2015.Q1 | Artonview 81 Autumn 2015

Guy Maestri, East West Cutting, 2014, oil on linen, 183 x 225cm (Wynne Prize Finalist 2014)

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JAMES TURRELL Handcoloured photography | Indian miniatures | The Boxer Bequest | NGA Kids

‘ONE OF THE GREATEST ARTISTS OF OUR TIME’ NEW YORK TIMES

JAMES TURRELL A RETROSPECTIVE CANBERRA ONLY nga.gov.au James Turrell Virtuality squared 2014 Ganzfeld: built space, LED lights Collection James Turrell Image: National Gallery of Australia

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AUTUMN 2015 | 81

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FEATURES

REGULARS

By the decade | 4

Ramayana | 28

Acquisitions | 36

Roger Butler on this year’s Masterpieces for the Nation Fund: Margaret Preston’s For a little girl

Melanie Eastburn on the tale of Rama told through the exquisite art of Indian miniature painting

James Turrell, Dorothy Napangardi, Trevor Nickolls, Dorrit Black, Joseph Jenner Merrett, Khadim Ali

New directions | 6

Supporting creative young minds | 30

Thank you … | 44

Gerard Vaughan speaks candidly with Eric Meredith about what’s in store for the National Gallery of Australia

Rose Marin takes a closer look at the Gallery as a great destination for children and families

Facesinview | 46

Handcoloured | 12

The Alan Boxer Bequest | 32

Shaune Lakin and Anne O’Hehir colour the world again in an exhibition of handcoloured photographs

Deborah Hart celebrates the works of Blackman, Perceval, Tucker, Boyd, Olsen and more in the Alan Boxer Bequest

Light takes form | 18 Lucina Ward steps into the light of James Turrell’s retrospective at the National Gallery in Canberra

Members news | 48

Issue 81 | Autumn 2015 Cover: James Turrell Virtuality squared 2014, built space, LED light program. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2014. © James Turrell

Exhibitions NGA CANBERRA

Editor Eric Meredith Designer Kristin Thomas Proofreader Meredith McKendry Photographers Alanna Bishop, Eleni Kypridis, Lisa Mattiazzi, Brooke Shannon, John Tassie, Dominic Thomas Pre-press Michael Tonna Printing CanPrint, Canberra

James Turrell (pages 18–27) Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, until 8 June Adult $25.49 (Mon–Fri) $30.58 (Sat–Sun & public holidays) Member $20.39 | Student $20.39 Limited timed tickets available for each session Book now at ticketek.com or 1300 795 012 Impressions of Paris Orde Poynton Gallery and Project Gallery, until 15 March Colour my world (pages 12–17) Project Gallery, 3 April – 30 August The story of Rama (pages 28–9) Orde Poynton Gallery, 24 April – 23 August New prints NGA Contemporary, from 1 May Alive and spirited Childrens Gallery, until 26 April Dress up Childrens Gallery, from 9 May

Contributors Roger Butler, Senior Curator of Australian Prints and Drawings Melanie Eastburn, Curator of Asian Art Deborah Hart, Senior Curator of Australian Painting and Sculpture post 1920 Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator of Photography Rose Marin, Family Program Coordinator Anne O’Hehir, Curator of Photography Gerard Vaughan, Director Lucina Ward, Curator of International Painting and Sculpture

NGA ELSEWHERE

Donations +61 (0)2 6240 6691 Sponsorship +61 (0)2 6240 6740 The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is a not-for-profit entity.

Many acquisitions, exhibitions and programs are made possible through private and corporate supporters.

Capital and country Newcastle Art Gallery, 7 March – 31 May Bodywork Lake Macquarie City Gallery, 10 April – 10 May Artspace Mackay, 22 May – 5 July Stars in the river Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery, until 10 May William Kentridge Western Plains Cultural Centre, until 29 March Impressions of Paris Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, 27 March – 7 June

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© National Galley of Australia Published quarterly. Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Every effort has been made to identify copyright holders but omissions may occur.

The views expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the National Gallery of Australia. Artonview may contain names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

ISSN 1323‑4552 Printed on FSC and PEFC certified paper using vegetable-based inks.

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Director’s word Gerard Vaughan

One of the most interesting and enjoyable aspects of my arrival at the NGA was the preparation for and opening of the exhibition James Turrell. The result was a great credit to all staff and, of course, to my predecessor Ron Radford AM, whose commitment to the work of an artist renowned throughout the world has brought such a fantastic show to Australia.

Ron participated in the opening events, and I congratulated him not only on the exhibition but also on his determination to acquire a group of Turrell’s major works, included in the show. We now have one of the strongest holdings of Turrell’s work anywhere.

For a retrospective on a living artist, there is perhaps no greater compliment than that paid by the artist whose lifetime of achievements is being presented—especially when that artist has a career as long as Turrell’s. So, when James described the installation quality of our show as one of the finest ever, we were delighted.

Understanding and executing Turrell’s vision for art based on the experience of light requires a team of committed professionals, and Gallery staff worked tirelessly with Turrell’s assistants to build the ten lightworks in the retrospective.

It was a huge and exacting project, equivalent to building three houses in eleven weeks. This achievement deserves great praise.

During this intensely busy period, NGA staff also made time to make me feel very welcome and briefed me on every imaginable topic, and I look forward to working with them in pursuing our mission to promote the broadest

possible understanding of the visual arts in Australia.

With that in mind, we have some other great exhibitions coming soon: our exhibition of handcoloured Australian photography opens early April, followed at the end of the month by a collection of Indian miniatures from the National Museum, New Delhi; May then brings with it a print show at NGA Contemporary. And don’t forget our many fun and informative public programs, including our part in this year’s Enlighten festival.

I enjoyed meeting so many of you at the members opening for James Turrell. The first thing any applicant for a job like the NGA directorship is asked is ‘what is your vision for the future?’ Since the job interview, I have had time to engage in many discussions with colleagues and members of the Council about future ideas and plans, so it was with great pleasure that I accepted Eric’s invitation to do an interview for this issue of Artonview to serve as an introduction for our readers.

The subject of this year’s Masterpieces for the Nation Fund is For a little girl 1929, a marvellous, charming and stylistically innovative work by Margaret Preston.

It is a picture that, for Preston, punctuates a decade, drawing her preoccupations of the 1920s to a close as she considered new ideas.

Many of you will have donated to this fund in previous years, and I warmly encourage you to continue supporting this growing collection of exceptional works of art. This is a particularly

inspiring way through which each and every one of us, according to our means, can help out.

Notably, a great exemplar of generosity is the late Alan Boxer, whose recent bequest to the Gallery included works by many of Australia’s most important mid twentiethcentury masters. Senior Curator Deborah Hart draws out some of the highlights on pages 32–5. Our new acquisition of works by James Turrell last year included a gift from the artist, his wife Kyung and Pace Editions in New York in honour of our former director Ron Radford. Senior Curator Christine Dixon singles out Shanta II (blue) for discussion in this issue (pages 36–7).

My colleagues and I have a demanding year ahead. The complex and difficult issue of checking and validating the provenance information concerning antiquities in our Asian collection will gather pace, bringing, we trust, greater clarity and certainty in an area that has been the subject of considerable press and public comment and scrutiny. I believe that the new processes we have put in place will serve us well.

I look forward to sharing with you, in future issues of Artonview, details of our vision for new and challenging ways to present not only our own incredible collections but also exhibitions of masterpieces drawn from around the world.

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Margaret Preston For a little girl 1929, oil paint on canvas © Margaret Rose Preston Estate. Represented by Viscopy

BY THE DECADE Roger Butler on this year’s Masterpieces for the Nation Fund: Margaret Preston’s For a little girl

Margaret Preston (1875–1963) had a long working life, producing paintings, prints and decorative arts items over some five decades. The decades seem to have been important markers for her life—times to review and move forward.

The first decade of the twentieth century was centred on study in Europe, the second in exhibiting and teaching in England. Returning to Australia, she married in Sydney on the last day of 1919, entering the 1920s with a new name and place of residence. In this decade, she came to prominence with her colourful paintings, many of which were still-life studies of Australian flowers. But, by the end of the decade, she gave up colour to concentrate on structure and moved in 1932 into the bush at Berowra. The 1940s saw her return to Sydney reflecting on Aboriginal art in her paintings, monotypes and masonite cuts. She entered the 1950s at the age of seventy-four and had her second solo exhibition in 1953, exhibiting an extraordinary group of stencil prints that were to be a summation of her career.

Her painting For a little girl 1929 is a transitional work painted at the time when Preston was moving away from her use of bold decorative colour to a more monotone palette, a move that did not please the critics. Preston had always had a deep interest in the structure of works of art and frequently analysed and sometimes borrowed from others.

This work is one of a number of prints and paintings in which Preston has captured the central elements of the painting in very shallow space. In Self-portrait 1930 in the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection, she has curtailed the space with a brick wall, while the space in For a little girl is defined by the white tablecloth in the foreground and the white wall behind.

Preston considered the still life as a laboratory to test out her ideas and has been playfully inventive in this painting.

The tablecloth is adorned with four images of flowers in a vase and the white wall behind has a repeat pattern of bottlebrush flowers in orange and black, obviously her own designs.

The objects on the table—a French vase, wrapped sweets in a bowl, two Chinese spoons and a loaf of bread on a plate—retain their forms and colour, unlike later works in which Preston forced forms into strict geometric, monochrome space.

Not quite part of the still life on the table is a small painting with a white matt in a thin black frame that hangs low on the wall.

A young girl in a blue smock and bonnet lifts her hand to a group of birds that continue the patterning of the bottlebrush stems, while the orange tile roof of a cottage repeats the orange of the flowers. There is a sense of great fun in the execution of this work. Perhaps,

this is because the painting has a hidden autobiographical content.

Preston was painting For a little girl at the end of the 1920s and, as is her want, was reflecting on the past decade. The painting within the painting is more than just a compositional element; it is a work by former student and friend Edith Collier (1885–1964) and was produced in Bonmahon, a coastal village in County Waterford, Ireland, where the artists worked together in the years prior to Preston’s return to Australia. Collier, a New Zealander, did not remain in England either, returning to live at Wanganui in 1922.

Preston was not only looking back with pleasure when she painted For a little girl but also thinking of the future, and she travelled the following year to New Zealand to visit her old friend.

For a little girl is an exceptional work that will, among other works in the collection, help define Margaret Preston’s phenomenal career. A fitting painting for the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2015.

MASTERPIECES FOR THE NATIONAL FUND 2015 Support the acquisition of this masterpiece for the nation by contacting the NGA Foundation today foundation@nga.gov.au | +61 (0)2 6240 6408 Donations above $2 are tax deductible

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Queen mother of Bhutan Tshering Yangdon on tour with NGA Council member Catherine Rossi Harris and Assistant Director Michael Baldwin, 23Â October 2014

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NEW DIRECTIONS Gerard Vaughan speaks candidly with Eric Meredith about what’s in store for the National Gallery of Australia

Eric Let’s start with your first impressions as a Canberra resident because, of course, visiting a city and living in it are two very different experiences.

Gerard I think it’s fair to say that Rose and I are both enjoying being here. I’d never spent more than a night or two at a time in Canberra but what we’ve found is a very liveable city.

We like the parkland, the openness, the space.

It is clearly a city that has developed its own particular lifestyle in recent years.

Also, geographically, Canberra offers so many possibilities. For someone from Melbourne, the prospect of getting to Sydney much more quickly is really good. Access to the coast, the countryside and, in due course, the mountains, all of that is great.

Eric Did you ever imagine yourself here, in the position you are now?

