2010.Q1 | artonview 61 Autumn 2010

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NEW DISPLAYS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIAMASTERPIECES FROM PARIS

Issue 61, autumn 2010

2 Director’s foreword4 Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2010:

Robert Dowling’s Miss Robertson of Colac (Dolly) Anne Gray

6 Foundation7 Sponsorship and Developmentexhibitions and displays

12 Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond Lucina Ward

16 New look National Gallery of Australia p 16: overview, Ron Radford p 18: ‘Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly paintings’,

Deborah Hart p 20: ‘Photography’, Gael Newton p 22: ‘Asian

costume’, Beatrice Thompson p 24: ‘Fashion’, Robert Bell

p 26: ‘Jewellery’, Robert Bell p 28: ‘Polynesian art’, Michael Gunn

p 30: ‘Melanesian art’, Crispin Howarth p 32: ‘Australian Surrealism’,

Deborah Hart

34 Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire Ron Radford

acquisitions

36 Japan Miyuki: the imperial outing and hunt Lucie Folan

40 Thomas Bock Portrait of two boys Gael Newton

41 Portrait of three Californian goldminers Gael Newton

42 Philip Wolfhagen Autumn equinox; the loss of the sun Miriam Kelly

44 Murray Griffin Self-portrait Emma Colton

45 Fiji A priest’s fork Crispin Howarth

programs and events

46 Faces in view48 Art and about with the Wolfensohn Gift suitcases

Mary-Lou Nugent

49 Travelling exhibitions50 Mandala workshops in rural schools

published quarterly by

National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 nga.gov.au

ISSN 1323-4552

Print Post Approved pp255003/00078

© National Gallery of Australia 2009

Copyright for reproductions of artworks is held by the artists or their estates. Apart from uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of artonview may be reproduced, transmitted or copied without the prior permission of the National Gallery of Australia. Enquires about permissions should be made in writing to the Rights and Permissions Officer.

The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

editor Eric Meredith

designer Kristin Thomas

photography Eleni Kypridis, Barry Le Lievre, Brenton McGeachie, Steve Nebauer, David Pang, John Tassie

rights and permissions Nick Nicholson

advertising Erica Seccombe

printed in Australia by Blue Star Print, Melbourne

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(cover) Vincent van Gogh Van Gogh’s bedroom at Arles 1889 (detail) oil on canvas 57.5 x 74 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris, transferred in application of the Peace Treaty with Japan, 1959 © RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government Agency

2 national gallery of australia

Director’s foreword

Our summer exhibition, Masterpieces from Paris: Van

Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond—Post-Impressionism

from the Musée d’Orsay has already attracted over 220 000

visitors from around Australia and the world to the National

Gallery of Australia. On Boxing Day alone, over 6000 people

came to see the masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay.

The beautifully designed exhibition book has so far sold

over 22000 copies.

The decision by the Orsay to tour many of their

Post-Impressionist works while renovating their Post-

Impressionist galleries presented an extraordinary

opportunity for us to exhibit these treasures from the

beginning of European Modernism for an Australian

audience. Post-Impressionism is not well represented in

Australian collections and there has never been a

Post-Impressionist exhibition in Australia before.

That the Orsay decided on Australia as the first of two

international venues for the exhibition was a great coup

for Australia and for the National Gallery of Australia.

Thérèse Rein eloquently opened this important exhibition

on 3 December.

In preparing for the opening of Masterpieces from

Paris we were very excited about the arrival of so many

important Post-Impressionist works from the Musée

d’Orsay. But, now that the exhibition is here, it has

surpassed our wildest expectations. The works are truly

revealed under the National Gallery of Australia’s lighting.

Guy Cogeval, president of the Musée d’Orsay, called it

a ‘revelation’ to see them here. Having often seen these

works in Paris, I have to agree they have never looked

better. Of course one of the reasons the Musée d’Orsay

is lending the works is that they are renovating their

Post-Impressionism galleries, including the installation

of a new lighting system.

Masterpieces from Paris has just over month before

it ends and already promises to be our most popular

exhibition ever. Do make sure you see it!

