2017.Q1 | Artonview 89 Autumn 2017

National Gallery of Australia

9 771323 455204

ISSN 1323-4552

89

Encourage your family and friends to become NGA members before Versailles: Treasures from the Palace ends on 17 April, and they’ll receive a Golden Ticket, giving them unlimited and express access to the show. +61 (0)2 6240 6528 nga.gov.au/members

This major exhibition surveys contemporary art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the country. 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the referendum granting Indigenous peoples the right to be counted as Australian.

26 May – 10 September nga.gov.au | FREE

Archie Moore Aboriginal anarchy 2012 (detail), layered synthetic polymer paint, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2013.© Archie Moore

French school (18th century) Courtyard of the Royal Chapel, Palace of Versailles c 1725, oil on canvas. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot

Encourage your family and friends to become NGA members before Versailles: Treasures from the Palace ends on 17 April, and they’ll receive a Golden Ticket, giving them unlimited and express access to the show. +61 (0)2 6240 6528 nga.gov.au/members

ISSUE 89 AUTUMN 2017 Contributors Jaklyn Babington, Senior Curator, Contemporary Art Practice—Global Tina Baum, Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Crispin Howarth, Curator, Pacific Arts Bianca Hill, Gordon Darling Graduate Intern Gwen Horsfield, Head of Partnerships Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator, Photography Simeran Maxwell, Assistant Curator, International Painting and Sculpture Lara Nicholls, Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Guest contributors Christopher Allen, art critic and historian Freja Carmichael, independent curator Advertising enquiries artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au Enquiries artonview.editor@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/artonview © National Galley of Australia PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au

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.

Views expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the NGA. Artonview may contain names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

ISSN 1323-4552 Printed by CanPrint, Canberra, on FSC and PEFC certified paper using vegetable-based inks FSC-C017269 | PEFC/21-31-41

Cover: Rodel Tapaya The promise land: the moon, the sun, the stars 2016 (detail), synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Courtesy of A3 - Arndt Art Agency and the artist Left: Karla Dickens Taking back the stars 2016 (detail), cotton, thread

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CONTENTS

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DIRECTOR’S WORD COMING SOON Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, Hyper Real, Picasso: Vollard suite, Cartier, AusArt Fellowship in New York, Albert Namatjira, Land, art and protest

14 EXHIBITION AND MAJOR NEW COMMISSION FOR THE NGA RODEL TAPAYA Jaklyn Babington profiles Filipino artist Rodel Tapaya whose major commission for the NGA will be on show here from 18 March

18 COMING MAJOR EXHIBITION DEFYING EMPIRE Seven artists reveal their work in the upcoming Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial and Tina Baum profiles Defying Empire artist Yhonnie Scarce

26 EXHIBITION SPONSOR WESFARMERS ARTS Gwen Horsfield interviews Helen Carroll, Manager of Wesfarmers Arts and Curator of the Wesfarmers Collection, and Freja Carmichael shares her experiences as an emerging Indigenous curator

32 CURRENT MAJOR EXHIBITION VERSAILLES Dr Christopher Allen draws a parallel between Europe’s most opulent palace and one of the great periods of western art and Simeran Maxwell shines the light on the animal inhabitants of Versailles

50 DIARY OF AN OBJECT Bianca Hill unpacks Daniel Thomas’s Waterbag, a homage to Marcel Duchamp

54 TOURING EXHIBITIONS ABSTRACTION Lara Nicholls on Australian women’s impact on abstraction in Australia

RESOLUTION Brenda L Croft talks to the NGA about her work and the ongoing relevance of exhibitions that draw together contemporary Indigenous photomedia

64 NEW ACQUISITIONS Pipilotti Rist, Jeffrey Smart, Roy de Maistre

ARTONVIEW 89 AUTUMN 2017

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DIRECTOR’S WORD Gerard Vaughan

The NGA has a particularly rich calendar of major exhibitions in 2017.

the series, Defying Empire, presenting the work of seven of the thirty

The very popular Versailles: Treasures from the Palace continues until 17

artists in this highly anticipated and carefully considered survey of recent

April and is followed at the end of May by our third National Indigenous

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art practice.

Art Triennial, Defying Empire. Then, come October, an exhibition of

I am delighted that our long-time Indigenous Art Partner Wesfarmers

works by the world’s most representative exponents of hyperrealist

is the principal sponsor of Defying Empire. Our enduring relationship

sculpture takes us into 2018. And that will be immediately followed

with Wesfarmers, particularly on our award-winning Indigenous Arts

by our spectacular Cartier exhibition, bringing to Canberra many of

Leadership program, is inspiring and has made a profound difference to

the most beautiful jewels in the world.

the careers of many Indigenous art workers from around Australia over

Over summer, many of you will have discovered the marvellous

the years. See pages 26–9 for an interview with Helen Carroll, Manager

treasures we have on show in Versailles. It was a pleasure to have the

of Wesfarmers Arts and Curator of the Wesfarmers Collection, and

delightful Tina Arena as its ambassador, launching the exhibition in

page 30–1 for International Indigenous Arts Fellowship recipient Freja

December in the national media. She spoke passionately about French

Carmichael’s story as an emerging curator.

culture and the palace, in particular. The crowds have been pouring in,

In our winter issue of Artonview last year, we highlighted Swiss artist

and we are very pleased by the huge interest shown in the exhibition so

Pipilotti Rist’s video work Worry will vanish revelation 2015, which we had

far. I hope, too, that our Golden Ticket offer for members has given you

recently acquired with the help of our Foundation members. We’ve had

the chance to see it more than once, as the quality and detail of the works

to wait for the availability of a suitably large space for this complex and

on display, and the richness of the installations, certainly repays close and

sumptuous contemporary installation, and I am pleased to say it is now

repeat inspection.

on display thanks, in part, to the support of Canberra’s Molonglo Group

There are still plenty of opportunities to come again over the next

and, of course, the many contributors to the acquisition at last year’s

month and a half, and we have a host of events that will help illuminate

Foundation Gala Dinner. We’ve also launched this year’s Masterpieces

the art, culture and life of Versailles through performances, films,

for the Nation fundraising appeal, which is seeking contributions for the

workshops and public talks and lectures. Coming up in March, our

acquisition of Roy de Maistre’s wonderful Studio interior 1959, one of his

major conference ‘Enchanted Isles, Fatal Shores’ brings an impressive

finest studio interiors (see page 67).

line-up of Australian and international experts who will present some

New work by Filipino artist Rodel Tapaya (see pages 14–17) will

fresh and challenging research and new perspectives on Versailles and its

soon go on display, including a fascinating large triptych specially

enduring influence and resonance in film, fashion, art and architecture.

commissioned by the NGA. And our newly refreshed Asian galleries

Our new Versailles-themed NGA Play space has also proved popular

are exhibiting some rarely shown works from our collection, including

over the school holidays, with thousands of children enjoying the many

photography by Eduardo Masferré, a founding figure of Filipino

activities available. I’ve noticed, too, that parents, grandparents and

documentary photography in the 1930s. Our Australian galleries

carers are finding it a fun and informative place to spend time learning

are scheduled to change significantly in June, with the return of our

something about the palace and its gardens, architecture and objets d’art.

Australian Impressionist masterpieces from London and Singapore—

The space will change over time, and its next iteration will be tied to the

but more on that in our next issue.

National Indigenous Art Triennial, providing our young visitors with a cultural experience closer to home.

The triennial—initiated by the NGA with Culture Warriors and

Finally, I’m happy to say that Blue poles has returned and is back on display. While, of course, we missed it on our walls, it was the undoubtedly the standout work in the highly acclaimed and hugely

followed by unDisclosed—has become a permanent event in the

successful Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts

Australian and international art calendar. In this issue of Artonview,

in London. It was a privilege to share it temporarily with a huge and

we provide a taste of what’s in store for you in the latest exhibition in

appreciative global audience in the United Kingdom.

Pipilotti Rist Worry will vanish revelation 2015 (video stills), from the series Worry work family, audio‑video installation. Purchased with the assistance of the National Gallery of Australia Foundation Gala Dinner Fund, 2016.

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine. © Pipilotti Rist

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COMING SOON

DEFYING EMPIRE: 3RD NATIONAL INDIGENOUS

PICASSO: VOLLARD SUITE

ART TRIENNIAL

5 August to 22 October 2017

26 May to 10 September 2017 On 26 May, the NGA kicks off a line-up of special exhibitions with the third National Indigenous Art Triennial, Defying Empire.

The exhibition surveys the contemporary practice of thirty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists whose diverse works reference the long fight for Indigenous recognition in Australia and their right to self‑determination. This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 Aboriginal Referendum, and the exhibition examines issues relating to Indigenous identity, history, politics and connections to country and community. Defying Empire is generously supported by Wesfarmers

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Pablo Picasso’s trip to the great cultural and artistic centres of Rome, Naples and Florence had a profound effect on the course of his work during the 1920s and 1930s, a period that saw him embrace classical and mythological themes and imagery, culminating in the one hundred etchings in his Vollard suite 1930–37. Three hundred sets were made but most were broken up and only a few cultural institutions worldwide hold the Vollard suite in its entirety today. The British Museum is one, and another is the NGA in Canberra, where the suite will go on show in a free display for a limited time from 5 August 2017. This is a notto-be-missed opportunity to see one of the twentieth century’s greatest

Arts and is free.

suites of prints.

Yhonnie Scarce (Kokatha and Nukunu peoples) Thunder Raining Poison 2015 (detail).

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016. Photo: Saul Steed

Pablo Picasso Masked figures, bird-woman, from the Vollard suite 1930, etching.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1984. © Pablo Picasso/Succession Picasso. Represented by Viscopy

COMING SOON

HYPER REAL

CARTIER

20 October 2017 – 18 February 2018

30 March to 22 July 2018

From the real to the hyperreal, our in-depth survey of human figuration

Cartier is coming to Australia and will be a must for your 2018 calendar.

in sculpture will be on display from 20 October 2017 to 18 February

Pencil in your visit to this breathtaking collection of the world’s most

2018. Hyperrealism, paralleling photorealism in painting, commenced in

exquisite jewels only at the NGA between 30 March and 22 July 2018.

the 1960s and 1970s, when a number of sculptors became interested in

Showcasing more than three hundred spectacular items, the exhibition

a form of sculptural realism based on a vivid and lifelike representation

explores themes such as ‘Icons of Style’, ‘The Age of Glamour’, and ‘Royal

of the human figure. Presenting major works from the thirty artists most

Style’, with loans from royal families, celebrities and the astonishing

representative of this style, the exhibition spans more than fifty years

Cartier collection itself. Portraits, costumes and film will be part of

of hyperrealist practice. Featured artists include the leading American

the program, evoking the glamorous world of the Maison Cartier and

pioneers George Segal, Duane Hanson and John DeAndrea as well as

its clients. Never before will so many incredible diamonds, emeralds

Juan Muñoz (Spain), Maurizio Cattelan (Italy), Berlinde de Bruyckere

and other precious stones, in exquisite settings such as royal tiaras,

(Belgium), Evan Penny (Canada) and others. Australian artists Ron

have come to Australia.

Mueck, Sam Jinks and Patricia Piccinini will also feature significantly, and the exhibition will examine new global directions, including robotics and film.

Zarko Baseski Ordinary man 2010, polyester, resin, fiberglass, silicone and hair

Cartier Paris Crocodile necklace 1975 (detail), gold, 1023 brilliant-cut yellow diamonds, two navette-shaped emerald cabochons (eyes), 1060 emeralds and two ruby cabochons (eyes). Cartier Collection. © Cartier

ARTONVIEW 89 AUTUMN 2017

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ALBERT NAMATJIRA From 14 July 2017 Marilyn Darling AC stands in the NGA’s boardroom with two luminous watercolours

by Arrarnta artist Albert Namatjira, just two of the outstanding collection of thirty‑one Namatjira watercolours she generously presented to the NGA late last year, along with a boomerang he painted and terracotta pot

by Irene Entata that depicts Namatjira and his mentor Rex Battarbee. Marilyn assembled this collection with her husband, the late L Gordon Darling AC, CMG, whose passion for Namatjira’s work is well known.

The Darlings’ ongoing and considered patronage has played an invaluable role in redressing the Australian art world’s neglect of Namatjira’s practice over the decades.