Gerard I think it’s true to say that, for me, the possibility of becoming Director of the NGA offered a lot of interesting possibilities because Canberra is the national capital—it’s a different dynamic here. Cultural diplomacy, for example, is a much more obvious and interesting issue than in other galleries around

the country. I’m having long discussions with colleagues here to get a fix on what the special qualities of the NGA are and on what it can do that others can’t or don’t do. I don’t have all the answers yet, but these are interesting and challenging matters to think about.

Eric What, then, do you see are the key or most immediate goals or concerns for the National Gallery of Australia? And what can you say about your plans for the Gallery at this early stage as Director?

Gerard First of all, let me begin by saying that, while I was at the NGV, I got to know two directors, Brian Kennedy and Ron Radford, and I’m a great admirer of the achievements of both. Ron, particularly because he was here for a decade, did tremendous things in terms of collection development, in terms of exhibitions. He mounted the most visited exhibition in the history of Australia, taking that honour away from the NGV while I was director. [laughter] But, that was good; a bit of competition is a good thing.

In any organisation like this, a change of director is a moment to sit back and think very carefully and seriously about what

has happened in the past and the direction in which the institution might go in the future. Of course, I have very strong views about new directions, new things we might do and different ways of doing what we already do. I’m a great believer in public engagement and making a visit to a museum of art an educative, enjoyable and interesting experience. But we also have to accept that this is a leisure activity, too. People have a choice. They can choose to go to the football, they can go to the beach or they can go to the National Gallery of Australia. So, we want the experience of being here to be one that people will remember and think was very worthwhile.

The NGA has a good track record in that, but we’re going to take a look, naturally, at everything we offer and decide whether there are different ways in which we can go about them.

Certainly, I have had long discussions with the senior executive team, the senior curators and many other colleagues and stakeholders.

Some ideas are very ambitious. They’ll take time and, above all, they’ll take money. The big one is Stage Two, the new building planned for the non-Indigenous Australian collections.

AUTUMN 2015 | ARTONVIEW 7

There’s an existing plan that I’ve inherited, and we’re continuing to think about where it might go. But, being realistic, that project is a good number of years away—how many years is a matter both for the Council of the NGA and for government.

Between now and the opening of a new building, we’re going to be giving a lot of thought to how we use existing resources and spaces, about what we can afford and what we can do within defined time limits. I would like to suggest we have another talk about this a little further into the year, when I can give an update on how things are going.

Eric Provenance is one issue you’ve made a top priority since your appointment. I don’t want to dwell on it here as it’s something we’ve been very open about in the media, but can you talk a little on the subject and, in particular, the new federal guidelines?

Gerard Most major collecting institutions in Australia already have their own guidelines, their own protocols and acquisition policies, but to have a national benchmark that reflects all the great international protocols and legislation is very important. Now, with the publication of the Attorney-General’s Department’s Australian best practice guide to collecting cultural material, there is complete clarity.

It’s worth saying that, although there’s been something of a spotlight on the NGA—and that’s fair enough as we are the national

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collecting institution for visual culture—we’re not alone. There are many institutions like us around the world that have been buying the same kinds of material from the same dealers and in the same context. It’s true to say there has been an evolution over the last decade or so in terms of what I would call the rigour the community expects we bring to the issue of due diligence and provenance research.

Of course, it’s regrettable a more rigorous approach to checking details of provenance wasn’t adopted earlier, but we’re not alone in this. At the end of the day, the NGA has been the victim of fraud.

We’ve now put in place some firm processes.

We want to move quickly, but not too quickly because we cannot make a mistake. We’ve got to get it absolutely right. We now have a team of three curators working permanently on the provenance histories of each work in the Asian collection. We’ve identified fifty-four South Asian antiquities that we think should take priority. Many are going to be cleared in a straightforward way, but there may be some for which we have to enter into discussions with foreign governments, when we feel we’ve identified a problem. In the case of the Shiva, we need to ask ourselves the question, ‘Given that we are the victim of a fraud, what might we have done to avoid that?’ They’re the principles we’ll be applying as we go forward.

It is an evolutionary thing and we’ve got to a point where there is a new clarity, a new global benchmark concerning these matters.

Eric Let’s talk about cultural diplomacy as it seems to have been a major drawcard for you.

Gerard As I said, that is, for me, one of the most interesting parts of this role, and it plays out on many levels. If you go right back to the formation of the NGA, to the very first discussions in the 1960s, those responsible for developing the first policy document for a possible national art gallery emphasised the fact that we must collect and display the art of our own region. That was not just East Asia but also South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific region. We’ve got incredibly strong collections in these areas.

I’ve always had a great personal interest in Pacific art, so I was pleased that, on my first day in the job, I had an official visit from the director of the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea, Andrew Moutu, who came with some colleagues and associates from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We discussed ways we can continue collaborating and supporting each other.

We’re now a signatory to a memorandum of understanding for cooperation and exchange between our institutions.

Australia is undertaking a redevelopment project for their museum to improve its facilities, and we are part of that, as is the National Museum of Australia. The NGA has already sent a team of our experts to help and advise, and I’m going to go to Papua New Guinea myself very soon. In the middle of this year, when celebrations

take place commemorating the fortieth anniversary of PNG independence, the NGA wants to be part of what’s happening.

We’re looking at exchanges of staff, exchanges of collection material, for example. It’s particularly appropriate that, at the same time as a new exhibition opens in Port Moresby to celebrate the refurbishment and redevelopment of their museum, we’ll be mounting here, at the NGA, a very important exhibition on the visual culture of the Sepik River, Myth and magic.

We also receive long-term loans from other institutions. For example, Cambodia has recently lent us some major sculptures from their national museum. We’ve just had a Barnett Newman painting loan from the National Gallery in Washington as Newman is not represented in our very strong collection of New York School painting.

I think that the possibility of continuing exchanges is very interesting. [For articles on both loans, see our last issue] All the collecting institutions in Canberra, including the NGA, can also play a role in assisting Government in hosting and entertaining distinguished visitors from overseas. In my second week here, the Prime Minister hosted the state lunch for the visiting President of France at the NGA, and that was a great opportunity for the President to have a brief look at the Indigenous collection.

Many official visitors to Canberra come to the NGA, and it’s always a really great pleasure

to meet them, show them around and give them an insight into our own culture, which is incredibly multifaceted. Our population comes from every corner of the world almost, and that needs to be expressed in the national collections, too.

There are interesting things an institution based in Canberra can do that, perhaps, the state galleries can’t do or would do differently, and that’s fantastic.

Eric You also have a strong academic background. How do you see that informing your role as Director?

Gerard It’s a good question, and every director of a museum like this comes with a basket of different skills and interests.

In my case, my professional career has been divided between academia and museums and galleries. I’ve come and gone between the two.

I’m certainly trained as an art historian and that remains one of the great passions that drives my life.

The NGA has always been a great repository of information about the visual culture of Australia. It has the biggest and best art library in the country. No question about that! The archives of Australian artists held by the NGA are extraordinary. So, it’s already a powerhouse when it comes to the study of Australian art. Certainly, the plans for Stage Two describe it as ‘The Centre for Australian Art’ and its documentation, research and educative values will be crucial.

But, there are so many more things we can do, so many alliances we can have with other galleries, with universities, research institutes and private collectors, both in this country and overseas. So, as time goes on, provided we have the resources and the funding, we can develop those even further.

Eric Ron Radford brought back the blockbuster to the NGA. Are we going to continue those?

Gerard Of course, we will continue to have blockbusters, but there’s a certain reaction nowadays against that particular description.

Shows on that scale have become incredibly expensive and place demands on the world’s greatest museums—and museums and galleries everywhere are having to cut back and think much more about budgets. Major museums around the world have found that smaller, more-focused shows are easier, cheaper and, if well planned and well curated, still able to bring in enormous crowds.

We’re already seeing it in Europe and North America. We are seeing an evolution, and the NGA will be part of that.

You’ll find that, as the years roll on, there will be more shows curated by the NGA, not just ticking the box with another institution sending a packaged group of predetermined pictures. There will be a more creative process in exploring the work of individual artists or groups of artists or themes and ideas. If and when an irresistible opportunity presents itself,

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Page 8: NGA Director Gerard Vaughan gives French President François Hollande and Prime Minister Tony Abbott a tour of The Aboriginal Memorial at the National Gallery of Australia, 19 November 2014 Photo: Cole Bennetts—Pool/Getty Images

Page 9: NGA staff Giselle Stanton and Sarah Mchugh in the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea’s conservation lab with Director Andrew Moutu and conservator Francis Bafmatuk, 10 December 2014 Opposite: Director Gerard Vaughan, James Turrell and former director Ron Radford at the opening of James Turrell: a retrospective, 12 December 2014

of course, we may well bring in a ‘Masterpieces from’ show, but I think they’ll be fewer and they’ll get a bit smaller.

Eric Would you similarly define Turrell?

Gerard Yes. Turrell is a special example because he’s a contemporary artist of enormous distinction. But the Turrell show is also a little different because of this institution’s special relationship with the artist, which has come through the interest of Ron Radford and senior colleagues here. The show consists of a relatively small number of individual rooms that cover a huge area because of the nature of the light installations.

Because he is an artist with whom we’ve worked directly and collaboratively, we were also able to acquire from him a group of major works for the collection. So, when the new wing is built, we can represent Turrell, who is a global superstar, in a very rich way.

Only two or three other museums in the world have collections as strong as the NGA’s.

That gives us distinction.

Eric And is Turrell and the launch of NGA Contemporary an indication of more of a contemporary focus?

Gerard NGA Contemporary is, of course, a relatively small space, but it was an opportunity to respond to the fact that this building on the corner of King Edward Terrace and Bowen Place ran out of display space many years ago. We collect a great

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deal of contemporary art. The Indigenous galleries, because they’re big and new and spacious, reflect that, but, when it comes to non-Indigenous Australian art, there is simply no room to show the fantastic contemporary things we acquire. The availability of that space beside the lake is important but, even so, it’s not big enough for us to do justice to the contemporary collections.

As we go forward, I see NGA Contemporary evolving in its use. I see it as a space where we’ll do cutting-edge contemporary art. We might dedicate the space to one artist or a group.

We might invite an artist to create a special installation or performance. I think it offers great possibilities and the potential to attract a younger crowd.

I’m very keen and very interested in the general issue of energising activity around the perimeter of this building. Externally, we’ve got the lakeside gallery, the Sculpture Garden full of masterpieces and the James Turrell Skyspace; and inside, we’ve got The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88, a very major work that can be viewed from outside. So, we’re thinking that other important works of art, particularly sculptures, within the building can be installed so they can be lit and viewed from outside after hours.

In the space between here and NGA Contemporary, I hope we can do more art events. The Ministry has been very helpful, and so has the National Capital Authority.

Making this our corner, if I can put it like that,

of the parkland on the southern side of the lake, making it somewhere where there’s a lot happening would be fantastic.

We’re looking at new opportunities for Canberrans to come to the NGA precinct, whether it’s open or not; there’ll be things on, particularly more night openings. The ambition and vision are there, and we’ll need to secure the right resources to make it happen.

Eric In terms of late nights, the area does liven up at least once a year during Enlighten.

Gerard Exactly. That’s a really good example, and we have plenty planned for those days. If we can continue contributing to keeping that sense of enlivenment going at other times of the year, it would be a great outcome.

Eric Although you’ve had very little time to familiarise yourself fully with the national collection, do you see any areas in need of particular growth?

Gerard It’s too early to say. Ideally, we’ll be putting more resources toward collecting contemporary art from other parts of the world. I’d like to see more important examples of contemporary Asian art coming into the collection, for example. There are many, many parts of the world where there are amazing artists working. I don’t think we will have the money or the resources or the time or the space to start collecting deeply from parts of the world where we’ve never collected before, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t go and find

individual artists and individual works of real quality and interest.