A week before the opening of Masterpieces from Paris,

the Hon Peter Garrett, Minister for the Arts, announced

another important milestone in the Gallery’s history—the

opening of the final phase of the planned new collection

displays in our current building, which completes the

four-year program of relocation, refurbishment and

redisplay of the collections. The most recently opened

spaces include a new purpose-designed oval gallery for

our Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly series, our first permanent

space designed especially for the art of photography,

our first permanent jewellery displays, and our first

permanent showcases for costumes. Importantly, we also

opened Australia’s first gallery, be it small, devoted to

Polynesian art and directly upstairs above it a new display

devoted to Melanesian art. The space in the Australian

displays where the Ned Kelly series used to hang is now

devoted to Australian Surrealism, the Gallery having been

given, fairly recently, the large Agapitos/Wilson collection

of Australian Surrealism. Surrealism, particularly from

Australia and Europe, is one of the great strengths of the

national collection.

A new acquisition, a Japanese screen titled Miyuki: the

imperial outing and hunt 1600–10, has already become a

favourite in our downstairs East Asian gallery. The screen

is a fine example of the superb achievements of painters

during Japan’s Momoyama period with its delicate and

refined painting of details of this tale of Gengi. Acquiring

this work would not have been possible without the very

generous support of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett, who

continue to show their dedication to bringing the best of

Japanese art to Australian audiences.

In the Australian Contemporary space, Tasmanian

landscape painter Philip Wolfhagen’s Autumn equinox;

the loss of the sun 2009 evokes an earlier era of landscape

painting in Australia. Wolfhagen builds up his rich

painterly surfaces layer upon layer to reveal atmospheric

aspects of his local environment such as seasonal

particularities and subtle nuances of light at particular

times of day.

We have recently acquired two early daguerreotypes

which are among the Gallery’s earliest photographs. The

first photograph is a double portrait of two young boys

by Tasmanian colonial portrait painter Thomas Bock,

executed around 1848–50. The second is a portrait of

three Californian gold miners by an unknown American

photographer and also dated from the late 1840s. Bock

was an accomplished engraver and portrait painter and

turned his hand to photography in the mid 1840s, soon

after the first daguerreotype demonstrations in Australia.

These works add to the Gallery’s significant collection of

photographs from the first century of photography in Asia

and the Pacific, helping to illustrate the vibrant history of

photography in the region.

A recently acquired nineteenth-century Fijian priest’s

fork is a provocative addition to the new Polynesian gallery.

Used for the ritual consumption of animal and human

flesh, this exquisitely decorated object joins other finely

crafted works in Australia’s first gallery dedicated to the arts

of Polynesia.

artonview autumn 2010 3

The Gallery’s Masterpieces for the Nation Fund

program had its most successful year in 2009 with the

acquisition of Tom Roberts’s Shearing shed, Newstead

1893–94. I would like to thank those who generously

donated to this vibrant colonial-period Australian landscape

painting. The subject of the 2010 Masterpieces for the

Nation appeal is the evocative portrait Miss Robertson of

Colac (Dolly), painted in 1885 and 1886 by Australia’s first

locally trained artist, Tasmanian painter Robert Dowling.

It was painted at her family’s Colac property on Dowling’s

return to Australia after 27 years abroad. It is one of

the artist’s last works and perhaps the finest and most

engaging of his late portraits.

Miss Robertson of Colac (Dolly) was briefly on display

in the Australian gallery before its inclusion in the National

Gallery of Australia’s travelling exhibition Robert Dowling:

Tasmanian son of Empire, which fittingly begins its tour

in Launceston—at the Queen Victoria Museum & Art

Gallery on 6 March—where Dowling grew up and began

his career. The exhibition then travels to Geelong Gallery

in Victoria, where the artist set up practice in the mid

1850s, before the exhibition comes to Canberra to the

National Gallery of Australia. This exhibition highlights a

significant but neglected figure of the late colonial period

and shows his importance in the development of Australian

art. The book accompanying the exhibition, written by the

exhibition curator John Jones, will be the first publication

dedicated to Dowling’s work and includes the full range of

his much-lauded Oriental, biblical and social-commentary

subjects and, importantly, his Aboriginal subjects. It is a

major contribution to the history of nineteenth-century

Australian art.