In 2002, Gordon spearheaded the NGA’s touring exhibition Seeing the Centre: the art of Albert Namatjira, which celebrated the centenary of the artist’s birth. Subsequently, in 2008 and 2009, the Darlings gave twenty-five

watercolours to the NGA. Many of these works

as well as scholarship in the area. The estate

will become the focus of a special display

also made an equally generous donation to

at the NGA in July, alongside a selection

the Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print

of watercolours and ceramics by successive

Fund, which not only supports acquisitions

generations of Hermannsburg artists.

of Australian works on paper for the national

In addition to the gift from Marilyn, the

Gordon Darling Graduate Internship at the

the estate of Gordon Darling, in accordance

NGA (a unique training position that helps

with his will, to support the growth of the

bridge the gap between graduate study and a

Hermannsburg collection into the future

curatorial career).

AUSART FELLOWSHIP Supporting Australian visual art graduates studying in America In keeping with its mission to ‘strengthen the relationship between America and Australia through the visual arts’, the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia will once again be offering the AusArt Fellowship in March 2017 to assist an Australian visual arts student studying in America.

Made possible with the support of the Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, in partnership with the American Australian Association, the AusArt Fellowship comprises an annual grant of US$30 000 and is open to postgraduate artists, curators, art historians, administrators, academics and conservators to assist them in furthering their field of study at an American university, educational institution or museum. It is now in its fifth year and offers tangible and meaningful support to Australian students who choose to pursue their studies or practice in America.

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COMING SOON

collection but also important research and the

NGA received over one million dollars from

Over time, the fellowship will nurture a reservoir of talent and a culture of reciprocity that will benefit the wider Australian arts community. Last year’s recipient, Mark Hilton, was chosen from a strong field of applicants on the basis of his practice as a sculptor and draftsman and for his advocacy for Australian art in America. The fellowship, he says, ‘allowed me to work unencumbered, full-time in the studio and to immerse myself within the energising city of New York’, where he could ‘test ideas outside of Australia in a wider, tougher context for an extended period of time’.

Founded in 1982 by L Gordon Darling AC, CMG, with the help of prominent New Yorkers, the AFNGA is a non-profit organisation guided by an eminent group of Australian expatriate and American art enthusiasts, collectors, academics and professionals who use their corporate, personal and philanthropic ties to help further the AFNGA’s mission.

Applications open March 2017 afnga.org

LAND, ART AND PROTEST From 9 June 2017 In 1967, Aboriginal Australians gained the right to be counted in the Federal government census. It was a historic culmination of thirty years of strategic campaigning and protest

by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people across Australia and helped instigate a slew of further political demonstrations throughout the country. Coinciding with the referendum’s fiftieth anniversary, a new display at the NGA in Canberra draws together works of dissent and resistance from the national collection.

It charts the rise of Aboriginal land rights and the homelands movement in the 1960s, the fierce Ningla A-na moratoriums of the early 1970s, the struggle against the expansion of uranium mining on sacred land in the Opposite, from top: Marilyn Darling AC with two Albert Namatjira watercolours at the NGA, Canberra, December 2016; The 2016 AusArt Fellow Mark Hilton in his studio.

Below, from left: Chips Mackinolty Kali (The boomerang) and Walyaji wankarunyayirni (Land is life) 1982, screenprints. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1984

1980s and the concurrent rise of related conservation movements mounted by nonAboriginal activists.

Presenting some sixty works, the display includes Mervyn Bishop’s legendary photograph of Gough Whitlam pouring soil into the hand of Gurindji elder Vincent

Lingiari at Daguragu (Wave Hill) in 1974 and Carroll Jerrems’s portraits of Aboriginal activists, including poet and author Roberta Sykes. Robert Campbell Junior’s Aboriginal Embassy 1986 chronicles the establishment and suppression of the Tent Embassy opposite Old Parliament House. The work recalls the storyboard composition of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur’s proclamation boards of around 1830, which sought to overcome language barriers in an attempt to end the ‘Black War’ in Tasmania. Although Campbell’s work makes it clear that barriers to racial equality still existed over a century and a half later (and even to this day).

Vibrant political posters made at backyard workshops and university collectives such as Eyre Peninsula Cultural Trust, Garage Graphix and Tin Sheds are filled with strident images, sharp puns and shrewd art historical references.

A screenprint for the Land Rights Dance at Balmain Town Hall in 1977 appropriates imagery from Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty leading the people 1830, likening the gravity of the Aboriginal land rights movement to the French Revolution.

ARTONVIEW 89 AUTUMN 2017

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EXHIBITION LISTING AT THE NGA

TOURING EXHIBITIONS

VERSAILLES: TREASURES FROM THE PALACE

SILVER AND GOLD: UNIQUE AUSTRALIAN OBJECTS 1850–1910

From the court of the Sun King Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see and experience here in Australia a mesmerising period in French history.

9 December 2016 to 17 April 2017 Adult $27.00 | Children 16 and under free Concession $25.00 | Member $20.00 Premium tickets also available Book now at ticketek.com or 1300 795 012

Works from the NGA’s significant collection of colonial Australian decorative arts and design.

4 February to 25 June 2017 @ Western Australian Museum—Kalgoorlie-Boulder Free

ARTISTS OF THE GREAT WAR A powerful exhibition addressing wartime propaganda, front-line experience and remembrance in art. A free, well-illustrated brochure is available on request.

29 October 2016 to June 2017 Free

FRANK STELLA: SAVING ABSTRACTION Visually powerful works by Frank Stella and master printer Kenneth Tyler, taking printmaking to new levels.

19 November 2016 to 16 July 2017 Free

PIPILOTTI RIST: WORRY WILL VANISH REVELATION

A visually exhilarating exhibition revealing the contribution Australian women have made to abstract art.

25 February to 7 May 2017 @ Geelong Gallery 21 May to 23 July 2017 @ Newcastle Art Gallery Free

RESOLUTION: NEW INDIGENOUS PHOTOMEDIA Contemporary photomedia by some of today’s leading and emerging Indigenous Australian artists.

24 March to 28 May 2017 @ Perc Tucker Regional Gallery 9 June to 13 August 2017 @ Araluen Art Centre Free

MAX AND OLIVE: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC LIFE OF OLIVE COTTON AND MAX DUPAIN

Experience the visceral, colour-saturated universe of acclaimed video artist Pipilotti Rist.

11 March to 20 August 2017 Free

The exceptional partnership between photographers Olive Cotton and Max Dupain.

12 May to 9 July 2017 @ Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Free

RODEL TAPAYA: NEW ART FROM THE PHILIPPINES

LIGHT MOVES: CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN VIDEO ART

Exciting new talent Rodel Tapaya draws inspiration from Filipino folklore and contemporary events.

18 March to 20 August 2017 Free

A selection of video art since its early days in the 1960s to now.

18 February to 16 April 2017 @ Bunbury Regional Art Galleries 30 April to 4 June 2017 @ Nautilus Art Centre Free

DEFYING EMPIRE: 3RD NATIONAL INDIGENOUS ART TRIENNIAL A major survey of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art through the work of thirty of today’s leading, mid-career and emerging artists.

26 May to 10 September 2017 Free

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ABSTRACTION: CELEBRATING AUSTRALIAN WOMEN ABSTRACT ARTISTS

EXHIBITION LISTING

American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia Bringing America and Australia closer together through the visual arts since 1983.

The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to foster closer ties between the United States and Australia through the visual arts.

AFNGA works to secure gifts of landmark works of art and contributions in order to support the collection, exhibition and educational programs of the National Gallery of Australia. AFNGA also supports Australian visual arts graduates studying in the USA through the AusArt Fellowship—an annual grant of US$30,000.

AFNGA is guided by an eminent group of Americans and Australian expatriates who use their corporate, personal and philanthropic ties to help further AFNGA’s mission.

American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Inc. 50 Broadway, Suite 2003 New York, NY 10004 USA +1 (212) 338-6863 info@afnga.org

www.afnga.org

The Gould Collection of Important Australian Art

auction • sydney • 15 march 2017 sydney exhibition thursday 9 march – tuesday 14 march 11am – 6pm 55 oxford st (corner pelican st) surry hills nsw 2010 02 9287 0600 info@deutscherandhackett.com www.deutscherandhackett.com

SIDNEY NOLAN Ned Kelly – Outlaw, 1955 ripolin enamel and oil on composition board 91.0 x 71.0 cm eSt: $1,200,000 – 1,800,000

ANDREW ROGERS WE ARE The unveiling of 8 sculptures on the occasion of the vernissage of the Venice Biennale in the garden courtyard of Palazzo Mora Strada Nova 3659, Venice 30121, Italy 9am, Thursday, 11 May, 2017 On exhibition until 26 November 2017

Image: ‘We Are’ - 6 bronze and 2 stainless steel sculptures abating in height from 240cm (95”) to 140cm (55”)

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Rodel Tapaya in his studio, 2013. Photo: MM Yu

RODEL TAPAYA

E X H I B ITI O N A N D M A J O R N E W CO M M I S S I O N F O R TH E N G A

Rodel Tapaya: new art from the Philippines Jaklyn Babington profiles Filipino artist Rodel Tapaya, whose major commission for the NGA will be on show here from 18 March in an exhibtion of his new work

While working in his Bulacan studio last year, Filipino painter Rodel Tapaya took some time out to discuss the symbolism in his large triptych The promise land: the moon, the sun, the stars, a newly commissioned work for the NGA. ‘In some way, I realise that old stories are not just metaphors,’ he says, ‘I can find connections with contemporary time. It’s like the myths are poetic narrations of the present. Sometimes, the present events are so hard to grasp that they could be mistaken as a myth, or folktale, just to enable people to cope’.

Only later for me, as I was reading news about the Philippines, did this comment strike a chilling resonance with the country’s current socio-political crisis. I could no longer look at the painting—with its headless pink torsos, floating decapitated heads and mysterious hooded killers—without drawing connections and wondering how are people ‘coping’ in a country where, recently, one million Filipinos have ‘surrendered’, 43 000 have been arrested and 6000 have been killed?

President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal anti-drug campaign has resulted in the emergence of ‘death squads’, whose extrajudicial, vigilante-style killings are becoming an everyday occurrence.

This is a contemporary Filipino reality that is difficult for the rest of the world to grasp. At a time when the international media is emblazoned with the headlines, ‘The Killing Time: Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s War On Drugs’ and ‘When a Populist Demagogue Takes Power’, it is fascinating to look at Tapaya’s artistic practice as another form of socio-political reportage. It is through the artist’s amalgamation of myth, folktale and reality that the nuances of the Filipino collective conscious and the complexity of the Philippines’ past, present and future are told.

The small town of Montalban, now known as Rodriguez, is situated in the Rizal province in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains.

This is where Tapaya was born. ‘I am the sixth child to seven children

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Rodel Tapaya The promise land: the moon, the sun, the stars 2016, synthetic polymer paint on canvas.

Courtesy of A3 - Arndt Art Agency and the artist

of my parents, whose small livelihood is to make smoked fish’, he says,

Comprising seven hundred islands, the Philippines is a unique

‘Though we were poor, I never felt poor since we always lived simply,

country historically marked by political instability and great social and

and there was always food on the table, usually the leftovers of smoked

cultural diversity. The rich pre-Hispanic culture of the Philippines was

fish that had not sold. As a boy, at about eight years old, I helped in the

all but subsumed by three and a half centuries of Spanish conquest, after

business by buying old newspapers … that we use as packaging for our

which the country fell under American rule (and briefly under Japanese

fish’. Tapaya’s first introduction to the world of art and the trigger for his

occupation during the Second World War). The 1946 Treaty of Manilla

enthusiastic collecting and compiling of reference material came from

granted independence, but the presence of American Special Troops has

the images he saw in the newspapers, as he reveals: ‘I was always excited

continued. The Philippines has also endured four decades of the Moro

to do this errand since I was very interested in the pictures of paintings

conflict, with 120 000 deaths and two million people displaced. Newly

in the lifestyle sections. I would cut them out like precious clippings,

under the control of President Duterte in 2016, the country is again

as well as some comic strips I particularly liked’.

experiencing rapidly worsening socio-political problems. In many rural

Tapaya is now a voracious reader and analyst of art history, whose tertiary studies at the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines have been strengthened with intensive courses in painting

folkloric tales to make sense of their experiences.

Tapaya’s commission for the NGA is a work of epic scale befitting

at the Parsons School of Design in New York and the University of Art

the complexity of its subject matter. The painting brilliantly presents

and Design in Helsinki. He has been exhibiting for over a decade and

three separate yet interconnected narratives across a ten-metre triptych.

established an intriguing literary-based visual practice, unique in its

‘My challenge to myself is always … how to make a huge work complex

Filipino perspective yet striking for its participation in the rich history

in composition and detail yet with harmony and unity, inspired by

of Hispanic narrative painting. His flat application of paint, cramped

stories of past, true or not, from myths, legends and current events’,

figurative compositions and mix of decorative surface with political

he says. It is an impressive example of his internationally celebrated

messaging immediately evokes the work of the Mexican muralists and

folk‑narrative style: ‘old stories’ reimagined and reimaged for a

Surrealists such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro

contemporary audience.