When we have the new building, we are planning a very substantial space for global contemporary art—a place where, perhaps, we can put to one side our historic taxonomies when it comes to artistic production and where visitors can find Indigenous and non‑Indigenous Australian art mixed up with contemporary Asian art, art from America, from Africa, from Britain, from Germany, wherever. And to find themes and concepts that link them together, but not necessarily rigid national divisions, which tends to be the way we collect and display things now.

Like everything else, art production and collecting is increasingly globalised.

The time has come for this institution to have a separate department of contemporary art. That’s something I’m very keen on.

The staff here support it and the Council support it. We need a group of curators whose only role in life is to think about contemporary practice, whether it’s here or other parts of the world, and deliver new experiences to the Australian public.

Eric Yes, it’s certainly interesting considering contemporary art came about during this period, the rise of a global society, with conversations happening across borders.

Gerard You’ve put your finger on it.

That’s exactly what it’s all about. It’s a great opportunity for the NGA.

Eric How do you propose to support these areas of growth?

Gerard There are different ways in which we can support them but, at the end of the day, it’s always about resourcing. We have to know that we can rely on government to provide the basic operating funding required to employ staff to run this great institution. However, already some thirty to forty per cent of our gross revenue comes from non-government sources—from our own income-earning activities, from philanthropy, sponsorships— and that amount will continue to grow.

Research shows that, in this country, the impression that the arts and sport (which gets a lot of funding) have separate constituencies, or markets, is wrong. The people and families who go to the footy are largely the same people and families who go to museums and galleries.

There’s a far greater overlap than any of us might have imagined. So, the role of the NGA Foundation, the role of marketing, all of that becomes much more important and focused because it’s now a shared process between government and the private sector.

That also dovetails with what we were talking about before concerning cultural diplomacy. There are tremendous opportunities, particularly in Canberra, to take advantage of that. It’s never easy to secure money from the private sector but, if you’re professional, methodical, focused and, above all, credible, you’re halfway there. It’s a brave new world, and the role of the private sector

is becoming increasingly important. But, at the end of the day, it’s government that will drive the agenda when it comes to basic levels of operational funding, new buildings, new facilities, things like that.

Eric And, finally, is there anything in particular you’d like to add for our readers?

Gerard Well, I would like to comment on Artonview itself, which has a special quality.

The articles always have a depth of content and seriousness that I’ve appreciated. Inevitably, it will evolve in tandem with new ideas and approaches for the collection and exhibitions, and that evolution will be interesting.

Of course, Artonview will go on reflecting what happens here and, more to the point, involve our readership and members more.

I am looking forward to seeing how all of us—the NGA team and our members and readers—will bring about changes to enrich our understanding and experience of our National Gallery’s collections, exhibitions and programs.

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Robyn Stacey Untitled 1985–87, gelatin silver photograph, colour dye. Courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney

HANDCOLOURED Shaune Lakin and Anne O’Hehir colour the world again in an exhibition of handcoloured photographs

In the early 1980s, the National Gallery of Australia recognised that the handcoloured photograph represented a challenge to the assumed primacy of the perfectly realised black-and-white print. In response, it began developing a sizable collection of works by contemporary photographers. As then curator of photography Helen Ennis inferred in 1987, in an article for the autumn issue of Photofile, collecting handcoloured photographs also complicated the way accounts of recent Australian photography were invariably told through ‘classic straight single’ black-and-white photographs made by men.

A strong story now runs through the national collection, tracing the development and significance of handcoloured prints to Australian photography since the 1970s.

Our exhibition Colour my world: handcoloured Australian photography brings together, for the very first time, a selection of material covering this important aspect of recent Australian photography.

The history of handcolouring in photography is as old as the medium itself.

Since its invention in the mid nineteenth century, photographers have delighted in

disrupting the purity of photographic print surfaces using a variety of techniques, most often collage and the addition of colour.

The fact that photography rendered the world in monochrome was widely seen as a shortcoming; painted on rosy cheeks and glittering gold jewellery abound in early photographic daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits, animating the image and attempting to make the sitter appear more lifelike.

Handcolouring continued to be employed right through the first half of the twentieth century, most notably in studio-produced portraits and tinted postcards.

By the mid twentieth century, the practice of handcolouring photographs was in decline, as photographers began to engage more explicitly with the technical integrity of photography. Rhetoric around black-andwhite photography’s very particular, direct relationship to the world, its technological origins and its highly idiosyncratic capacity to see the world in new ways placed the photographic print in a place that was very distinct from other kinds of pictures.

With notable exceptions such as Stephen Shore, William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz

in the United States of America, the photographers who dominated the scene worked in gelatin silver. Colour photography, which was expensive, belonged to the commercial realms of advertising and fashion; and, even when a colour photograph assumed a documentary function, the complexities of colour printing processes left the picture without the immediate and direct relationship between the world and image—and thus the authority—of black-and-white photography.

In this climate, to bring colour back into the image through handcolouring was an act of resistance. Any photographer in the 1970s who took to their prints with coloured pencils and brushes, in effect, disputed the so-called authority of black-and-white photography.

This challenge operated in a number of ways. For feminist photographers, handcolouring acknowledged the underrecognised history of women’s photographic work, as it was historically women who were employed by studios to hand-paint or tint photographs. Overpainting the print also disrupted the myth of photographic transparency and truth, the basic proposition that the photograph is a disinterested

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window onto the world. In a related way, handcolouring personalised the photographic print, itself the product of technological process, arcane knowledge and chemistry.

The technical mastery of a finely printed photograph was subsumed and then subverted by paint and coloured pencil applied by hand. Through all of this, the handcoloured photograph forms part of a wider development that engaged many of the benchmarks of contemporary photographic practice—a shift from photography’s role as a reportage tool dominated by classic photojournalism to one that expressed more personal, private concerns.

The significance of the private and the personal is located in both the subject and the

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materiality of photographs in the Gallery’s collection and currently on display in Colour my world. Consider photographs by Micky Allan and Ruth Maddison in which the significance of daily tasks such as picking up a disabled child from school and the mundane familiarity of a family Christmas are matched by the subjectivity, intimacy and warmth of Allan’s and Maddison’s handcoloured, tactile surfaces. Robyn Stacey’s reflections in the 2002 book Australian art in the National Gallery of Australia sum up the thinking of many who took up the practice: ‘This approach seemed a good way to visually re-enforce the personal and intimate quality of the prints, as well as being sympathetic to the subject matter’.

Melbourne-based Janina Green recalled in recent correspondence with the authors that she liked the way handcolouring converted the otherwise ‘austere and formal’ black-and white photograph into something that was ‘sensual and emotional’. The desire to personalise the mechanical photographic object is shared

by West Australian artist Miriam Stannage, whose large handcoloured prints provoked iconic modernist photographer Max Dupain to berate, in a 1982 review, the addition of colour as ‘an emotional seducer like the tasty chemical additive in one’s favourite jam’.

As Ennis noted, another important aspect of the work by photographers who handcoloured during the 1970s and early 1980s was the

fact that they worked in series. Even though photography is essentially a serial medium, art photography’s most highly prized products tend to be single prints. This was especially so with analogue photography, where pictures were often taken on strips of film from which the photographer would select a defining image to print (usually indicated with a highly performative coloured circle or cross on a contact sheet). Warren Breninger’s series Expulsion of Eve 1978 sees the same picture of an eleven-year-old girl reproduced across fifteen prints, each of which has been heavily mediated by the artist with colour, collage and reworking. There is no single, defining image or perfectly realised photographic

print, but instead a prolonged series of prints that challenge the notion of the ‘classic straight single’ photograph and the basis of its relationship to the physical world.

And, if the darkroom is a place of isolation, and some risk (particularly for many women photographers), handcolouring created community: Micky Allan taught both Ruth Maddison and Robyn Stacey the fundamentals of the art and many women at the time were part of active networks involving collaborative exhibitions, publications and projects. The handcoloured photograph brings the viewer into this space of community.

It engages a direct connection between the experiences of the photographer, the sensual

Opposite: Miriam Stannage The flood from the series News from the street 1984, gelatin silver photograph, colour dye. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1990 © Miriam Stannage

Above: Janina Green Maid in Hong Kong #7 from the series Maid in Hong Kong 2008, gelatin silver photograph, colour dye. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Wilbow Group, 2012, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Following page: Warren Breninger Expulsion of Eve (no 3) 1978, gelatin silver photograph, chinagraph, decal lettering. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant, 1982

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surface of the photograph and the viewer, a relationship that is staged in the event of the work itself.

While the disrupted surface of the handcoloured photograph may well have challenged the conventions of ‘classic’ photography during the 1970s, during the 1980s it became one of a set of tools used by postmodern artists to interrogate ideas of originality and authorship. Artists, including Julie Rrap, Janina Green and Robyn Stacey, played with notions of surface and photographic reproduction by rephotographing their handcoloured works and presenting their works as colour prints. Handcolouring becomes part of the process: the world was transformed through the artist’s imagination and hand and then rendered a document again through the lens of the camera.

The rapidly expanding use of digital photography since the 1990s has encouraged photographers and people interested in photography to reconnect with the medium’s history. Associated with this and perhaps in response to the immateriality of contemporary photography (images are now mostly taken, stored and shared electronically), we have seen a return to the photographic object.

Handcolouring, whether by hand or digitally, demonstrates that, even though digitisation has impacted significantly on the accessibility and scale of contemporary photography, many of photography’s rituals, motivations and pleasures remain the same. Nici Cumpston hand colours large-scale landscapes of the Murray‑Darling river system as a way of documenting traces of Indigenous occupation and use and of bringing to our attention the decline of the system’s delicately balanced ecosystems. Similarly, the handcoloured photographs of collaborators Charles Green, Lyndell Brown and Jon Cattapan remind us that an essential part of the experience of photography has always been the embodied, social experience of it.

Below, from top: Ruth Maddison Number 26 from Christmas holiday with Bob’s family, Mermaid Beach, Queensland, 1977/78 1979, gelatin silver photograph, colour dye. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1988 Micky Allan The prime of life no 7 from the series The prime of life 1979, gelatin silver photograph, pencil, watercolour, gouache. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1981 © Micky Allan. Represented by Viscopy

COLOUR MY WORLD Recent handcoloured Australian photographs at the NGA from 3 April to 30 August For the diary: ‘Curators’ perspective’, Shaune Lakin and Anne O’Hehir 9 April, 12.45 pm

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James Turrell Virtuality squared 2014, built space, LED light program. Collection of James Turrell All images in this feature © James Turrell

LIGHT TAKES FORM Lucina Ward steps into the light of James Turrell’s retrospective at the National Gallery in Canberra

Visitors leaving Virtuality squared 2014 tend to be smiling, thoughtful, intrigued and, occasionally, weak at the knees. They describe weightlessness, the effects of saturated colour, the mystery of the void beyond and the extraordinary after-effects on the threshold.

Moving within the work, they witness a light cycle that suffuses the senses, a space in which there are no corners or edges to orient the eye and where a synaesthetic experience gently confuses the body. They have just encountered a Ganzfeld, James Turrell’s monumental, cavern-like, light-filled installation in the retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia.

Ganzfelds, like Turrell’s Skyspaces, are a series of works based on a particular premise.

The word comes from the German for ‘complete field’, and the series comes from research conducted in the late 1960s in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art and Technology program. Collaborating with painter Robert Irwin and space-mission psychologist Ed Wortz, Turrell experimented with biofeedback, sensory deprivation techniques and anechoic chambers, testing the modes and limits of perception. The ideas that came out of this research continue to provide inspiration today, while new technologies mean the artist can now execute works he conceived more than forty years ago. Virtuality squared uses a computer-controlled LED lighting system that allows Turrell to mix an exquisite range of colours and to engineer

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subtle transitions, building and composing light into one of the largest spaces in the National Gallery of Australia.

