Artonview 105 – Autumn 2021

Autumn 2021

Mother nature Patricia Piccinini on creating a skywhale family

The mysterious Australian benefactor to the National Gallery, London • Bert Flugelman’s buried treasure Jenny Kee & Linda Jackson • Celebrating International Women’s Day

Contents

CEL EBR AT ING

02 04 05 06

22

50

26

52

30

58

08

32

Director’s Word

Editor’s Letter | Contributors

Y E A R S OF SHOWC A SING T HE A R T S

Meet the Member

Studio Spotlight Janet Fieldhouse

An extraordinary eye The Australian benefactor to the National Gallery, London

14

Cover story: Wonder Woman Patricia Piccinini on creating a skywhale family

Born Ready Romance Was Born

Two of a Kind Jenny Kee & Linda Jackson

The Couture Connection Fashion and art’s symbiotic relationship

The Change-makers A portfolio of inspiring leaders

38

A New Chapter Exploring the Know My Name initiative

46

A Virtual Agenda Behind the scenes of the Know My Name Conference

Joan Ross: Collector’s Paradise Enlighten Festival

National Treasures Bert Flugelman’s hidden sculpture

The Textile Conservators

60

My Collection Anthony Medich

64

A Modern Grand Tour A 48-hour artistic road-trip

68

Director’s Choice Anne Ferran’s Scenes on the death of nature series I-V

On the cover Artist Patricia Piccinini is pictured in the National Gallery of Australia Sculpture Garden in Fujiko Nakaya’s Foggy wake in a desert: An ecosphere, 1982, © Fujiko Nakaya. Patricia wears Romance Was Born Sorceress embroidered gown from the Resort 2018 collaboration with Del Kathryn Barton. Cover photo by Sam Cooper, photography assistants Karlee Holland and David Hempenstall, produced

by Sophie Tedmanson, production assistants Jessica Barnes and Natalie Tizi, hair and make-up by Maria Taumoepeau.

Right The installation of the exhibition Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London.

Pictured: Sandro Botticelli. Four Scenes from the Early Life of Saint Zenobius. c. 1500. © The National Gallery, London.

Mond Bequest, 1924.

b

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

1

National Gallery Director Nick Mitzevich with artist Patricia Piccinini and Chairman Ryan Stokes AO at a test flight for Skywhales: Every heart sings.

Director’s Word

Gooroo Burri, In December we launched Skywhalepapa – Patricia Piccinini’s new hot-air balloon sculpture commissioned for the national collection – on its first test flight. It was an exciting step in our journey with the artist.

In 2018, after an initial discussion about a collaboration, Patricia came back with the idea to build on what she had already started with Skywhale (which was donated to the national collection) and create a skywhale family.

I was standing with the artist on that cold and foggy morning in a field outside Canberra to see Skywhalepapa take to the sky for the first time. It gave me goosebumps. Watching him rise above the trees cradling babies and floating through the air, accompanied by Skywhale – it was incredible to see this big idea become a reality. The National Gallery’s collaboration with Piccinini, along with the support of valued partners the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and The Balnaves Foundation, has helped create a world-class work of art; an exceptional work that is a testament to the ambition and creativity of contemporary Australian artists who are pushing the envelope and defining what art is in the 21st century.

Skywhalepapa and the national tour of Skywhales: Every heart sings exemplify our vision to make the national collection more accessible and share it beyond the Gallery walls.

The Vermeer is one of three paintings in the exhibition that come from the Salting Bequest, a legacy left by the Australian-born George Salting, who remains the most significant ever benefactor to the National Gallery, London. Turn to page 8 to read more about the fascinating George Salting. I hope you enjoy Botticelli to Van Gogh as much as we enjoy bringing it to you.

We also recently opened Joan Mitchell: Worlds of Colour, the first solo exhibition in Australia of the innovative American artist.

The exhibition is drawn from the Kenneth Tyler Collection and supported by Ken Tyler AO and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler through the Tyler Charitable Foundation.

Mitchell’s work references water, trees and flowers – including sunflowers – through her abstract style. With these works and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the building, 2021 is already off to an amazing start and we have so much more to look forward to this year.

Nick Mitzevich I acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Custodians of the Canberra region, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples and their Elders past and present.

As Skywhale and Skywhalepapa get ready to tour the nation, on site in Canberra this month we are thrilled to open Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London. The exhibition represents 500 years of European art history and it is exhilarating to have iconic works such as Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Vermeer’s A young woman seated at a virginal in the Gallery.

2

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

3

Contributors

And she was indeed: the artist wearing art, standing in a work of art.

The idea for the shoot was a collaboration with Patricia and born out of her passion for art and the environment, her love of fashion and a desire to champion women artists – from Fujiko Nakaya, who created the aforementioned Foggy wake in a desert sculpture on the Gallery grounds, to the exquisite couture of Romance Was Born, who very kindly lent us the outfits for this shoot.

Elizabeth Fortescue Elizabeth Fortescue is the Arts Editor of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph and the Australian correspondent for The Art Newspaper. In early 2020 Fortescue travelled to London and investigated the fascinating history of George Salting, the Australianborn collector who remains the most significant ever benefactor to the National Gallery, London (on page 8).

Romance Was Born, who will be part of the upcoming second instalment of the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, are featured on page 22 talking about their regular collaborations with artists, including Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson – who are also in Know My Name and are interviewed on page 26.

Georgina Safe For more than two decades Georgina Safe has written about style, culture, travel and design for titles including the Australian Financial Review, Monocle Magazine, The Business of Fashion and Harper’s Bazaar. Safe is also an author of publications about creative duos Romance Was Born and Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson – both of which she interviewed for this issue (on pages 22 and 26 respectively).

These connections – celebrating art and the environment – form the thread of this issue, from Patricia’s extraordinary new Skywhalepapa hot-air balloon sculpture, which she writes about on page 14, to the fascinating story of Bert Flugelman’s Earthwork sculpture, which has been buried underground in a Canberra park since 1975.

Sam Cooper Photographing Patricia Piccinini in the Sculpture Garden for the cover of this issue was no easy task for the National Gallery’s Digital Media Manager, Sam Cooper, who at one point was knee-deep in a pond dealing with mosquitoes, wayward fog and intermittent sunlight to get the perfect shot.

In an interview at the National Gallery in 2009 and extracted on page 52, the late Flugelman pondered: “What constitutes a work of art; is it the object or is it the idea? Is it the conceptual thing or does one have to have a token? Is just the knowledge of the event not sufficient?”

Autumn 105 The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the Gallery stands, and recognises their continuous connection to culture, community and Country.

For now, it’s more fun enjoying the wonder of art and knowing that, just as Patricia Piccinini’s skywhales interact with nature when they float in the sky, somewhere under that grass the buried Flugelman treasure has also become part of the environment.

Artonview may contain names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

I hope you enjoy this issue.

Copy Editor Tom Lazarus

Email: Artonview.Editor@nga.gov.au @sophieted

nga.gov.au

I’ve always loved the Sculpture Garden and I now row past it every other morning. I started rowing 20 years ago. We lived on 40 acres of land for 20 years, and then I spent two years working in London.

I’d been using a rowing machine when I was in London for fitness, and when we moved back to Canberra I thought I should do the real thing. Our club (Capital Lakes Rowing Club) runs learn to row programs, and I like to encourage people of all ages to take up rowing.

I am 69 years old and I row about 10km four mornings a week. I love rowing past the Gallery and seeing Antony Gormley’s Angel of the north.

I even use it as one of my landmarks for rowing – as I row around the lake I line the boat up on certain points along the course: the Eagle monument, the Arboretum, Black Mountain tower and the Angel.

The Angel is so beautiful, and I love the story behind it. You see pictures of the other one in Gateshead, England, and it’s almost industriallooking in its location. Then here you’ve got the same sculpture but it’s smaller and set in among gumtrees and beside the lake – there’s such a contrast. I think the Angel works in both locations. It’s just so peaceful to look at. And you get a really good view of it from the boat.

Advertising enquiries ArtonviewAdvertising@nga.gov.au Enquiries artonview.editor@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/artonview © National Galley of Australia 2021 PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au Follow Us

Contributors Jessica Ausserlechner, Jaklyn Babington, Jessica Barnes, Tina Baum, Adriane Boag, Sam Cooper, Rebecca Edwards, Jessi England, Deborah Hart, David Hempenstall, Karlee Holland, Shaune Lakin, Nick Mitzevich, Anne O’Hehir Sandra O’Malley, Elspeth Pitt All images by the National Gallery of Australia unless otherwise stated.

4

I was born in Canberra, so I have been coming to the National Gallery since it opened and have been a Member for at least 20 years. My brother, Les Cormack, worked at the Gallery in the 1980s.

He worked in the Conservation department on the frames of paintings by some of the great Australian artists including Rupert Bunny, Arthur Boyd, William Dobell, Albert Tucker and Uta Uta (Tjangala).

My dad used to pick me up at work and we’d meet Les for picnic lunches in the Sculpture Garden.

Editor Sophie Tedmanson

Rights and Permissions Ellie Misios

Sophie Tedmanson Henry Dalrymple Chief Content Officer

Each issue we profile a member of the National Gallery.

This month: SUE PARR, whose hobby gives her a different perspective on the Sculpture Garden.

Jess Green Musician Jess Green (aka Pheno) has performed for theatre, dance and television; collaborated with Katie Noonan and Nell; played at the Closing Ceremony of the 2018 Commonwealth Games and was Composer in Residence at the 2019 Canberra International Music Festival. In 2020 she was commissioned by Patricia Piccinini to compose music for her skywhales project Every Heart Sings (read the lyrics to We Are the Skywhales on the pull-out colouring-in sheet).

There was a moment during the cover shoot for this issue when Patricia Piccinini, barefoot and wearing a couture gown by the side of a pond in the middle of the fog sculpture in our Sculpture Garden, turned to me and said: “I feel like a work of art!”

I recently went for a run through Commonwealth Park to find the exact spot where Earthwork is buried and discovered a small plaque under some trees on a grassy knoll next to Lake Burley Griffin (for the inquisitive, it’s located in the same area as Floriade). To think that somewhere underneath, buried in a pit six metres deep, six metres wide and 18 metres long, are six Bert Flugelman aluminium tetrahedrons was fascinating. After 46 years underground, what do they look like now? I was tempted to go back with a metal detector – but would that defeat the purpose of Flugelman’s idea of what constitutes art?

Meet the Member

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 National Gallery of Australia.

ISSN 1323-4552 ISSN 2208-6218 (Online) Printed by Adams Print, on FSC certified paper using vegetable-based inks, FSC-C110099

Cameron Haas

Editor’s Letter

I like how art is about connection. When I lived in London I used to work across the road from the National Gallery, London, and down the road from the Houses of Parliament where I would walk past Auguste Rodin’s The burghers of Calais outside Westminster, just like the ones here in the Sculpture Garden. At the National Gallery, lunchtime visits to the Australian Art section and Van Gogh in particular would give me sunlight in the midst of an English winter. So, to me, art kind of joins dots between moments in my life.

Exhibitions I’ve really enjoyed over the years include Hugh Ramsay (2019), Federation: Australian Art and Society 1901–2001 (2000), and Masterpieces from Paris – Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond (2010). I’m really looking forward to attending Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London this month because I love sunflowers and angels.

Since retirement I volunteer in many gardens around Canberra.

I work in a community garden in Kingston where we grow vegetables for refugee families. It’s nice to give each family a bag of organic food each week. And it varies – we harvested a couple of hundred cloves of garlic the other day, so they always get a clove of garlic, but we also grow zucchinis, tomatoes, eggplant, silverbeet, lettuce, rocket, and I always pick a bunch of herbs and flowers. I also volunteer with local gardening organisations, weeding and replanting in several heritage properties around Canberra including Manning Clark House, the Bible Garden at St Mark’s National Theological Centre, the SIEVX Memorial and the Red Hill and Stirling Ridge reserves. I particularly like my Thursday mornings at the Old Parliament House Rose Gardens. I find such peace and tranquillity in gardens, of whatever sort – especially the Gallery’s Sculpture Garden.

Share your favourite memories of the National Gallery of Australia by emailing: membership@nga.gov.au

Sue Parr rows past the Sculpture Garden with Antony Gormley’s Angel of the north (life-sized maquette), 1996, National Gallery of Australia, gift of James and Jacqui Erskine 2009, © the artist.

Autumn 2021

5

Studio Spotlight We visit an artist in their studio and discover how space influences their inspiration and creative process.

This month: JANET FIELDHOUSE.

When I was about seven years old there was a little old white lady called Mary who lived in my neighbourhood of Yorkeys Knob in Gimuy/Cairns. She was the first person to ask me to draw pictures for her, one day when I went to Sunday Mass.

I drew a scene from the Bible with some coloured pencils and a drawing book that she gave me.

I never in my life thought about being an artist. It was only when I got into high school that I began drawing pictures for friends and family, and after I finished I decided to go to TAFE and do the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts course.

After TAFE I became a tutor, then a teacher. Over the years I still did not think about becoming an artist, until I received a six-month scholarship to Australian National University in Canberra. I majored in ceramics and 12 years later I completed a BA with honours and a Master of Philosophy in Visual Arts.

It was only when I finished my studies that I became an artist.

I was lucky at the time that Vivien Anderson Gallery – the commercial gallery in St Kilda, Victoria – was interested in my works. I have been represented by them for many years now.