Siqueiros and Frida Kahlo. However, in a constructed knotting of the

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areas, people continue to believe in pre-Hispanic mythical beings and

By drawing inspiration from pre-colonial mythology and Filipino

social, political and environmental issues of Filipino life, Tapaya’s work

folkloric tradition, Tapaya meticulously pieces together numerous

illuminates a complicated contemporary existence. And, as with the great

pictorial fragments, fusing the otherworldly with the real, in a visual

social narrative painters before him, the local issues grappled with are

grappling with contemporary politics and social and environmental

often of global significance.

issues. He explains, ‘I try to weave them in one continuum, and hopefully

RODEL TAPAYA

people find the narrative by their own journey through the maze. I also

The symbolic associations are rich and explored through numerous

hope people see how challenging it is to make a mural-like scale of

fragmentary elements, both literal and allegorical, set against a rapidly

work with complexities of content and composition. It involves editing,

changing backdrop comprising the underworld, the poverty of the real

emphasising and including subtleties in the imagery, concepts and

world and the ominous, industrial landscape of a bleak future. The first

themes to enrich the interpretations’.

panel revolves around the theme of division, metaphorically represented

A creation myth from the Moro-Isolan tribe in Mindanao runs

by the Moon and the Sun, with specific reference to the ongoing conflict

across all three panels of The promise land: the moon, the sun, the stars.

between the Moros and the government-controlled military. The second

Tapaya reveals the narrative during our discussions. Buwan, the moon,

panel reflects the pressing environmental issues of the Mindanao region,

and Araw, the sun, were a married couple with many children. One day,

the southern island of the Philippines and a region of fertile agricultural

Araw set an impossible task for his wife, demanding she ensure the

land and rich natural resources. In the third panel, we find a depiction of

cooking pot be filled with gabi leaves by the time he returned home.

the Lumad struggle, dispossessed of their traditional land and displaced

Buwan’s failure to do so, however, sent Araw into a rage, and he

from their homes by the ongoing conflict and big-business interests in

demanded a separation. Worried that her children would be cold if they

the gold and mineral potential of the area.

came with her yet suffer from the heat should they go with her husband,

There is no overlooking the fact that the violence embedded in

Buwan argued. Araw then killed the children, chopping them into pieces

this myth finds an unsettling resonance with contemporary Filipino

with his bolo (traditional Filipino machete), and banished Buwan: ‘You

events. As Tapaya explains to me: ‘It is historical to have the new

shall go with them and look after them in darkness’. Henceforth, the

President coming from Mindanao, the first time in Philippine history.

moon and the sun were separated by night and day and the children’s

People are hopeful that having a President from Mindanao can offer

remains were transformed into thousands of stars.

hope or the promise of peace’. I feel a sense of unease when I realise

Tapaya reimagines this myth in his triptych. A great winged creature

that the Filipino name for the Mindanao region is ‘The promise land’.

(Buwan), whose face is divided by a crescent, stares out at us, her red-

It is only with a closer understanding of the mythical and socio-

feathered form perched against the black of the night sky. A ferocious

political subject matter of Tapaya’s work that the title gains its terrifying

warrior (Araw), holding his kalis (sword) aloft, is shrouded in the red and

contemporary incongruity.

orange of a burning flame. He appears to send a flickering and crackling heat in all directions, while the stark white face of a Lumad (indigenous) figure, dressed in traditional textiles of the Bagobo tribe, bleeds profusely,

Rodel Tapaya: new art from the Philippines, 18 March to 20 August 2017, Free.

spilling a dark red blood across the scene below.

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CO M I N G M A J O R E X H I B ITI O N

DEFYING EMPIRE

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DEFYING EMPIRE

Seven artists reveal their work in the upcoming Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial and Tina Baum profiles Defying Empire artist Yhonnie Scarce

Tony Albert (Girramay, Yidinji & Kuku-Yalanji peoples) The Hand You’re Dealt 2016, paper (playing cards).

On loan from the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf

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JULIE GOUGH

Seven artists of the thirty in the upcoming third National Indigenous Art Triennial, Defying Empire, reveal a glimpse of what’s in store for visitors to this much‑anticipated major survey of new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, which opens at the NGA on 26 May.

I am concerned with developing a visual language to question and re‑evaluate the impact of the past on our present lives. Each work has been built from the outcomes of the last and represents a claiming within a larger consideration of ways to personally invoke and involve nation, viewer and self in acknowledging our entangled histories.

Current artwork in installation, sound and video provides the means to explore ephemerality, absence and recurrence. One process is to revisit the past, literally revisit the places where particular events happened, to show, through the resulting artworks, that the time/spaceplace split is a modern invention.

Working with film enables me to utilise repetition and duration.

Repetition of effects, perhaps action or text, offers a staccato tempo, something aligned to the trauma of multigenerational memories, a legacy of colonisation. Making these works allows me to experience Country, while revealing its tenacity, which parallels the survival of Tasmanian Aboriginal people against the odds. Duration similarly mirrors, in the gallery for the visitor, a temporal-witnessing of what I undertook outdoors, to gather and focus by filming, episodically, the evidence after the fact of invasion.

Julie Gough (Trawlwoolway people) Hunting Ground (Haunted) & (Pastoral) Van Diemen’s Land 2016, HD video. On loan from the artist and Bett Gallery

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DEFYING EMPIRE

TONY ALBERT

ARCHIE MOORE

An important part of our history, which for so long has been ignored,

Skin was an identifier of who I was and what status I held—not in the

is the significant contribution made by Aboriginal and Torres

long gone birth right of a traditional ‘skin name’, but from racist slurs

Strait Islander service men and women during war times. Coloured

that we’ve all heard at some time and continue to hear today. The skin

Diggers, as they are known, have fought in every war since the Boer

of Black dog is preserved by taxidermy, filled with sawdust and old

War. (This does not include the important Frontier Wars fought on

newspapers but also full of a history of racism and a feeling of being

Australian soil that still remain unrecognised.) While enlisted, these

subhuman. The dog wasn’t black enough so it got darkened with

soldiers were treated as equals, united by bravery to protect their country.

boot polish, a medium itself rich in racial connotations and make-up

Like other Australian soldiers, they were tortured, they took bullets and

for ‘black face’ performers from decades ago and the odd, misguided

shrapnel, some lost limbs and others lost lives.

incidents of recent times.

However, on return to Australia they were greeted by the same

It sits awkwardly on the floor, staring up at you with accusatory

racism they faced before leaving for war. The equality shared in the

eyes as an indictment of past mistreatment of an individual but also of

trenches was all but lost—Aboriginal diggers were refused entry

a marginalised group. There have been many papers that speak of a link

into veteran hotels, denied the land grants that were given to white

between discrimination and mental illness, how words said in jest or

soldiers. This is not a work that glorifies war. It is to honour our service

abuse can lead to depression. A nametag hangs around the dog’s neck

men and women, who for so long were subjected to profound racial

in case you are still unaware that this is a self-portrait.

discrimination despite their bravery. Today, I stand here honoured to play a role in overturning this history of misrecognition.

Tony Albert (Girramay, Yidinji & Kuku-Yalanji peoples) The Hand You’re Dealt 2016 (detail), paper (playing cards). On loan from the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf

Archie Moore (Kamilaroi people) Black Dog 2013, taxidermy dog, shoe polish, raven oil, leather, metal. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2014

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BROOK ANDREW

MAREE CLARKE

We are the sum of our ancestors. We are not yesterday, we are today,

My work is about regenerating cultural practices, making people

and with this we need to change accordingly, not to be caught up

aware of our culture, and that we are really strong in our culture,

with yesterday. We all change and become different all the time.

identity and knowledge. We haven’t lost anything; some of these

This is to be rejoiced. Our bodies are our own, though in a majority

practices have just been lying dormant for a while.

white community and language wrapped in a very fixed privileged

The traditional body adornments such as the reed necklaces

white idea of the ‘best’ contemporary lifestyle, we all fall for self-

and kangaroo-tooth necklaces are authentically reproduced but

delusion about both that ‘best’ culture and race, ‘us’. It is easier today

are supersized to reflect the scale of the loss of our knowledge of

for people to feel hatred and fear because cultural boundaries are

cultural practices. The production techniques are reclaimed through

shifting. Today we have a chance to move on. To bring to the front a

my examination of anthropological text and photography held in

new order of knowing, exploring, learning and sharing. We exist as

academic institutions around the world.

multiples like we have never existed before. We all need to own ourselves, we should let people do this.

I love to go about this process. I don’t do a lot of sketches, I think … I think a lot … and once I have the artwork finished in my head … I will then make the work. I like to look at new ways to tell stories through art.

Brook Andrew (Wiradjuri people) Revealing Distance 2016 (detail), linen, cotton, synthetic polymer paint, ink, foil

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DEFYING EMPIRE

Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta, Boon Wurrung & Wemba Wemba peoples) Made from Memory (Nan’s house) 2016 (detail of content in hologram), holographic photograph

RUSTY PETERS

KEN THAIDAY SENIOR

Looking at those old people, my bother and uncle, seeing them

I am from Erub (Darnley Island) in the Eastern Islands of the Torres

painting—I bin thinking, I might do painting myself. That’s when

Straits. I like to make things different … what I’m doing is something

I started to paint my Country. I didn’t want to paint someone else’s

more different … I make mobilised artworks … It’s my style, my way, it’s

Country—I might get sick. I paint for my mother and grandfather’s

me … That’s what I do. The knowledge is stronger when you learn from

Country. I bin ask Rover (Thomas), what you painting for? Him and

the Elders … My father taught me everything, he was one of the best

those old people got me thinking and today I keep going, painting

choreographers in Erub, all my singing and dancing today is from him

my Country, Ngarrangkarni (dreamtime stories), for my father and

… I am glad I carry this culture; I will never stop and keep going all the

grandmother’s Country, where I was born, the trees, milky way, all

time. My work represents Darnley Island … The shark and frigate bird

them things.

are my totems, I make them … That’s what I am, an artist. I give glory to God, he give me the talent to make my art. I love my art, I love my culture, I will never let it go.

Rusty Peters (Gija people) Three Nyawana in Yariny Country 2016, natural earth pigments on canvas. On loan from the artist and Warmun Art Centre

Ken Thaiday Sr (Meriam Mer people) Eastern Island Warrior headdress 2016, aluminium, stainless steel, perspex. On loan from the artist and Australian Art Print Network

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DEFYING EMPIRE

Yhonnie Scarce Tina Baum spoke to Yhonnie Scarce about her work in the upcoming exhibition Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial.

Knowing who you are and your place in the world is a comforting

So, when approached by curator Nici Cumpston to create a work for

thing, but it doesn’t come easily, that is, perhaps, unless you are as

the 2015 Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres

focused and fearless as Melbourne-based glass artist Yhonnie Scarce.

Strait Islander Art, she ‘felt that it was important to create a work that

She is strong-willed but empathetic, ambitious but compassionate, and

was specifically about South Australia’s history of nuclear testing’.

she is not afraid to speak her mind. Over the course of the past year or

A spectacular cloud‑like form comprising two thousand delicate

so, in particular, I’ve had good reason (and the pleasure) to speak to

blown-glass yams, Thunder Raining Poison is a stark reminder of the

her on numerous occasions to discuss the intricacies of her evocative

of Maralinga’s tragic place in recent history. It sits universally in the

contributions to the upcoming third National Indigenous Art Triennial,

understanding of the effects of war and weaponry on the human race.

Defying Empire, which opens at the NGA on 26 May. We’ve spoken about

The work was an instant hit when it was first shown at the Art

her life, loves and passions, but we always come back to art and, of course,

Gallery of South Australia as part of the Tarnanthi Festival. Audiences

to her works in the triennial, including her most ambitious work to date,

there were confronted and surprised by the history behind the work.

in scale and form, Thunder Raining Poison 2015.

‘That didn’t really happen, did it?’ or, simply, ‘Where is Maralinga?’, were

Born in the township of Woomera in the far north of South Australia

some of the responses Scarce heard, and it took her by surprise ‘that

and raised in the Northern Territory’s Alice Springs, Scarce has been

many people were unaware of the nuclear tests at Maralinga’. ‘Then

surrounded by art and creativity her whole life. She has many fond

I realised it was a secret for so long’, she says. A strong component of her

memories of growing up, from her creative outpouring as a young girl

practice is in exposing hidden or forgotten histories: ‘I enjoy uncovering

at school to visiting art galleries during her work lunch break later in life.

secrets that have been hidden for a long time. I sometimes think that

It wasn’t until she studied visual arts at the University of South Australia,

my practice is similar to an investigative journalist who confronts issues

though, that she knew she wanted to be an artist. She has always

head on … I tend to do a lot of reading and Internet research’. She then

maintained that glass chose her, drew her in and enticed her. It is easy

extends this research by travelling to the places she finds of interest.

to see how this medium can be sensual, brutal and engaging on so many

‘I feel that it’s important to obtain a strong sense of what may have

levels, and her use of this delicate material to create powerful statements

happened there, and it actually forces me to concentrate on the real

is something she excels in.

reason why I am there in the first place.’