The contrast between its square entrance and the vista inside is part of what makes Virtuality squared so extraordinary. We prepare to enter the work on the bench in the waiting area: we remove shoes, slip on clean plastic booties and wait in turn to climb the stairs. This is a landscape without horizon.

There is no image or object to see except each other seeing. The Ganzelds, like his Wedgeworks, are influenced by Turrell’s experiences as a pilot and things seen at sea: the ‘whiteout’ conditions of the arctic explorer, the disorientation of flying in clouds or fog,

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the rapture of diving to extreme depths or soaring at heights. We feel the physicality of light.

Virtuality squared is the most elaborate of ten constructed spaces installed for the retrospective. The exhibition comprises fifty works over almost five decades: drawings, photographs, prints, models, holograms, projection pieces and large-scale installations, including Within without 2010 (the Gallery’s Skyspace in the front garden). Works from private and museum collections come together with the newly acquired ‘Vertical vintage’ works from each decade of his practice to examine the artist’s key themes throughout his career. We explore the wealth of Turrell’s

sources in architecture, astronomy, physics, geology, philosophy and religious traditions.

His interests in geometrical forms, types of light and lighting techniques as well as references to popular culture are apparent.

Many of Turrell’s early works were developed during his time at the Mendota Hotel in Santa Monica, and a sequence of light performances produced there, the Mendota stoppages. In 1966, he sealed off rooms in the rented building, then cut holes into the walls and reopened some of the spaces to outside light. By manipulating sunlight during the day and urban light in the evening (neon signs, street lights, passing cars), Turrell orchestrated arrangements of light, shadow, colour and

Opposite: James Turrell Joecar (red) 1968, projected light. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2014 Right: James Turrell Afrum (white) 1966, projected light. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, partial gift of Marc and Andrea Glimcher in honour of the appointment of Michael Govan as Chief Executive Officer and Wallis Annenberg as Director and purchased with funds provided by David Bohnett and Tom Gregory through the 2008 Collectors Committee

movement. As well as his earliest projected light works, the Mendota period inspired a range of subsequent projects, including Shallow space constructions such as Raemar pink white 1969.

Joecar (red) 1968 is a Cross-corner projection and one of the earliest works on display.

A thick column of glowing red light reaches from floor to ceiling in the far corner of the room. It forms a fissure in the space, a cleft between the walls, and seemingly invites the viewer to venture beyond the gallery.

Like Afrum (white) 1966, from LACMA’s collection, Joecar (red) is made using a highintensity projector, a specialist lens and minutely focused metal gobo to shape the

light. Our eyes shift between interpreting the light as falling onto the surface of wall and being set behind the wall. In this way, the work plays with and confuses notions of exterior and interior space. Elsewhere, Turrell creates three-dimensional shapes where none exist and constructs walls and scrims only to have them disappear.

Afrum, Alta, Carn, Catso, Enzu, Gard and Squat are seven of the twenty aquatints that make up First light 1989–90. The suite is an anthology of works created, left unmade or, like the autonomous spheres elsewhere in the exhibition, awaiting realisation in an ideal world. Examining Alta, we see how the mottled and graded blacks are used

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Opposite, clockwise from top left: James Turrell Alta, Enzu, Afrum and Carn from the series First light 1989–90, etching and aquatint. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, The Poynton Bequest, 2013 Above: First light 1989–90 (left) and Projection piece drawings 1970–71 (right), with a view into Afrum (white) 1966, installed in James Turrell: a retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

with great sensitivity to indicate walls and a floor; this subtly carries through to the white square‑based pyramid formed in the corner of the space. Gard pushes the pyramid, now with a triangular base, back into the corner. Others from the suite explore further possibilities using, like Afrum (white) and Joecar (red), the geometry of the walls and volume of the room to create the shapes.

Turrell’s titles suggest a range of ordinary and esoteric connections: families, species or genus, geographical or plant taxonomies, characters or linguistic definitions.

Bullwinkle 2001 is a Magnetron. Like Shanta II (blue) and the Skyspaces, it relies on a carefully constructed aperture but,

unlike the others, uses light emitted from a cathode ray tube. In 1996, when Turrell began the Magnetron series, CRT televisions were commonplace, and he continues to use the now largely defunct technology for its specific tone and texture. Sitting and watching the flickering ‘screen’, we notice the variety and intensity of the cast light. Bullwinkle is at times still and all but monochrome and at others highly energetic, verging on frenetic, as befits the adventures of the cartoon character of the title. Turrell tells how, when the first group of Magnetrons were installed, the sources for the others—a weather, news, sports and porn channel—were discernible from the patterns and rhythms of light they emitted.

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At the centre of the exhibition is a group of works connected to Turrell’s chef d’oeuvre, Roden Crater, a naked-eye observatory on the edge of the Painted Desert, near Flagstaff, Arizona. He found Roden Crater while flying, and the bowl-shaped space was sufficiently elevated to cast the sky a deeper blue and to exploit the effect of ‘celestial vaulting’. The large multi-panelled photographic work General site plan Roden Crater 1986 and the view through the stereoscopic viewer capture the sheer immensity of this venture, which has consumed the artist’s energy and funds since the mid 1970s. This is a place to shape the sky, a place where we feel geological time, and where the artist is building spaces to capture

light and engage celestial events to ‘perform the music of the spheres in light’.

Other works refer to the range of skills Turrell brings to the project, including those of aerial cartographer. In the series of prints Mapping spaces 1987–88, aerial photographs and contour images of the crater are juxtaposed against images from the earlier Mendota period, drawing links between the two major projects. The Roden Crater field kit 2000 brings together samples from the site with surveyor’s instruments and documents, a reminder of the importance of heavy‑lifting equipment in Turrell’s toolkit: his teams invest a great deal of energy in moving cubic tonnes of earth short distances. When complete,

Roden Crater will house Skyspaces, Wedgeworks, Projection pieces and Space division pieces. Two of the six spaces now finished are the most complex: the shaping of the bowl and the Alpha tunnel that stretches 260 metres underground from the northeastern edge to the East Portal Skyspace. But, as Turrell’s striking photographs demonstrate, the crater shows remarkably little impact of these dramatic incursions.

Three holograms produced from 2006 to 2008 suggest Turrell’s interest in the thingness of light. We expect to see realistic objects produced by the light waves cast onto holographic film, paper or plates. But, passing in front of these holograms, a sharp-angled

green triangle or series of overlaid sheets of colour appear and reappear before our eyes.

One work, Untitled (XIX A) 2006, captures a rich golden-orange beam; and, together, in the darkened space, they seem like exotic jewels. The holograms, like the exquisitely produced aquatints of First light 1989–90 and Still light 1990–91, make simple geometric forms surprising and, like the Projection pieces, persuade us that we are seeing threedimensional objects or even the essence of the form.

Orca 1984, a Space division piece, is one of the most demanding works in the exhibition.

Viewers enter a darkened space and sit a while to allow their eyes to adjust. The room initially

appears empty except for two halogen lights set high on the side walls but, as with many of Turrell’s works, our patience is rewarded after a time when a rectangular shape becomes apparent on the far wall. It is as if, like Raemar pink white, there is a suspended monochrome canvas before us, but it is an indistinct, foglike grey colour. Once the viewer becomes accustomed, he or she may start to venture toward the rectangle, now more readily, but paradoxically, perceived as a volume or void.

An extended period allows colours to emerge, balancing the viewing with the sensing of space beyond.

Turrell’s prints and drawings both relate to his installations and are independent works.

Opposite: James Turrell Bullwinkle 2001, television, built space. Collection of Suzanne Deal Booth and David G Booth Above: The Roden Crater room: (from left to right) Stereoscopic aerial view of Roden Crater 1982, Roden Crater field kit 2000, Roden Crater at sunset 1/2 sun 1989 and Roden Crater box 1986

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For his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the gigantic Aten reign 2013 featured in the rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous building. The series of prints subsequently produced by the artist captures the extraordinary effects of that temporary work through various techniques, including woodblock, aquatint and digital means. A trio of these, Suite from Aten reign 2014, is a generous gift from the artist, his wife Kyung and Pace Editions in honour of the Gallery’s former director Ron Radford.

Each of the aquatints, in green, red and blue, required three plates, and the printers used an airbrushed acid resist to achieve the graduated colours. The prints somehow achieve, with ink

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and paper alone, a sense of the intangibility of light.

All Turrell’s works exploit the strengths and limitations of human perception, offering experiences for small groups or for a single person—Bindu shards 2010, the Gallery’s Perceptual cell, for instance. They invite us to not just see but also consider what and how we see. The retrospective in Canberra is one of a group of exhibitions—following those in the United States of America, Israel and Italy—to celebrate the artist’s many achievements to date, an example of his ongoing concerns and new stimulus. LED light and associated technologies have inspired Turrell to new possibilities, and now he wonders about

being on the edge of something entirely new.

Will the next step be to build with light?

Will he manage a Ganzfeld or Perceptual cell controlled by the participant’s thoughts? What will visitors hundreds of years from now make of the structures in the volcano in Arizona?

In James Turrell: a retrospective, we revel in the work of one of the world’s most extraordinary artists. This is the best opportunity to experience the range of James Turrell’s practice, at least until Roden Crater opens.

Opposite: James Turrell Suite from Aten reign 2014, aquatint. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of James and Kyung Turrell and Pace Editions in honour of Ron Radford AM, 2014 Right, from top: James Turrell: a retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Turrell oversees the operation of his work Bindu shards 2010

JAMES TURRELL Fifty years of a giant in the contemporary international art world, organised in association with Los Angeles County Museum of Art, at the NGA until 8 June Visit our website for more details and tickets.

Members save 20–33% on ticket prices For the bookshelf: James Turrell: a retrospective is available at the NGA Shop and selected bookstores nationally For the diary: ‘Let’s focus on perception’, panel of experts, 25 March, 6.00 pm ‘Art as a spiritual experience’, Prof David Tacey, 22 April, 6.00 pm Visit our website for a full list of talks, concerts and screenings

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Opposite, from left: Basohli style, Pahari The portrait of Rama c 1730, opaque watercolour on paper Guler style, Pahari The great battle between Rama and Ravana c 1780, opaque watercolour on paper Mandi style, Pahari The coronation procession c 1800, opaque watercolour on paper All works from National Museum, New Delhi

RAMAYANA Melanie Eastburn on the tale of Rama told through the exquisite art of Indian miniature painting

A tale of love, loyalty, betrayal and the victory of good over evil, the Ramayana is one of the world’s great epics. It is ubiquitous in Indian life and culture as popular entertainment and moral guidance. The most popular form of the story is attributed to a transcription by Valmiki, a poet of the fourth century BCE, but the Ramayana has as many variants as it does narrators. In the extraordinary exhibition The story of Rama: Indian miniatures from the National Museum, New Delhi, the Ramayana is told through one hundred and one paintings, each illustrating a key moment from the narrative. It begins with a painting of the sage Narada asking Valmiki to write the story.

The Ramayana takes its name from the hero Rama, an exemplary prince and ideal man, admired for his honour, valour and compassion. Rama is an avatar of the great Hindu god Vishnu, preserver of peace, who takes an earthly form when he is needed to restore balance to the world. Among Vishnu’s other avatars are Kurma the turtle, boar-headed Varaha and the much-adored Krishna, all of whom are depicted with distinctive blue skin of varying intensities.