Right Janet Fieldhouse (Kalaw Lagaw Ya/Meriam Mir peoples), Hybrid Coconut Scraper Canoe Series 1, buff raku trachyte, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2019; (below and left) the artist creating works in different studios in Virginia, USA. © Janet Fieldhouse. Courtesy of Vivien Anderson Gallery. Images supplied by the artist.

My creative process involves researching ideas then doing drawings. Sometimes I make prototypes; sometimes I just make the form and solve problems as I go. That’s the making side of my creative process, but my finishing creative process is placing the art works in the kiln, firing between 1100 and 1200 degrees Celsius to create a colour tone just by this process. I wait until the works are fired and then add other materials like feathers and woven raffia afterwards.

Where is my studio? Well, my studio is me; I have been travelling so much that I haven’t set up a studio in Gimuy/Cairns, where I currently live. All the studios I have used over the years have been through artist residency programs in Australia and overseas.

I had been using Trinity Bay State High School studio space as an artist in residence, which had everything a potter would dream of, until COVID-19 restrictions. Now I use my bedroom.

Every studio space I have used and the experience of working in them has been so different. For example, Canberra Potters’ studio, the Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, and First Nations potter Debra Martin’s studio at Pamunkey reservation in King William, Virginia, are all basic – just a room with a sink, workbench, shelves, a throw wheel and chairs. I have seen a lot of studio spaces during my travels but, like I said, my studio is me – wherever I go, my studio is with me.

My family, my Torres Strait Islander heritage and my culture are my inspiration and are integral to my art. Art and my practice is important to me because it gives me a sense of belonging in my family, my heritage and my culture.

— In conversation with Tina Baum, Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.

6

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

7

An extraordinary eye

Australian-born collector GEORGE SALTING remains the most significant ever benefactor to the National Gallery, London.

As four works he donated make their way to Canberra for Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London, ELIZABETH FORTESCUE uncovers the mysterious man behind the Salting Bequest and his fascinating legacy.

In 1909, when the eccentric gentleman George Salting died at his upper-storey residence in exclusive St James’s Street, London, the art cognoscenti moved into eulogistic overdrive.

Charles Hercules Read, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum, wrote in The Burlington Magazine: “As a great collector of the most catholic sympathies [Salting] stood almost alone, and has unquestionably left his mark on the connoisseurship of our day.” Connoisseur magazine also paid tribute: “It is almost impossible to give, even in several articles, any coherent and systematic idea of the wealth of Mr Salting’s collection.”

Effusive? Yes. But true? Absolutely. Salting, a Sydney-born man of independent means, settled in London and became such a distinguished and discerning collector that one of the world’s great museums declares today that it remains solidly in his debt.

The Director of the National Gallery, London, Gabriele Finaldi, affords Salting the highest praise: “He’s an amazing person,” Finaldi says seated in his book-lined office overlooking Trafalgar Square. He is talking as though Salting could walk in at any moment to discuss his latest acquisition: “It’s an amazing gift he makes to the National Gallery. It is very wide ranging, from the Renaissance to the French 19th century.

It’s nearly 200 pictures. It remains the most significant gift of pictures to the National Gallery.

“So there you are. An Australian had a very significant role in the shaping of the exhibition. I’m delighted that pictures from the Salting Bequest are travelling in the show.”

Those three paintings will be on display in Canberra this month as part of Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London: Johannes Vermeer’s A young woman seated at a virginal, Frans Hals’s Portrait of a woman with a fan, and Jan Steen’s A peasant family at meal-time (‘grace before meat’).

Frans Hals 1582/3 - 1666.

Portrait of a Woman with a Fan. c. 1640. © The National Gallery, London.

Salting Bequest, 1910.

8

nga.gov.au

These paintings are the tip of the iceberg that is the Salting Bequest, a legacy that was left to various British institutions.

From Salting’s estate, the National Gallery received 192 Autumn 2021

9

paintings (approximately 8 per cent of its entire collection of 2300 works). Thirty-one of these paintings have since been transferred to the Tate in its role as the national collection of British art, while Salting left other treasures to the V&A and the British Museum.

Despite his enduring legacy as a collector, Salting is littleknown in Sydney, where he was born in 1835. His father was Severin Kanute Salting, a Dane who arrived in the city in 1834 and made his fortune in import-export and the pastoral industry. Severin and his wife, Louise Fiellerup, had a second son called William. The family home was Greenknowe, a mansion in Sydney’s Potts Point designed in 1846 by James Hume. (Greenknowe Avenue takes its name from the mansion but the home, with its stately drive and large gardens, is long gone.)

Salting moved to Britain and studied at Eton between 1848 and 1853. Poor health forced him back to Sydney, where he graduated from the University of Sydney in 1857, excelling in classics. The following year, after his mother’s death,Salting and his father journeyed to Rome, Naples and Florence, where the young man immersed himself in art and culture.

When his father died in 1865, Salting inherited the prodigious income of £30,000 a year. Basing himself in London above the Thatched House Club at 86 St James’s Street near Buckingham Palace, he never married or had children. Instead he spent the rest of his life obsessively collecting art. He invested well and left a much larger estate than he had inherited from his father.

Perhaps the best insight into Salting’s personality comes from Sir Charles John Holmes in the early 1900s, when he was director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, who recalled a visit to Salting’s home at 86 St James’s Street.

purchases until the table in his sitting-room was heaped with them,” Sir Charles wrote. “An hour or more was spent in this way, and still nothing was said about the expected meal.

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London is organised by the National Gallery, London, Art Exhibitions Australia and the National Gallery of Australia.

My uncle, a bit of a gourmet, grew fainter and fainter. At last he could bear it no longer, and said he really must be off to lunch.

‘Oh! I nearly forgot,’ replied Salting and, clearing a space with a sweep of his arm among the outspread treasures, he pulled open the table drawer to produce two plates of cold beef.”

The exhibition is supported by Government Partners VisitCanberra and the Australian Government International Exhibitions Insurance program, Principal Sponsor Mazda, Principal Donor Singapore Airlines and Major Partner the Seven Network.

George Salting’s niece, who in 1892 married Lord Binning, the son of the 11th Earl of Haddington, and settled at Mellerstain House, a Georgian mansion near Gordon on the Scottish Borders. George Haddington, who was born in 1985, still lives at Mellerstain, which is seasonally open to the public.

The young Earl also inherited a passion for art and established the Borders Sculpture Park on the house’s grounds.

The Gallery acknowledges Principal Patrons Julian Burt and Alexandra Burt through the Wright Burt Foundation and Exhibition Patrons; Philip Bacon AM, Kay Bryan, Maurice Cashmere, The Hon Ashley Dawson-Damer AM, Wayne Kratzmann, Dr Michael Martin and Elizabeth Popovski, Lady Potter AC, Penelope Seidler AM, Paul Taylor, and Sally White OAM and Geoffrey White OAM.

I met the young Earl in London and we enjoyed a tour of 86 St James’s Street, where Salting had lived in two large rooms with his artworks stacked against the walls. (The building is now Mark Mason’s Hall, the administrative headquarters of the 10 Orders in Freemasonry.) He said George Salting’s name was “very much” known and remembered in the family, although the Earl was unaware that Salting’s gift to the National Gallery, London remains its largest.

“One might think to ask, ‘Isn’t it a shame that he gave it all away?’” asked the Earl. “But actually I think it’s a great thing that it’s in good hands being properly preserved.”

– The writer travelled to London courtesy of Art Exhibitions Australia

“I had come one winter morning by appointment to his rooms above the Thatched House Club. Salting had not yet got up, but he insisted on my climbing, boots and all, onto the very bed in which he was lying so that I might look closely at a Constable which hung above it,” Sir Charles wrote.

He also recalled that his uncle, the archaeologist and Windsor Castle librarian Sir Richard Rivington Holmes, was once invited to lunch at Salting’s rooms: “Salting displayed his latest

Illustrated London News

Opposite A portrait of George Salting.

10

nga.gov.au

This page (above) Jan Steen.

A Peasant Family at Meal-time (‘Grace before Meat’). c.

1665. © The National Gallery, London. Salting Bequest, 1910; (below) Johannes Vermeer. A Young Woman seated at a Virginal. c. 1670-2. © The National Gallery, London.

Salting Bequest, 1910.

Autumn 2021

11

In the Spotlight

Works in the Botticelli to Van Gogh exhibition (not part of the Salting Bequest) include: (left) Carlo Crivelli.

The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius. 1486. © The National Gallery, London. Presented

by Lord Taunton, 1864 and (opposite) Jacopo Tintoretto.

The Origin of the Milky Way. Ca. 1575. © The National Gallery, London.

“A truly great work of art is worth seeing again and again” — John McDonald, The Sydney Morning Herald “Four centuries of masterpieces worth the wait” — Matthew Westwood, The Australian “While the majority of exhibition spaces around the world remain shuttered … the chance to see not one but 61 paintings

by Europe’s most revered artists is momentous” — Jane Albert, Broadsheet � Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London runs until 14 June. Book tickets: nga.gov.au/masterpieces

12

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

13

Wonder woman Artist PATRICIA PICCININI on nature, nurture and the inspiration behind creating a skywhale family.

Patricia Piccinini inside Skywhalepapa in December 2020.

14

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

15

Left Patricia Piccinini sketches her skywhale family.

Opposite Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhalepapa, 2020, nylon, polyester, Nomex, Hyperlast, cable, National Gallery of Australia, commissioned with the assistance of The Balnaves Foundation 2019, purchased 2020 © Patricia Piccinini.

Wonder is such a positive emotion. It combines delight, discovery and gratefulness. For me, the place where I find wonder is in nature. I am inspired by the way that nature has found a way to live in every part of our planet, and the way that every lifeform is perfectly adapted to its unique role.

Life itself and its myriad forms are truly wondrous to me.

When I am asked what the Skywhale is about I always return to the idea of wonder. I conceived of the Skywhale as a direct response to the extraordinary reality of the actual whales that inhabit our seas. When you think about it, they are pretty improbable. They are mammals, not fish. They evolved from small piglike animals to make their home in the depths of the oceans. Like us, they breathe air and give birth to live young and breastfeed. Unlike us, they do all this underwater.

Their breastmilk consists of a thick cream so it doesn’t dissipate in the water. That the biggest creature on earth, the blue whale, evolved from land-dwelling creatures with hooves is just wondrous.

Imagining that the whales’ ancestors might have evolved to be airborne is similarly improbable, but perhaps not impossible. After all, bats have done that and bats are also mammals. Bats aren’t birds – their wings are made up of skin stretched between their fingers and they give birth upside down.

The story of the skywhales begins with my sense of wonder at the process of evolution. It also comes from the realisation of just how lucky I am to be part of it. I am fortunate to be alive and to witness everything that the world has to offer.

Nature does not exist to serve me. It is not a resource for me to exploit. Yet somehow it is here for me. It nurtures and supports me. And so, the Skywhale was born.

16

nga.gov.au

With her giant mammaries she is obviously a mammal and a carer. Perhaps her voluminous belly is full of levitating hot air from gas-producing bacteria, allowing her to slowly weave her way across the landscape catching the air currents instead of sea currents.

These ideas of wonder and luck are perfectly suited to hot air balloons. With their grand scale and majestic beauty they gracefully float above us. They inspire in us a sense of wonder.

It’s inherent in the medium. We are lucky to see them because the conditions must be perfect. The weather needs to be just right for the skywhales to fly, so when they do it is even more special.

I was so happy that the Skywhale was embraced by the Australian community. She has featured on beer cans, in political cartoons and on tea towels. People have made ceramic, Lego, papier-mâché, glass and cake skywhales.

I’ve even seen beautiful tattoos of the Skywhale on the bodies of people who love her.

People could imagine that she was a mother and I was often asked where her children were. So, eight years later, I am so happy to be able to answer that question with Skywhalepapa.

In this new work we see the male of the species, and he is looking after the young ones. If Skywhale is about wonder, then Skywhalepapa is about care.

I don’t know if these Skywhale babies are his or hers or their babies. What I do know is that they are both caring for them.

The point of this work is that care is something that belongs to all of us. Care should not be gendered. Care is not a human thing. Care is something we can all share and it is the carers who are the heroes of our community.

Autumn 2021

17

“When we see Skywhalepapa caring for his young we are reminded that care is not just vital, it’s admirable.

I hope that Skywhalepapa shows us that caring is a theme that warrants making a grand and enormous artwork about, because it is rarely seen this way.”

Care is something that has never been more vital than it is today. Whether it is the pandemic or the environment, we need to care about the people and the world around us.

It is care rather than selfishness that will turn things around.

I hope that when people see this giant creature looking after these little ones they will see this beautiful sign that everyone can care. Skywhalepapa is so strong and beautiful. He carries the children on his shoulders, in his arms and in his tail.

He doesn’t let any of them fall. It’s a big job and an important job. I was inspired by my visits to the bats that roost near my home in Melbourne. In summer you can see them with their offspring, who must be held constantly until they are old enough to fly. I often think about them when I think about my own children, whom I wish I could protect in the same way.

One of the ways we have defined nature comes from the Darwinian story of competition. The idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ was a defining social story of his times and it persists to this day. However, another way of understanding the way nature operates comes from contemporary science and indigenous knowledge.

This page (above) Care and nurture are the themes behind Skywhalepapa, who carries nine babies; (below) Patricia Piccinini inspects the inflation of Skywhalepapa during the test flight in December 2020.

18

nga.gov.au

We now see that there is a lot of collaboration and cooperation in nature. Recently I read the theory that cells developed a nucleus by allowing another cell to come in and inhabit them, and this incoming cell then went on to become the organising part of the cell. This is evolution by inclusion rather than competition.

of the fittest’ is just a convenient way of justifying treating nature in a thoughtless and uncaring way.

