beach to photograph Mick’s paintings while Juno Gemes created por traits of Mick in his studio home at Newpor t for the catalogue.

Thanks Renata Brak for the fine catalogue design.

For galler y assistance during the exhibition at Cooee’s Paddington Galler y our thanks to Aline Channer y Barber, Shelly Indyk, Louise Ferrier and Dasha Ross.

Mick Glasheen collaborated on the preparation of this exhibition with Curator s Juno Gemes and Adrian Newstead for Cooee Ar t Galler y, 31 Lamrock Avenue, Bondi Beach.

Wor ks may be ordered in various mediums and sizes from the catalogue or in person during the viewing at 326 Oxford Street Paddington 27th - 30th June, or thereafter at Cooee Ar t Galler y, 31 Lamrock Avenue Bondi Beach, Sydney 2016, Australia

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Restoration Island four panel digital print with paint on canvas and/or paper

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Writing on the land – Aboriginal Rock Art Engravings Gadigal Country Sydney Basin Dr. Marie Geissler

Honorary Associate Fellow, Faculty of Humanities, Law and the Arts, University of Wollongong Mick Glasheen’s surreal renderings of Australian landscape give visual form to a wide-ranging complex of philosophic and intercultural currents that inform the interactions between Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australia. His potent images are inspired by his deep knowledge of Aboriginal culture and its spiritual connection to Country and those of non-Indigenous scholarship, namely ideas of Plato, Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, Buckminster Fuller and Keith Critchlow.

Cosmic in intent, he investigates both micro and macro-scaled worlds. Based on rock art sites, coastal vistas and caves of the Sydney/Hawkesbury and South Coast regions they are true to the tradition of plein-air and have been painstakingly executed in pencil, onsite over many months. The originals are hand-drawn with pencil on paper and capture a certain “spirit of place” that give expression to his understandings of the immersive, spiritualized nature of land that has been explained to him by the Aboriginal custodians of the 6

land with whom he has engaged throughout the documentation process.

The original drawings are used as source materials for further experimentation. They are photographed then printed in various scales and visually dramatized with colour and imposed imagery where they are variously coloured using pastel and paint. Some are sketched so as to be appropriate for a 360-panoramic digital projection and enhanced by audio overlays of the bushland sounds that have been recorded at the site.

Glasheen is an artist and film maker of Welsh and Irish background, who was born on Guringai land and has developed a deep knowledge and respect for Aboriginal traditional culture, which has deepened over the last 15 years through his close relationship with South Coast Aboriginal Yuin elder Uncle Max ‘Dulamunun’ Harrison and other initiated Aboriginal men in the region. While

his work finds resonance with other artists such as John William Lewin, Joseph Lycett, Sidney Long, John Bradley, William Robertson, Lin Onus and Salvador Dali, its distinguishing formats are large-scale, immersive, horizontal panoramas.

A student of the National Art School in the 1960s Glasheen studied with Brett Whiteley, Martin Sharp, Tim Storrier and Lyndon Dadswell and was amongst the first of its graduates to work in experimental film documentary of Aboriginal Australia. He was inspired by the work of ethnographic filmmakers Ian Dunlop and Mike Edols who recorded footage in remote Australia over the 1950s and 1960s, of traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, culture and their use of traditional technologies.

A watershed period for his career began in 1971 when he was awarded a grant by The Experimental Film Fund to document the stories embedded in the sacred Monolith Uluru. He, with Juno Gemes, committed to this project as residents of The Yellow House.

They researched and prepared for the filming and camping in the Central Desert. Gemes reading TG H Strelow’s Songs of Central Australia while Mick studied Charles Mountford’s Ayres Rock - Its People, Their Beliefs, and Their Art, an early book of photographs and documentation of the giant monolith. Juno Gemes realized they needed to find the Traditional Owners of these stories and secure their permission and participation in their film, so she set out six weeks before Mick to the Centre while Mick prepared the complex filming equipment lenses and the Geodesic Dome for their six month stay in Central Desert. During the 1970s,Traditional Owners were nt encouraged to stay in the National Park. This immersive experience with Pitjantjara Elders changed the perceptions of both artists for life. For Mick it allowed him to build the foundations for his understanding of the importance of reading the Country.

