A Collection of Stranger Things

Curated by Patrick Pound, artist, Associate Professor of Art and Performance, Deakin University, Danny Lacy, MPRG Senior Curator and Narelle Russo, MPRG Collections Curator.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the MPRG Collection, A Collection of Stranger Things reveals a hidden microcosm of objects and artworks that have rarely been displayed before. Artist Patrick Pound delved into the depository to uncover unique visual connections and works that sit outside MPRG’s current collection strategy of works on paper by leading Australian artists and representations of the Mornington Peninsula. The exhibition features a diverse range of artworks including glass, ceramics, paintings, prints and drawings alongside Pound’s collections of found photographs and objects. A Collection of Stranger Things traces the evolution of the MPRG Collection and dusts off rarely seen gems placing them in new contexts so that we may see them afresh.

Patrick Pound is a leading New Zealand born, Melbourne based artist whose work Portrait of the wind 2011 was acquired by the Friends of MPRG from the 2012 National Works on Paper. Pound has worked with many public gallery and museum collections, alongside his ever-growing collections-based artworks, rethinking how things might be found and made to hold ideas. Pound says to collect is to gather your thoughts through things. In 2017 he was the focus of a major survey exhibition Patrick Pound: The Great Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Recent exhibitions have included Shadow catchers AGNSW, 2020; Water QAG/GOMA, 2019; Defining Place/Space: Contemporary Photography from Australia at the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA), San Diego, USA, 2019; Photography andAir at the Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid, as part of PhotoEspana, 2019, and On Reflection, City Gallery Wellington, 2018.

PATRICK POUND’S EXHIBITION OPENING SPEECH Saturday 14 March, 2020 First of all, I too would like to acknowledge the Bunurong/ BoonWurrung people on whose unceded land we stand.

I’d like to thank Danny Lacy and Narelle Russo and the team here, for the offer to make this new project to mark 50 Years of the MPRG collection and for guiding me through their treasures. They have been extraordinarily generous in their engagement with this project allowing me to hold a mirror to their collections, and pair things up in new and interesting ways.

A Collection of Stranger things shuffles my collections of found photographs and found objects with the MPRG collections. The Gallery and I have both been collecting for 50 years. (It’s in better shape than I am.)

The Gallery collections have come together in 4 key ways: from works that refer to the region, to works by artists from the region; from works on paper to a host of terrific works acquired by very generous donors. At the same time the gallery has surveyed what’s going on in contemporary art. These strategies have made for a relevant and rich collection.

When objects assemble in galleries they have no say in the matter. They gather as strangers. Some get along better than others. Some things have nothing in common until they are brought together. Some prefer to be alone.

This show is about noticing things and the possible connections between them. To collect is to gather your thoughts through things. I collect found photographs and other things in categories from ‘photography and air’ to a ‘museum of falling’. I collect photographs of people who look dead but probably aren’t. I have collections of photos of photographers and ‘photos of photos’ and ‘photos of people holding photos’. I buy all of my things on the internet. When I click buy; that is the equivalent of me taking a photograph. The mouse is my camera. When I click the mouse to buy a photo that is my decisive moment. My work treats the collection as a medium.

In this exhibition which deliberately rethinks what it might mean to collect, to categorise and to arrange and display sets of objects, I have set the things of the MPRG a new role. I’ve given them a sabbatical from their usual task of being a sign of themselves as exemplary art objects.

The show is organised in sections organised by collection categories. Each category comes under an imposed collection constraint. We start with a set of gallery holdings each of which holds an idea of sleep or repose - or even slumber and death.

Having found these in the gallery collection, I then set out to find a single photograph that formally aligned with each example.

Collections always begin by pairing like with like. Collections rely on comparative anatomies and stylistic increments. Galleries unpack these seemingly natural developments through material culture.

The wall of pairs and doubles plays on this default of collection.

Art galleries prefer to align things as if they were naturally inclined to have developed just so. There is an air of control and cultural logic to this that is at once comforting and culturally elevating. Artists are co-dependent on this ruse.

On the other hand, modern galleries like this one, happily put things to the test, critically re-evaluating them and us as they do so. I like to think of things as holding and expressing ideas. In my work I try to see how and why they hold these ideas, and put to the test how they might be made to hold or perform different ideas, even if for a brief moment.