With the exhibition Masterpieces from Paris and the

new collection displays, the National Gallery of Australia

confirms its place as a leader in the Australian art museum

world. Through the extraordinary efforts of the National

Gallery of Australia Council and the Gallery staff, we will

continue to present the very best of the world’s art to

audiences in Australia and beyond.

Ron Radford AM Director

Maurice Denis Landscape with green trees (Green trees) (Procession under the trees) 1893 oil on canvas 46 x 43 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris, accepted in lieu of tax, 2001 © RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski © Maurice Denis. ADAGP/Licensed by Viscopy, 2009


Masterpieces for the Nation Fund

Robert Dowling’s Miss Robertson of Colac (Dolly)

Since it was initiated in 2003, the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund has assisted the Gallery in acquiring seven significant works for the national collection. Last year was our most successful campaign to date, and we hope to improve on this record with this year’s appeal for Robert Dowling’s fascinating nineteenth-century portrait of Miss Robertson of Colac.

Miss Robertson of Colac (Dolly) 1885–86 is a large and

impressive portrait by Australia’s first locally trained artist,

Robert Dowling. It conveys Dolly’s sense of shy reserve,

as well as her latent sensuousness—with the toe peeping

out beneath the dress, the steam rising from the teapot

and the flowers in full bloom behind her.

John Jones, the expert on the artist and curator of the

Gallery’s Robert Dowling touring retrospective, has written

the first major book on the artist, published in conjunction

with the exhibition, in which he writes:

… this image of a young Miss Robertson of Colac is a

refreshing change. The artist must have enjoyed the

experience of depicting someone youthful and engaging,

after painting so many old and sometimes dead men

… The portrait displays a new informality, a feature of

Royal Academy portrait exhibits in the 1880s and seen

in the work of Dowling’s English contemporaries James

Sant (1820–1916), John Dicksee (1817–1905) and James

Hayllar (1829–1920).

Dolly, or Elise Christian Margaret Robertson, was the eldest

daughter of William and Martha Robertson of The Hill,

a property near Colac in Western Victoria. William was

a prominent grazier from Colac, active in the Victorian

Parliament and public life generally.

Dolly was born in 1866. She spent most of her younger

years at the family property and, although she was courted

by a number of suitors, her strict father considered none

good enough for his daughter, and she never married.

She died in Melbourne in 1939.

Dowling visited The Hill in 1885 and painted three

portraits of three generations of Robertsons: one of William

Robertson, one of William’s late father (painted from a

photograph) and this portrait of Dolly.

At the time of Dowling’s visits to The Hill, William

Robertson had recently taken up photography, and his

photograph album includes a photograph of Dowling with

this portrait of Dolly, taken in 1885, showing her wearing

a white dress. Dolly was nineteen at the time. In Melbourne,

towards the end of 1885 or early in 1886, Dowling

re-painted the work as it now exists, with Dolly in a dark

brown dress. Family tradition has it that Dolly insisted she

be repainted in brown to make her look more grown up.

It has also been proposed that the dress was changed to

brown after Dolly’s father rejected one of her most recent

and dearly loved suitors. ‘If I am never to marry,’ she is

reputed to have stormed ‘then I will be in mourning for the

rest of eternity’.

Dowling made a number of other changes in this

portrait. He provided welcome comfort by depicting her

before a tea table with her favourite Japanese tea service

and vanilla slices, holding a book in her right hand.

Her loving black-and-white spotted border collie at her

side provides companionship. Previously, her right arm had

been outstretched on the side of a garden bench and there

was no dog or tea table.

The painting has some similarities with the work of the

British artist John Everett Millais, whose jewel-like paintings

of the 1850s–80s created a vision of Victorian womanhood,

and of the French-British artist James Tissot, who made his

reputation with images of charming women. It also makes

an interesting comparison with the work of John Longstaff,

and in particular his group portrait Motherless 1886, in the

National Gallery of Australia’s collection, painted at around

the same time. Longstaff created a scene of melodrama

and sentimentality, using a sombre brown tonal palette.

While there is an element of wistfulness in Dowling’s

portrait of Dolly, there is no sentimentality; and, although

Dowling’s palette is limited, it goes far beyond the brown

tonality of Longstaff. Thus, while Longstaff is the younger

artist, Dowling’s is the more vital work.