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In legend, Vishnu was resting atop Shesha, king of the serpent gods, in his heavenly abode when woken by 3333 gods calling him to Earth to vanquish Ravana, the destructive demon king of Lanka. At the same time, King Dasaratha of Ayodhya was engaged in sacrifice in the hope of being granted a son.

He was astounded when Vishnu, in the form of a beautiful young man holding a bow and arrow, emerged from a burst of flames and announced himself as Rama, eldest son of Dasaratha. Rama’s three younger brothers were born of two of Dasaratha’s three wives: Bharata was the son of Kaikeyi and Lakshmana and Shatrughna were Sumitra’s twin boys.

Good, handsome and extremely strong, Rama won the hand of the virtuous Sita, an incarnation of Vishnu’s consort Lakshmi, goddess of beauty and prosperity, in a contest of strength and skill. Rama easily lifted and shot an arrow from the bow of the god Shiva, accurately hitting a tiny, moving target.

The weapon had proved impossible for the other suitors to even budge. Among them was the demon king Ravana, who swore revenge after learning of Sita’s amusement at his failed attempt; in another version of the story,

Ravana’s wrath is instead incurred when Rama rejects the advances of the demon king’s sister.

Afraid that Rama would become king ahead of her son Bharata, Kaikeyi manipulated King Dasaratha into exiling Rama for fourteen years and making Bharata heir to the throne.

Rama dutifully complied and, with Sita and Lakshmana, went to live in a forest. Dasaratha died heartbroken and Bharata, loyal to Rama, reluctantly ruled as regent. While in exile, Sita was enchanted by a golden deer and asked Rama to catch it for her as a companion.

As the elusive deer (Ravana’s evil uncle Maricha in disguise) led Rama further and further away, Sita was abducted by Ravana.

The deer chase is represented in a fine and sparse early seventeenth-century painting depicting the beautiful animal leaping away from blue-skinned Rama who, with one foot in the air, stands ready with his bow and arrow.

With the help of the monkey general Hanuman and his army, Rama and Lakshmana searched for Sita. The many adventures and obstacles along the way are dramatically played out through the miniatures. An image from the modern state of Himachal Pradesh in the foothills of the Himalayas is one of

three paintings in the exhibition representing the mighty final battle between Rama and Ravana. The clash, involving the monkey army and the demon forces with bulging eyes and fangs fighting alongside the primary hero and villain, is illustrated in lively and gruesome detail. While multi-headed Ravana is graphically decapitated, his heads regrowing each time, heavenly beings in floating boats scatter blossoms on Rama, who kneels astride the white horses of Indra, king of the gods.

The style of the painting is described as Guler after the previous name of the state in which it was created. Guler is one of several painting schools, including Kangra, Basohli and Mandi, which are also categorised under the wider term Pahari (from pahar, meaning ‘hill’ or ‘mountain’).

Another Pahari painting depicts Sita, once rescued, undergoing a trial by fire to prove she has been faithful to Rama. In a lush green landscape, Sita emerges from the flames unscathed and is shown on the left side of the painting seated beside Rama and receiving the gods, including Shiva, wearing a tiger-skin cloth, four-headed Brahma and Agni, the god of fire, as well as the monkey allies. After all

the drama, tension and violence associated with Sita’s rescue, Rama, Lakshmana, Sita, Hanuman, the monkey king Sugriva and attendants return victorious to Ayodhya in a flying chariot rich with floral ornamentation.

The chariot, one of the spoils of Rama’s victory, had been stolen by Ravana from his own brother to whom it was a gift from Brahma.

The return of the heroes to Ayodhya was marked with great joy, the city resplendent with the light of oil lamps. Their homecoming is the origin of Divali, the festival of lights held each autumn to celebrate the triumph of goodness, knowledge and light over evil, ignorance and darkness.

Created between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries from across India, the paintings not only present the fantastic story of the Ramayana but also the diversity of regional painting styles that developed over time. Most of the paintings were originally created as illustrations to written manuscripts that have long since dispersed.

A key image is a painting of Rama seated cross‑legged on a large lotus blossom and holding the bow and arrow that are his identifying attributes. For all the extraordinary

detail and complexity of so many of the paintings in the exhibition, this Basohli-style portrait shows Rama in profile against an unadorned background of pure, rich orange.

It is a great pleasure to be able to display these one hundred and one paintings from the National Museum, New Delhi, and to share the excitement of the Ramayana with visitors to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The exhibition marks the first of many collaborations between these two premier national institutions.

THE STORY OF RAMA The epic tale of Rama illuminated through Indian miniatures from the National Museum, New Delhi, at the NGA from 24 April to 23 August For the diary: ‘Curator’s perspective’, Melanie Eastburn, 28 April, 12.45 pm ‘Ramayana: myths and realities’, Dr Richard Barz, 12 May, 12.45 pm

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SUPPORTING CREATIVE YOUNG MINDS

Rose Marin takes a closer look at the Gallery as a great destination for children and families The National Gallery of Australia recognises how important it is to provide a welcoming and fun environment for children and their families, and they are actively encouraged with a dedicated exhibition space and a mix of self‑guided and facilitated programs that provide meaningful opportunities to engage with the national collection and temporary exhibitions.

Children are the artists, administrators and audiences of tomorrow’s galleries, but their special place at an institution such as the National Gallery is not simply dependent on their future as adults. Children engage with art in a fundamentally different way; their honesty and perspective often produce unexpectedly rich interpretations and discussions. Their responses provide instant benefits for not just them but also other children, families and the wider community.

The Sculpture Garden has long been a favourite with families; and, with new technologies now available, the Gallery last

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year developed a great way for children to explore the garden with the iPhone app Eye See ART. Using location-based technologies, the app provides clues to find and examine sculptures. The treasure hunt–style adventure appeals to kids’ sense of play and is easy to use for a generation that is more tech-savvy than ever. The adventure concludes with a real‑world reward on completion: a badge of their favourite sculpture.

The Gallery is always thinking of new ways to engage children, and ‘My friend at the gallery’ has been introduced for younger children to explore the Gallery with a parent or carer. Families can pick up their storybook and ‘friend’, handmade dolls inspired by characters within works of art on display, from the front desk and share a self-led journey in which unexpected discoveries are made and relationships built.

Dedicated staff and volunteers deliver a range of programs to suit developmental stages—from birth to preschool to preteen.

These programs provide specific frameworks in which children and their families can view works of art through exploration, activity and shared experience. Even before children start running about, the guided tour and social event ‘A little look at art’ provides a babyfriendly environment for new parents (or carers) to share their experiences of art and parenthood. Then, when children turn two, the emphasis shifts to them with the popular ‘stART with art’ program in which toddlers and parents share a tour of the Gallery, enjoy creative activities and dance and play at a concert.

The Gallery also offers plenty of programs for kids once they are off to school, including opportunities during the holidays. These programs engage young minds and hands in creative activities with artist-led workshops, drop-in family days and a range of regular favourites and one-offs. The Gallery’s James Turrell: a retrospective, for instance, includes a fun discovery trail that provides questions

for reflection on the nature and impact of light and colour. There is also the Light Lab, a digital space to explore, create and share.

Tweens also get a look in with the Art Scene Investigation Squad headed up by Detective Inspector Smarty Pants and Officer Angelheart. Each ‘episode’ of the adventurebased ‘ASI: Art Scene Investigation’ tackles a new mystery, and it is hard to tell where these intrepid art detectives and their special guest stars will end up next. And, of course, the big, unmissable yearly events for Canberran families and visitors alike are the immensely popular Sculpture Garden Sunday in March and Big Draw in October.

New kids and families webpages on the Gallery’s website are now helping parents learn more about the programs that are right for them. The webpages also include a link to join the NGA family by becoming a mini member, a membership program for children.

It has never been easier to plan, book, share and enjoy your family experiences at National

Gallery of Australia, where we love the imagination, originality and joy that children bring to art appreciation.

Even a trip to the cafe can include drawing about your experience at the Gallery with activity sheets available in the cafe and Sculpture Garden Restaurant. So, why not make 2015 a time for fun, discovery and learning with your children at the National Gallery of Australia.

From far left: the Gallery’s ‘stART with art’ is a great way to bring out the joy of creativity in children; discovering new ways to draw at the annual Big Draw; Gwen Horsfield is Inspector Smarty Pants in ‘ASI: Art Scene Investigation’; family and friends enjoy a day of art activities, music and relaxation at Sculpture Garden Sunday; kids discover the Sculpture Garden with the Gallery’s Eye See ART app

NGA KIDS AND FAMILIES More information on programs for kids and families is on our website or What’s on poster

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John Olsen Childhood by the seaport 1965 (detail), oil on composition board © John Olsen. Represented by Viscopy

All works in this feature from National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, The Alan Boxer Bequest, 2014

THE ALAN BOXER BEQUEST Deborah Hart celebrates the works of Blackman, Perceval, Tucker, Boyd, Olsen and more in the Alan Boxer Bequest

The Alan Boxer Bequest is one of the most significant acts of generosity to the National Gallery of Australia. It comprises key works by some of Australia’s finest twentieth-century artists, including Roy de Maistre, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, John Olsen, Charles Blackman and John Perceval.

A dedicated and insightful collector, Boxer enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the Gallery over many years. He took a keen interest in the developing national collection, visiting the off-site store before the building opened to the public in 1982. Following his retirement, he became a voluntary guide at the Gallery, further deepening his understanding of mid twentieth-century Australian art, which comprises the majority of works in the bequest.

The earliest work is de Maistre’s Waterfront, Sydney Harbour 1918–19, part of a relatively small group of paintings undertaken in the lead-up to the seminal exhibition Colour in art with Roland Wakelin at Gayfield Shaw Gallery in Sydney in 1919. This work was illustrated in the first edition of Bernard Smith’s classic art-historical text Australian painting in which Smith notes that the work was among the paintings that ‘foreshadowed

the first Australian essays in abstract art’. While it may not look abstract to us today, de Maistre was abstracting from the real, simplifying forms into bold planes of colour. It has long been the Gallery’s aim to represent this period of works by de Maistre and Wakelin in depth, and Waterfront, Sydney Harbour is a great addition to the collection.

Some of the works fill major gaps in the collection, including Blackman’s Rabbit tea party 1956–57 from his highly regarded series Alice in wonderland, which had not previously been represented. Rabbit tea party reflects Blackman’s interest in a child’s imaginative world, an interest he shared with his wife, poet and author Barbara Blackman, and artists such as Joy Hester and Sidney Nolan. Blackman first encountered Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s adventures in Wonderland as an audiobook as a result of Barbara’s sight impairment. The fact he heard rather than read this engaging tale meant that his imagination was given free rein as he brought a personal take to the story—with Barbara as Alice and himself as the rabbit. In Rabbit tea party, they are seated on high chairs alongside a disproportionately large, luminous yellow

vase in a world of make‑believe that engages us in its enchantments.

Blackman, Nolan and Tucker enjoyed working in series. Tucker’s Gamblers and parrots 1960 was identified by Boxer as the first work of significance that he bought for his collection and, as he said in an interview in 2000, it remained one of his favourites. In accordance with Tucker’s typology of roughly cast Antipodean heads, the gamblers look as though they are hewed from the landscape itself. Tucker had spent time in Rome, where he became familiar with the heavily textured works of Alberto Burri and a group of artists known as tachistes. He adapted their interest in earthy textures into evocations of Australia remembered from a distance. The dramatic card players facing each other personify a mighty stillness that contradicts the lively antics of the birds, which seem to take control of the situation.

If Tucker’s figures appear ancient, weathered and fixed in time, Nolan’s Kelly and figure 1962 embodies a fluid ambiguity. Compared with works from his iconic Ned Kelly paintings of 1946 and 1947 in the national collection and on display at the Gallery, this later painting

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conveys a deliberate awkwardness. In place of the modernist black square of Kelly’s armour, a human face emerges from the helmet-head.