When we see Skywhalepapa caring for his young we are reminded that care is not just vital, it’s admirable. I hope that Skywhalepapa shows us that caring is a theme that warrants making a grand and enormous artwork about, because it is rarely seen this way. In the past, care, especially the care of children, was largely unheralded, underpaid and undervalued.

However, in my lifetime I have seen a wonderful opening up of the idea of parenting, with more dads getting more involved in the work of raising children. I can only hope this might lead to a larger revaluing of care in general as a vital human responsibility.

When I think of the skywhales flying all over the country I imagine them as a wondrous celebration of the value of care.

When I see them in the sky they make me reflect on the wonder that we can find in nature and also in the many diverse families that surround us, and their extraordinary stories. � Skywhale and Skywhalepapa are part of Skywhales: Every heart sings, the third instalment of The Balnaves Contemporary Series and a Know My Name project. Skywhales: Every heart sings will travel nationally in 2021–22 as a National Gallery of Australia Touring Exhibition thanks to the Principal Patronage of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. � Book now: knowmyname.nga.gov.au/events/ skywhales-every-heart-sings-project/

We now know that all life is genetically related and needs other life to survive. Like many, I believe the only way forward for humans is together with other animals. Other animals are just as evolved as we are and just as deserving. Perhaps ‘survival Autumn 2021

19

A test flight of Skywhale and Skywhalepapa was conducted in December 2020, in preparation for the Skywhales: Every heart sings national tour.

20

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

21

Sydney design house Romance Was Born has long blurred the line between art and fashion, and several of its couture pieces from the national collection will feature in part 2 of Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. Here, cofounders ANNA PLUNKETT and LUKE SALES talk with GEORGINA SAFE about delving into their archives to create new, environmentally-friendly pieces and their collaborations with artists including Patricia Piccinini (who wears their gown on the cover of this issue).

Born ready 22

nga.gov.au

Romance Was Born designers Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett.

Autumn 2021

23

GEORGINA SAFE 2020 was a momentous year of change for many reasons.

What impact did that have on Romance Was Born?

We’ve had a huge shift of focus. We’ve done a lot of thinking about how we can move our business forward in this new landscape while drawing on the values that are true to Romance Was Born. We’re taking a more artisanal approach, making more handmade pieces and smaller runs of garments. We’re now doing sleepwear, swimwear and homewares, too.

LUKE SALES

ANNA PLUNKETT We’re creating new garments from our archive fabrics. We went through the archives and pulled out a bunch of silks that we’ve held on to over the last 15 years. We’ve had such success with it, because a lot of our customers are very familiar with the collections going back over the years and they got really nostalgic. We sold those pieces the fastest we’ve ever sold out of anything. They were really fun to make as well because we got to go back through the old prints and look at how things go together now and then. It’s also nice to be able to use fabric that other companies think of as dead stock, because it’s never dead to us!

GEORGINA What’s the state of the fashion industry at the moment [at the end of 2020]?

It’s so weird because I don’t even think of ourselves as being in the fashion industry anymore. The way we used to interact with it and operate in it: we are not like that anymore. We’ve become much more focused on just following our own vision and we’ve stopped wholesaling and now just sell online through our website. When you’re doing your own online sales it’s much easier to see things that work well or what our customer is responding to, because when a store tells you what is popular that’s only based on their customer, not necessarily the Romance Was Born customer.

LUKE

Clockwise Romance Was Born, tea towel kimono outfit, 2018, patchworked linen with crystal, silk tulle, sequins and bugle bead embroidery, feathers, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2019, © the artist; Romance Was Born, Cockatoo cocoon cardigan outfit, 2018, patchworked linen with crystal, silk tulle, sequins and bugle bead embroidery, feathers, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2019, © the artist.

24

nga.gov.au

Images supplied

Romance Was Born outfits from the national collection, purchased 2019.

GEORGINA What are your thoughts on Romance Was Born being featured in the Know My Name exhibition?

It’s an awesome concept because many people don’t know a lot about

ANNA

Australian artists in general, let alone women artists, so it’s very timely that the National Gallery is putting Australian women front and centre. And when it comes to fashion in art galleries, the huge success of the Alexander McQueen: savage beauty exhibition at the Victoria & Albert museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York proved there’s a real appetite for it.

There’s no denying people want to see fashion in an art context and that it’s relevant to contemporary culture.

GEORGINA You dressed Patricia Piccinini for the cover of this issue of Artonview.

Tell us about your connection to her.

We first met Patricia years ago at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, then she contacted us when she wanted to wear something for the opening of her exhibition Patricia Piccinini: curious affection at the Gallery of Modern Art in Queensland in 2018. She wore our Del Kathryn Barton unicorn dress, then said if we were ever in Melbourne we should visit her studio, which we’ve since done a few times. We have an ongoing dialogue about the ways we could possibly work together some day.

The themes and ideas in her work are definitely things we work with, but we are taking it slow and waiting for the right opportunity.

LUKE

(and in this issue, on page 22). Tell us about your collaborations with them.

We’ve worked with both of them on different projects and collections over the last eight years. The first time was with Jenny when she asked us to style her Art of the Scarf show at Australian fashion week. A couple of years later we worked with Linda on our Kinda Couture show at Australian fashion week, where we got to work with her in our studio on the frocks. It was such a fun time getting hands-on with ‘Jet Jackson’, as we called her! Then we collaborated with Linda on some costumes for a movie Sia was working on, which was quite surreal.

And then there was our first show in Paris in collaboration with Jenny in 2018.

Most recently we all worked together on Jenny and Linda’s retrospective exhibition [Step into paradise, 2019–20] at The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

They were such special times and we feel very lucky to have shared these moments with them. Jenny’s and Linda’s perspectives on life and their experience of the world is really fascinating to us. As creative people they are totally original and that’s inspiring.

ANNA

� Romance Was Born features in part 2 of the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now: knowmyname.nga.gov.au.

GEORGINA You’ve collaborated with many artists including Del Kathryn Barton, Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, Kate Rohde, Nell, Sarah Contos and Samuel Hodge. How do these partnerships enhance your creative practice?

The cyclical nature of fashion can become very monotonous, so working with a new artist each season is like when we first collaborated on assignments together; it brings a more exciting energy to each collection. We might see an artist’s work and know about them for a while until it’s the right time for us to work with them. When we start thinking about a collection and the kind of visual language we are trying to communicate, there might be a certain artist who comes to mind because their work embodies something that might be a good fit for that collection.

LUKE

GEORGINA Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson are also featured in Know My Name

Autumn 2021

25

Two of a kind

Five decades after they met, JENNY KEE AO and LINDA JACKSON AO – the instantly recognisable creative queens of Australian fashion whose couture outfits feature in the Know My Name exhibition – are enjoying renewed interest in their lives, including a new documentary, writes GEORGINA SAFE.

Jenny Kee AO was at home one morning in 1973 when a friend called to tell her there was a fashion designer visiting from Melbourne whom she must meet. Her name was Linda Jackson AO and she was showing her clothes at the Winter Antique Fair at the Bonython Gallery in Sydney.

“The antique dealer Robert Tucker insisted I meet this talented girl, so I got off the couch and went down,” remembers Kee. The attraction was instant.

“I walked in and saw all these amazing ’50s and Hawaiian-print playsuits, gored skirts and bra tops,” says Kee. “I knew this girl and I were on the same wavelength. Then I saw her. She had Titian red hair and looked like a 1940s film star. I was completely entranced and felt I’d found my creative soulmate.”

The pair talked about Jackson’s recent travels through Asia and the boutique called Flamingo Park that Kee was about to open in Sydney that would celebrate 1950s retro designs. It may have been a social conversation, but there was something deeper at work.

Linda Jackson AO and Jenny Kee AO modelling outfits designed by Jackson on Bondi Beach in 1976.

26

nga.gov.au

Annie Noon, Linda Jackson archive, MAAS collection

“I fell in love,” says Jackson. “If a person is special, you know straightaway, and we saw the world in the same light and loved talking about the same things.”

Kee placed her first clothing order with Jackson, ready for the opening of Flamingo Park. It was the beginning of an extraordinary collaboration that would last nearly a decade, capturing the character, colour and variety of Australia’s natural and cultural landscape. From the vibrant excess of the Flamingo Park Frock Salon and its Flamingo Follies fashion parades to Kee’s iconic koala knit – famously worn

by Princess Diana – and Jackson’s couture-esque odes to the outback, the pair honed a distinctly Australian design vocabulary unfettered by convention, taste or fashion.

“It’s hilarious if you have a look at what other people were doing at the time because what we were doing was something quite different,” says Jackson.

“Jenny and I never copied anything that was

happening overseas and we never bought anything from anyone else. We did our own thing and the single criterion was that everything had to make us feel really good. And if somebody else loved it too, then that would be even better.”

That they did, and continued to do, as was evidenced by the publication in 2019 of the book Step Into Paradise, the first definitive survey of more than four decades of their creative practice. An ABC documentary of the same name will air later this year, exploring the compelling stories and energy around their creative partnership and separate careers after they parted ways in 1981.

Completing a trifecta of renewed interest in the duo, their work is also included in the National Gallery’s Know My Name exhibition, which Kee and Jackson visited in early December, much to the delight of fellow arts patrons.

“It’s a huge moment in Australia’s art history to have such a serious exhibition devoted to women artists and all of us in this show would feel very strong and honoured that it’s happening now,” says Kee. While women have long played second fiddle to men when it comes to the visual arts, Kee and Jackson have celebrated and worked with women since the inception of their creative partnership, and the documentary – commissioned by ABC Arts and made possible through the supporters of the National Gallery’s Know My Name initiative – is no exception.

Co-produced by Fran Moore and Darren Dale, the team includes a predominantly female crew including director Amanda Blue, cinematographer Bonnie Elliott, editor Jane Usher, and associate producer Charlotte Mars.

“As a general statement I trust women more than I trust men so it’s great that the team is all-female,” says Kee with a laugh. “Amanda is very inquisitive and easy to talk to – she gets into your skin and then she gets under it.”

Kee and Jackson spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s immersing themselves in nature, going on long Autumn 2021

27

Opposite Details of Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson works from the national collection on display in Know My Name. (left) Jenny Kee, Black opal headpiece, 1981–20, screenprinted and digitally printed silks, sequins, metal, purchased 2021; (right) Linda Jackson, Black opal rainbow outfit, 1985, screenprinted cotton and linen, purchased from Gallery admission charges 1985.

Right (above) Jenny Kee, Flamingo Park scarf, 1982, screenprint on silk, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1982.

Designed for the opening of the Gallery; (below) Jenny Kee AO and Linda Jackson AO.

The documentary picks up where those shoots left off, using the medium of film to give the pair’s connection to the natural world a new and more dynamic dimension. Kee and her garments have been filmed in the Blue Mountains, where she lives, and Jackson around her part-time home in bushland near Rylstone, west of Sydney.

“Filming is so different to photography, and to witness the experimentation that was possible was spectacular,” says Jackson. “There was a lot of experimenting with colour and movement and really doing something quite radical as an art form.

That’s something that will be amazing with this documentary because that’s how Jenny and I always worked together and how we continued on afterwards with our individual ways of creating.”

The vibrancy and dynamism of that practice is on display in Know My Name part 1 and 2, which includes outfits from Jackson’s 1976 creation Wildflowers, which features intricate wildflower and gumleaf appliqués on a Chinese-style top and 1950s dirndl skirt, and her quilted and handstitched ochre and sky blue Uluru look inspired by her travels to central Australia in early 1980.

28

nga.gov.au

Kee’s goddess-inspired pieces – “The goddess is the divine feminine principle incarnate and the mother of all life”– are particularly relevant to the theme of the exhibition, and include her euphorically colourful Universal Tribal Opal Oz and Opal Oz outfits, both of which were acquired in the 1980s by the National Gallery along with Jackson’s works for the national collection.

“We have a long connection with the National Gallery, but for many years the costume collection was not really being used to its optimum,” says Jackson. “It’s fantastic that [National Gallery Director] Nick Mitzevich has had the creative vision to bring it to life.”

Kee’s connection to the National Gallery is particularly strong: she was asked to create a silk scarf to commemorate its official opening in 1982. The design was “a visual essay on Oz” and the limited edition of 1000 scarves printed by Fabio Bellotti in Italy sold out almost immediately.

“I think the Queen even received one because she opened the Gallery,” recalls Kee. Almost 40 years on, it is fitting that these two creative queens are returning to the National Gallery for the next phase of their vivid and unmistakably original careers. � Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson are featured in the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, on now: knowmyname.nga.gov.au.

— The ABC is a partner of Know My Name.

Hanna Lassen/Wireimage

bushwalks in the Blue Mountains, where Jackson photographed Kee modelling her designs, which she also captured with her camera around Sydney’s beaches. “We were grounded in nature: that was our magic,” says Kee. “When we were out walking together doing our meditative shoots it was nature that was guiding us and her beauty has never left us.”

Autumn 2021

29

In 2019, the National Gallery of Australia acquired a selection of outfits from Romance Was Born, the label of Sydney-based designers Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales. These garments are the first by the fashion house to enter the National Gallery and come from its 2018 collection Step into paradise ‘kinda couture’, one of a series of collaborations with Australian fashion pioneers Linda Jackson AO and Jenny Kee AO.

From the runways of Paris to the national collection, fashion and art have a symbiotic relationship. REBECCA EDWARDS explores the creative collaboration between iconic duo JENNY KEE AO and LINDA JACKSON AO and design house Romance Was Born, whose couture dress artist Patricia Piccinini wears on the cover of this issue.