We hope that people will be generous so that this

portrait of Dolly will be secured for the national collection.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art

For further information about the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund or to make a donation, please contact the Foundation on (02) 6240 6454

Robert Dowling Miss Robertson of Colac

(Dolly) 1885–86 oil on canvas 91 x 120 cm


Foundation

Founding Donors 2010 program

Do not miss this rare opportunity to become involved in the

Founding Donors 2010 program, which concludes on 30

June 2010. The program aims to raise $1 million by June

2010 through the assistance of 100 donors contributing

at least $10 000 each—contributions may be made over

two financial years. The funds raised from this program will

assist the Gallery to acquire works of art for the national

collection to be exhibited in the galleries and displays of the

new building.

Undoubtedly, the opening of the original building in

1982 was the most significant event in the Gallery’s history.

At the time, wide support was given by the Founding

Donors, whose outstanding contributions continue to be

acknowledged by the Gallery. Now, the Founding Donors

2010 program provides a means for today’s supporters to

play their part in this new milestone event for the Gallery.

Supporters of the Founding Donors 2010 program will

be recognised through the inclusion of their name on the

Founding Donors 2010 honour board, which will be placed

in the Gallery foyer. In addition, supporters will be invited to

a special preview of the new Gallery spaces.

If you are interested in becoming a Founding Donor

2010, please contact Annalisa Millar, Executive Director of

the National Gallery of Australia Foundation, on (02) 6240

6691 or [email protected].

Foundation gala dinner and weekend

The annual fundraising dinner and weekend will be held

on 20 and 21 March 2010. Experience a weekend of

behind-the-scene tours, a private viewing of the exhibition

Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne

and beyond and a gala dinner on Saturday evening, as well

as brunch at the French Embassy on Sunday. For further

information regarding purchasing tickets, please contact

Annalisa Millar, Executive Director of the National Gallery of

Australia Foundation, on (02) 6240 6691.

Masterpieces for the Nation

Masterpieces for the Nation is an annual appeal organised

by the Foundation that enables a number of benefactors

to donate; their combined donations then make it possible

for the Foundation to acquire a work of art for the national

collection. Last year was our most successful campaign ever

and through the generous assistance of many donors, we

acquired Tom Roberts’s magnificent painting Shearing shed,

Newstead 1893–94.

The Gallery is delighted to announce that Robert

Dowling’s superb portrait Miss Robertson of Colac (Dolly)

1893–94 has been selected for this year’s Masterpieces for

the Nation Fund. An article about the work is featured on

pages 4–5.

For further details regarding the Masterpieces for the

Nation Fund or to donate, please contact the Foundation

on (02) 6240 6454.

National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle

A bequest to the National Gallery of Australia is a

significant and lasting contribution to the future of the

national collection. As, at times, you would have felt

captivated, excited, challenged or inspired by a work of art,

please consider making a bequest to the National Gallery of

Australia. Further information is available at nga.gov.au.

The annual event for the Bequest Circle will be held

shortly and you would be most welcome. Please contact Liz

Wilson, Development Officer, on (02) 6240 6781.

Andrew Barr, John Hindmarsh and Ray Wilson at the

opening of Masterpieces from Paris, 3 December 2009.


Sponsorship and Development

Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond

Presented in association with Musée d’Orsay. An exhibition

of this scale cannot be realised without the generous

support of our partners. We extend our great appreciation

to the following organisations:

Presenting Partners

ACT Government through Australian Capital Tourism,

Australian Government through Art Indemnity Australia

Principal Partners

National Australia Bank, Nine Network Australia, JCDecaux

Major Sponsors

Qantas, The Yulgilbar Foundation, National Gallery of

Australia Council Exhibitions Fund, The Age, The Canberra

Times, The Sydney Morning Herald

Supporters

ABC Radio, WIN Television, Accor Hospitality (Novotel

Canberra), Champagne Pol Roger, Yalumba Wines

The gala opening of Masterpieces from Paris was

generously sponsored by Ten and a half catering,

George P Johnson, Champagne Pol Roger, Yalumba

Wines and Coopers Brewery. Their catering and events

support provided greatly assisted in making the opening

night truly memorable.

McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17

R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter, generously partnered

with the Gallery for McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17.

This exhibition is currently in Perth at the Art Gallery of

Western Australia until 28 March, before travelling to

the final venue, the Bendigo Art Gallery, where it will be

Michael Chaney, Chairman, National Australia Bank, Ron Radford, Director, National Gallery of Australia, and John Simpson, Strategic Adviser, Office of the CEO, National Australia Bank, at the opening of Masterpieces from Paris, 3 December 2009.


on display from 24 April to 25 July 2010. We thank the

R.M.Williams team for their energy and commitment

towards the exhibition. We greatly value the ongoing

partnership between our organisations.

We also extend our gratitude to long-term supporter

of the Gallery the Hon Mrs Ashley Dawson-Damer as the

Exhibition Benefactor for the McCubbin exhibition.

Australian Government Visions of Australia

Visions of Australia has provided funding for the National

Gallery of Australia’s travelling exhibitions In the Japanese

manner: Australian prints 1900–1940, Robert Dowling:

Tasmanian son of Empire and Australian street stencils.

The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage

and the Arts supports the Gallery through Visions of

Australia, an Australian Government program supporting

touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the

development and touring of Australian cultural material

across Australia, and through the Visual Arts and Craft

Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and

state and territory governments.

Council Circle

The Gallery welcomes The Age and The Sydney Morning

Herald into the Council Circle. Thanks go to the following

Council Circle members for their continued support:

National Australia Bank, Wesfarmers, Nine Network

Australia, JCDecaux, Qantas, The Yulgilbar Foundation,

Accor Hospitality (Novotel Canberra) Champagne Pol

Roger, The Canberra Times, WIN Television and Mantra

on Northbourne. Our thanks also to long-term supporter

The Brassey of Canberra for supplying accommodation for

the students who were at the Gallery in January for the

National Summer Art Scholarship program in 2010.

National Australia Bank Art Education and Access Partnership

As part of its Art Education and Access Partnership,

National Australia Bank (NAB) supported the 2010 National

Summer Art Scholarship. In January, 16 visual art students

starting Year 12 spent a week at the National Gallery of

Australia discovering the national collection, learning about

how works of art are acquired, exhibitions developed,

going behind the scenes to see how the Gallery works

and participating in workshops with gallery staff,

professional artists and educators. Like the National Gallery

of Australia, NAB is passionate about supporting Australian

communities and helping young people reach their creative

potential. We are grateful to NAB and staff for their

generous support and involvement in this important annual

art education program.

Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship

Wesfarmers Arts has provided unwavering and enthusiastic

support in the consultation and development of the

Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship. This initiative will

reap important and ongoing outcomes to encourage the

professional development of Indigenous professionals

in the visual arts sector. The partnership represents

two iconic Australian organisations committed to the

long-term development, training and mentorship of

Indigenous people and the Indigenous arts sector. The

Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship will focus on the

professional development of Indigenous people in roles

supporting the visual arts such as curatorship, marketing,

exhibition management, art handling, registration,

Fairfax Media’s David Hoath, Sales and Marketing Director,

and Ryan Almeida, Sales Development Manager, and

Shaun Morgan, Manager, Fairfax 360, at the opening of

Masterpieces from Paris, 3 December 2009.

Thérèse Rein with His Excellency Mr Michel Filhol,

French Ambassador in Australia.


Deborah Eburne and Max Eburne, General Manager, JCDecaux, at the opening of Masterpieces from Paris, 3 December 2009.

National Australia Bank’s Greg Sutherland, Executive General Manager Strategy and Marketing, and Jacinta Carboon, Senior Sponsorship Manager Arts and Community, at the opening of Masterpieces from Paris, 3 December 2009.

publishing, photography, digital image management and

fundraising. This partnership is one that is valued highly

by the National Gallery of Australia and we are grateful

to Wesfarmers Arts for making it possible.

American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia

The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia’s

two grants were made possible with the very generous

support of important benefactors Elaine and James

Wolfensohn KBE, AO, and Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards.

The first grant will go towards the National Gallery of

Australia Travelling Exhibitions program for projects

developed for improving disability access and remote access.