The shifts reveal Nolan’s deepening enquiries into non‑Indigenous relationships with a vast continent. His depictions of severe drought conditions in Queensland and the Northern Territory in 1952 resulted in remarkable images of distorted carcases of cattle the following year, while his series Burke and Wills, painted in the same year as his Kelly and figure, informed his sense of hallucinatory states of mind and a precarious relationship with the land.

Boyd’s Dreaming bridegroom II 1958 is one of the finest paintings from his groundbreaking Bride series. Inspired by a visit to central

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Australia in the early 1950s, the series is rich in symbolism relating to complex interconnections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Boyd was shocked by the difficult conditions of the Aboriginal people he encountered. As was often the case, his investigations into particular issues became fused with broader concerns to do with love and relationships. Dreaming bridegroom II was selected for an exhibition of Boyd’s work at Zwemmer Gallery in London in 1960, which helped forge his reputation in Britain. Other important works by Boyd in the bequest are Mount Terrible 1956 and a lively ceramic, Maquette for ceramic pylon c 1955— the maquette for Boyd’s sculpture for the Olympic Games in 1956.

Two stunning paintings by Olsen, McElhone Steps 1963 and Childhood by the seaport 1965, were included in the artist’s retrospective in 1991–92 at the National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of New South Wales. Childhood by the seaport recalls Olsen’s early years in Bondi and the freedom of a child in the water, at one with the natural environment. Similarly, Perceval’s Early morning, Williamstown 1956 conveys this artist’s spontaneous, buoyant and quite distinctive response to a seaport and helps to fill a gap in the collection. Other works in the bequest include those by artists Brett Whiteley, Donald Friend, Leonard Hessing, Elwyn Lynn, Stanislaus Rapotec, Kevin Connor and James Wigley as well as a rare painting by art critic Robert Hughes.

Opposite: Charles Blackman Rabbit tea party 1956–57, synthetic polymer enamel paint on hardboard Right: Roy de Maistre Waterfront, Sydney Harbour 1918–19, oil paint on board © Caroline de Mestre Walker

Below: Albert Tucker Gamblers and parrots 1960, polyvinyl acetate and synthetic polymer paint on composition board © Barbara Tucker

This is an extraordinary bequest by any standards. While there are too many significant works to be able to discuss them all here, the National Gallery will continue to honour Alan Boxer as a passionate collector through the ongoing display, study and publication of his remarkably generous bequest.

BEQUEST CIRCLE bequests@nga.gov.au | +61 (0)2 6240 6781 Members of the Bequest Circle have made a commitment to building the national art collection in their wills

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James Turrell Shanta II (blue) 1970 © James Turrell

Another dimension of art James Turrell Shanta II (blue) 1970 fluorescent light On display: James Turrell: a retrospective When we experience a work created by James Turrell, many of our assumptions about art do not apply. The artist harnesses various technologies that rely on visual perception rather than traditional techniques of sculpture, and his art has no narrative. Because the elements also have industrial or everyday uses, the works might appear neutral or manufactured, while the artist seems to remain at arm’s length from their making. So why do we react to his installations with such intensity?

The illusion of the Gallery’s recently acquired Shanta II (blue) is a three-dimensional geometrical figure that floats in the corner of an empty room. On approaching the cuboid (the shape is also known as a rectangular parallelepiped), we see the space around it has been constructed to produce the effect of a solid rectangle made of blue fluorescence. As we cross to the other side, the figure morphs into a cube. Everything is

cool: white walls, plain geometry, blue light.

Yet these simple means have a disproportionate effect, concentrating our attention on the contradiction of an imaginary solid consisting of an immaterial substance.

Viewers require more time than usual when encountering Turrell’s sculptures, as the lightworks are seen immediately but apprehended gradually. Each is approached individually, with little or no knowledge of how it is constructed. Perhaps there is less conversation among the audience, too, as the dim space encourages silence. Even the colour is pure but without any strong associations, as it is neither sky blue nor royal blue, but rather a hue used in advertising or photography.

Other versions of Shanta employ pink or white light, which have very different results.

Even when we realise the blue is an aperture where two walls meet, this knowledge does not destroy the illusion. As all outside distractions have been stripped away, we confront the work of art in a singular manner. This may be the reason most people understand Turrell’s art in an experiential way, spread over time, and do not reject it as abstract or meaningless.

Mediation between the viewer, the works and

the natural world is through the eye, body and mind, allowing a new sphere in which artificial light, a museum, mathematics and physics coincide in the most normal way possible.

Even if we do not comprehend how the illusion of Shanta II (blue) is produced, we still comprehend a pure image consisting of light, colour and time. Originally created more than four decades ago, the installation points to Turrell’s increasing sophistication of presentation, the way he works through ideas and variants that pinpoint how effects are made and his larger project about perception.

Most of all, perhaps, the works seem to be humble as well as rarefied. Avoiding decoration, with few associations and little or no physical presence, Turrell’s lightworks persuade us to keep looking. Our minds retain an afterimage, seemingly perfect or even meant to be, opening our senses to another dimension of art.

Christine Dixon, Senior Curator of International Painting and Sculpture

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Her slow, persuasive rhythm

Dorothy Napangardi Mina Mina 2008

Dorothy Napangardi c 1950–2013, Warlpiri people Mina Mina 2008 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 152 x 305 cm On display: Indigenous galleries Born around 1950 in the remote central Australian landscape north-west of Alice Springs, Dorothy Napangardi spent her formative years learning about the rich cultural and spiritual realm of this desert region. Taught by her parents, Paddy Lewis Japanangka and Jeannie Lewis Napurrula, she gained an intimate knowledge of the abundant resources, both flora and fauna, and flourished with her family in what appeared to be a harsh and barren environment.

Napangardi’s first contact with white people occurred around the mid to late 1950s, when a government patrol officer relocated her and her family to the newly established Aboriginal settlement of Yuendumu, hundreds of kilometres south-east of their Mina Mina

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homeland. Her life changed remarkably at this point, and she was given the English name of Dorothy. Her family tried to return to their Country and their traditional way of life on numerous occasions but were repeatedly forced to return to Yuendumu.

While at Yuendumu, she married young and raised her small family of four daughters.

However, she left Yuendumu and moved to Alice Springs and began to paint her Karntakurlangu/Kanakurlangu Jukurrpa (Women’s or Digging Sticks Dreaming) on canvas boards in 1987, later turning her attention to painting her beloved homeland of Mina Mina. Her paintings are topographical and historical cultural maps communicated with a delicate hand. They must also be read as the ancient epic travels of the Warlpiri ancestral women as they traversed across the desert country.

Over time, the content of her paintings, the Jukurrpa (Dreaming), remained constant, while her artistic style developed in a uniquely contemporary way. She was not bound or

hindered by traditional iconography but used it instead as her guiding reference point.

Some of her paintings consist of delicate lines of minimal doting that dance with slow, persuasive rhythm across the surface of the canvas. It is like a visual rendition of the desert wind as it sweeps small particles of sand across the vast sandhills of Mina Mina, constantly recreating and changing the desertscape.

In other paintings, Napangardi captures the white blinding stillness of a dry crystallised salt pan, basking and blistering in the heat of the day.

Although Napangardi’s artistic practice was cut short with her sudden death in 2013, we must not forget this extraordinary contemporary artist who was informed by her culture, her Country and her birthright; she was a ceremonial woman who delicately and defiantly articulated her love for her Country through her remarkable paintings.

Franchesca Cubillo, Senior Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Leading the parade

Trevor Nickolls Family in blue Holden 1998 © Trevor Nickolls. Represented by Viscopy

Trevor Nickolls 1949–2012, Ngarrindjeri people Family in blue Holden 1998 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 121.5 x 152.5 cm On display: Indigenous Urban gallery Trevor Nickolls’s practice began in the late 1960s, prefiguring what we now call the urban Aboriginal art movement, which began coming out of cities during the mid 1970s.

And, although these were particularly difficult times for Aboriginal people in Australia, Nickolls endured to become one of the nation’s most recognised and celebrated artists and an inspiration to some of Australia’s leading Indigenous artists today.

Like the great Aboriginal masters coming out of the desert whose later works included multi-layered stories, Nickolls often worked with multiple perspectives and iconography, providing an insight into his world of travelling between tradition and modernity, or what he called ‘dreamtime’ and ‘machinetime’.

Family in blue Holden 1998 is one such work, with its carnival of colour, activity and obvious and obscure meanings, the many icons of Australia complementing and colliding, juxtaposed in a classic Nickolls dreamscape.

The central convertible blue FJ Holden, driven by a family of wandjina, transports the happy passengers, Gija artist Rover Thomas and Nickolls, through time and imagined realities. The references to country, city, ancestors, night and day and the myriad of characters only heighten our ongoing scrutiny and enjoyment of this work as its performance unfolds. The presence of Ned Kelly, a blind kangaroo, the mini Holden ute and other elements are characters in a play that is at once intensely personal, wholly Aboriginal and universally Australian—a characteristic of his work in general.

Thomas was Nickolls’s friend, and a fellow artist, and both represented Australia at the 1990 Venice Biennale. It was this experience, on an international platform, that transformed Nickolls’s practice.

Family in blue Holden joins fourteen other works by Nickolls in the national collection and helps illustrate the legacy of perhaps the greatest among the few pioneers who inspired a generation of young urban-based Aboriginal men and women to find strong voices in art in recent decades.

Tina Baum, Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

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To Paris and back Dorrit Black 1891–1951 Paintings from Paris and the Fleurieu Peninsula Nude on display: Australian Modernism galleries When Dorrit Black returned to Australia from London and France in late 1929, fresh from her studies at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art and André Lhote’s Académie Montparnasse, she was referred to as ‘a modern of moderns’ in Adelaide’s The Register News-Pictorial of 5 September 1929. She became a passionate evangelical to the modernist cause and established the Modern Art Centre in Sydney, which flourished from 1930 for three short but highly influential years. Along with her friend Grace Crowley, she was instrumental in the development of early Cubism in Australia.

Black also left her mark in Europe and was revered by the English modernist master Claude Flight, who hung her work alongside his as exemplars to his students at the highly influential Grosvenor School.

The National Gallery of Australia has long held an excellent collection of Black’s linocuts but, until recently, had only a modest collection of her oils, mostly from her later years when she was dutifully caring for her mother in Adelaide. In November 2014, the Gallery significantly augmented its collection of paintings by Black with the acquisition of three works, two of which are rare early examples from her sojourns in Paris and Mirmande studying under Lhote. Nude was painted when she first attended Lhote’s school in 1928, having crossed the English Channel to France to acquire ‘a definite understanding of the aims and methods of the modern movement and, in particular—of the Cubists’, as she wrote in her account of her studies there.

She was compelled to undo all of her early art school training, which had been concerned with the effect of light on form, to embrace a new language of abstraction. She wrote, ‘Lhote comes in one day in the week to pose the model and one day to criticise or “correct” … He judges the work from the standards of rhythm, balance, proportion and life, and applies these standards to its three properties— form, tone and colour’.

In addition, the Gallery acquired an important French provincial landscape by

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Black, which has now been identified, through careful research, as Provençale farmhouse (exhibited in her first solo show after returning to Australia at Macquarie Galleries, 10–20 September 1930). In 1928, Black joined her friends Grace Crowley and Anne Dangar at Lhote’s famed summer school in the hilltop village of Mirmande in the Rhône Valley.