‘I like to think that I am pushing the boundaries with the medium

Her hope for her extraordinarily beautiful work is that will

of glass. Every year, my work is becoming larger in scale and the subject

‘encourage audiences to understand how Australia was colonised and

matter darker’. Although physically beautiful in every respect, Scarce’s

how this has affected Aboriginal people and to open up to who we are

work in glass is often born out of Australia’s dark past, from our colonial

and what we have had to deal with’, and, in many respects, what we are

history and from those moments when we have failed as a nation

still dealing with today. ‘We are strong people,’ she adds, ‘who have a long

to address or engage, appropriately or respectfully, the rights of our

history of tradition, and I would love our people to be respected more’.

Indigenous peoples. Thunder Raining Poison relates to the atomic testing

Scarce’s ambition and the attention she pays to her work have afforded

conducted at Maralinga in South Australia by the British Government

her many memorable opportunities, including exhibiting at the Venice

in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of Scarce’s Kokatha people were affected

Biennale in 2013 and the Biennale of Sydney in 2014. And, soon, she will

by the tests and, while some were relocated, those that remained were

join twenty-nine other contemporary Indigenous artist in the NGA’s

exposed to the radiation left behind.

National Indigenous Art Triennial.

As a child, she remembers hearing stories about the ‘horrific fallout of the radioactive clouds’, which have left the land unable to sustain life to this day. ‘The stories’, she says, ‘have never left my mind’.

Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, 26 May to 10 September 2017, Free. An exhibition catalogue will be on sale.

Yhonnie Scarce at the Jam Factory, Adelaide. Photo: James Grosse.

Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY + dianne tanzer gallery

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Wesfarmers Arts Helen Carroll, Manager of Wesfarmers Arts and Curator of the Wesfarmers Collection, talks to the NGA’s Gwen Horsfield about the Perth-based company Wesfarmers’s collection of art by leading Australian and New Zealander artists and about its ongoing support of the NGA’s Indigenous Arts Leadership program.

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EXHIBITION SPONSOR

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‘Committing to a deep and genuine integration of Indigenous participation and leadership within the visual arts community in Australia is a long‑term prospect.’

Gwen Horsfield: Can you start by giving us an idea of the scope of the Wesfarmers Collection and how it came about?

Helen Carroll: The collection is one of the oldest extant corporate collections in Australia, having begun in the mid 1970s and still actively acquiring work today. It’s always been a collection focused on Australian art and broadly representative of the wide arc of Australian art practice from the colonial period through to the present.

Gwen: What’s the driving force behind the development of the collection today? Is there a particular focus for it?

Helen: The driving force has always been to be able to represent the diversity of art in this country through works that can stand alone in an artist’s career in terms of their significance and individual distinction.

Gwen: Your collection is proudly on display in your offices.

Do you find that this has a positive impact on the creative mindset of the organisation, on innovative thinking? Is the work environment different because of it?

Helen: Yes, the impact on people’s experience of working life at Wesfarmers is very tangible. We’re all working in an art gallery, and it’s an absolute joy and privilege to be able to come to the office each day and be surrounded by beautiful and conceptually engaging art.

The collection flows throughout the offices and communal spaces,

Above: Aden Ridgeway of Cox Inall Ridgeway speaks at the graduation dinner for the 2016 Indigenous Arts Leadership program at the NGA, Canberra.

Opposite: Participants in the 2010 Indigenous Arts Leadership program tour the NGA’s then new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander galleries.

Pervious pages: Wesfarmers’s new head office at Brookfield Tower in Perth, 2016.

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WESFARMERS ARTS

and we’re regularly bringing in artists, curators, historians and collectors to see the work and talk about art and ideas with our staff. So our people are engaging with the collection as part of the fabric of Wesfarmers, and there’s consequently a real level of respect and appreciation for art among our staff. I think that brings with it a correspondingly wider perspective on work and life and an openness to new ideas and alternative ways of looking at the world.

Gwen: You also share your collection with the broader community through loans to galleries in Australia and internationally.

Where might readers discover the Wesfarmers Collection today?

Helen: Committing to a deep and genuine integration of Indigenous

Helen: We have a permanent relationship with the Art Gallery of

a profound way about how we as a society see the value and role

Western Australia that sees work from the Wesfarmers Collection

participation and leadership within the visual arts community in Australia is a long-term prospect. It will mean cultural change in of collecting, preserving and fostering culture. We’re just at the

continuously on rotation at the gallery, which is fantastic, and we’ve

very beginning!

recently hung a new display from the collection in the beautiful spaces

Gwen: You say we’re at the very beginning but we have seventy-four alumni who have gone through the program since it began in 2009, some who now hold senior positions in institutions and many others who have gone from strength to strength in community engagement and leadership roles. Is the task really that big?

of Perth Concert Hall.

We’ll no doubt do more touring exhibitions in the future as well, given the terrific experience we had taking our contemporary exhibition Luminous world around Australia from 2013 to 2016.

Gwen: Since 2009, you’ve partnered with the NGA on its Indigenous Arts Leadership program, which aims to develop the careers of Australia’s Indigenous arts professionals and to boost their representation as leaders in the industry. Can you tell our readers a bit about how this program began and how it has been refined over the years?

Helen: The achievements of the graduates so far is super exciting to see.

Helen: The partnership came about as the result of two national

Gwen: What do you find are the most rewarding aspects for a business working with the arts, particularly a major institution such as the NGA?

institutions, Wesfarmers and the NGA, wanting to contribute in a meaningful and committed way to changing the landscape for Indigenous representation in our museums, galleries and public collections. The program is dynamic in nature. It has certainly changed and diversified over the years, and that’s due to the commitment both of our organisations have to listening to the sector we are aiming to support. This means shaping the work we do to respond to the specific needs of the Indigenous arts worker community.

Gwen: And part of that response has been to expand the program to include a scholarship component and an additional fellowship at an institution overseas. Since it began, though, what impact do you think the program has had on the industry?

But, yes, I think the challenge is that big because the issue is about our capacity as a nation to affect a whole-scale shift in thinking about how our institutions embody Indigenous culture and embrace Indigenous audiences. It’s a necessary and exciting development for our cultural sector, and the NGA and Wesfarmers want to see that change happen.

Helen: Definitely, I would say that easily the most rewarding aspect of working with a partner like the NGA is the opportunity to work alongside and to common cause with people of the highest professional integrity who devote their careers and lives to art and culture for the benefit of all Australia’s people, today and in generations to come.

Gwen: What advice can you give to emerging and aspiring arts professionals?

Helen: Be yourself, be generous with your time, knowledge and your passion for culture and be always open to new ideas.

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Wesfarmers Arts International Indigenous Arts Fellow Freja Carmichael shares her experiences as an emerging Indigenous curator and provides some fresh observations on curatorship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander material.

During an internship at the Queensland Museum in 2009, I first

Redland Art Gallery supported the two-year project, and

experienced a collection of historical material from Quandamooka,

a number of mentors guided me and provided advice. As an

my family’s place of belonging. I was deeply moved by the personal

emerging curator, having this support network was so important.

stories and histories of the objects, and it became clear to me then that,

And, now, being a member of the newly formed curatorial collective

as a curator, I could creatively support our communities, honour our

Blaklash further emphasises the strength of working together.

ancestors and celebrate our culture.

Amanda Hayman, Katina Davidson and I formed the collective in

Early on in my working history, I assisted in developing and

2016 through our long-standing working relationships. We had all

staging Indigenous community events and activities, and I often

observed and agreed that there was gap in the Brisbane arts sector

observed curatorial practices that limited the implementation of

for culturally appropriate representations involving Aboriginal

meaningful engagement with our communities, particularly during

and Torres Strait Islander artists.

the developmental phases of the projects. My concerns related to the

We are all also alumni of the Indigenous Arts Leadership

level of input in decision-making, timing of the engagement processes

program run by the NGA in Canberra every year with the

and observation of cultural protocols.

support of Wesfarmers and, throughout our careers, we have

This inspired me to complete my Master of Museums Studies

developed strong relationships between our communities across

at the University of Queensland, which responded to these challenges

Queensland and the institutions in which we work. We each

by exploring the role of the curator in exhibitions involving

bring different understandings and experiences to the collective,

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. When it comes to

which is mutually beneficial for us, individually and for the

telling our stories and preserving our culture, traditional curatorial

projects we are working on. For example, I recently returned

practices do not cover the range of activities and level of engagement

home from Utrecht, where I worked on the final stages of

required in Indigenous arts. We don’t have a top-down approach.

delivering the exhibition Mapping Australia: cartography to county

Instead, we follow a more innate collaborative process. So I argued

at the Aboriginal Art Museum. This invaluable opportunity

that exhibition development should be just as significant and

again came from the NGA, from its Wesfarmers-supported

thoughtfully approached as the display itself and that innovative

International Indigenous Arts Fellowship.

curatorship should be applied to support the preservation and promotion of Aboriginal culture.

After this experience, I now know how important it is that we, as Indigenous curators, are involved in representing our people

On completing my dissertation, I had my first practical

not just locally but also internationally to ensure our cultural

opportunity to apply my understandings and approaches when

integrity is maintained and soundly portrayed. The fellowship

I curated Gathering strands at Redland Art Gallery in mid 2016.

also reaffirmed the importance of our work and practice,

This project evolved after being successfully awarded a twelve-

providing me with further strength to continue on this journey,

month Australia Council for the Arts Curatorial Fellowship in

working collectively and collaboratively with other curators

2014 toward research and development for an exhibition. It was a

and with our artists and communities. Freja Carmichael,

transforming and challenging experience in which I wore many

independent curator and researcher

hats. I went from doing community consultation to researching, liaising with artists, coordinating workshops, developing funding submissions, selecting works of art and writing. Every day was completely different.

Freja Carmichael in Amsterdam en route to the Rijksmuseum, 2016.

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C U R R E NT M A J O R E X H I B ITI O N

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Dr Christopher Allen, author of French painting in the golden age and national art critic for The Australian, draws a parallel between Europe’s most opulent palace, the Palace of Versailles, the successes and failures of the Sun King, Louis XIV, and one of the great periods of western art, the French golden age of the seventeenth century.

Right: Versailles: Treasures from the Palace at the NGA, Canberra, 8 December 2016.

Previous pages: Manufacture des Gobelins, after Charles Le Brun, The king’s visit to the Gobelins factory, 15 October 1667 1729–34 (detail), from the series Life of the king, wool, silk and gold thread. National Furniture Depository. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Christian Jean / Jean Schormans

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Nothing seems to epitomise the golden age of the French seventeenth

The situation improved significantly in the middle decades of

century more vividly than the immense complex of the Palace of

the century and was transformed by the combination of increasing

Versailles, an undeniable expression of the power and prestige of the

prosperity and state patronage under the young Louis XIV. But, even

Sun King and symbol of the absolute monarchy that was the first

so, the greatest artistic and literary achievements of the period belong

incarnation of the modern centralised state. But subsequent generations,

to the first two decades of his reign, the 1660s and 1670s, when the new

from the German princelings who rushed to build their own oversized

king enjoyed economic and military success. In 1678, with the Peace

palaces in the following century to modern tourists, have also seen

of Nijmegen, Louis reached the zenith of his power. By the middle of

Louis XIV and the sprawling palace he built as the emblems of

the next decade, however, the loss of his able minister Jean-Baptiste

French classicism.

Colbert, and the fundamental policy mistakes that ensued, led to the

Yet the truth is not quite as straightforward. In the first place, the greatest French artists of the seventeenth century, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, spent almost all their lives in Rome and chose to die

destructive wars that overshadowed the last three decades of his rule until Louis’s death in 1715.

What is intriguing is that the history of the Palace of Versailles

there. They were also well over a generation older than Louis XIV and

seems to match this story of rise and decline. Its successive phases are

had done much or most of their work before he took over the running

symptomatic of changes in the outlook of the king and the conception

of the state in 1661. Rome, the capital of European art, was the only

of the state, which help to explain both the cultural and the socio-

place that these painters could achieve greatness given the mediocrity

political developments of the time. The early and late incarnations

of cultural life, and especially of painting and sculpture, in early

of the palace parallel the more- and less-fortunate periods of Louis’s

seventeenth-century Paris.

exceptionally long reign.