Collaboration has always been central to Plunkett and Sales’s practice. Since the establishment of Romance Was Born in 2005, they have worked closely with several artists including Jess Johnson and Del Kathryn Barton, however after meeting Jackson and Kee in 2009 their collaborations have resulted in some of their most spectacular pieces. Through their Flamingo Park label in the 1970s and subsequent work as independent designers, Jackson and Kee have always been a great inspiration to Plunkett and Sales in the development of their own creative vision. Certainly, the pairing of these design duos seems inevitable, as all share an innate ability to effortlessly meld art and fashion.

The Couture Connection

Their first collaboration was in 2014–15, when Romance Was Born worked with Jackson on the Cooee couture collection, a tribute to her 1980s fashion label, Bush Couture. Jackson handpainted textiles at her rural property in New South Wales and then worked on pieces directly with Plunkett and Sales in their studio to transform the fabric into elaborate couture garments. Step into paradise ‘kinda couture’ forms part of the National Gallery collection and is the result of a collaboration with Kee. Plunkett and Sales drew on Kee’s love of Australiana and accessed her archive, creating designs that employed vintage scarves, knitting patterns and prints along with the contemporary energy and humour characteristic of the Romance Was Born label.

Goddess knit gown and cockatoo cocoon cardigan also pay direct homage to Kee’s distinctive knitwear. The latter offers a humorous take, drawing from the jumpers featuring Australian animal motifs that rose to international fame after Princess Diana was photographed wearing a Blinky koala pullover in 1982. Plunkett and Sales paired their cardigan with thigh-length purple, Swarovski crystalembellished lycra shorts in a cheeky wink to fashion of that era and the style of activewear favoured by Princess Diana.

With its batwing sleeves, the cardigan takes on a bird form and the outfit is complemented by a feathered hat, a nod to both Kee and Jackson, whom Plunkett and Sales have described as “exotic birds”.

Indeed, although the Step into paradise ‘kinda couture’ collection is predominantly inspired by Kee, garments such as the dramatic Chimera appliqué opera cape are imbued with the spirit of Jackson as well. Not only does Jackson collect and wear opera costumes, but the portrait designs appliquéd to the cape are unmistakable representations of the pair, taken from drawings made by Kee in the mid-1970s.

These pieces from the Step into paradise ‘kinda couture’ collection are conceptually rich and form a loving homage by Plunkett and Sales to their inspiration. Alongside key examples of Jackson’s and Kee’s work, they will be on display in part 2 of Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. — Rebecca Edwards is the Sid and Fiona Myer Curator of Ceramics & Design.

Tim Street-Porter, other images supplied

Among these works is Tea towel kimono, a playful garment taking on the structured design of a Japanese kimono or Chinese hanfu – a silhouette favoured by both Kee and Jackson during the 1970s – here patchworked from vintage Australian souvenir tea towels sourced by Sales from second-hand stores and eBay. Referencing the design of Kee’s iconic knitted wattle minidress of the late 1970s, an example of which is held in the National Gallery collection, it is embroidered with wattle forms comprising Swarovski crystals, silk tulle and sequins.

30

nga.gov.au

Opposite (above) Jenny Kee AO and Linda Jackson AO in front of a Flamingo Follies backdrop at the Bondi Pavillion in 1975; (below) Romance Was Born’s cooee couture fashion parade at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2015, © the artist.

Right Romance Was Born, Chimera appliqué opera cape outfit, 2018, appliquéd and satin taffeta with bugle and seed beading, sequins, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2019, © the artist.

Autumn 2021

31

The Change-makers

The Diplomat: Julie-Ann Guivarra Australia’s Ambassador for Gender Equality considers what it means to be a woman in 2021.

As women in 2021, we should recognise and appreciate the efforts of those who have come before us – the women who have paved a way in their respective fields for other women to follow. We should, however, also acknowledge that while we have come some distance on gender equality over recent decades, there is still much to be done.

In celebration of International Women’s Day and the Know My Name exhibition, Artonview spotlights a group of inspiring females – cultural leaders, mentors, diplomats, storytellers, innovators and warriors for gender equality – who are leading their fields and working tirelessly for positive change.

Some of the greatest challenges for gender equality are social and cultural norms that limit or confine the spaces in which women can operate. The Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia is a commendable effort to change perceptions of women’s place in the world. It is a powerful statement about recognition.

Recognition of their creative contribution is something that women artists globally have struggled with for centuries.

Art allows us to understand social, cultural and political contexts. It is a window into our communities and societies; it challenges us to consider broader possibilities. But imagine there is an unspoken and inherent bias in what we are seeing.

Are we looking at the depiction of our nation and culture through the eyes of many, or few?

In 2019 the National Gallery, London, looked at its collection of paintings. In the collection there are some 2300 paintings spanning the 13th to the early 20th century. Of those 2300, only 21 were by women. Here in Australia, women make up only 25 per cent of the national collection, a disparity the National Gallery of Australia is addressing with the Know My Name initiative.

Changing social and cultural norms is not something governments can do alone. It takes the whole of society – women and men, boys and girls.

Over the summer, I have been reading Women and Leadership

by Julia Gillard and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. It has been really affirming to know that while women who have attained high office are challenged by questions of gender, encouragingly, these women haven’t let themselves be defined only by gender.

Images supplied

Yes, you are a woman, but you can also be an artist, an educator, a leader, a representative of your country. This will come with challenges, but you are capable.

32

nga.gov.au

Opposite Brenda L. Croft’s portrait of Dr Aunty Matilda House from the Know My Name exhibition. (Read the artist’s tribute on page 34). Details of work: Artist Brenda L. Croft, (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra peoples), Matilda (Ngambri/ Ngunnawal), 2019, pigment inkjet print, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2020, (c) Brenda L. Croft. Featured in the Know My Name exhibition.

Above Julie-Ann Guivarra, Australia’s Ambassador for Gender Equality.

As for the future of gender equality, I would hope we reach a time when women’s contributions to society are adequately recognised. When girls everywhere can attend school, when they can grow up free of gender-based violence, when they can choose the career they want without discrimination, when they can contribute to society in ways uninhibited by social and cultural norms. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Women in Leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world”, which recognises the additional challenges for women as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and women’s critical decision-making role in the response and recovery.

Autumn 2021

33

The Elder: Aunty Matilda House

by Brenda L. Croft

The Trailblazer: Natasha Stott Despoja AO

by Virginia Haussegger

There was one Eora woman whom the British officers found very striking, and a little frightening, too.

Natasha Stott Despoja AO is a feminist trailblazer at every turn.

Her tireless leadership spans decades: from the brutal politics of being Australia’s youngest woman to enter Federal Parliament, at the age of 26, to her 13 years as a South Australian Senator and role as youngest leader of the Australian Democrats.

That alone was unprecedented. But this unstoppable pioneer proceeded to build a stellar career post politics that propelled her onto the global stage as a warrior for women’s rights and gender equality.

Dr Aunty Matilda House is a Ngambri/Ngunnawal elder from Canberra. My image of her – Matilda (Ngambri/Ngunnawal) – which is in the National Gallery collection, is part of a series, Naabami (Thou shall/will see): I am/we are Barangaroo, honouring Cammeraygal woman Barangaroo (c. 1750–91), wife of Wangal man Woollarawarre Bennelong (c. 1763/4–1813).

Barangaroo was renowned for both her fisherwoman skills and her standpoint as a staunch First Nations woman.

She determined how she would live and die on her Peoples’ lands during a time of immense upheaval and overwhelming change for the Eora nation and its clans.

The broader project of Naabami (Thou shall/will see): I am/we are Barangaroo honours the spirit of Barangaroo through photographic portraits of contemporary First Nations women and girls, reflecting diverse representations of Barangaroo’s ongoing inspiration, cultural continuity and connection to spirit and place.

Naabami (Thou shall/will see): I am/we are Barangaroo is intended as a resolution to the (mis)appropriation of her name for the purpose of naming a precinct overshadowed by a phallus-shaped monument to greed accessible to a select few.

No matter how much concrete, glass, steel and reimagining of the newly renamed, reclaimed foreshore occurs the spirit of Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Warrior Woman – is omnipresent and omniscient, embedded and embodied into the cultural DNA of the area.

Her steadfastness is echoed in the gaze of First Nations matriarchs such as Aunty Matilda House.

Matilda (Ngambri/Ngunnawal) is a visual First Nations call and response over more than two centuries. � Matilda (Ngambri/Ngunnawal) (pictured on page 28) features on the portrait wall in the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, on now.

Right Natasha Stott Despoja AO photographed by her son, Conrad Stott Smith.

Opposite Artist Fiona Hall AO with her work Paradisus terrestris, 1989–90, from the national collection, (c) the artist.

34

nga.gov.au

Stott Despoja’s impressive diplomacy as Australia’s Ambassador for Women and Girls (2013–2016) and position on the World Bank Gender Advisory Council (2015–2017) won her many international admirers. In 2020 she was elected to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

But it is her fearless leadership as the founding Chair of Our Watch, and her advocacy of primary prevention to end horrific rates of violence against women, that has made Stott Despoja one of the nation’s most impressive current leaders. In a powerful address at the National Press Club in 2020, she called out domestic violence as “one of the most heinous manifestations of gender inequality”.

The Artist: Fiona Hall AO

by Julie Ewington In her late thirties, Fiona Hall AO became mildly notorious.

At the 1990 Adelaide Festival she debuted Paradisus terrestris, the much-loved sardine-can sculptures now in the National Gallery collection, and overnight transitioned to national recognition. The ‘sardine cans’ are funny, sexy. But these tiny works ask big questions and that’s what caught the public’s imagination: what, exactly, is the place of human beings in the great world of creation? How are we different from flowers and trees and shrubby bushes? By 1995, when the National Gallery’s exhibition Garden of Earthly Delights completed its national tour, Fiona Hall had become one of the country’s best-loved artists.

memory speaks to our own experience; familiar processes like knitting or weaving or metalwork draw us into understanding that Hall is embodying her explorations. This is the core of the inspiration Hall offers: the world can be questioned, may be made anew. And we understand this is worthwhile work, and work worth doing in this country, which is now, more than ever, in need of fresh ideas.

Hall is undoubtedly an inspiration — intelligent, energetic, ferociously hardworking; a generous teacher to decades of art students; a willing collaborator with other artists; a contributor to many major projects. She is articulate, passionate and informed about current issues. But despite her engaging personality, Hall’s work itself was always the source of that inspiration: after all, this is how the vast majority of us come to appreciate her. Hall’s work is characteristically labour intensive, her improbable skill fascinating. We prize her imagination, the unexpected conjunctions: extensive collections of reiterated objects where Hall plays, persistently, with core concepts so that eventually, through this ruminative reiteration, we get what she’s working towards.

Hall’s works tell their own stories — traces of her bodily labour remain entangled in the very substance of the art. Somatic Autumn 2021

35

The Scientist: Dr Cathy Foley AO

by Janet Laurence About 10 years ago I was at a breakfast with Sir David Attenborough following a residency I had done in Aceh, Indonesia, with Fauna & Flora International, from which I created the exhibition After Eden [the video work is in the national collection]. I asked Sir David why real change to stop the destruction of the environment is so slow in coming about when there is an enormous ground surge of people wanting to take action. Sir David, who has long been a champion of gender equality – particularly in the environmental and science sector – replied: “The real difference will happen when women across the globe are educated and given a voice.” That comment has stuck with me for the past decade; the upholding of women and giving us power to affect change is so important, and it starts with education.

Cathy Foley AO, Australia’s new Chief Scientist, is a shining example of that: as a leading physicist at the CSIRO for the past three decades, she is highly qualified and has exceptional qualities for the role, and can show what women are capable of.

Dr Foley’s achievements and accolades are impressive: in 2013 she was named NSW Woman of the Year, in 2015 she won the Clunies Ross Award for outstanding service to physics and in 2020 she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for “distinguished service to research science, to the advancement of women in physics, and to professional scientific organisations”. But what she does now, as only the second female Chief Scientist in Australia’s history, is just as important. We must hear her voice more publicly; we need to know that she’s in this position.

The Cultural Leader: Dr Terri Janke

by Patricia Adjei Dr Terri Janke is a Wuthathi and Meriam woman who was born on Yidinji country in Cairns and grew up on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country in Canberra. I first met Dr Janke in 2003 when I was studying a double degree of arts and law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Dr Janke had undertaken similar studies, so I was interested in what she had achieved. We later discovered that we are also distantly related through our Wuthathi family – our great-greatgrandmothers were cousins.

Intellectual property law. Many of the policies and agreements, as well as the internationally recognised First Nations arts and film protocols, have paved the way for better recognition and protection of Indigenous cultural intellectual property rights. Other countries have also referenced these protocols as standards for their First Nations arts and cultural sectors.

For example, the Canada Council for the Arts is exploring ways to draft their own First Nations arts protocols using Australia’s newly launched First Nations arts protocols as a guide.

Dr Janke has had an amazing career and is a leader in her field both in Australia and globally. As a Council Member of the National Gallery of Australia and founder of the Indigenous law firm Terri Janke and Company she inspires and mentors younger First Nations lawyers who want to work in the area of copyright, commercial law and Indigenous Cultural and

Dr Janke shows us that being a female leader in 2021 you have to be passionate, determined and have a strong work ethic.

It also helps that she has a supportive and loving family.

Dr Janke is a female First Nations leader to admire, respect and celebrate.