Over the duration of their stay they learnt local traditional knowledge and the deep mythology associated with the Rock from Mountford’s informants, Aboriginal elders, Captain Number

1 and “Lively Number One”. They used time lapse photography on 16 mm film stock to reveal the stories of Uluru. Soon after this trip Mick Glasheen obtained another grant to film a very large desert ceremony (inma) run by the Pitjantjatjara in the Musgrave Ranges near Hermannsburg. The footage is currently being edited and updated to more contemporary formats. Over these times he encountered many of the leading protagonists within the Indigenous studies field including Nugget Coombs,W.E.H. Stanner,Ted Strehlow and Charles Mountford. In 1988, he documented the Aboriginal Memorial for the Sydney Biennale, at its harborside installation at Walsh Bay with Indigenous curator Djon Mundine.

The paintings and drawings included in his 2019 exhibition at Manly Art Gallery and this exhibition at Cooee Gallery in June 2020 had their beginnings in 2011 when Glasheen returned to these media of his earlier years, to focus on studies of local rock art engravings and coastal landscapes in the Sydney and Jervis Bay region. These sites had been introduced to him by local elders.The landscape drawings refer to large rock platforms at Westhead and the Hawkesbury area, and their Aboriginal engravings of emus, shields, spirit figures, fish and kangaroo. Glasheen also depicted the spectacular coastal landscapes of Barenjoey, Palm Beach and the Eucalypt woodland hinterland, its native grasses, black boy and banksia together with local birds, lizards and kangaroos.

The Michael Glasheen Benifit Exhibition, Drawing on the Land Garigal Country, at Cooee Gallery draws together works from his last four exhibitions and includes previously unseen works from the artist’s studio. Through this significant body of work Michael Glasheen reveals a fresh and exciting view of the most ancient form of Aboriginal Art, employing completely original techniques devised by him to honour these sites and their deepest meanings.

As Uncle Max ‘Dulumumun’ Harrison has observed “Mick’s deep understanding of this Country has enabled him to create drawings that reveal the the spiritually profound ‘infrastructure of the bush’.”

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Emu in the Milky Way ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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‘This picture shows the rock engraving at the eastern end of the Elvina rock platform. It depicts the Emu that Aboriginal people saw flying through the night sky. Its body is seen in the dark spaces of the Milky Way – with its head under the Southern Cross, its neck and body stretches to the left, through the Pointers, all the way down to the horizon. The egg in the emu’s belly, in the engraving, can be seen reflected in the brightest part of the nebulosity of the Milky Way, seen in the sky.

This is the centre of our galaxy and contains a black hole that astronomers estimate to be four million times the mass of the sun. Ancient Aboriginal knowledge and modern science join in wonder at the mystery of the universe.’ - MG 9

Behind Occupation Cave with Brush Turkey ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Ceremonial Site Berowra at Dawn | 2015 ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Ceremonial Site Berowra at Noon ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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‘This picture shows the rock engraving at the centre of the Elvina rock platform. Aboriginal engravers have cut across natural cracks in the sandstone to make a number of evenly-spaced lines. This engraving may represent the Rainbow Snake – a potent symbol of the life-giving power of water – emerging from the surface of the rock.’ - MG

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Rainbow Snake and Rainbow ink, graphite, acrylic, oil pastel, pastel hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Boin Station Panorama with Coromrant ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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“

The paintings in this exhibition are inspired by seeing the Aboriginal presence in the land continuing to talk to us.

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- Michael Glasheen

Garigal Rock Engraving Suite Michael Glasheen Artist

These large drawings of rock engravings were created on site in the Kur-ing-Gai National Park. They were scanned in ultra high definition and printed same size on grey Canson paper. These pictures were then taken back on site and painted with mixed media, scanned again and printed on large canvases in ultra high definition ~ finally painted on again in studio. All the pictures are drawn with multpiple vanishing points, so the Aboriginal rock engraver’s ‘drawing on the land’ can be viewed in 3D 360 virtual reality, to experience this significant Australian Aboriginal contribution to the history of art.

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Michael Glasheen photography | Juno Gemes

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Eal Spearing | 2017 ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Blue Tongue Lizard ink, graphite, acrylic, oil pastel, pastel hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Boin Bungaree at Barranjoey ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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The Music Lesson | 2017 ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Sea Eagle Over the Edge ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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‘A well-known engraving site in the Ku-ring-gai National Park is pictured here without the encumbering timber enclosure. Framed within the tessellations of the rock are wallabies, fish, an eel, a fairy penguin, and a man and woman reaching to a crescent image and hermaphrodite figure.’ - MG

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Eclipse Rock Engraving ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper 27

Emu in the Morning ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Artists House and Garden, Waratah Road Palm Beach | 2017 ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper

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Dingo Beach ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper 30

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Geometry of thinking / Melancholia | 2016 ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper 32

‘There are no rock engravings at this site, at the western end of the Elvina rock platform. Generations of Aboriginal people must have come here to sit on the naturally tessellated rock at sunset and ponder the mystery of the universe. In this picture, the angel and her truncated rhombohedral sculpture from Albrecht Durer’s engraving, Melencolia 1514, appear in a dawning enlightenment.’ - MG

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photography | Juno Gemes

Michael Glasheen - Biography Annie Kelly Mick Glasheen was one of the most important multi-media artists amid the new wave of Sydney artists who defined the art world in Australia during the late 1960s and 70s.