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‘Nothing seems to epitomise the golden age of the French seventeenth century more vividly than the immense complex of the Palace of Versailles, an undeniable expression of the power and prestige of the Sun King and symbol of the absolute monarchy that was the first incarnation of the modern centralised state.’

Versailles was not always the monumental structure we see today.

It was originally built by Louis XIII in 1623 as a relatively modest hunting lodge. Louis XIV was fond of it because of happy times he spent there as a very young king with his even younger mistress, Mademoiselle de La Vallière, far from the social and political pressures of life in Paris, which he associated with a childhood growing up during the years of instability and outright civil war known as the Fronde (1648–53).

The first stage of the enlargement of Versailles (1662–70) was on a grand but not excessive scale and was conceived as an addition to the original structure, not as a replacement of it. The hunting lodge was encased on three sides by what was called an ‘envelope’, but the original building and its courtyard, the Cour de Marbre, remained intact. Even later, when the palace was massively extended, this earlier core remained the heart of the whole residence and included the rooms in which the monarch actually slept at night.

This enlarged Versailles was conceived as a theatre of royal pomp, especially of pleasure and entertainment. The first of the great festivities, which ran over several days and included theatre, music, ballet, feasts and fireworks, was held in the grounds and gardens of the palace in 1664, and the most important later ones were in 1668 and 1674. There was, indeed, a political motivation behind these entertainments, for Louis discovered that he could control his formerly rebellious nobility by keeping them occupied at court with pleasure, social distraction and, above all, competition for his attention and favour.

After the Peace of Nijmegen, however, Louis determined not only to extend the physical structure of the palace but also change its function so that it became, in effect, the seat of government, an artificial capital outside Paris, the urbanistic expression of the absolute monarchy and the modern centralised state. There was a massive need for accommodation for the princes and senior nobles who were expected to be resident at Versailles, as well as for their servants, not to mention offices for the bureaucracy of the state.

The most visible change to the original structure, apart from the new wings and endless outbuildings that grew up around it, was the filling in of the great terrace that had given sculptural shape to the garden facade of Louis Le Vau’s original extension. Externally, the result is the enormous but architecturally insipid front of the building that now looks onto the gardens, its ornamental motifs too small to articulate so huge a mass. Internally, the terrace allowed the construction of the Hall of Mirrors (1678–84), the most impressive single room in the palace.

The Hall of Mirrors is also a theatre, but not a theatre of pleasure.

It is explicitly devoted to the display of power. When it came to deciding on a plan for the painted decoration, the customary set of mythological subjects indirectly alluding to the greatness of the king was rejected in favour of a history of the most important events of his reign, beginning with his decision to govern alone—that is, personally, rather than delegating responsibility to a prime minister. The story emphasised the

Opposite, from top: Israël Silvestre and Jean Lepautre First day: festival of the king and queens from Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle, May 1664 1674, engraving; Jean Lepautre Fifth day: fireworks on the canal at Versailles, from Divertissements of 1674 1676, engraving. Palace of Versailles. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot

military triumphs and conquests that enlarged the territory of France, and the hall was bounded at each end by the Salon de la Guerre and the Salon de la Paix. The message was very clear: Louis is the greatest monarch in the world and offers his neighbours the straightforward alternatives of war or peace on his terms.

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By the time the Hall of Mirrors was completed, Louis had lost his immensely able minister Colbert, whose place was taken by the more bellicose François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois. The king had begun to persecute the Protestants, whose rights had been guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes, promulgated by his own grandfather Henri IV in 1598. In 1685, Louis finally revoked the edict, precipitating a disastrous exodus of merchants, manufacturers and skilled craftsmen from the country. This display of religious intolerance helped bring about the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, which threw out the Stuarts and brought Louis’s archenemy Prince William of Orange to the British throne. The ensuing War of the Grand Alliance lasted from 1688 to 1697.

The golden age was in irreversible decline and the last straw was the gruelling War of the Spanish Succession, which began in 1701 and lasted almost until the Sun King’s death.

From a distance, the history of Louis XIV illustrates both the good and the bad faces of the new centralised state. In its first phase, there were great achievements. Imposing order in place of chaos—including more efficient and rational economic management and enlightened patronage of industry, crafts and the arts—greatly enhanced prosperity.

In the second phase, however, we see the destructive consequences of heavy-handed bureaucracy, excessive regulation, intellectual and religious intolerance and militaristic foreign policy.

The ideas that inspired the literary and artistic culture of the French golden age are not surprisingly akin to those that we see embodied in the political thinking of the time, and we can summarise them as a love of rules, order and rational principles and an inclination to form institutions to administer these rules and principles. It is not hard to see why the French loved rules and order. French society had been thrown into chaos by the religious wars at the end of the sixteenth century and continued to be rocked by episodes of political unrest until stability was restored in the second half of the seventeenth century.

The love of order first manifested itself culturally in the group of writers who, with the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to Louis XIII, became the Académie française in 1635. Their task was to prune and regulate the French language, which had undergone an immense and unruly growth spurt from the middle of the sixteenth century. And their efforts were so successful that a succession of great writers, within less than a generation, had given French not only its characteristic clarity and incisiveness but also a literary vocabulary far more restricted than that of English, as well as much more stringent rules of grammar and decorum.

These were also the writers who most clearly demonstrate that the golden age of French classical literature belongs to the 1660s and 1670s, the successful first two decades of Louis’s rule, which also correspond to the first phase of Versailles. We can date to this period all the great plays of Jean Racine (apart from the two pieces written late in his life and not for the professional stage), all the important plays of Molière, all of Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables (except for a final late volume) and other great works such as François de La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes and Madame de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves.

Adam Frans van der Meulen March of the king’s army on Courtray, 18 July 1667 1679–84, oil on canvas.

Palace of Versailles. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot

The case of art is a little different because there is no comparable flowering of great artists in France in the 1660s and 1670s, although we can discern a similar attraction to the principles of rules and

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order and, perhaps even more clearly, understand the reasons for the cultural regression that corresponded to the second phase of Versailles as the centre of an increasingly authoritarian and intolerant state.

By the second quarter of the century, French painters began to feel more confident in developing their own styles, and many never went to Rome at all. By the 1640s, the artists who considered themselves progressive sought to free themselves from the monopoly of the Guild of Painters. They obtained authorisation from Cardinal Mazarin in 1648 to constitute themselves into an academy under royal patronage,

Versailles: Treasure from the Palace, 9 December 2016 to 17 April 2017, see page 10 for ticket prices. Exhibition catalogue on sale.

Public programs: ‘Enchanted Isles, Fatal Shores: Living Versailles’, two-day conference, 17–18 March, 9.00 am ‘A European royal stage: Louis XIV’s Savonnerie carpets’, Wolf Burchard of the National Trust, London, 19 March, 2.00 pm Exclusive viewing of Versailles for members, 6 April, 5.30 pm ‘The fall of the House of Versailles’, Roland Peelman talk and mini-recital, 8 April 2.00 pm

which would exempt them from guild membership. The young but very talented and energetic Charles Le Brun became the effective leader of the new institution.

The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, however, really came into its own in the 1660s, when Colbert came to see it as a vehicle for training artists to a high level of technical and aesthetic excellence. This was consonant with his efforts to improve standards in other fields of manufacturing, but he saw that art was a special case because it was capable of directly celebrating the king and the state. So, although members of the Academy already shared in the general French love of rules and order, it was really Colbert who galvanised them in this respect, suggesting monthly lectures in art history and theory based on individual masterpieces from the royal collection, followed by debates whose conclusions were to be registered as principles and rules of art practice. These principles eventually took the form of the elaborate Tables de préceptes drawn up by the secretary of the Academy Henry Testelin.

The debates of the Academicians are of considerable art historical interest. But, despite raising the status and prestige of French art in Europe, the Academy, under Louis XIV, ultimately failed to produce art of the first rank. Unlike writing, French painting did not derive the same benefits from the quest for rules and principles.

This was no doubt because art was not given the same freedom of expression. It was more explicitly tied to the glorification of the state, more directly subject to mobilisation for explicitly political purposes. And, in that respect, the fate of French art under Louis XIV anticipates the general decline that corresponds to the second phase of Versailles’s expansion.

The very impulses to order and centralisation that were stimulating during the golden age, when they were spontaneous, or even supported by an absolutist regime, became stifling when they were imposed and enforced. Yet Versailles itself—in spite of wartime austerity measures such as the melting of the silver furniture of the Hall of Mirrors in 1689— never lost its prestige as the greatest palace of France or, indeed, as it was described by the Persian monarch Nassereddin Shah Qajar in his 1873 travel memoirs, the finest palace in all of Europe.

Jean Varin Bust of Louis XIV 1665–66, marble. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Franck Raux

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C U R R E NT M A J O R E X H I B ITI O N

WILD, TAME & HUNTED

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Simeran Maxwell shines the light on the animal inhabitants of Versailles. From the domestic to the exotic and those fit for the hunt, animals became symbols of pedigree and power, love and loyalty, influence and affection, not just in painting and sculpture but also in palace furnishings and the intimate possessions of the royal family and their vast entourage.

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Kings, queens, courtiers, ladies-in-waiting and servants were not the only inhabitants of the French court. Animals, from domestic pets to exotic species, also populated Versailles, and many were immortalised in paintings or in the objets d’art commissioned for the palace and its gardens, becoming symbolic of the values of French royalty as well as its power. The inclusion of dogs in portraits, for instance, was not just a nod to the canine favourites of the court but also an iconographic reference to loyalty and deference. Two of Madame de Pompadour’s favourite dogs had nicknames in line with these ideas: Inès was sometimes known as ‘Fidelity’, while Mimi was ‘Constancy’. The group portraits The Sourches family 1756 and The Duke of Penthièvre and his family 1768 include dogs for this purpose.

Many of the preferred smaller breeds of lapdog in European courts originated in Asia, as a box from Queen Marie-Antoinette’s personal lacquerware collection shows. From a young age, Marie-Antoinette favoured the Pug and, during her reign, the breed became fashionable in the French court. History, however, might have gone differently. On her way from Vienna to Versailles in 1770, at the age of fourteen, she was accompanied by her pet Pug named Mops when she was told that, due to French protocol, all her personal belongings from Austria had to remain behind. Her new lady-in-waiting consoled her that, once at court, she could have ‘as many French dogs as she pleased’, but it wasn’t long until the queen became so lonely that the convention was overturned and Mops joined her at the palace. Previously, the Papillon, a type of toy spaniel, had been common, and a variant known as the Phalène, with droopy rather than perky ears, was Madame de Pompadour’s preferred breed. Her lapdogs were often included in portraits of her and even

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Above: Michel-Barthélémy Ollivier The party hosted by the Prince of Conti in honour of the hereditary Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg, L’Isle-Adam, 1766 1777, oil on canvas. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin Opposite: Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the elder The Duke of Penthièvre and his family c 1768 (detail) (also known as The cup of chocolate), oil on canvas. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin Previous pages: Alexandre-François Desportes The grand dauphin’s hunting dogs c 1702 (detail) (also known as Death of a deer), oil on canvas. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Daniel Arnaudet / Jean Schormans All works in this feature are from the Palace of Versailles

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Left: Edo-period Japan Box in the form of a dog on stand 18th century, wood, lacquer, glass. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Thierry Ollivier Oppoiste: Etienne Le Hongre Wolf 1673–74, painted lead. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin

appear in decorative elements that once adorned her many homes,

army on Courtray, 18 July 1667 1679–84. The pair gambol alongside

including a carpet woven by the famous Savonnerie carpet factory.

Louis XIV and his entourage astride their war horses. Even within the

Despite his public appearance as an authoritarian ruler, Louis XIV

during the night. The Prince of Conti’s wife slept with a large Mastiff

his favourites, featured in many paintings of the king, were Pistolet,

who attacked her jealous husband one evening as he came to check

Silvie, Mignonne, Princesse and Dolinde. He was known to carry dog

there was no paramour in her bedchamber.

biscuits in his pockets, made daily by the royal pastry cooks. He also

During the seventeenth century, collections of rare and savage

commissioned leading French artists to make exquisite velvet-lined

beasts were also common at palaces across Europe. In line with this,

dog beds of walnut and ebony marquetry for each of his residences.