So, in my museums of things, such as the museum of falling which you will find in the covered cases, I begin and end with a pair of watercolours from the gallery collection that depict a tree stump on a beach. It’s not until you find them in this new context, that you are reminded that they depict two fallen trees and might even belong alongside a Fisher Price model of a waterfall or a tiny lead toy of a girl who has fallen of her sled which was made in the very same year as the two watercolours.

It is the search word that places them in my museum of falling. They are returned to one of their original meanings and replaced in strangely appropriate company and they get along just fine. Julian Barnes said: ‘you put two things together that have never been put together before and the world is changed.’

This show is arranged as a symmetrical puzzle. Several of these collection based works and groupings, perform as if in a mirror. In one work you will notice the air travels from the left through each of the photographs and the single museum work.

Then on the wall to their right, the air heads through the photographs and the gallery work in the opposite direction.

In another work Mirror-Mirror you will notice that on the left every person is looking into the mirror from the left. Then you will see the gallery’s marvellous Brett Colquhuon picture of a blue mirror facing directly out.

To the right of that you will see the line of found photographs continues. Each of which I have found, and you too will find, has a single person looking into a mirror from the right. The work is a collector’s palindrome.

William Carlos Williams famously said: ‘No ideas but in things.’ I’m not quite sure what he meant, but I know it applies to my work. I want to unpack the museum and give its collection objects a new task. Museums collect things as exemplary objects. I collect things that are exemplary of my ideas not those of the gallery or even necessarily of the things themselves.

Museums typically turn things into signs of themselves as they are set the task of being exemplary. That is, they are turned into typical and excellent examples of a certain type of thing. Museums becalm things. Take a Jacobean wine glass that’s been bought by a museum to be a sign of a peak of the craft of air-stem glass blowing and of the class politics and lifestyle of Jacobean England. That wine glass is never going to hold wine again. God forbid. But, if I take it and put it in my Museum of Air, it asks us to rethink it in terms of the air in its stem—the fragile breath of its maker caught

400 years ago. Things don’t get a say in this, of course. That Jacobean wine glass must be getting bloody thirsty by now.

You will be relieved to know, all the puzzles in this exhibition are solved for you. Your task is to work out how the things belong in each collection. Your task is to test your wits against these collections. It’s part detective story, part garage sale.

What you also find, when you impose a particular collection constraint, is that, within that constraint, the rest of the world sneaks in. Gathering things under the category of falling or sleeping, you get everything from a sleeping woman to a dead bird, you get a ruler with wood from Falls Idaho and a book on How to Profit from the falling Dollar. You get sadness and joy. Something to remember about all of these found photographs: The camera stops life in its tracks. The camera is an idling hearse.

Some photos might seem a little more voyeuristic than others. Say, the collection of people from behind. You have to be careful when you are searching for those on the internet, but galleries are full of them.

The collections in this exhibition quietly retain the patina of the techniques and habits of search engines, from the Markov Chain to the logic gate to the taste profile and so on. The Internet is a vast unhinged album. The Internet shows us what it thinks we will like depending on what we have liked before. That is its genius and its poetic flaw. The Internet makes sense of things via binary-logic gates such as either/or and and/or, and similar search look-alikes. But we have to remember that heart pills and contraceptive pills look the same but they don’t do the same thing.

Like the museum or the gallery, my work treats the world as if it were a puzzle. It seems to say: ‘If only we could find all the pieces we might solve the puzzle.’

It’s a folly, of course, but looking for things in common sure beats working in isolation.

The Sleeping Collection

Photography in the mirror

Wind (Left) and Wind (Right)

The Museum of Falling

Behind the Collection

All of these works are from the MPRG Collection.

Patrick Pound has created distinct themes and matched a selection of his found photographs and objects with our collection.