Born in Sydney in 1942, Glasheen studied Art at the National Art School (NAS), and Architecture at The University of New South Wales between 1959 and the early 1960s. His formal studies ended when, inspired by a visit of Buckminster Fuller in 1964, he began to create the 16mm film entitled The Evolution, which was released in 1966. In the May issue of Oz magazine in that same year, Glasheen produced a pop art centre-spread he called the Oz Pop Shop Catalogue - a collage of advertising signs and package labels. From it came works that were included in the exhibition Oz Super Art Mart, at Terry Clune’s Kings Cross gallery, Sydney. This show, was the first in which Mick publicly exhibited his artworks.They hung alongside those by Johnny Allen, Peter Kingston and Martin Sharp. In 1968 Mick became editor of 34

the UNSW student newspaper Tharunka, and produced the Be Astounded edition, dedicated to Marshall McLuhan. In that same year Mick built a Geodesic Light Dome with Electronic wizard Jacky Joy Jacobson joining 5000 light bulbs to each joint of the structure accompanying The Human Body Performances directed

by Juno Gemes at The Powerhouse 10 Cunningham Street, the three level warehouse at Haymarket.

When, in September 1970, Martin Sharp founded theYellow House in Terry Clune’s former gallery, Mick Glasheen became a founding member alongside Albie Thoms, Juno Gemes, Peter Kingston, Brett Whiteley, Peter Wright , Antionette Starkiewicz ,George Gittoes, Bruce Goold, Greg Weight, Garry Shead and David Litvinoff. While at The Yellow House, Mick and Juno researched the sacred stories of Uluru over a six month period and prepared for their journey to make the film Uluru, the first collaborative film based on sacred stories embedded in the monolith.

While Juno travelled to the Red Centre to find the Traditional Owners in preparation for Mick’s arrival, Mick drove his hand painted Toyota from the Yellow House with Bolex cameras and especially designed equipment for the time lapse narratives, as well as a Geodesic dome for their campsite. They camped for six months near the traditional owners at Uluru at a time when it was difficult for even the Aboriginal elders to visit their own sacred sites. Their experiences in the Central Desert influence both artists’ lives and art practice from that point onward.

In 1972, Mick Glasheen became the founder of Bush Video, a collaborative group of filmmakers, artists and experts in electronics and computer technologies, who together produced experimental video art. He has made numerous experimental films, videos and interactive media since that time.

During the past twenty-five years, living on the northern beaches of Sydney, Mick has drawn and painted the Australian landscape with a vision of creating art based on an immersive 360-degree experience, with multiple vanishing points. Inspired by Aboriginal rock carvings, Mick developed a new way of drawing Country, in relation to the traditional custodians of the land.

This exhibition, Drawing on the Land: Garigal Country, is an extension of previous shows held at Palm Beach, Newport, and the Manly Art Gallery. It is comprised of his most recent drawings and paintings, focusing on the Garigal rock engraving sites in the Kur-ring-gai National Park.The paintings were designed for viewing in 3D virtual reality. As Mick explained it himself, “ the paintings in this exhibition are inspired by seeing the Aboriginal presence in the land continuing to talk to us.”

Annie Kelly is an author who has published 10 books with Rizzoli New York. She is also published in Newsweek, LA Times, Belle Magazine.

ABOVE | Self Portrait of Artist Age 16 | 1958 watercolour on paper 35

Triassic Dreaming Triptych ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper 36

Barrenjoey Lighthouse ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper 37

Dancing with Strangers ink, graphite, crayon, hand coloured digital print on canvas and/or paper Reprinted with permission of the State Library of New South Wales.

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‘This picture depicts the first encounter of Europeans with Aboriginal people on the foreshores of Pittwater in March 1788. It is composed from a print of a small watercolour painting, “View in Broken Bay” 1788 by Lieut. William Bradley which is in the collection of the Mitchell Library.

Details of Bradley’s paintings have been blown up – showing the Europeans and the people of the Garigal clan shaking hands and dancing together.’ - MG

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Montage with scroll photographs by Juno Gemes Scroll title of work “In every grain of Sand” 41

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