Louis XIV instructed his architect Louis Le Vau to design a menagerie

His favourite dogs lived in a room known as the Cabinet des Chiens,

for the grounds of Versailles. It consisted of a hexagonal building with

adjacent to the King’s Bedchamber at Versailles. They were looked

pens set out along the outside and a luxurious viewing room in the

after by his old governess, and he later instituted a position called

centre. Louis XIV commissioned a series of animal and hunting scenes

Capitaines des Levrettes de la Chamber de Roi, assisted by three dog

for the menagerie pavilion, and Louis XV commissioned a similar

valets. Many canine elements appear throughout the earliest decorations

series from the most celebrated artists of his period, illustrating hunting

at Versailles, a nod to Louis XIV’s love of the animal. For instance, a pair

scenes set in foreign countries with exotic animals such as tigers, lions,

of seventeenth-century Italian porphyry vases has seated dogs carved

bears, ostriches, leopards, elephants, crocodiles and bulls. The latter

on either side of the top lip.

series decorated the Gallery of the Exotic Hunts built on the second

Needless to say, dogs ran amuck at the palace, and many paintings attest to that. In Etienne Allegrain’s View of Versailles from the Orangerie

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palace, women often slept with their dogs as guardians of their virtu

had a softer side where his hunting dogs were concerned. Some of

floor of king’s rooms in 1735–36.

Hunting was the ‘true sport of kings’, and evidence of their

c 1695, a medium-size hunting dog can be seen playfully leaping at a

passion can be found everywhere at the palace. Alexandre-François

courtier on the pathway on the left, while the French school’s Courtyard

Desportes became a favourite painter of Louis XIV and, later,

of the Royal Chapel, Palace of Versailles c 1725 includes two large dogs

Louis XV. Both kings relied on him to record royal hunts as well as

roaming freely among the crowd while a Mastiff-type appears to be

portraits of their favourite dogs, and he often accompanied Louis XIV

barking the arrival of a carriage beyond the gates. Sentinel was another

on horseback to make sketches during the hunt. The grand dauphin’s

common role dogs served at the court, as well as during royal processions

hunting dogs was commissioned by Louis XIV’s eldest son for his

to other courts and into war. Adam Frans van der Meulen depicts two

palace at Meudon in 1702. The painting demonstrates Desportes’s

dogs in the foreground of his monumental painting March of the king’s

skill as an animal painter, using different positions for each of the four

VERSAILLES

‘Despite his public appearance as an authoritarian ruler, Louis XIV had a softer side where his hunting dogs were concerned … He was known to carry dog biscuits in his pockets, made daily by the royal pastry cooks.’ dogs: one drinking; one alert, watching over his prey; one lying down; and one standing panting. He creates a vital contrast between the stag, lying prone with its eyes open but lifeless, and the dogs, all very much alive.

Under Louis XV, Jean-Baptiste Oudry became the official painter of the hunt and was commissioned by the king to complete an allegorical series in the year he moved the court back to Versailles. Still life with bust of Africa 1722 presents a seemingly haphazard arrangement of items—a rifle, a hunting dog, falcons and the carcasses of a hare and two pheasants. It acts as homage to the art of hunting, portraying the three main types practised at this time: shooting, hunting with dogs and game-bird hunting. The two hooded falcons, gun, dog and other elements demonstrate Oudry’s skill as a painter, which did much to raise the status of the still life, then situated at the bottom of the hierarchy of genres admitted to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

As well as hunting scenes and portraits of the royal dogs, Oudry painted a series of life-size portraits of the inhabitants of Louis XV’s menagerie between 1739 and 1745. Hunting images became increasingly more common not only in formal paintings but also on everyday items such as the king’s decorated menus and lady’s fans.

Menageries went out of fashion during Louis XVI’s reign, and sections of the one at Versailles were demolished to make way for Marie-Antoinette’s dairy, where farmyard animals were housed instead.

Pastoral idyll became all the rage. Cows, sheep, goats and other domestic animals replaced ferocious beasts, both physically and in decorations.

For instance, a baby kid surrounded by two ladies and a gentleman in rustic attire appears on a lady’s sequined fan.

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Various maps of Versailles show the position of the large and small stables and the royal kennels on either side of the main avenue to the palace. The stables were a core service of the French court and were run by the Grand Equerry, who supplied and cared for seven hundred horses and attended the king whenever he was on horseback. Louis XIV favoured English horses for hunting and his carriages were drawn by Swedish Oldenburg greys and Polish Tigers. He even asked the Persian royal household for Arabian Stallions. The royal kennels were run by the Grand Huntsman. The Duke of Penthièvre served both Louis XV and XVI in this role. He had no interest in hunting himself but, nevertheless, conscientiously oversaw the kings’ hunting parties and managed a staff of forty-four dog handlers.

In a practical sense, the large number of dogs and, under Louis XV, cats were helpful in controlling the spread of vermin throughout the palace. However, sanitation was never very good and the animals contributed to Versailles’s infamous odour. Perfume fountains were common and helped mask the smell. The bottom of a Chinese vase embellished by the Stoldz brothers and used as a perfume fountain in Louis XV’s dressing room is decorated with a swan, a symbol of grace and beauty also associated with love, music, and poetry, its wings outstretched among the twisting rococo decoration. Swans were one of the many exotic species of birds found in the palace menagerie.

Other birds were also used to decorate various objets d’art at Versailles.

The ornate gold barometer commissioned for Louis XVI, before he

Versailles: Treasure from the Palace, 9 December 2016 to 17 April 2017, see page 10 for ticket prices. Exhibition catalogue on sale.

Public programs: Early morning viewing and petit dejeuner for members, 23 March, 8.00 am ‘Louis’s legacy’, music performed by Salut! Baroque, 1 April 2.00 pm Exclusive viewing of Versailles for members, 6 April, 5.30 pm

became king, was intended as an allegory of his marriage to MarieAntoinette. It has both an eagle, taken from the Austrian coat of arms, and a rooster, or cockerel. The medieval French symbol of the rooster is a play on the word gallus (Latin for both an inhabitant of Gaul and cockerel) and grew in popularity during the Ancien Régime because of its strong Christian associations. Similarly, doves appear in pairs on many objects, as they were seen as a symbol of love and devotion. A nesting pair is carved into the top of Marie-Antoinette’s harp.

Fairy tales and fables were popular educational tools at the French court, assisting to establish the hierarchy of animals. This helped to reconcile the royal family’s love of animals with their love of hunting.

Jean de La Fontaine published his version of fables in 1668, which was dedicated to Louis XIV’s son, the dauphin. These stories inspired the three hundred and thirty painted lead figures that decorated the Labyrinth, the naturalism of which suggests they were likely inspired by the animals in the nearby menagerie. Throughout the Ancien Régime, animals of all types were a mainstay of life at Versailles. Exotic animals contributed to the magnificence of the French court, while noble breeds of domestic animals were symbols of prestige for their owners.

Irrespective of type, their proud owners ensured that they are forever remembered in the art and design of the period.

Opposite: Jean-Baptiste Oudry Still life with bust of Africa 1722, oil on canvas. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot Right: Michel-Ange Challe (designer) and Jean‑Joseph Lemaire (sculptor) Barometer 1773–75, carved and gilded limewood. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMNGrand Palais / Christophe Fouin

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DIARY OF AN OBJECT

D I A RY O F A N O B J E C T

Two koala figurines bound together with red twine, the Sydney Harbour Bridge swirling within a fractured snow globe, a ‘desiccated lamington’ and paper lips on a popsicle stick. These are just a few of art historian and curator Daniel Thomas’s favourite things collected in response to the 1967 landmark exhibition Marcel Duchamp: the Mary Sisler collection.

They are among an eclectic assortment of 108 items he assembled into a hessian waterbag (one of three) as a metaphorical homage to the revitalising and replenishing effect the exhibition had on Australia’s cultural landscape, which Thomas recalls was like a desert at the time.

Seventy-eight works made the journey from the United States, first to New Zealand then on to state galleries in Australia as well as the Newcastle Art Gallery (at that stage, there was no national gallery in Canberra). Duchamp, who was eighty at the time, did not make the trip himself, but the exhibition formed a comprehensive survey of his practice, from his earlier, more prosaic paintings to his revolutionary conceptual pieces. While public outcry in New Zealand saw certain works removed from display, Australian audiences embraced Duchamp’s critique of high-art culture.

Homage to Duchamp

Lying strewn across a desk, the items in the waterbag appear disparate. However, themes emerge as you begin reading the contents.

Bought from tourist stalls near the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a humorous collection of Australian kitsch highlights the uniqueness of Australia against the major art centres of Paris and New York in which Duchamp operated. The aforementioned koalas and snow globe, a kangaroo silhouette ironically cut out from kangaroo hide and even the waterbag itself emphasise the anti-aesthetic of Australia’s tourist

Bianca Hill unpacks Daniel Thomas’s Waterbag to tell the story of Marcel Duchamp’s impact on the Australian art and social scenes of the 1960s.

market. Topographical and tourist road maps, aerial photographs and lurid postcards are each marked and circled like mementos from a past trip—reminders of a place so far away, and unlike home, that explaining it to family and friends requires visual cues.

Select pieces of exhibition ephemera—a catalogue, press releases and gallery correspondence—record efforts to promote and illuminate the show for Australian audiences, while now brittle sheets of Copyrapid (an early form of photocopying) highlight its critical reception and preserve some of the dubious and biting headlines that were typical of the media’s response. ‘Very serious business at the gallery’, one unconvinced journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald observed. Another, Ronald Millar from The Australia, asked whether it was all ‘A joke on art itself?’ Thomas, however, includes these critiques as a point of contrast to the main plot, which he tells through collected personal responses.

Opening an unassuming brown envelope reveals fifty-five autographed polaroids taken during the install and over the duration of the exhibition. Art critic Clement Greenberg and curator Renée Free are captured fondling the naked female breast that protrudes from Duchamp’s Please touch 1947. Both smile sheepishly. Short inscriptions on the reverse of some photographs record the responses of visitors and gallery staff to Duchamp’s infamous sense of absurdity, such as actress Peggy Cass claiming to have entered Sydney through Duchamp’s French window 1920, a miniature French window with its panes covered in black leather.

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‘Here, the tension between reality and fiction is heightened— is that a piece of charred, decaying wood or, as Thomas insists, a stale lamington?’

But the story the waterbag tells does not end in the gallery space.

Duchamp’s reach was much greater, so Thomas included images of both subtle and blatant homages that communicate the audience’s fascination with the infamous ready-mades. Collector Jeremy Caddy nailed a coat rack to the wooden floor of his home, an almost exact facsimile of Duchamp’s Trap 1917, and his enclosed photograph affirms Duchamp’s negation of the work of art as original while simultaneously venerating him as an artistic genius.

The anonymous characters are the most revealing. A group of recurring faces in the polaroids and a series of small absurdist works represent them and their responses. A folded questionnaire poses several existential questions. One query asks about 10 Cunningham Street, the address of a warehouse in central Sydney where artists staged weekly happenings, including influential figures such as photographer Juno Gemes, stage designer Brian Thomson and filmmaker Martyn Sanderson.

A series of twenty-three cards attributed to Sanderson and featuring text bubbles and comic panels proclaims, ‘You are holding a brief shuffle sequential set of essential possibilities … please include it as it includes you’. Sanderson allows the reader to determine their own experience, inculcating them into the production of the work of art, just as Duchamp invited audiences to reconsider ‘What is art?’ Although Thomas will maintain that Waterbag was simply ‘a bit of fun’, it is, in retrospect, an ambitious conceptual work that reflects the extent of the great French-American’s influence on the Australian arts community.

Similar to Duchamp’s own portable miniature monographs of the 1930s, such as Green box and Boîte-en-valise, Waterbag was editioned.

Thomas produced three versions, which he intended to be identical reproductions. However, variation inevitably occurred, as handwritten letters and polaroids can never truly exist in multiple. The first iteration was sent to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for its extensive Duchamp archives. The second remained with Thomas, who later gifted it to Australia’s national collection. And the third and final iteration was sent as a gift to Duchamp, although he sadly died before receiving it, and it fell to his wife, Alexina, to unfold the contents.

People who come to view Waterbag will each read a different story, leafing through its contents at his or her own pace and in no particular order. It is not a closed or fixed text but one that exists in a moment-tomoment specificity and is literally informed by the reader. What remains constant, however, is Thomas’s simple yet considered thankyou to Marcel Duchamp for challenging the institution of art itself.

Page 50: Daniel Thomas Waterbag containing a collection of items relating to the exhibition of Marcel Duchamp (the Mary Sisler collection) 1968–75, various mediums. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Daniel Thomas Left: Lips on a stick with the exhibition catalogue for Marcel Duchamp: the Mary Sisler collection Opposite: Envelope containing 55 black-and-white instant photographs taken at Marcel Duchamp

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ABSTRACTION

TO U R I N G E X H I B ITI O N

‘Realistic painting has proved to be a blind alley. We have reached the end of that alley, and been obliged to turn around and retrace our steps.