She is an inspiration and a role model, and can make such an enormous difference to the ambitions of young girls, particularly those going into STEM areas – and we need more women in those fields.

It will also be interesting to see how Dr Foley champions Australia’s significant science capabilities. I can’t help but feel that having a woman at the helm will make a difference. It is so important that we have women in high positions as shining examples, but also for the way we affect change. Women have very holistic ways of thinking and approaching things, so I hope having a woman like Dr Foley providing evidence-based advice will have a positive effect on the way things evolve – especially in this current era of a pandemic and climate change.

The Writers

Brenda L. Croft Artist Brenda L. Croft is from the Gurindji/ Malngin/Mudburra peoples from the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory and AngloAustralian/German/Irish/Chinese heritage. She has been involved in the Indigenous and broader contemporary arts and cultural sectors as an artist, arts administrator, curator, academic and consultant for more than three decades and is currently Associate Professor of Indigenous Art History and Curatorship at the Centre for Art History & Art Theory, College of Arts & Social Sciences, ANU. Brenda’s cross-disciplinary, practice-led research encompasses critical performative Indigenous auto-ethnography, representation and identity, Indigenous Storying and creative narratives, installation, multimedia and multi-platform work, personal and public archives, memory and memorialisation.

Julie Ewington Julie Ewington is a Sydney-based writer, curator and broadcaster. An authority on contemporary Australian art, especially art by women, she has held both academic and curatorial positions (including Head of Australian Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art from 2001 to 2008 and Curatorial Manager, Australian Art from 2008 to 2014). In 2014 she received the Australia Council’s Visual Arts Award to honour her achievements as a curator, writer and advocate for the visual arts.

Patricia Adjei Patricia Adjei is a Wuthathi, Mabuiag Islander and Ghanaian woman from Sydney who is the Head of First Nations arts and culture at the Australia Council. She is a 2018 Churchill Fellowship recipient, investigating the practical application of laws in the US and Panama that protect indigenous cultural rights, has served on the City of Sydney’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory panel and worked at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva as the 2010 Indigenous Intellectual Property Law Fellow.

Janet Laurence Artist Janet Laurence is well known for her sculptural and installation practice that reflects on themes of interconnection and the natural world. Working within and beyond the museum, she explores the deep, intricate relationship between all living things and the impact of human activity on the planet today.

Virginia Haussegger Virginia Haussegger is a passionate women’s advocate, award-winning television journalist and writer. She is Chair and Founding Director of the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation, a gender equality research initiative at the University of Canberra. In 2014 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia and is the 2019 ACT Australian of the Year.

Above Dr Terri Janke in front of Outside Dibirdibi by Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori (Kaiadilt people) in the Know My Name exhibition at the National Gallery.

Right Chief Scientist Cathy Foley AO.

36

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

37

As Australia cautiously emerged from the COVID-induced lockdown of 2020, Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre reopened in September with Virginia Woolf’s feminist manifesto A room of one’s own, written in 1928. Anita Hegh’s electrifying performance brought Woolf into that darkened room — clear-eyed, reasoned, determined, passionate. The audience was enthralled. For Woolf’s wisdom about women’s creativity continues to illuminate this moment, nearly 100 years later and a world away from 1920s England. Her argument was that women had talent, drive and ambition in abundance but were thwarted by the lack of opportunity. The problem was never our genes or our talent or even our will, but the way women’s lives were traditionally arranged and, too often, constrained.

Since Woolf wrote her celebrated essay, women’s lives have changed enormously, especially in recent decades.

Opportunity for artists is closer to hand than ever before in Australia. Recognising that just 25 per cent of its Australian art collection is by women, the National Gallery of Australia joins this ongoing social and cultural transformation with its Know My Name initiative, which focuses on women artists, and its commitment to gender parity across its collection, exhibitions, programs, staffing and entire organisation. This is a watershed moment: the Gallery is the first art museum in Australia to take such an uncompromising position.

The consequences for this country’s culture will be profound, and the international implications are potentially enormous.

So, what’s in this initial expression of Know My Name?

An extensive suite of exhibitions across the entire Gallery — the largest museum presentation of work by women to date in Australia. It centres on Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1990 to Now, a grand summary of works by more than 170 artists delivered in two parts over the course of the year accompanied by a major publication; it comprises collaborative projects that include showing images of national collection works by women on billboards and signage across the country, an international conference and extensive public programs throughout 2021. Know My Name is plural rather than singular — “and hers, and hers too …” — and it embraces artists as different as the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, an Aboriginal collective from the remote Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of the central and western deserts, to Melbournebased Patricia Piccinini with her hot-air balloons, Skywhale and Skywhalepapa.

With its landmark promise of gender parity, the National Gallery celebrates radical, revelatory, diverse and overlooked art by women – in the past, present and future. JULIE EWINGTON argues it’s a timely reset that goes to the heart of the institution and asks, what happens when you open doors and minds?

A new chapter 38

nga.gov.au

The protest poster wall in the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition.

This focus at the National Gallery in Canberra is backed by ongoing collaborations with other arts organisations working towards greater opportunity for women artists. These include a brace of university partners supporting feminist research; the Sheila Foundation, in Perth and Sydney, whose mission is ‘to write women back into our art history … ensuring equality for today’s women artists’; and the #5WomenArtists campaign by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, DC. A key partner is the energetic Countess Report led by artist Elvis Richardson with Amy Prcevich and Miranda Samuels.

Simultaneously a show of strength and an advocacy project, Know My Name attacks gender disparity by demonstrating the brilliant achievements of Australian women artists from the past and the present, and by working out ways to support artists into the future.

Autumn 2021

39

The Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, including works by Elise Blumann, Barbara Tribe, Rosemary Madigan and the Persona and shadow series by Julie Rrap.

40

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

41

Almost a century after Virginia Woolf’s clarion call, nearly 50 years since Australian feminist artists began meeting and working together in the early 1970s, this long voyage of discovery has barely begun. We are now familiar with many names from the past 100 years: in the 1920s Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith were the country’s leading modern painters, and Jessie Traill was by far its greatest printmaker; in the 1940s Nora Heysen was the first woman appointed an official Australian war artist and Brisbane sculptor Daphne Mayo was at the height of her career; in 1968 Janet Dawson, Wendy Paramor and Normana Wight were included – three women out of 40 artists, a statistic that is now notorious – in the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark exhibition The field.

Since then art historians have rediscovered the work of many more women artists – answering the infamous question ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ posed in 1971 by American art historian Linda Nochlin – including photographer Olive Cotton, Adelaide painter Dorrit Black and Perth’s Elise Blumann. Behind these better-known names were thousands of others whose work has been brought to light by curators and researchers, to the delight of museum visitors. (Some works were hidden in plain sight in art museum collections for many years.)

To cite just a few key projects: in 1977 Adelaide’s Women’s Art Movement mounted a national unselected exhibition with more than 400 women participating; in 1982 the Women & arts festival in New South Wales focused attention on women’s creative work across many art forms; and in 1984 the Australia Council published Women in the arts: a strategy for action, the first comprehensive study of its kind in the country. Since that time a strong commitment by Australian arts bureaucracies to gender equity has developed; this has not been without its fits and starts, but eventually this resulted in a broad position that accords with the best principles of Australian egalitarianism, that deeprunning current that gave women in South Australia the vote in 1894, putting them among the first women in the world to exercise this democratic right.

Yet while the principle of equal opportunity was gradually becoming accepted in recent years through the public arts policies that sustained artistic practice and in employment across art colleges, the fundamental beliefs about gender and artistic achievement that were enshrined in art museums, let alone the art market, were far slower to shift. Only in the past 20 years have significant projects begun to dislodge old gender-based certainties. These include elles@centrepompidou in Paris in 2009, with collection displays of the nation’s modern art museum at the Centre Pompidou given over to works by women; two important exhibitions in the US two years earlier, WACK!: art and the feminist revolution at MOCA in Los Angeles and Global feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum; and, closer to home, the national survey exhibition Contemporary Australia: women at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art in 2012. This movement is gathering momentum in innumerable fascinating and improbably diverse manifestations. In a sense, with Know My Name the National Gallery of Australia is recognising the strength of women artists around the globe, whether in their own studios, working collectively with traditional media or making leaps in the digital arena. This story is huge.

42

nga.gov.au

Know My Name shows not only how far the National Gallery has come in its 39 years, but also how the role of the art museum has shifted in the past half-century. One hundred years ago art museums were seen as sanctified spaces for art from the past; repositories of recognised greatness.

That recognition was almost entirely gender-specific: the great artists of the past were male — or so went conventional wisdom. Today those certainties have been swept away; society has changed profoundly in the past 50 years and women have been claiming their place in every area of cultural life. At the same time, art museums have become recognised as public arenas for cultural action, and their important role in collecting, exhibiting and commissioning art from the present day, as well as from the past, is now acknowledged.

With that active role comes responsibility: if museums are making memories for the future, it follows they have a crucial stake in understanding and interpreting the present.

Lola Greeno (Pakana people), Green Maireener shell necklace, 2016, green maireener shell on cotton string, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2017 in recognition of the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum.

All museums rely on regular revision if they are to renew their mission, to continue to be relevant. Which is why this particular taking-stock, which implies investigation of the participation of women in the nation’s flagship art institution, is not only timely, but also essential. Know My Name engages with such fundamental questions as what forms art may take; whether the Gallery’s collection can encompass traditional and customary forms, domestic and collaborative arts, and emerging digital arts, and whether it is ready to recognise overlooked and underappreciated practices. Know My Name begs the crucial question, what are the many reasons art is made? And this radical revision extends to the past: what art practices have been previously overlooked as ‘women’s work’, as lesser forms of practice, or swept aside by the bright glamour of another form of contemporary work, or even an artist’s celebrated male partner?

This is not the first time Australian art museums have experienced a profound cultural realignment that resulted in a rethink of their priorities. The post-World War Two emergence of innovative forms of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts, an important expression of the increasing political and cultural assertiveness of Indigenous communities, provoked just such a shift from the late 1950s and into the 1960s; it was marked in 1973 with the opening of a dedicated space for Aboriginal and Pacific arts at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and increasingly through the 1980s by the development of holdings of Aboriginal art including, importantly, at the National Gallery.

The brilliance and energy of Aboriginal painting posed an irresistible challenge to previous cultural certainties and shortly afterwards the emergence of Aboriginal weaving and Torres Strait Islander printmaking (among other emerging art forms) complicated an Australian cultural landscape previously dominated by painting and sculpture.

Since then great artists such as the weavers Yvonne Koolmatrie, from South Australia’s Coorong wetlands, and Lena Yarinkura, from Arnhem Land, and the great Pakana (Tasmanian Aboriginal people) makers of the maireener shell necklaces such as Lola Greeno have introduced new forms of art into the canon. Perhaps most astonishing is the commanding work

Autumn 2021

43

of senior Aboriginal women, whose cultural authority permits them to become great innovators in their maturity: think of the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Kitty Kantilla, Gulumbu Yunupingu and Sally Gabori, and today Noŋgirrŋa Marawili. Like Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, these exceptional artists have swept into the future with their gaze firmly on the past.

Know My Name opens up a similar Pandora’s box of unforeseen issues for Australian culture: it provokes a multitude of questions about other points of view on life and art; it gives fresh ideas room to flourish; and it welcomes previously overlooked stories and experiences. For this is one of the fundamental revelations of feminist art and scholarship over the past half-century: that women have different life experiences, different stories to tell, and engage with media and practices that are deeply embedded within female experience. Just one instance from one of Australia’s numerous cultural communities: the painter Savanhdary Vongpoothorn draws on wisdom she has inherited from both her parents, but since Lao culture passes through the female line she owes a particular debt to her mother.

Not very long ago some of women’s experiences and expressions were guarded, even coded: I’m thinking here of Janet Cumbrae Stewart and other lesbians of her generation, of her tender sensual celebrations of the female body, but also of many other manifestations of women’s sexual desires (both queer and straight) that are only gradually being recognised as potent, authentic accounts of life—themes explored in the Know My Name exhibition The Body Electric, which brought together work based in photography from the 1960s onwards. In every artistic medium, in fact, feminist experiment unleashed a world of playful, sexy, desiring images: just look at Queen of spades (1975) by the late Frances (Budden) Phoenix, with its demure pale pink crochet vulva.

This small work carries a huge message: as scholar Elizabeth Emery notes in the Know My Name publication, Queen of spades is ‘at once an object of activism as much as it is an object of art; a wholly politicised tribute to the work, bodies and histories of women’.

Around the same time Phoenix was subverting expectations with her doily, in the mid-1970s the artist Elizabeth Gower recorded this exchange: ‘After my first show, a critic warned me that my work looked “feminine”. I was horrified at this description and felt very vulnerable and angry at myself for not hiding my “femaleness” better, but I was also incredibly relieved that now the secret was out I wouldn’t have to pretend any more.’ There you have it: the awful truth – the artist is a woman.

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori (Kaiadilt people), Nyinyilki (detail), 2009, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2011, © courtesy the artist, Mornington Island Art, Queensland and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne.

44

nga.gov.au

looking as bright as they ever had for women artists. A gross marker: in 1971 very few women held lecturing positions in the country’s art colleges, never mind leadership positions.