While there, she sent a postcard to her family in which she wrote, ‘I’m continuing to enjoy my work & have finished 5 things that I intend to keep. Not very much for 4½weeks perhaps but when you consider that I only kept 3 things out of 6 mths in Paris … it shows progress’. Her time at Mirmande had a significant and lasting effect on her enthusiasm for her art and her practice, which is clear in a letter to John Young at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney in mid February the following year: ‘since the beginning of Lhote’s summer class at Mirmande I have been enjoying painting again tremendously, more, I think, than I have ever done before. And I have a pretty clear idea now of the direction in which I want to aim’.

Provençale farmhouse is one of only a handful of works documenting this precious period in her career. It is also a very fine example of her painting practice at the time, which would influence so many other modernists after her return to Australia, making the work an incredibly important addition to our collection of modernist paintings.

At the end of 1933, having carved out an indelible place among the Sydney modernists, Black returned to Adelaide to tend to her widowed mother, who was suffering from dementia. She built a house and studio at Magill in 1939, where she painted many of her South Australian landscapes, including views of the Fleurieu Peninsula such as the Gallery’s recently acquired Coastal trees c 1948.

It is among her last works. On 12 September 1951, while driving her fashionable and thoroughly modern blue Fiat convertible in Norwood, she had a car accident, sustaining serious injuries to which she succumbed the day after. Fellow artist Ivor Francis declared in his obituary for his friend, that she was ‘Adelaide’s first and, perhaps, least understood “modern” artist’.

Opposite, from top: Dorrit Black Provençale farmhouse 1928, oil paint on canvas; Coastal trees c 1948, oil paint on canvas Above: Nude 1928, synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Lara Nicholls, Assistant Curator of Australian Painting and Sculpture

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Maori chiefs in Australia Joseph Jenner Merrett 1816–1854, print after William Nicholas (lithographer) The warrior chieftains of New Zealand 1846 lithograph, watercolour 50.8 x 36.2 cm On display: Australian colonial galleries The lithograph The warrior chieftains of New Zealand is a full-length portrait of Maori chieftain Hone Heke, his wife Hariata and the old chief Kawiti. The two men are in Maori clothing, while Hariata is in European attire. The young Heke holds a musket, while the older Kawiti holds a taiaha, a traditional staff weapon. The image is a sympathetic observation of a younger generation of Maori people in the mid nineteenth century who were adopting European conventions, including clothing and weapons.

The history of Maori people in colonial Australia is yet to be written. But, as early as 1808, a party of Maori men, including a Te Pahi, a senior chief, had visited Sydney, where they were guests of Governor Philip Gidley King for seven weeks. Such connections with Aotearoa New Zealand and its people were important for the fledgling colony. Keith Vincent Smith, in his recent book Mari nawi, discusses the interaction of Aboriginal Australians and Maori in the context of shipping. Such close links were formalised in 1839 when Governor of New South Wales George Gipps’s jurisdiction was expanded to include New Zealand. The National Gallery of Australia has a number of works in its collection relating to Maori in Australia.

The Gallery was recently given the Wesleyan Missionary Society manuscript of 1821, which includes a depiction of a Maori man. Another work acquired in recent years is the 1846 oil painting by William Duke of the Maori political prisoner Hohepa Te Umuroa.

The warrior chieftains of New Zealand is also from 1846. The image was made by Joseph Jenner Merrett (1816–1854), a fluent Maori speaker and amateur artist, who after living in Aotearoa New Zealand for some years, toured New South Wales in 1846, giving lectures on the Maori people and selling impressions of this lithograph. The work, one of the largest lithographs produced in Australia to that time,

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was a totally colonial production. Merrett’s image was drawn onto the lithographic stone by the well-known portrait artist William Nicholas (1807–1854), printed by local land surveyor William Meadows Brownrigg and published by stationer and music seller William Ford. The warrior chieftains of New Zealand is a testimony to the capacity of Sydney artisans to collaborate on an exceptional work.

Roger Butler, Senior Curator of Australian Prints and Drawings

Joseph Jenner Merrett (print after) The warrior chieftains of New Zealand 1846

Book of kings Khadim Ali Untitled 2014 from the series Evacuation pencil, watercolour, gouache and gold leaf 108 x 70 cm On display: Australian contemporary gallery Written by tenth-century Persian poet Firdausi, the Shahnama or Book of kings is a poetic account of Iran’s ancient history, from mythical creation to the more historical Arab conquest of Iran in the seventh century. The stories of the Shahnama—sung, read aloud and illustrated—comprised artist Khadim Ali’s principal boyhood amusement, and he has used its legends in his art to present the plight of his people, the Hazara, who have been persecuted by the Taliban for decades.

Although a trained miniature painter, Ali’s works do not function in the same way as the delicate miniature paintings traditionally adorning the Shahnama. Elusive rather than didactic, Ali’s subjects fall in and out of focus, alternately materialising then dissolving.

Black lines ordinarily used to delineate the compositional elements of miniature paintings instead erratically encircle them, concurrently composing the images and cancelling them out. Whereas the Shahnama was written at a time in which Persian national identity was being edified, Ali’s work sees it falling apart.

Beneath the flailing limbs of lions, the serene countenance that once would have adorned the monumental Buddhas of Bamiyan (the cultural capital of the Hazara) may be grasped.

The ancient figures carved into a cliff in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan were systematically destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

The unconscionable ruin of these cultural icons haunts Ali’s paintings, the Buddha’s face, bust or body appearing intermittently at intervals throughout the Evacuation series and in the artist’s work at large.

Ali was born in 1978 in Quetta, Pakistan, as an Afghan refugee but has achieved great success as an artist to date. His paintings are held in galleries such as the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Guggenheim and were exhibited in Documenta 13 in 2012. This work is the first by Ali, now living in Sydney, to enter the national art collection.

Khadim Ali Untitled 2014 from the series Evacuation © Khadim Ali

Elspeth Pitt, Assistant Curator of Australian Prints and Drawings

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THANK YOU …

Exhibitions, programs and acquisitions at the National Gallery of Australia are realised through the generous support of:

GRANTS

American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, made possible with the generous support of Kenneth Tyler AO and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne Australian National University Centre for European Studies Gordon Darling Foundation Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal McCusker Charitable Foundation

CORPORATE PARTNERS

ABC Radio ACT Government, through VisitCanberra ActewAGL Actew Water The Age Aesop APT Audi Avant Card Barlens Broadsheet The Brassey of Canberra Canberra Airport The Canberra Times Clayton Utz Coopers Brewery Eckersley’s Art & Craft Flash Photobition Forrest Hotel and Apartments Forty Four Twelve Hotel Realm JCDecaux Maddocks Moët Hennessy Australia Molonglo Group National Australia Bank National Capital Authority National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund Nine Network Australia Novotel Canberra Palace Cinemas PricewaterhouseCoopers Qantas Airways Qantas Freight Ticketek The Sydney Morning Herald Wesfarmers WIN Television

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DONORS

Includes donations received from 3 October 2014 to 5 January 2014 Lenore Adamson Donna Bush Jacob Grossbard

Decorative Arts and Design Fund Meredith Hinchliffe

Gifts of works of art Graham Anderson and Ronnie Ransfield Antonia Begbie The Hon Mrs Ashley Dawson-Damer AM Tim Fairfax AC Estate of Mark Hinderaker Jane Hylton Penelope MacDonald Vicki McGeogh and Wayne McGeogh Prof Callum Morton Jeanne Pratt AC Ron Radford AM Clive Rogers, in memory of RB Cito Cessna 1945–2009 James Turrell, Kyung Turrell and Pace Editions, in honour of Ron Radford AM

Honorary Exhibition Circle Patrons James Erskine and Jacqui Erskine Bruce Parncutt and Robin Campbell John Schaeffer AO and Bettina Dalton

Members Acquisition Fund 2014–15 Robert Aernout Cynthia Anderson Dorothy Anderson John Anderson Margaret Anderson Prof Warwick Anderson Isabelle Arnaud Lachlan Astle and Neil Matthews Margaret Aston Michelle Atkinson Australian Garden History Society, ACT Monaro Riverina Branch Garry Bachell Dr Lynne Badger Prof Peter Bailey Janet Bamford Lesley Barker Maurice Beatton and Kay Beatton The Beddoe family Maria Bendall Prof Jeffrey Bennett and Ngaire Bennett Prof Martin Bennett Virginia Berger Judith Bibo Sheila Bignell David Biles and Julie Biles Noel Birchall Robert Blacklow Beryl Blaseotto Bill Book and Margaret Smythe Margaret Bourke and Max Bourke AM Ivor Bowden and Caroline Bowden Stephen Box and Deidre Box

June Braithwaite Neil Branch Assoc Prof Phillip Braslins Margaret Brennan and Geoffrey Brennan Mary Brennan Antony Buckingham Anne Burhop and Winston Burhop Jill Burke Peter Burns, Mary Burns and Jules Burns Ron Burns and Gail Burns Margaret Butkus Annette Byron Alex Cairns and Robyn Cairns Dr Stuart Cairns John Caldwell and Judith Caldwell Dr Berenice-Eve Calf John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert‑Jones AO David Campbell AM Yvonne Campbell Alan Capp and Carol Capp Deb Carroll and Jim Carroll Sophia Cassimatis and Helen Cassimatis Maria Carmen Castelo Vikki Clingan Victoria Collins Dr Arthur Conigrave and Dr Kate Conigrave Kerry-Anne Cousins Ann Coventry Neil Cox and Kay Cox David Craddock Merrilyn Crawford Helen Croaker Georgia Croker Prof Robert Crompton and Helen Crompton Patrick Crone Bill Curnow and Carolyn Curnow Bruce Daly and Ida Molly Daly Dean Daniel Marlene Danza Wilma Davidson Dianne Davies Haydn Daw and Susan Daw JW de Burgh Persse Beryl Dearlove Bette Debenham Dr Moreen Dee Patricia Degens Cecily Dignan Judith Dixon Susan Doenau Neil Donoghoe Joan Dooley Charles Douglas Shaun Duffy and Susan Duffy Robyn A Duncan Dr Murray Elliott AO and Gillian Elliott Prof Ian Falconer and Mary Falconer Emer Prof Norman Feather Jan Finley Peter Flanagan and Cherie Flanagan Jo-Anne Flatley-Allen Anna M Fletcher

Lynn Fletcher and Wayne Fletcher Philip Flood and Carole Flood John Flynn and Marlene Flynn Michael Flynn Rob Forbes and Sandy Forbes Richard Forster and Carolyn Forster OAM Barbara Franks David Franks The Hon Robert French AC Helen Fyfe Neilma Gantner Robert Gardiner Roy Garwood Joan George William Gibbs and Geraldine Gibbs Lindsey Gilbert and David Gilbert Margaret Ginnings, in memory of Michael Ginnings Maryan Godson and Richard Godson James Goldrick and Ruth Wilson Shirley Gollings and Ian Gollings June Gordon Dr Elizabeth Grant AM and Sue Hart Sybil Griffiths Peter Grove Bill Guy and Dr Kate Guy Elizabeth Haddad Kerri Hall and Dr Christopher Baker Malcolm Hanratty and Maureen Hanratty Sam Harkiss and Dr C Petersons John Harrison and Danielle Kluth Pat Harvey and Frank Harvey Courtney Hawke OAM Bruce Hayes Janet Hayes Prof Christopher Robin Heathcote Susan Hegarty Anthony Hill and Maureen Hill Colin Hill and Linda Hill Gordon Hill and Pamela Hill Dr Marian Hill Meredith Hinchliffe Graham Hobbs Brig J Garth Hughes and Margaret Hughes Barbara J Humphreys Peter Hunter and Des Hunter Judith Hurlstone Gordon Hutchinson Claudia Hyles Helen Jackson Lucie Jacobs Dr Victoria Jennings David Jeremy and Philippa Jeremy Dr Joseph Johnson CSC, AAM, and Madeleine Johnson Elaine Johnston Annette Jones Brian Jones Susan Jones WG Keighley David Kennemore Rob Kenyon and Delia Sala Dinny Killen Christine King