Now we have started on the new track, and already find it rich in new discoveries.’ Dorrit Black, 16 March 1932 In her draft speech for the formal opening of her progressive Modern Art Centre in Sydney in 1932, Black summed up with clarity the remarkable ideological shift that had taken place in all art forms in the early twentieth century. It was a shift she was determined to impart to the more conservative forces of the Sydney art world when she returned in 1930 from a long sojourn in France and England with her friends and fellow modernists Grace Crowley and Anne Dangar.

These pioneering women transferred to Australian audiences an evangelical zest and enthusiasm for modernism’s great project. Each, in her own way, brought back the theory and techniques learnt under the Cubist masters André Lhote and Albert Gleizes in France and while studying the modernist teachings of Claude Flight and Cyril Power at the Grosvenor School in London. In Sydney, Black shared her newfound knowledge at her Modern Art Centre, while Crowley did so at the Crowley-Fizelle School on George Street—their lessons augmented by lavish doses of on-the-spot theory and technique courtesy of Dangar’s

Abstraction

illustrated letters to Crowley sent from Gleizes’s artist commune in the Rhône-Alpes.

The NGA holds a significant group of rare works across a range of media by Crowley, Dangar and Black, which not only illustrate the early influence of European Cubism but also unequivocally show the critical

Lara Nicholls explores the powerful impact Australian women had on the development of abstraction, one of the most significant and influential movements in art history, as seen in the new NGA touring exhibition Abstraction.

role progressive women played in opening up avant-garde practices to artists at home in the 1920s. In doing so, they redirected public tastes away from conservative, heroic landscapes and portraiture of the Edwardian era. These works now form part of a new touring exhibition of works from the national art collection that traces the trajectory of abstraction over the past century through the various interpretations of the many generations of Australian women who adopted the approach in their practice.

The exhibition, Abstraction: celebrating Australian women abstract artists, has only just opened at Geelong Gallery, in time for International Women’s Day on 8 March, when a panel of esteemed women will discuss art, gender and politics in a special event celebrating the considerable contribution Australian women have made to abstract art. Without doubt, when the world turned modern at the outbreak of the First World War, it was largely women who embraced abstraction as the new path for Australian art, and they have since been some of its most influential contributors.

One of Australia’s quintessential modernists, Margaret Preston, whose reductive woodblock prints open this new touring exhibition, did not mince her words when she stated in Art and Australia in 1933, ‘Cubism is the foundation of all twentieth century thoughtful original work’, explaining that it is ‘a revulsion against the anecdotal type of art’ of the nineteenth century, which she saw as the antithesis of modernism.

The women represented in Abstraction, and the grand sweep of time

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covered by the exhibition, show the many incarnations of a development

in an interview with James Gleeson in the late 1970s, ‘I sort of felt the

that was as influential in art-historical terms as the rediscovery of

urge I wanted to be bold and big. I wanted to have this greater freedom

perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi in Quattrocento Florence.

in general in expressing myself as an artist’.

From the starting point of Cubism and Constructivism in the first

two decades. However, Hard Edge or Geometric Abstraction and

so too did the geographic centre shift away from Paris and London

Op Art began to make their presence felt by the mid 1960s. The NGA

toward New York. From Cubism, Crowley brought painting toward

acquired many works by the artists included in the 1968 exhibition

Geometric Abstraction, a purely non-representational iteration of the

The Field, which traced this new form of abstraction. Viewed at times

form. Other artists practised a more-organic abstraction, such as Inge

as a rather ‘blokey’ style, only three women were included in The Field,

King in her early carved stone and wood sculptures made at the Abbey

two of whom, Normana Wight and Janet Dawson, are represented

in Hertsforshire in the 1940s—two of which, Animal shapes in space

in the NGA’s touring show. Like many of the works in Abstraction,

c 1948 and Figure in oak 1949, are included in Abstraction. She then

Dawson’s Study for lighthouse 1968 is about something intangible and

travelled to New York in 1949, where she adopted steal, a transformative

fleeting—in this case, the moment when darkness switches to light in

experience for her practice.

the intermittent flash of a lighthouse globe. While it is Hard Edge in

Yvonne Audette arrived in New York a few years later, in 1952, the year Jackson Pollock painted his masterpiece Blue poles. It was a time of momentous changes in the art world, ushered in by Abstract

style it is also ethereal and enigmatic, a quality that would often allude Dawson’s male counterparts.

The quest to capture transient, elusive, mutable subjects or events

Expressionism. She saw exhibitions by Pollock and Willem de Kooning,

inspired many artists to harness abstraction. It was no longer about theory

and a visit to Franz Kline’s studio had the indelible effect of teaching

or philosophy. Instead, emotional response became a primary factor in the

her how to ‘paint space’. Her The flat landscape 1959 is a critical example

later decades of the twentieth century. Lesley Dumbrell, whose language

of Kline’s influence, philosophically and technically.

is entirely abstracted, found it to be the only solution for depicting the

In Australia, Abstract Expressionism took a number of forms, some

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The movement seemingly dominated the art world for over

decades of the twentieth century, abstraction evolved globally, and

invisible. Her monumental Foehn 1975 draws its title from the wind force

of which were derived from the Tachiste painters of Europe. Works such

that moves from the ocean over the mountains. She describes the work as

as West 1960 by Margo Lewers and Earth in spring 1968 by her friend

capturing the sense and feeling of the changing wind current or the cold

Eva Kubbos show the reach of these merged idioms. Kubbos recounted

of sudden drops of rain or snow at the top of the ridgeline.

ABSTRACTION

Page 54: Mary Webb Abstract painting 1955 (detail), oil on canvas. Purchased 1976 Opposite: Virginia Cuppaidge Lyon 1972, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Gift of the artist, 2012 Right: Inge King Figure in oak 1949, oak.

Purchased 1988 All works in this feature are from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Dumbrell and other women such as Elizabeth Gower and Virginia Coventry were also leading the charge into a new feminist perspective with the formation of the Women’s Art Register in 1975 and the publication of the highly influential journal Lip. As a young mother in Hobart, surrounded by children’s paraphernalia and an endless stream of junk mail, Gower began to take her immediate ‘feminine’ domain and repurpose it in her linear abstractions of everyday life in works such as Then and now 1987.

The importance of Indigenous artists in the evolution of abstraction cannot be underestimated. Indeed, it took an Indigenous woman, Emily Kam Kngwarray, living in the Central Desert at the station Utopia, to crack open the mystery of abstraction for a wider Australian audience.

Prior to her rise in our consciousness, abstraction had been highly regarded but niche, collected mostly by institutions and the cognoscenti.

In a manner that was deeply tied to concepts of land, country and spirituality, her exuberant fields of colour painted on heroic scale quashed much of the remaining conservative opposition to abstraction and opened up to now willing audiences that ‘new track’ Black had spoken of in 1932.

Abstraction @ Geelong Gallery, Free, 25 February to 7 May 2017, and @ Newcastle Art Gallery, Free, 21 May to 23 July 2017.

Public programs: International Women’s Day 2017, panel conversation, Geelong Gallery, 8 March, 5.00 pm

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RESOLUTION

TO U R I N G E X H I B ITI O N

resolution Brenda L Croft sits down with the NGA’s Shaune Lakin to discuss her recent work and the ongoing relevance of exhibitions that draw together contemporary Indigenous photomedia, such as the NGA’s touring exhibition Resolution. Brenda was a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative in Sydney in 1987 and worked as a curator of Indigenous art for many years, including at the NGA from 2002 to 2009.

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Shaune Lakin: The NGA’s travelling exhibition Resolution: new

my father’s side, Aboriginal family members (and this has happened

Indigenous photomedia includes four photographs from your most

to me on a number of occasions), will introduce me as their full-blood

recent series blood/type. These self-portraits draw on your family history as well as nineteenth-century photographic processes. Can you talk a little about the points of origin for the works and how they are made?

Brenda Croft: The title of the series blood/type draws on the idea of typeface. The framework for it was the descriptive terms used for my dad when he was young, particularly in newspaper reports when he was awarded a scholarship to go to university in Queensland back in 1944.

That made big news right round the country, because he was probably the first Aboriginal person to go to university. These reports used a range of descriptors for him, like ‘abo’, ‘native’, ‘half-blood’, ‘half-caste’ through to ‘brilliant’ and ‘scholar’, these sort of weird, dynamic framings of how other people saw him.

So I was thinking about how Indigenous people have been identified by others, and continue to be so by conservative commentators who seem to claim authority in relation to questions of indigeneity. It’s a question of who has the right to claim Aboriginality, and how the language of the coloniser continues to frame those claims.

We hear, all the time, statements like, ‘They don’t even look Aboriginal’. When this is said, it negates your right to speak. You don’t have a right to challenge. I read this as being, ‘We like our blackfellas to

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cousin: ‘This is Brenda and she’s my full-blood cousin’. You can see this look of confusion on people’s faces like ‘What are they talking about?’

I like how this kind of plays with that language.

Shaune: What about the use of type itself, the text that overwrites the images?

Brenda: My mother was a prolific letter writer, she was always on the typewriter. I have many letters typed by her. And, when I was going through the collections of the Northern Territory Archive Service, part of National Australian Archives, I discovered correspondence she had typed on behalf of my father. The NTAS/NAA holds a lot of material on Dad, covering when he was in various children’s homes. The earliest record of him is from 1927, in what’s called the Timber Creek Police Letters Book, which recorded when he and my grandmother were taken to Darwin in 1927.

There are records of him from when he was at Kahlin Compound in Darwin until he was placed in various homes throughout the Northern Territory, before being sent across to Queensland. When I came across letters that he dictated to my mother, who typed them, I recognised the typeface from her typewriter. You know how every typewriter has its own ‘fingerprint’, its own ‘DNA’. My use of the

be framed by the predominant language’, which happens to be English.

archival typefaces in these works takes me back to the public and

But, of course, the logic of commentators on the far right does not

personal archives and to my experience of immersing myself in

apply to the experience of Indigenous people. Family members from

those records.

RESOLUTION

‘What is black?

What is grey?

What is white?

I love the way that the work is really brutal, and that’s exactly how I want it to be.

It’s not about being pretty.’

Shaune: While your work is not strictly photographic, the origins of your practice sit squarely in photography. Your earliest pictures, from the 1980s, were documentary photographs, but your work has recently turned toward the medium’s nineteenth-century origins, notably the collodian process that was widely used in Australia from the 1850s to the 1880s. How does the collodian process engage with the issues around classification and language that you’ve just described?

Brenda: The process played a strong hand in ethnographic labelling and typecasting in the nineteenth century. But my interest is as much in the process itself as it is in the roles it has played in the subjugation, misrepresentation and classification of colonised peoples. It’s important to note that each collodian self-portrait is unique, a one-off. The chemical reaction in each of them is distinct to that plate and changes with each of them, as does the lens’s focus, which is difficult to manage with this process. I really like the mistakes that occur. I also want to acknowledge, here, that I was greatly assisted by Ellie Young from Gold Street Studios, who helped me take these portraits.

I then digitise the original by scanning and enlarging it and applying the typeface. So the work plays with the idea of generations as well: second-generation removed, third-generation removed, all of those things are there. The process plays with the logic of the ‘full-blood’ original and the ‘half-caste’ or ‘quarter-caste’ reproductions. I also like the idea of using digitisation to bring a nineteenth-century medium into the twentyfirst century.

The process, too, literally shows everything. Every blemish comes up, every pore, every hair follicle. It changes the tonality of your skin, my skin. What is black? What is grey? What is white? I love the way that the work is really brutal, and that’s exactly how I want it to be.

It’s not about being pretty. It’s not about the perfect selfie. These are brutal images because they’re meant to be. That’s why they’re printed so large.

Shaune: Some artists have expressed uneasiness about the ethnographic identifier ‘Indigenous’ being used to bring together work by disparate contemporary artists. How do you feel about your work being included in an exhibition of contemporary Indigenous photomedia, and what do you think we gain, particularly today, by drawing together work made specifically by Indigenous photographers?