Now they do in great numbers, and by the stellar example of their own work, through teaching subsequent generations, and through persistent and intelligent questioning of art’s gender prejudices, they have profoundly affected the women (and men) who have succeeded them. More notable markers: the Archibald Prize for portraiture, once a bastion of male artists and conservative styles, has been won four times in the past decade by women: Del Kathryn Barton (2013), Fiona Lowry (2014), Louise Hearman (2016) and Yvette Coppersmith (2018); the four artists to most recently represent Australia at the prestigious Venice Biennale have been women – Simryn Gill (2013), Fiona Hall (2015), Tracey Moffatt (2017) and Angelica Mesiti (2019); and women regularly win major public art commissions, from Emily Floyd’s gigantic blackbird (2006) beside Melbourne’s EastLink freeway to Lindy Lee’s The garden of cloud and stone in Sydney’s Chinatown (2015–20).

Seeing women working as artists is now more or less normal.

But only more or less. We still use the telltale qualification ‘woman’ to describe any number of great artists, as if the artist being male were still the norm. When will this no longer be the case? This normalisation of women’s work as artists is part of a very long social and cultural shift; it has already taken decades, and it will take many years more to fully to play out.

But it is inexorable.

Does the National Gallery know what the consequences of its bold commitment will be? Not exactly. And that’s the best part.

This initiative will ripple out across the decades. The point of opportunity is that it opens doors and minds to creativity, unlocks ideas and narratives (and budgets), suggests innovative collaborations and fosters unexpected possibilities. Know My Name will inspire young people both in Australia and around the globe — artists, craftspeople and designers now unborn, but whose names we will come to know — to redouble their efforts and rise to the challenge of their talent. Bring it on. � To find out more about the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, publication and initiative, head to: knowmyname.nga.gov.au.

So where are we right now? Australian women are working as artists ‘in numbers too big to ignore’, as Helen Reddy sang in 1971 at the very beginning of the decade when feminists began (once again) to explore the role of women artists in Australia. The numbers of artists practising professionally has grown exponentially since then as women have trained and have held on to their working lives with increasing determination. Pre-COVID, before the pandemic brought its daunting challenges for women’s employment, things were

Autumn 2021

45

A virtual agenda The National Gallery’s Know My Name Conference was a visual feast – and a virtual one, as acclaimed artists and academics livestreamed interactive discussions about gender and feminism in art. If you weren’t among the many who tuned in globally, here’s your lowdown on the event. By JESSI ENGLAND and ADRIANE BOAG.

“When I got to New York [in the early 1980s] and I started showing, I was told by gallerists there’s no such thing as a good woman artist. Literally.” – Nan Goldin Drawing on a cigarette in her Brooklyn living room, Nan Goldin shared her experience of being a woman artist and activist with writer Jennifer Higgie – sitting in her study in London – during a video call in late December.

This page (Clockwise, from top) The installation of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers’s Kungkarangkalpa (Seven Sisters) was performed via Zoom with the artists on the APY Lands; the Gallery boardroom was transformed into a broadcast studio; Diana Baker Smith & Verónica Tello, Opening Night: The Order of Arrangements 2020 (still), Single Channel HD Video, courtesy the artists.

Opposite Artist Nan Goldin, in Brooklyn, in conversation with Jennifer Higgie, in London.

Page 48 (from top) Gallery staff producing the conference; the Annual Lecture ‘Decolonise Your Feminism’ featuring (clockwise, from left) Kimberley Moulton, Dr Crystal McKinnon, an Auslan interpreter and Paola Balla.

46

nga.gov.au

The transatlantic conversation was watched by people glued to their computer screens around the globe and was one of the highlights of the Know My Name Conference, a virtual event produced out of the National Gallery of Australia’s Boardroom in Canberra.

It was a silver lining in the pandemic year when travel restrictions and border closures meant the annual conference on site had to be adapted to a digital format – not only pushing the technical expertise of Gallery staff, but also expanding the reach of the innovative Know My Name project to a global audience.

Over four days the Boardroom was transformed into a live broadcast studio for the thought-provoking and inspiring virtual conference, which brought together leading and emerging diverse Australian and international voices from arts and academia.

Director, Artistic Programs Natasha Bullock played the role of MC, facilitating live audience questions, joined daily by other Gallery staff onsite. Online, 48 presenters, including several artists, considered historical and contemporary experiences of gender and feminism in the arts and engaged with the ideas that underpin the Gallery’s Know My Name initiative, addressing themes such as “Decolonise Your Feminism”, “Communities, Collectives & Lineages”, “Future Practices’ and ‘Alternate Histories”.

The program also featured innovative accessibility, with three simultaneous livestreams, and included keynotes, in-conversations, panel discussions, new performance video works, live Q&As and networking sessions.

The conference led to the opening of the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, which also included a virtual opening night and onsite media call, the first time since the pandemic that the Gallery was able to celebrate an exhibition opening with several artists on site.

– The Know My Name Conference was developed in collaboration with presenting partners the Australia Council for the Arts, Australian National University School of Art & Design, University of Melbourne and UNSW Art & Design.

Against the backdrop of Janet Dawson’s The origin of the Milky Way, conference co-convenor and Assistant Autumn 2021

47

The Facts

748 765 180 delegates +

hrs

development and production

annual lecture only

48

presenters including artists

2021

3

simultaneous livestreams for accessibility

online visitation over 4 days

14 45 hrs

6

global locations: Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Thailand, the US and the UK

“The colonisers brought with them the notions that women are the property of men, that our primary role is domestic, and these ideas were transplanted onto our people and communities.

They disrupted our systems of matriarchal power, ignoring the cultural role that women have had in our cultures as lore and knowledge holders.”

GENEVIEVE GRIEVES opening keynote address

“This [conference] is not about recovering and reincluding. It asks as much why is the artist the great white man in the face of the infinite diversity of creativity in all cultures, in all forms.”

PROFESSOR GRISELDA POLLOCK pictured top right in conversation with Professor Sally Smart

min

of screen time

Accessibility

“Art by Australian women is fabulous, controversial, exciting, curious, uplifting, revolutionary. Know My Name matters, black lives matter, stories of Aboriginal people and culture matter, and stories about women and the environment matter.”

The Speakers

GENEVIEVE GRIEVES Worimi woman and Narrm/ Melbourne-based educator, curator and academic

Artist JUDY WATSON

PROFESSOR GRISELDA POLLOCK 2020 Holberg Prize –winning feminist art historian and cultural theorist NAN GOLDIN American photographer and activist, renowned for her pioneering depictions of intimacy and sex

Accessibility was a key priority and major success of the Know My Name Conference.

The inclusion of delegates with disability, and artists with disability as panellists and presenters, was critical for the design and technical delivery. The program format considered time of day, session length, breaks, and a variety of content types.

The online platform enabled delegates to select from three access experiences while 48

nga.gov.au

participating in a shared discussion and live questions board. The purpose-built platform was able to broadcast three simultaneous streams of live and pre-recorded content with Auslan interpretation and captions or audio description or with video and audio only. The Know My Name Conference has subsequently been recognised as an exemplar for the disability and visual arts community for digital engagement in Australia.

JENNIFER HIGGIE Australian-born writer and editor-at-large of Frieze magazine and presenter of the podcast Bow Down: Women in Art History DR CRYSTAL MCKINNON Amangu Yamaji woman, historian and critical Indigenous studies scholar

“Know My Name is a critical and timely response to the lack of representation of women in our institutions.”

Artist GEMMA SMITH who designed the colours for the walls of the Know My Name exhibition

“Art by Australian women is often complex. Know My Name is a chance to have a new perspective on female artists over the last century.”

“Know My Name is about checking an imbalance throughout history – it’s about shining a light on the great women artists of Australia.

Australian women artists are incredibly important to the history of Australia. Australian women artists are bold, creative, tenacious, intelligent, provocative.”

ALISON KUBLER National Gallery of Australia Council and Know My Name Project Board Member

Artist JO LLOYD

“Know My Name builds cultural legacy – it’s about giving recognition to Australian women artists.”

PROFESSOR SALLY SMART Artist, National Gallery of Australia Council and Know My Name Project Board member, pictured above in conversation with Griselda Pollock

Autumn 2021

49

Joan Ross: Collector’s Paradise Warrang/Sydney-based artist Joan Ross was commissioned to create a vivid animation that explored – and exploded – the façade of the Gallery as part of the Enlighten Festival, writes ELSPETH PITT.

Joan Ross asks us to think about museums as places that keep, acquire, and classify objects.

In her vast work Collector’s Paradise, a fluorescent moth with flapping wings unleashes chaos. Vitrines smash, specimens escape, and the museum tumbles down. In the wake of a flood that clears the rubble, Weereewa/Lake George emerges as drawn by the colonial artist Joseph Lycett in 1825. Gold balloons spelling $BOUNTY$ float and later burst in the bright blue sky.

The legacy of colonisation is at the heart of the artist’s practice: “One of the reasons that I make the work that I do is that I don’t think you can be anywhere in Australia and not consider that we’re on Indigenous land,” says Ross, who was born in Glasgow and came to live in Australia as a child. “I’m constantly aware of the colonial influence, and the disjunction between that and nature.” � Joan Ross: Collector’s Paradise is a Know My Name project, and was presented as part of the 2021 Enlighten Festival.

For more information and to stream Joan Ross in conversation about her work on demand, visit: knowmyname.nga.gov.au/ events/joan-ross-collectors-paradise.

– Elspeth Pitt is Curator, Australian Art.

Opposite The artist Joan Ross in her Bondi home and studio.

Above Joan Ross, still from Collector’s Paradise, Warrang/Sydney, 2021, moving image, colour, sound, 5:01 minutes, animation and sound: Josh Raymond, architectural adaptation and mapping: The Electric Canvas.

50

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

51

Bert Flugelman’s sculptures can be viewed in public places around Australia – including Cones in the National Gallery’s Sculpture Garden. But what about the one you can’t see, buried underground in a Canberra park? In an extract from the archives, the late artist tells DEBORAH HART, Henry Dalrymple Head Curator, Australian Art, about Earthwork / Tetrahedra – which has remained buried in Commonwealth Park since 1975 – and his other most famous works.

National Treasures

Bert Flugelman during the burial of Earthwork at Commonwealth Park in 1975.

52

nga.gov.au

Australian Information Service.

One of this country’s pre-eminent sculptors, Bert Flugelman brought passionate determination, courage and humour to his practice, which spanned several decades. Best known as a sculptor, he worked in a wide range of media including performance, painting and printmaking. He was also a dedicated and much-admired teacher over many years.

In 1968 he worked at the Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney – a new initiative instigated by the artist and art theorist Donald Brook, who encouraged a cross-disciplinary approach to making art. In this interview we undertook in 2009, Flugelman recalled these heady days as an invigorating time of “burning euphoniums, feathered offices and performance art on peak-hour buses”. His mantra was always that, irrespective of the approach, art was to be engaging and it was for everyone.

Born in Vienna in 1923, Flugelman came to Australia in 1938 as a 15-year-old, his father having relocated in flight from the Nazis. It seemed a cruel blow that around the time when the young artist returned to his city of birth after the war that he contracted polio. He was determined not to be defined by the affliction and it was perhaps these challenging

formative experiences that gave him the sense of needing to live life to the fullest and to make the most of his lively intellect and artistic talent. While a number of his formative sculptures were figurative, by the 1970s Flugelman was interested in a more formalist, geometric approach as he increasingly worked in stainless steel and aluminium. Yet he never lost the interaction in his works between precise artistic resolution and human engagement. He also retained his spirit of irreverence and questioning what art could be, as revealed in his buried sculpture discussed below.

Flugelman’s much-loved Cones in the National Gallery’s Sculpture Garden is one of his major achievements, impressive in its conception and scale, extending over some 20 metres.

It is full of life – the cones pivoting on points, interacting in a dance with one another, with the natural environment and with the audience reflected in the luminous surfaces. Like many of his public sculptures it is a tribute to a much-admired and respected artist who was a tremendously vital presence in Australian art.

Autumn 2021

53

BERT FLUGELMAN In

1975 Tom McCullough [curator of the Sculpture ’75 exhibition in Canberra], asked me whether I’d be interested in doing an earthwork. Quick as a flash I said, “Yes, of course.” And then he said, “Well, we can let you have a bulldozer and a driver, and we can let you have a site out at Commonwealth Park.”

And I literally didn’t know what to do, but it seemed an interesting idea to use the bulldozer as a tool, and to have that openness. I had seen earthworks which had been done in America and all over the place, and earthworks which were handed down through the ages – like the earth drawings in South America [the Nazca Lines in Peru] and the [Uffington] White Horse in Oxfordshire, England, where people had worked on that scale.

I decided to take six tetrahedrons which had been exhibited first in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. And I loaded them on a trailer [in Adelaide] and took them to Canberra.

I told the bulldozer driver what I had in mind, that was to dig a trench about five or six metres deep, 20-odd feet wide, and 60-odd feet long. And to have a level floor at the bottom.

And we installed the six tetrahedrons at the bottom, exactly the way they were installed at the gallery the last time.

And then we gradually and gently filled in again, making sure that ... the tetrahedrons weren’t disturbed in any way at the bottom of the trench. Then he gently filled in again ...

And he made good the landscape until there was nothing left except the curve of the hill. And they’re still up there.

While we were digging into installing these things, I had a phone call from a property owner in Victoria, who said he and his wife had seen it on television and they’d like to buy it.

And she said, “How much do you want for it?” I mentioned a reasonably outrageous price at the time; $10,000 – [in] 1975, that was a lot of money. They said: “That’s a bit steep. But we do want them. When can we have it?” And I said, “Well, you can own it from now!” And he said, “No, no, whenever you dig them up.” And I said, “I’m not going to dig them up, I’m going to leave them here. But you can own them!”