1. The Sleeping Collection From left to right Joy HESTER Reclining floating nude c. 1945-55 watercolour on paper Purchased, 1982 ____ Arthur BOYD Lovers in a boat at Hastings c.1955 oil on perspex Gift of the artist, 1988 Charles BLACKMAN Sleeping Princess 1954 black crayon on paper Bequest of Tess Hill and Bill Hawtin, 2018 Arthur LOUREIRO Death mask 1924 oil on canvas Gift of Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, 1977 Tony COLEING Dying Flying 2007 inkjet print on paper Purchased from National Works on Paper, 2008 David WADELTON Still life - head and foot 1995 pencil on paper Purchased from the Spring Festival of Drawing, 1995 ____ Brian DUNLOP Reclining nude 1980 pencil on heavy wove paper Purchased, 1981

Jean MARCHAND (Reclining nude) not dated pen and ink, heightened white Gift of Elizabeth Summons, 1984 2. Photography in the Mirror Brett COLQUHOUN The Mirror 2010 coloured pencil on paper Purchased from the 2010 Beleura National Works on Paper with funds provided by Beleura - The Tallis Foundation

Charles Bennett (Fallen tree, Mornington) 1922 watercolour and pencil on card Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2011 6. Behind the Collection From left to right Rick AMOR Study for ‘The visitor’ 2000 charcoal on paper Gift of the artist, 2006

3. Wind (Left)

Terry MATASSONI Contemplation 2010 lithograph on paper Gift of the artist, 2016

James GILLRAY The king of Brobdingnag and Gulliver 1804 etching and watercolour on paper Gift of Paul Butcher, 1995

Janet CUMBRAE STEWART Susie Quinlan née Gregory in a blue dress 1918 pastel on buff wove paper Gift of Miss Mary Quinlan, 1999

4. Wind (Right) Lesley DUXBURY Squall 1992 mezzotint on paper Purchased from the MPAC Prints Acquisitive, 1992 5. The Museum of Falling Charles Bennett Fell - Jan 20 1922, Tanti, Mornington 1922 watercolour and pencil on card Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2011

William DOBELL Clown n.d. pen, brush and ink on cream paper Gift of the William Dobell Art Foundation, 1979 William FRATER Susanna 1971 oil on composition board Gift of the artist, 1973 John KRZYWOKULSKI Figure study 4 1984 lithograph on paper Gift of the artist, 1986 Brett WHITELEY Undressing c.1972 lithograph on buff paper Purchased, 1973

7. The Collection in Pairs G.W. BOT Glyphs - the Ancients 2016 linocut on tissue paper.

Edition 1/33.

Gift of the artist, 2016 Imre SZIGETI Untitled c.1955 pen and ink on paper Gift of Dr and Mrs C.B. Christesen, 1986 Eric THAKE Bombed house, Darwin 1945 watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper Gift of Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, 1971 George BAXTER Untitled (Two portraits of a girl) c.1850s-60s colour steel and wood engraving on paper Untitled (Two English landscapes) c.1850s-60s colour steel and wood engraving on paper Bequest of Mrs Rebecca Knowles, 1983 John KRZYWOKULSKI Landscape towards a metamorphosis No.2 1991 synthetic polymer paint on hard board Gift of Dr and Mrs C. B. Christesen, 1992 Carole WILSON Vietnam Twice 2007-08 collaged and stitched map on paper Purchased from National Works on Paper, 2008

In display cabinet

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Denis O’CONNOR Glass form 1982 coloured glass Purchased with assistance from the Craft Board, 1982

Brent HARRIS The untimely (No 7 & No3 ) 1998 colour woodblock prints on oriental paper Purchased from National Works on Paper, 1999

MARTIN Bros Pottery Untitled (Ceramic pot) 1903 stoneware vase with green glaze Gift of Mrs Barbara Lindner, 1985 Kate COTCHING Old bags, pink and yellow 2002 hand-cut paper, ink and thread Purchased from National Works on Paper, 2002 Above display cabinet Julia POWLES The sky above my mother-inlaw’s house 2000 pastel on paper Purchased from National Works on Paper, 2000 John SANDLER Balancing 1973 colour photo-screenprint on paper Gift of the artist, 1973 Morris COHEN The River Kavieng, Bouganville 1930 pastel Gift of Mrs Valerie Albiston and Miss Yvonne Cohen, 1994

Lawrence DAWS Study for drapery for DOMESTIC VIOLENCE II 1986 chalk, pencil, coloured pencil and synthetic polymer paint on paper Gift of the artist, 2005 Sue McDOUGALL Double image 1983 fibre-tipped pen on paper Purchased from the Spring Festival of Drawing, 1983 Janet DAWSON Cover and page design for ‘Meanjin’ magazine (1963) pastel on cardboard Gift of Dr and Mrs C. B. Christesen, 1989 Ben CROSSKELL Captain Cook’s Cottage n.d. etching on cream laid paper Gift of Enid Denton, 1981