Brenda: I am fine with that. I have never had an issue with my work being described as ‘contemporary’ and/or ‘Indigenous’. It’s been shown across a whole range of categories. I’m really proud of having my work exhibited alongside Indigenous contemporaries and, for me, there has never been a problem with that because I don’t feel limited. It doesn’t

Page 58: Brenda L Croft (Gurindji Malngin & Mudpurra peoples) quarter-caste, from the series blood/type 2016, pigment inkjet print. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016 Opposite, from left: Brenda L Croft Michael Watson in Redfern on the Long March of Freedom, Justice and Hope, Invasion Day, 26 January 1988 and Aboriginal unity, Redfern Park, Long March of Freedom, Justice and Hope, Invasion Day, 26 January 1988 1988, gelatin silver photographs. Kodak (Australasia) Pty Ltd Fund, 1988

spell ‘limiting’ to me. That is why I always make sure that I also refer to all of my heritages. I am Gurindji Malngin and Mudpurra from the Northern Territory and have Anglo-Australian/German/Irish heritage.

I’m not one over the other. That’s not a judgment on anyone else at all.

That’s just who I am, and that’s how I want to use those things.

I was honoured to be involved in the first exhibition dedicated to contemporary Indigenous photography NADOC ’86. I feel the same about being included in shows along these lines now. From these shows, we gain an idea of how Indigenous people represent themselves.

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‘At its most basic, we should think of the photograph as just the end product of the extended process of photography, which is itself a very performative process.’

Photography still has a strong connection to representation, whether by depicting the world as it might appear or as a historical practice that assumed a capacity to view and depict the world in a particular ‘realist’ way. I do believe that, as Indigenous people, we have a different outlook on the world. It just is. There’s no way of getting around that.

And, for those of us with mixed heritage, we see through all of those filters. The work is not limited by categorisation, but categorisation still provides a lot to be said.

All the same, I think we are still limited by what is seen as ‘contemporary Indigenous art’. You do wonder what was achieved by those of us Indigenous curators trying to create a wider range.

Commentators, critics and the like are still blinkered by how they see us. I mean, what does it matter what ‘type’ of Indigenous person wins the Telstra [National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander] Art Award? What does it matter whether it is Tony Albert, Danie Mellor, Richard Bell or some other artist working in a globally contemporarised cultural setting?

Shaune: A survey of exhibitions of Indigenous practice since the mid 1980s shows that perhaps an inordinate number have focused on photomedia. It is as if Indigenous photomedia is the Above, from left to right: Brenda L Croft Native, octaroon and full/blood, from the series blood/ type 2016, pigment inkjet prints. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016

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RESOLUTION

‘other side’ of paintings by Aboriginal people working in remote communities. Literally dozens of exhibitions have attempted to account for Indigenous photography. Why do you think Indigenous photography has attracted so much curatorial attention?

Brenda: Has it? Well, I’ll take your word for it. I feel like it’s been pretty

performative process. Think about the whole action of placing someone

selective. I mean, why has Tracey Moffatt only now been selected

in front of a camera, and the particular forms of engagement with the

as Australia’s representative at the Venice Biennale? It will be really

subject taking place through the process. Look at Foelsche’s photographs

interesting to see the response to her representation and the work,

of Aboriginal men and women of the Top End from the 1870s and 1880s.

how it is received. But why wasn’t she shown at Venice long ago?

He was the head of police up there and involved in punitive actions

The power of her work was so great two decades ago. Will her current

against the Indigenous people he was subjecting to his camera. You can

work have the impact that the curator and artist are looking for now?

see this in the pictures. His subjects are often angry, and this was their

But I do think that photography has a very particular place in

only means of engagement, of stating their displeasure and place in

contemporary Indigenous artistic practice for a range of reasons.

being photographed. The only way they could show resistance was by

As Destiny Deacon has said, photography is about accessibility. You can

showing anger.

do it anywhere. You don’t need a whiz-bang camera to make good

Photography is a performative process for me, too. The performative

pictures. You could do it with an old Polaroid. This issue of accessibility

nature is not just in the way I frame myself within the images but also

has certainly been important for Indigenous artists, because photography

in what I do with those small collodian plates: preparing them with

can be highly portable and also relatively affordable.

collodian, digitising and upscaling them and placing them within

And the performative aspect of photography has also been

that definitional context, applying all those terms that relate to my

important, literally the idea of ‘dressing up’. Indigenous people

father, terms that also relate to me and, certainly for those conservative

in Australia have been so heavily scrutinised and researched

commentators, continue to be seen to define me. I think Indigenous

photographically. You just have to look at nineteenth-century images

people are still seen as foreign in our own country. We’re still seen as

by people like Paul Foelsche, Fred Kruger, Charles Kerry or Henry

‘the exotic’. It’s like: ‘Hello, the exotic here is not us!’

King or whoever, and even later photographers who had a much more empathetic approach like Axel Poignant, to see how Indigenous people have been performed for the camera. This issue of performativity has been an issue for contemporary Indigenous artists, as it is for me.

Resolution @ Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery, Free, 24 March to 28 May 2017, and @ Araluen Art Centre, Free, 9 June to 13 August 2017. Exhibition catalogue on sale at venues

At its most basic, we should think of the photograph as just the end product of the extended process of photography, which is itself a very ARTONVIEW 89 AUTUMN 2017

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Installation views of Pipilotti Rist’s Worry will vanish horizon, at Hauser & Wirth, London, 2014. © Pipilotti Rist. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Photos: Alex Delfanne 3

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NEW ACQUISITIONS

NEW ACQUISITIONS PIPILOTTI RIST Very soon, Pipilotti Rist’s exciting, immersive video installation Worry will vanish revelation will go on show at the NGA in Canberra. Since purchasing the work with the assistance of generous donations made at the NGA’s Foundation Gala Dinner early last year, the NGA has been planning its premier for Australian audiences. Now, with the support of locally based property developer Molonglo Group, the opportunity to do so has arisen.

We ask Johnathan (Yianni) Efkarpidis of Molonglo Group why art figures so strongly in their business and about their support of NGA’s contemporary programing over the past seven years.

NGA: Unusually for a property developer, art seems to be a driving principle in your building projects. How did this approach come about and how does it work in practice?

Johnathan: Developing a place is not just about constructing buildings.

It’s about developing landscapes and making them meaningful.

We don’t understand ourselves as property developers exactly. Our work is not only defined by property. Buildings are vessels, mechanisms for delivering content. It is the content that we are most interested in and how we can make those vessels work best for its delivery.

Through art, and other social and cultural activations we hope to deliver positively to our community, to promote pluralism and support and amplify diversity. It’s a way of telling other people’s stories and of thinking about things that are beyond our current experience.

NGA: Since 2009, you’ve supported a number of the NGA’s contemporary exhibitions. Is there something about these kinds of exhibitions that particularly excites you?

Johnathan: Contemporary art is a form of cultural agitation. We believe that agitation is important as it creates dialogue. That’s exciting.

NGA: Your prior partnerships with the NGA often go beyond supporting an exhibition to engaging with the content in a more meaningful way, through elaborate after parties or events and workshops at your NewActon precinct or the NGA, for instance.

Do you feel its important to engage at the level and why?

Johnathan: It goes back to dialogue. We’re interested in the conversations that art can elicit, so it makes sense to create forums for those conversations. This year, with Hotel Hotel, we have a very full program of events by way of talks, exhibitions, displays, workshops, dinners, gigs and excursions. They explore our curiosity about different things—our fascination with human actions and behaviours, for example, in our ‘Daily rituals’ study and our ongoing study of public and private realms and the ephemeral borders that connect and divide them.

NGA: What is your take on Pipilotti Rist’s work?

Johnathan: We love Rist’s work for the way that it questions the everyday ‘givens’ that we hold to be truth but really aren’t. She invites us to reimagine these givens and our reality. And we love her immersive works and how she plays with architecture.

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JEFFREY SMART Self-portrait, Procida is one of Jeffrey Smart’s most intriguing self-portraits.

Smart is looking back to a significant period in his life as a young

Painted in Sydney in the summer of 1956–57, it speaks of the past,

painter in Europe from the perspective of his life of struggle as an artist

present and future in a surreal arrangement of curious and disparate

in Sydney. However, despite the difficulties he endured during his twelve

objects, the most unusual and enigmatic of which is the painting of

years in Sydney, from 1951 to 1963, some of his most important surrealist

his portrait on a hand-tied tarpaulin placed in a landscape between

works were painted at that time.

different worlds.

In the distance, the solitary figure of an elegant woman with

The architectural form and sense of space in this rare and early self-portrait echoes the work of the great Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico.

a parasol walks toward the ocean. Yet the strange fragment of

Self-portrait, Procida recently joined the national collection with generous

broken yellow glass leaning against the painted portrait seemingly

support from Ermes de Zan and is now on display in the Australian

draws her into the foreground, onto the same plane as the painted

galleries at the NGA in Canberra. Lara Nicholls, Assistant Curator,

face. The still life on the distinctly striped table is rich with

Australian Painting and Sculpture

symbolism: the egg is often associated with rebirth, the pear a sign of longevity and fertility and the shell a sign of pilgrimage or journey. The signs are all promising, yet the foil to the riddles presented by this painting resides in the title, in the word ‘Procida’.

It is the name of the small Southern Italian island off the coast of Naples near Ischia and one of the last places in Italy Smart visited in October 1950.

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NEW ACQUISITIONS

Above: Jeffrey Smart Self-portrait, Procida 1956–57, oil on canvas.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016. © The estate of Jeffrey Smart

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2017 ‘One of de Maistre’s greatest works of art... was the creation of his Eccleston Street studio.’

Heather Johnson

Support your national collection by contributing to the acquisition of this key studio interior by Roy de Maistre of his Eccleston Street studio in London. To donate to this masterpiece for the nation, contact the NGA on (02) 6240 6408 or via foundation@nga.gov.au

ROY DE MAISTRE The subject of this year’s Masterpieces for the Nation fundraising appeal is perhaps the most visually arresting of Roy de Maistre’s studio interiors, which he painted throughout his career. It is an Aladdin’s cave, a carefully curated survey of his most important and treasured works dotted throughout the scene on easels and propped up against the walls of his Eccleston Street studio in London.

Dominating the composition is Colour composition derived from three bars of music in the key of green 1935, which closely relates to a pair of paintings by the artist in the NGA’s collection: Arrested phrase from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in red major and Arrested phrase

Later in life, de Maistre turned increasingly toward Christianity.

from Haydn Trio in orange-red minor, both commenced in 1919 and

He became a Catholic and was baptised at the Church of the Holy

completed in 1935. By placing one of the colour theory works in the

Redeemer on 16 March 1949. From the late 1940s onward, he painted

centre, de Maistre shows how critical colour theory, and the relationship

a remarkable suite of ecclesiastical works illustrating the life of Christ,

between music and colour, was to his practice.

including at least two delicate portraits of Jesus, shown in the foreground

De Maistre moved to his Eccleston Street studio in December 1937.

of this this studio interior. On the large easel at the back, partly obscured

Despite having numerous solo and group exhibitions in London and

by other paintings, appears his 1952 painting of the Resurrection, Noli

influential patrons from the upper echelons of English society, he sold

me tanger. He is well known for painting the Stations of the Cross for

few works and reluctantly let go of his most treasured paintings. In her

Westminster Cathedral in London.

1995 book Roy de Maistre: the English years 1930–1968, Heather Johnson

De Maistre was notorious for never dating his work. However,

comments: ‘One of de Maistre’s greatest works of art, and the one most

recent research has revealed that Studio interior was painted in

appreciated by friends and relatives, and acquaintances, was the creation

1959 and included in his first major retrospective at Whitechapel

of his Eccleston Street studio. De Maistre did not believe the common

Gallery in 1960. Conceived as a composition of paintings within a

wisdom that artists should make and work in a mess … His studio was

painting, his arrangement of key works in this fashion suggests that

not simply a work place, but also a domestic and private space. John

he was mentally preparing for this major survey of his entire oeuvre.

Rothenstein [Director of the Tate, 1938–64] referred to it as the theatre

Lara Nicholls, Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture

of his actions and the repository of his whole life, an environment of tenebrous beauty that was still informal and comfortable’.

Roy de Maistre Studio interior 1959, oil on pulp board. © Caroline de Mestre Walker

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M E E T TH E U LTI MATE D O M P É R I G N O N

Encourage your family and friends to become NGA members before Versailles: Treasures from the Palace ends on 17 April, and they’ll receive a Golden Ticket, giving them unlimited and express access to the show. +61 (0)2 6240 6528 nga.gov.au/members

This major exhibition surveys contemporary art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the country. 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the referendum granting Indigenous peoples the right to be counted as Australian.

26 May – 10 September nga.gov.au | FREE

Archie Moore Aboriginal anarchy 2012 (detail), layered synthetic polymer paint, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2013.© Archie Moore

French school (18th century) Courtyard of the Royal Chapel, Palace of Versailles c 1725, oil on canvas. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot

National Gallery of Australia

9 771323 455204

ISSN 1323-4552

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