This opened up a whole can of worms about what constitutes a work of art; is it the object or is it the idea? Is it the conceptual thing or does one have to have a token? Is just the knowledge of the event not sufficient?

DEBORAH

Were they made out of aluminium or stainless steel?

They were made of aluminium. This adds further speculation … we made it aluminium, it oxidises fairly readily, and those tetrahedrons, I would suggest, by now they’re just tetrahedral cavities with a little bit of aluminium oxide at the bottom. Any future excavation will wonder what that was!

BERT

DEBORAH Quite

a number of your works have been on interesting journeys. The Dobell Memorial, one of your most famous works, was quite controversial, wasn’t it?

54

nga.gov.au

Left Pyramid tower (the dobell memorial), 1978, on Bond Street in Sydney; (below) Spheres, 1977, in Rundle Mall, Adelaide.

BERT Well, it got a lot of publicity. It was controversial because it was a competition and there were about 14 of us invited to submit maquettes. … I won the competition and there was quite an outcry. … Lloyd Rees objected to it in the Sydney Morning Herald. And then, after it was up, he wrote me a letter saying he saw it for what it was, he realised he’d been an old-fashioned fogey and apologised. After that, the then Lord Mayor took against it and when Martin Place was reinvented he insisted they took it out of there. So it was pulled down, went into storage at the council depot, had a garbage truck drive into it.

There was a public outcry and they decided they would restore it and ... they moved it two blocks to Spring Street, which was in many ways a better site. But it wasn’t what it was designed for ... next to the waterfall and all the rest of it. And not only that, but it cost the city $350,000 to repair this thing and shift it two blocks. When the original fee for making it was $80,000!

Spheres was commissioned for Rundle Mall in Adelaide, a city you’ve had a very long connection with.

Tell us a little bit about the making of this work.

DEBORAH

BERT I had the maquette of two spheres on top of each other, which were exhibited at Waterhouse Gallery in 1972. In about 1975 there was a competition for three sites in Rundle Mall.

I entered the maquette and they stipulated that it be about five metres high and two metres wide, roughly. Now, in order for the one to sit on top of the other you have to slice an 18-inch piece off. Well, that’s negligible, it’s only about two inches high, which you cut off the two spheres. And then there’s a flange welded on, and another flange, and the two are bolted together.

You could never, otherwise, manufacture them without destroying the clean joining of the two surfaces.

It was mad to attempt it. And I was lucky that the people who worked for me, the fabricators who made the thing, the engineering firm, were enthusiastic about solving problems.

They were one-off people, they weren’t mass production.

They came from three generations of coppersmiths and they had a pride in their skills that is quite unusual.

It’s really an extraordinary work in Rundle Mall, and the way people interact with it. I think those reflections are very important, as they are with Cones.

DEBORAH

BERT They installed it on a Saturday afternoon and there were a few people there. And on Monday morning I went in to watch people look at it. I stood there, looking, and a little old lady came up and looked at it quite closely and peered at it, then she opened her handbag, took up a hanky, and then ... [blows nose]!

So I knew it was a winner!

DEBORAH

Cones was commissioned by the Gallery in 1978.

It had to be finished by 1982 [for the opening] … I had a budget, and as always budgets are very stringent. And in order to make it for the amount of money that there was, I went to this fabricator in Adelaide, and I said: “Look, you’ve got four years to make it. You can use it as a filler job, when you’re slack.” … And so finally, it cost nothing to make it. Well, they saw the sense of it and they made it, and everybody was happy.

BERT

City of Sydney, Paul Patterson

Tetrahedra brings together that sense of the sculptor, installation and performance. Can you take us on the journey this work went on?

DEBORAH HART

Autumn 2021

55

“It’s become what I always intended with public sculpture, and it really becomes a mark which stays there, and will stay there for a long time. When architecture has changed, buildings have changed, the landscape has changed, that is the one thing that is permanent.”

DEBORAH When the commission was approved by the trustees, you told a story that the trustees asked about the longevity of the work.

When the trustees wanted to know what the longevity of the sculpture was, they were much concerned that we used the best kind of material, and to get as many years as possible out of it. And so I wrote to Commonwealth Steel, which was a subsidiary of BHP, [to ask] if they would supply the steel.

And finally I got a letter back from a metallurgical laboratory of BHP saying that the make of steel being used and the gauge of steel being used, they could estimate that it had a life expectancy, under normal conditions, of 75,000 years!

I got a letter back from [the Gallery], saying, “Dear Bert, this will be very satisfactory!” So, we aim to please.

BERT

DEBORAH It’s such an amazing feat of engineering in the way the

Other key Bert Flugelman sculptures around Australia Melbourne, VIC Serpent II Brisbane, QLD Slow spiral Orange, NSW Federation arch Wollongong, NSW Winged figure (below)

double cone is kind of balanced as if they’re almost on points.

BERT It went through quite a number of stages. I started making it by cutting a circle in a piece of paper, of thin cardboard, using a compass, and then cutting it in half so I had a semicircle.

And you take the semicircle and you join the two edges and you have a cone. And if you hold it up and look at it straight, it’s an equilateral triangle that is formed by the silhouette.

And this equilateral triangle goes right through both my stainless steel sculptures. It’s the one discipline I submit to.

Having a considerable backbone allows you then to invent as freely as you want, because all your pieces are related; there is a family feeling about them.

It’s become what I always intended with public sculpture, and it really becomes a mark which stays there, and will stay there for a long time. When architecture has changed, buildings have changed, the landscape has changed, that is the one thing that is permanent. And it’s this unfashionable sense of permanence that gives it that effect, I think, to a very large extent.

DEBORAH One thing you did say about the particular choice of the number of the cones, that seven actually was quite important?

BERT Number seven … it’s a magic number, and I’m not the first one to say so. But also, if you have five you can conceive it as a symmetrical thing; two and two, and a centrepiece. If you have seven, it’s already long enough to read as an endless column in the vertical or horizontal. You imply that it goes on and on and on and on. So it’s not a long asymmetric thing but an ongoing thing.

– This is an extract from a conversation between Bert Flugelman and Deborah Hart on International Museum Day, 18 May 2009, at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Opposite (above) The artist Bert Flugelman with Cones in the National Gallery of Australia Sculpture Garden; (below) Cones, 1982, polished stainless steel, National Gallery of Australia, commissioned 1976, purchased 1982, © Bert Flugelman.

56

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

57

The Textile Conservators

Some of the most delicate treasures in the Gallery’s collection are in the care of the textiles conservation team, which painstakingly preserves everything from couture to Patricia Piccinini’s whimsical floating whales, writes SANDRA O’MALLEY.

Hot-air balloons, century-old European ballet costumes and high fashion fresh from the New York runway. These all make up the diverse working day of the National Gallery’s textile conservation team.

Senior Conservator Textiles Micheline Mollica, Michelle Hunter and Tiffany Abbott in preserving the textile collection, which spans international and Australian fashion and textiles, theatre costumes, Asian textiles and contemporary works – including for the past 18 months artist Patricia Piccinini’s hot-air balloon sculptures, Skywhale and Skywhalepapa, the latter of which was officially launched last month.

This page Carmela Mollica (left) and Michelle Hunter inspect Skywhalepapa during the test flight in December 2020.

Opposite The National Gallery’s textile conservation team (L-R): Gudrun Genée, Micheline Ford, Tiffany Abbott, Michelle Hunter and Carmela Mollica.

58

nga.gov.au

Now part of the national collection, the skywhales are a unique experience for the conservators – the National Gallery is one of the few galleries in the world to have hot-air balloons in its collection. For Carmela, working with the balloons has been the culmination of a longtime passion.

I fell in love with balloons when the festival started in the 1980s and I used to follow them and go every morning at 6am to see them,” she says.

Recently she trained to be part of a hot-air balloon crew and took part in the 2019 Canberra Balloon Spectacular.

“It’s a connection to an object in a different way,” she says.

By their nature, textile works require more regular attention and often have shorter display schedules than other materials due to their fragility and light sensitivity. They have also been front and centre in recent major exhibitions.

Textiles feature strongly in Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, including works by Kathy Temin, Mikala Dwyer, DI$COUNT UNIVER$E, Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, Barbara Campbell and Tania Ferrier, and the National Gallery’s acclaimed collection of Ballets Russes costumes were a striking display in the recent Matisse & Picasso exhibition.

“It’s great that we’re getting more textiles on display like we used to,” says Micheline. And with some exciting acquisitions in the pipeline, textiles will continue to claim their share of the spotlight.

For Carmela and Michelle, a passion for making and fashion was the impetus for getting into textile conservation.

Micheline was initially attracted to painting conservation but, with a mother who was a weaver, textiles were in her blood and eventually drew her back.

Tiffany, who produces the forms and underpinnings that give life to the textile works, came to her role after a decade in theatre and television as a costumemaker and pattern cutter. Former Guides Coordinator Gudrun Genée assists with the extensive process of protecting and storing the costumes.

For the team, the appeal of their work lies in discovering new ways of bringing to life – and extending the life of – the woven treasures in the collection.

“I like discovering interesting hidden things within the costumes and garments,” says Micheline. Carmela agrees, likening their role to that of forensic scientists: “In some ways an object talks to us and tells us a lot about it.”

Michelle says she is constantly amazed at the effort and skill that has gone into creating many of the textile works.

“Every bit of it was made by hand, from the fibre processing, to the dyeing, to the weaving, to making it into something else. I always find that it’s really special to work up close and find ways to make these last as long as possible so they can be enjoyed by people into the future.”

Autumn 2021

59

My Collection We explore the private collection of a National Gallery donor.

This month: ANTHONY MEDICH in conversation with SHAUNE LAKIN Head Curator, International Art.

Anthony Medich pictured with Rosemary Laing’s flight research #5, 1999, at the art-filled Medich Family Office headquarters in Bondi.

Photo by Renee Nowytarger.

SHAUNE LAKIN What inspired you to start collecting?

ANTHONY MEDICH In my childhood I used to go to all the art auctions with my father, Roy, who had an interest in collecting Australian artists such as Arthur Boyd.

I used to enjoy going to the auctions with Dad, but while those works were great they didn’t resonate with me greatly.

It wasn’t until I went through a friend’s collection that included photography that I found an immediate affinity. That collection was far more contemporary and innovative, and I decided at that time I would start collecting. I set a target to collect about five works each year – I didn’t want it to be a passing phase where you buy one or two works and then move on. I wanted it to be a continued focus. That was about 15 years ago and the rest is history.

SHAUNE You set a target of collecting five

works a year. Did you have any idea what those works needed to do or feel like or look like, or was it just based on your feelings about the work as you came across it?

ANTHONY It was more about me ensuring I had a continued interest. Because photography was my first interest, I set about researching and collecting work by artists working within the medium.

I started with more of a focus on artists I already knew such as Max Dupain and Lewis Morley. I came across Carol Jerrems’s work Vale Street and some of those works from the 1970s were very impressive but I ended up steering towards more contemporary works.

SHAUNE Can you remember the first work of art that made you think or feel differently?

ANTHONY Max Dupain’s Sunbaker was

one. I wasn’t really aware of it until I saw it. But then I thought: ‘Now, there is a work that is so simple yet captures so strongly something that is quintessentially Australian’. I find the form of photography quite fascinating, because it’s an instrument we’ve all got access to yet somehow some artists can capture something that can be so expressive. I’ve got 57,000 photos on my phone and I don’t have one that comes close.

60

nga.gov.au

SHAUNE A lot of your collection is displayed

in your workspaces and you live with a lot of art at home. What do you love most about living with art in both your domestic environment and the places you work?

ANTHONY It certainly brings a greater dimension to the place where the works are featured, you enjoy being in the space far more. I’ve got a lot of Rosemary Laing’s works, and she’s very precise and deliberate in what she does. So, in terms of taking in artworks as I work, art helps inspire and drive me to be more creative.

From a home perspective, it’s more about switching off and knowing that there’s different perspectives to the world. It’s a constant reminder about the world we live in, from a work and life perspective.

SHAUNE It’s interesting to hear you talk

about how your collection enables you and your colleagues to work more creatively and to think about the world in a way that might be productive to your business. You tend to build your collection yourself – how do you go about curating a personal collection?

ANTHONY If I look at this office [the Medich Family Office headquarters in Bondi], there is something about how art responds to the environment, the road overlooking the beach and the horizon. And I’ll be honest, there’s a thread of red in a lot of the works. So, if I’m forced to pull a lot of works together I like them to have some connectivity. The most interesting thing, I find, is how do I put works by the same artist together so that they add more strength to the other work when they are combined? Certain works – let’s say, for example, Destiny Deacon’s Over the fence – speak for themselves. But with Destiny’s picture, for example, when you put it with another work, whether it’s from the same series or another series, then you can really get a stronger sense of the artist by their combined power. I try to put Bill Hensons together, and certainly with the likes of Rosemary Laing and Tracey Moffatt I think it’s very good when you can take in more than one work.

SHAUNE So is that a guiding principle for your collecting – that you don’t limit yourself to just one work by an artist?

ANTHONY That’s what has evolved over time. Originally I felt like I should have

Autumn 2021

61

one work from a whole range of artists, but that didn’t really work for me. I ended up going back and collecting a lot of artists in depth because obviously those artists resonated with me and I saw a greater strength in having more from the total body of work. Artists like Rosemary Laing – who has made some extraordinary series over the years – and Shaun Gladwell and Daniel Crooks. I’m interested in the breadth of an artist’s practice as opposed to just a particular work.