Stanislaus Rapotec Experience in summer no 2 1964.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, The Alan Boxer Bequest, 2014

Angus Kirkwood Joan Kitchin Betty Irene Konta Gerry Kruger and Ted Kruger Lucinda Lang and Terry O’Brien OAM Robert Laurie and Diana Laurie Susan Laverty Craig Lea Claude Lecomte and Valerie Lecomte Faye Anita Lee Corrie Leffers and Thomas Leffers David Lewis OAM Dr Frederick Lilley and Penelope Lilley Don Limn OAM and Rose Limn Richard Mann and Mary Curtis Susan Marshall Margaret Mashford Rosamond Mason Sally-Anne Mason James McCauley and Doris McCauley Dr Ian McCay Christine McCormack and Jacqueline McCormack Patricia McCullough Anita McIntyre Selma McLaren Margaret McLeod Ralph Melano Tina Merriman Elizabeth Minchin and Tony Minchin Bevan Mitchell Ingrid Mitchell Barbara Mitterdorfer Lisa Molvig Ross Monk and Beth Monk Jean Moran Belinda Morgan Dr John Morris Margaret Morrow and B Morrow Dr Ann Moyal Janet Moyle

Frances Muecke Robert Munro and Ann Munro Peter Murphy Barbara Murray Heather Nash in memory of Bill Nash Claude Neumann Newcastle Art Gallery Society Maria Helena Nicoll and Paul Nicoll Barbara Noden and Victor Noden Dr Henry Nowik AO, OBE, and Kathleen Nowik Mike Ogden PSM Marija Orel Milton Osborne Robert Oser and Agie Oser Kenneth Anthony Osmond Ann Parkinson Jull Parsons Helena Partridge and Brian Partridge Robert Pauling The Hon Tom Pauling AO, QC Dr David Pfanner and Dr Ruth Pfanner Caroline Phillips Gerry Phillips and Sharon Phillips John J Price Richard Price Anne Prins Tony Purnell and Kaye Purnell Jim Rand and Merle Rand Ardyne Reid Eric Graham Reid John Reid and Jane Reid The Hon Mrs Margaret Reid AO William James Reid and Judith Robin Reid Lyn Riddett Marie Riley and Barry Riley Paul Robilliard and Hanan Robilliard Susan S Rogers Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose Dr James Ross and Heather Ross

Peter Rossiter and Linda Rossiter Ray Rummery and Barbara Rummery Bridget Sack and Peter Sack Raoul Salpeter and Roslyn Mandelberg Mark Sampson and Ruth Sampson Murray Sandland Sally Saunders Robin Schall Michael Shelley and Judith Shelley Roma G Sinclair Ruth Sinclair Mike Slee and Judy Slee Dallas Smith Elizabeth J Smith Jan Smith and Ric Smith Margaret Smither Peter Somerville and Juanita Gabriel Spectrum Consultancy Andrew Spilva and Vivian Spilva Carolyn Spittle and Murray Spittle Haddon Spurgeon Barbara Stacey David Stanley and Anne Stanley Maisy Stapleton John Stead Dr Michael G Stevens and Moira Semrani Keith F Steward Sydney Joy Stewart Elizabeth Anne Stone Dr Susanne Storrier Steven Stroud and Annaliese Williams Gay Stuart and Charles Stuart Janine Margaret Studdert Robert Swift and Lynette Swift Lady Synnot Pamela Tallents Elizabeth Tanner Prof Ken Taylor and Maggie Taylor The Taylor-Cannon family Susan Telford and Richard Telford Phillip A Thompson

Jacqueline Thomson OAM Dr Peter Trenerry Helen Tuite Janice C Tynan Elizabeth Upton Morna Elizabeth Vellacot Susan Volker and Derek Volker Bret Walker SC George Wallens John Ward and Gail Ward Brenton Warren Gabrielle Watt Wendy Webb Angela Westacott Joy Wheatley and Norm Wheatley Barbara White and Brian White Peter White and Anne White Pauline Wicksteed Dr Ian S Wilkey and Hannah Wilkey George M Wilkins Muriel Wilkinson David Williams and Margaret Williams Elizabeth Williams Joy Williams and Peter Eddington Wayne Williams Andrew Williamson Shirley Wilmot Julia Wilson Robine Wilson and the late Donald Wilson Belinda Wise-Carter Peter Witheridge Ellen Woodward and Pauline Woodward Michael Wright and Robyn Wright Barbara Young AO

National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund Jeanne Pratt AC The Foundation also thanks those donors who wish to remain anonymous

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ANNUAL LECTURE 1. Glenn Lowry, Director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, speaks to a packed house about changes to the museum in the 21st century, 29 October 2014 TUNE INTO ART 2–3. Guests of VisitCanberra for the Human Brochure campaign enjoy the Gallery’s Sculpture Garden Restaurant, 1 November 2014

TUTUS AND TINSEL 4. Canberra Dance Theatre performers Rebekah Robinson, Elizabeth Fellows and Lauren Vieira, 6 December 2014 TURRELL OPENING 5. Bec Cuzzillo and Matt Lowe, 12 December 2014 6. DJ Sophie Penkethman-Young 7. Tish Karaunarathna and Marta Przybylinska 8. Danny and Lisa Goldberg

MEMBERS OPENING OF TURRELL 9. Katrina and Clive Muir and Allan White, 13 December 2014 10. Lauren Waugh and Julian Simpson 11. Fiona McGrath and Kathryn Denby 12. Carolyn, Tristan and Desmond Yip 13. Sandra Dickin and Harold Jenner SUMMER SCHOLARS 14. Students discover the Indigenous galleries with Senior Curator Franchesca Cubillo

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MEMBERS NEWS Gallery members were some of the first in Australia to experience the exhibition James Turrell: a retrospective, which is changing the way Australians see art

Canberra’s best season Members celebrated the opening of James Turrell: a retrospective in true style with an evening of bespoke doughnuts, made-to-order gelato and live music. The Gallery’s new Director Gerard Vaughan welcomed guests, and James Turrell himself introduced the exhibition. Both then joined the celebrations, making it a night to remember for those early birds who booked before the night sold out.

But, we have many more exclusive events coming up in which members can engage with the retrospective, including our ‘Breakfast on the rise’, which provides an early morning viewing of Turrell’s Within without followed by breakfast in the Members Lounge. Keep an eye on the Membership

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pages of the website for events put on specially for you and your guests.

To welcome autumn, arguably Canberra’s most visually spectacular season, we are hosting a special afternoon event, ‘Flappers in the fall’. Just as Margaret Preston’s Flapper 1925 took inspiration from this new class of women in the roaring twenties, the Gallery will excite and delight guests with a boisterous but classy afternoon of jazz, champagne and hors d’oeuvres under the spectacle of the autumn canopy in the Sculpture Garden.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Gallery over the coming months, whether to experience James Turrell, attend a special event or engage with your national art collection.

MEMBERSHIP nga.gov.au/members | free call 1800 020 068 Play your part in the life of the National Gallery of Australia and enjoy the many benefits of membership.

Visit our website for exclusive programs for members or to join today

Clockwise from top left: Gallery members with James Turrell; made-to-order gelato; Scott Umbers and Marge Damiano with a view of Turrell’s Within without 2010; NGA Director Gerard Vaughan and members

MEMBERS RECEIVE 10% DISCOUNT

NGA SHOP Open 7 days 10.00 am – 5.00 pm | Parkes Place, Canberra ACT 2601 | Tel: (02) 6240 6420 | Email: ecom@nga.gov.au

Art Monthly AUSTRALIA

SUMMER 2014/15 NUMBER 276 AU$14.95

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www.artmonthly.org.au/subscribe.asp Hyperreality I ‘Pop to popism’ I Summer bumper issue

Photo: VisitCanberra

Canberra the perfect autumn getaway!

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*Subject to availability from 1 March 2015 to 31 May 2015 inclusive. Rate based on accommodation in a standard room with buffet breakfast for 2 people. Continental breakfast only at ibis budget Canberra. Bookings must be prepaid at time of booking and are non transferable and non refundable. For full terms and conditions visit www.accorhotels.com

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Auction Sunday 8 March 2015 Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney Sydney Exhibition Thursday 26 February Saturday 7 March 2015 11am - 6pm 55 Oxford Street (cnr Pelican Street) Surry Hills NSW 2010 02 9287 0600 View the catalogue online now www.deutscherandhackett.com

Alma Webou (c1928-2009) Pinkalakara, 2006 179.0 x 119.0 cm EST: $15,000-20,000

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Important australIan art IncludIng the davId clarke ao collectIon of australIan art SYDNEY 28 APRIL 2015

JOHN BRACK 1920-1999 First Daughter 1955 oil on canvas on composition board 75.5 x 55.4 cm Estimate $550,000–750,000 © Helen Brack

Exhibitions Melbourne 15–19 April 2015 10 am to 5 pm 41 Exhibition Street, Melbourne Sydney 23–28 April 2015 10 am to 5 pm 30 Queen Street, Woollahra Auction 28 April 2015, 6.30 pm InterContinental Sydney, 117 Macquarie Street, Sydney Enquiries 02 9302 2402 sothebysaustralia.com.au

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* Sotheby’s Australia is a trade mark used by Second East Auction Holdings Pty Ltd. Under licence from Sotheby’s

100 years of energising Canberra

2015 marks a major milestone for ActewAGL. 100 years ago the Kingston Powerhouse was commissioned to switch on our city’s lights and we’ve been energising Canberra ever since.

And we’re only just getting started.

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Supplying local energy yesterday, today and tomorrow.

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58 ARTONVIEW | AUTUMN 2015

Great Collections Start Here

ART ON THE RUNWAY

Over the past 34 years, Savill Galleries has specialised in the buying and selling of museum quality paintings. We have a vast stockroom and include a strong selection on our website. However, if you are looking for a particular artists work, please let us know. Subscribe online to our email newsletter.

Open: Tuesday to Friday 10 - 6 and Saturday 11 - 5 tel 02 9327 8311 | www.savill.com.au

‘Roos’ by Jeff Thompson

Arthur Boyd ‘Bride in the Moonlight’ 1960

Tim Storrier ‘Starlight on the Plains (Night Coals)’ 2008 - large work

Broadsheet Proud media partner of at the National Gallery of australia.

Garry Shead ‘Bacchanalian Marriage at Pokolbin’ 2012

156 Hargrave St, Paddington NSW 2021 art@savill.com.au | www.savill.com.au

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WEEKDAYS 5.30AM

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Building long term value

PwC’s Private Clients team are passionate about growing and protecting the future of Australian private and family businesses – from one generation to the next. © 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers. All rights reserved.

Contact: Eugene Kalenjuk Partner, Private Clients +61 (2) 6271 3604 eugene.kalenjuk@au.pwc.com

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‘ONE OF THE GREATEST ARTISTS OF OUR TIME’ NEW YORK TIMES

JAMES TURRELL A RETROSPECTIVE CANBERRA ONLY nga.gov.au James Turrell Virtuality squared 2014 Ganzfeld: built space, LED lights Collection James Turrell Image: National Gallery of Australia

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Guy Maestri, East West Cutting, 2014, oil on linen, 183 x 225cm (Wynne Prize Finalist 2014)

N AT I O N A L G A L L E RY O F AU ST R A L I A , C A N BE R R A

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It’s about Partnerships At NAB Private Wealth we understand that great partnerships are key to success.

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JAMES TURRELL Handcoloured photography | Indian miniatures | The Boxer Bequest | NGA Kids