SHAUNE Is there any specific work in

your collection that resonates with you at the moment?

ANTHONY My absolute favourite works are Rosemary Laing’s bulletproofglass and flight research series, so they have pride of place. They’re very expressive works.

People who see them usually have a similar reaction, they are very powerful. Typically I have bulletproofglass #2 in my office, but at the moment, it’s on loan to the National Gallery for the Know My Name exhibition.

So I currently have Rosemary’s To walk on a sea of salt. It has actually prompted me to rotate the collection more often. The

trouble is, when I’ve got a work that I love to look at as much as bulletproofglass #2, it’s hard to take it down.

SHAUNE You’re an incredibly generous person who supports a range of cultural organisations including the National Gallery. What motivates you to give?

ANTHONY I’ll be honest, that probably flows

more from the general Medich family perspective to give back. It’s a guiding principle for our family to give back to the communities we live and work in. So our family office operates with a business arm and there is also the philanthropic arm, our Foundation. We’ve got three main streams: we support medical research, art and community. Obviously, I’ve got a particular passion for art … and art is a great inspirer. It is a great way to get new perspectives on life and to see the world for what it is. I know that in some respects it’s a great luxury but, equally, I think to have a great life you need culture, and art is at the forefront of that.

ANTHONY Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles –

I’d be lying to say any other. It is such a memorable work and leaves such a distinctive impression. It makes you want to seek out other abstract works that are as good as that. I’ll be honest, after looking at Blue poles again I spoke to our consultant whom we use from time to time to try to open up a collection of abstract works. There’s something very interesting about abstraction. If I was able to collect works remotely as good as Blue poles, that would be a significant turning point in my collecting. � Rosemary Laing’s bulletproofglass #2, currently on display in the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, is on loan from Anthony Medich’s private collection.

– The Medich Foundation was a Major Partner of the recent exhibition The Body Electric.

Donors

The National Gallery acknowledges the support of all donors and recognises here the donations made between October and December 2020.

Supporters in Focus Longstanding Members of the National Gallery Heather and Malcolm Crompton were among the first to contribute to the collective giving appeal, and we are thankful for their donation to the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony.

The Cromptons’ giving is motivated by a desire to support the institution to share the power of art, both Australian and international.

Heather and Malcolm are particularly proud of the National Gallery’s collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, which is the largest in the world. Their admiration for the work of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists as well as the Gallery’s vision to share learning, understanding and respect for Indigenous culture with non-Indigenous Australians encouraged Heather and Malcolm’s gift to the Triennial.

We thank the Cromptons and all of our supporters for helping us to reach new and larger audiences than ever before, raising the profile of artists and their value in our lives.

SHAUNE Is there a particular work in the

national collection that inspires you?

4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony Lenore Adamson Robert Aernout Charles Bowden Annette Byron Marguerite Castello Malcolm Crompton and Heather Crompton Maria Magda Damo Dr Stephen Dyer and Sue Dyer David George and Annita George Julian Goldenberg and Neta Saint Karina Harris and Neil Hobbs Meredith Hinchliffe Hindmarsh Investments Pty Ltd Colin Hindmarsh and Barbara Hindmarsh Professor Ingrid Moses AO and Reverend Dr John Moses Anne Prins Susan Robertson and Alan Robertson Arjen Romeyn The Sargeson family Sally Saunders D’Arcy Slater Foundation John Trotter Loane Vakaci Wendy Webb Hilary White Zandra Wilson Chris Wright

Conservation Angela Compton Donations to support the National Gallery Mark Ames John Anning and Gillian McAllister Professor Gary Bouma and Patricia Bouma Community Impact Foundation Ross Goodin Dr Stephen McNamara Peter Sabatino Exhibition Patrons: Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London Philip Bacon AM Kay Bryan The Hon Ashley Dawson-Damer AM Wayne Kratzmann Lady Primrose Potter AC Paul Taylor Foundation Board Publishing Fund Ray Wilson OAM Know My Name Brett Backhouse Jillian Broadbent AC Graeme Bulte and Amber Bulte Annemarie Casey Wendy Cobcroft Christine Cooper Jayne Madden Eitan Neishlos and Lee Levi Tom Pongrass Dr Catherine Stuart Sally Tingle Carla Zampatti AC Robert and Eugenie Bell Decorative Arts and Design Fund Maxine Armitage

Rosemary Laing’s bulletproofglass and flight research series on display in the Know My Name exhibition.

62

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

63

Partnerships

A modern grand tour

Sydney to Canberra: 3 hours’ drive

An indulgent road-trip to Canberra to experience masterpieces from the National Gallery, London, makes a case for the pursuit of the senses, writes NOELLE FAULKNER.

Balloon Aloft balloonaloftcanberra.com.au

Stay Avenue Hotel avenuehotel.com.au

Play

Eat The Italian Place theitalianplace.net.au

Drink Lerida Estate Winery leridaestate.com.au

The grand tourists of the 17th–19th centuries – often artists, poets, writers and nobles – echoed Cobbett’s sentiment: that art and culture need to be seen to be understood. The pilgrimage was made to pay respects to the greats that came before (and sometimes included artists’ studio visits, leading to now-famous commissions) by way of a sensorial road-trip.

Tourism today owes a lot to this fashionable practice, which forged many of the cultural itineraries traversing Europe that we still follow (that is, when borders are open). The romance of travel in pursuit of great art remains as captivating as it ever was. Even if that means museum-ing from home via your computer.

The great masterpieces now travel to us, but that doesn’t mean the spirit of the grand tour needs to fade. In fact, road-trip culture is as Australian as it is European – OK, so instead of the Sistine Chapel we have the many Big things that line Australian highways: Banana, Merino, Prawn, but it’s as much about what you find along the way as where you end up.

And amid this current pandemic, the great Australian road-trip is one of the best ways (if not the only way) to travel.

This ideal is shared by Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London exhibition principal sponsor 64

nga.gov.au

Mazda, which makes cars with the open road in mind, prioritising safety, economy and comfort. So, in anticipation of the incoming masters from London, the Japanese carmaker lent Artonview a Mazda3 steed for a grand (capital) tour, a 48-hour trip from Sydney to Sunflowers.

Just under three hours out of Sydney, the roads to the Australian Capital Territory are mostly long and straight, so a traveller in pursuit of pleasure might want to look beyond the Hume (and have a transportive soundtrack prepared in advance).

The New South Wales Southern Highlands has a wealth of picturesque forests and historic viewpoints, and the highway itself is dotted with serene roadside picnic spots flanked by gumtrees alive with the calls of kookaburras and eastern whipbirds, and, if you’re lucky, the rustle of echidnas and blue-tongued lizards in search of insects.

Closer to the capital, the Canberra District wine region provides an early dose of sensory exploration. With more than 140 vineyards and 30 cellar doors, this cool-climate destination is perhaps most famous for its shiraz and riesling but has also been shown to create diverse and unique styles using sangiovese, chardonnay, pinot noir, viognier, merlot and tempranillo grapes, and even some European specialities such as grüner veltliner.

Lerida Estate Winery, at the foot of the Cullerin Range at Lake George, alongside the highway, is one such place. A young vineyard dating to 1997, this winery has a scenic restaurant and has won multiple awards for its meticulous winemaking, especially its shiraz and pinot noir, grown alongside merlot

Book Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London nga.gov.au/masterpieces/tickets

Images supplied

“There is no such thing as justly describing the fine things that we have seen today,” writer James Paul Cobbett scribbled in his 1828 travel diary, Journal of a tour in Italy, after visiting Florence’s then Gallery of Fine Arts on a grand tour of Europe.

“Art has here brought fiction so near upon the verge of reality that the line between them is too nice to be drawn by words.”

Autumn 2021

65

and cabernet franc. For those who prefer white, Lerida Estate also grows chardonnay, pinot gris and viognier, and produces a dazzling Provence-style rosé. Tastings here are personal and educational, and the staff are happy to explain the curious geography of Lake George, the impact the bushfires had on local growers and why Lerida’s philosophy is one designed for Australian conviviality (read: to be shared). In anticipation of the arrival of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Lerida Estate has even planted rows of sunflowers surrounding the restaurant.

Dinner calls for a culinary hit worthy of a grand tour of old.

At The Italian Place, cries of “buonasera!” “ciao!” and “grazie!” go up every few minutes throughout the night, a customary and energetic garnish to the traditional menu that spans all the regions of Italy. Plan a picnic on the lakeside parklands that surround the National Gallery of Australia: the restaurant’s adjoining providore offers takeaway smallgoods and the staff will happily pack you a hamper to match the magnificence of the masterpieces that brought us here.

The hottest place to stay in Canberra is arguably Braddon, at least when it comes to buzzing breakfast spots, local coffee roasters, cocktail bars, restaurants and retail therapy. Five-star hotel Avenue removes the guesswork from figuring out where to stay – it lacks very little. The rooms are bright and spacious, ranging from single to serviced-apartment-scale (complete with kitchenette and full-sized fridge), to the even more luxe spa suites. The hotel is just across the road from the CBD and has a vast, relaxing courtyard for reflection, sliding in some work between outings or enjoying a quiet drink from the hotel’s adjoining gastro-pub, Marble & Grain – a popular late-night haunt that also serves locally sourced farm-to-table bites.

Because the grand tourists were hedonists as much as they were art lovers, a final surge of the heart is called for before the peaceful drive home. What else could complement the grandiosity of a J.M.W. Turner or a Titian but a hot-air balloon ride at dawn? Mist and amber skies play against the capital’s angular architecture and surrounding plains. Like the rare masters that visit us just once in a lifetime – if we’re lucky – some views just need to be witnessed firsthand. As the motto of legendary late magazine editor and modern grand tourist Diana Vreeland goes, “The eye has to travel.”

Partnerships

Strategic Partners

Indigenous Art Partner

Presenting Partner

Contemporary Art Partner

Touring Partners

Major Partners

Supporting Partners

Media Partners

Promotional Partners

Visitors to the Botticelli to Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia with Vincent van Gogh.

Sunflowers. 1888. © The National Gallery, London.

66

nga.gov.au

Corporate Member

Clayton Utz

Autumn 2021

67

Director’s Choice: Scenes on the Death of Nature I-V A personal highlight from the national collection.

By NICK MITZEVICH.

68

nga.gov.au

Anne Ferran’s Scenes on the death of nature is a compelling work. I love that at first glance it evokes questions: What era is it from? Who are the models?

What are they thinking?

The series, made while Ferran was studying at art school, draws on rich European classical tradition – from Greco-Roman through to the Renaissance – yet it is very much grounded in the contemporary moment. It has an important gravitas that reinforces that art is a continuum that builds on history.

Seeing Scenes here at the National Gallery sharing a space with other powerful series

by Tracey Moffatt and Julie Rrap in Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now reveals a different perspective on Anne’s work. Her series took a critical look at how classical and romantic images position women, yet one of Anne’s principal aims in making the work was to remind us that visual pleasure is inherent in looking at art.

The series is shown in its entirety with the five images displayed together for the first time since the 1980s, making it a powerful experience.

It is an arresting work and represents what I love about 1980s photography: there’s a duality in that it is low-tech yet has a great sense of grandeur. You could think you are looking at a marble frieze, but on closer inspection the girls are draped in home-made outfits.

Naomi in the last image stares right at you, calling you in, as does the work as a whole.

When Anne visited the Gallery last year it was moving to see her before this series that means so much to her.

Anne Ferran, Scenes on the death of nature series I-V, 1986, gelatin silver photograph, National Gallery of Australia, KODAK (Australasia) PTY LTD fund, 1987 and purchased 2019, © Anne Ferran/Copyright Agency.

Anne created this very personal work using DIY techniques. The tableaux were set up in the garden of her home in Petersham, Sydney; the clothes were deliberately makeshift. The models in the images are Anne’s daughter Claire and her friends. Dreamy as they are, the girls are also resolutely grounded in the present;

Autumn 2021

69

5 St a r Accom mod at ion i n Ca nber ra T h i s h i st or ic hot el i nt er we ave s t he h id den my st ique of t he 19 2 0 s w it h moder n A r t Deco de s i g n s a nd of fer s a n e sc ape w it h i n a her it a g e -i n spi red set t i n g. O u r hot el i s conven ient l y loc at ed m i nut e s f rom C a nber r a’s m ajor t ou r i st at t r ac t ion s , t he c it y cent re a nd L a ke Bu r le y Gr i f f i n.

Hya t t Hote l Can be r ra – A Pa rk Hya t t Hote l, i s t he ide a l loc at ion for you t o be st d i scover Au st r a l i a’s c apit a l c it y.

12 0 C om monwe a lt h Ave, Ya r r a lu m l a AC T 2 6 0 0 Au st r a l i a For re s er v at ion s ple a s e v i s it hyat t .com The trademarks HYATT™, PARK HYATT™ and related marks are trademarks of Hyatt International Corporation. ©2008 Hyatt International Corporation. All rights reserved.

70

nga.gov.au

Autumn 2021

71

BOOK DIRECT ON OUR WEBSITE

It’s worth it!

STAY AND SAVE 10% With three centrally located hotels to choose from, Avenue Hotel, Deco Hotel and Pavilion on Northbourne, let us make you feel at home in Canberra.

We’re expecting you!

1800 828 000 www.capitalhotelgroup.com.au 72

nga.gov.au

10% off the best available rate Free complimentary onsite

and secure car parking Free high speed Wifi throughout

the hotels Free & easy 24 hour

cancellation up to 2pm the day before arrival

Vincent van Gogh. Sunflowers (detail). 1888. © The National Gallery, London