The second has been put towards publishing the catalogue

for the National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition

Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire.

Acknowledgements to Kate Flynn, who resigned as

Treasurer from the Board of Directors last November, for

her longstanding contribution to the American Friends of

the National Gallery of Australia. The Gallery looks forward

to her continuing friendship and advice as a member of

its Advisory Board.

We welcome Murray Regan and Chris Beale as

directors of the American Friends as well as Brad Haynes

and Francesca Macartney Beale Esq as members of the

Advisory Board.

The National Gallery of Australia is very grateful to

the American Friends for their continued and unwavering

support of the collection and of many of the Gallery’s

exhibitions and programs.

We would like to thank all our partners. If you would

like more information about Sponsorship at the National

Gallery of Australia, please contact Frances Corkhill

on +61 2 6240 6740 or [email protected].

For information about Development at the National

Gallery of Australia, please contact Belinda Cotton on

+61 2 6240 6556 or [email protected].


credit lines

Includes donations received until

22 January 2010.

GrantsThe American Friends of the National

Gallery of Australia with the very generous support of Elaine and James Wolfensohn KBE, AO, and Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards

The Gordon Darling FoundationAustralian Government:

Masterpieces from Paris has been indemnified by the Commonwealth through the Australian Government’s Art Indemnity Australia program, administered by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

Department of Health and Ageing‘s Dementia Community Grants Program

Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts through Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia, and through Art Indemnity Australia, the Australian Government’s art indemnity scheme through which loans to the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition have been indemnified

SponsorshipABC RadioAccor Hospitality (Novotel Canberra)ACT Government (through Australian

Capital Tourism)ActewAGLThe AgeapARTmentsThe Brassey of CanberraThe Canberra TimesCasella WinesChampagne Pol RogerCoopers BreweryDiamant HotelEckersley’s Art & CraftForrest Hotel and ApartmentsJCDecauxGeorge P Johnson Mantra on NorthbourneNational Australia BankNational Gallery of Australia Council

Exhibitions Fund

NewActonNine Network AustraliaQantasR.M.Williams, The Bush OutfitterThe Sydney Morning HeraldTen and a half catering Wesfarmers LimitedWIN TelevisionYalumba WinesYulgilbar FoundationZOO

DonationsJane FlecknoeJason ProwdPeter Webster

GiftsJohn BeardThe Hon Ian Callinan AC, QCThe Hon Ashley Dawson-DamerGordon Darling AC, CMG, and

Marilyn Darling ACPeter FayDr Tom FerrierDr Paul GerberDr Anna GrayPamela GriffithWilliam Hamiltonbequest of Margaret Louise JarrettChristopher LangtonJohn McPheeThe estate of Andrew PatersonLynda ScmeddingBruce SearleRoss SearlePhilip ToyneMurray WalkerMerrilyn Woodland

Founding Donors 2010Geoffrey and Vicki AinsworthAntoinette, Emily and Anna AlbertRobert Albert AO, AM, and Libby Albert AOIn memory of John David Andrew OBEDavid Baffsky AOJulian and Annie BeaumontAlfonso and Julie del RioDr Murray Elliott AO and Gillian ElliottGanter familyDr Gregory Gilbert and Kathleen GilbertSue GriffinNeil Hobbs and Karina HarrisMeredith HinchliffeHelen Eager and Christopher HodgesClaudia HylesGail KinsellaBeverly and Anthony KnightHamish Mackinnon

Paul and Catherine MortonPeter Blackshaw Real EstateDick Smith AO and Pip SmithDavid Smithers AM and Isabel Smithers

and familyTransACT CommunicationsDr Caroline Turner AM and Dr Glen BarclayLyn Williams AMRay Wilson OAMKaely and Mike WoodsMark Young

Gala dinnerPhilip Bacon AMJulian and Annie BeaumontAndrew and Kate BuchananPeter Clemenger AM and Joan ClemengerCharles Curran AC and Eva CurranRosemary Foot AODr Colin Laverty OAM and Elizabeth LavertyPeter Hack and Carole LawsonPeter Mason AM and Kate MasonRoslyn Packer AOLou Westende OAM and Mandy

Thomas-Westende

Masterpieces for the Nation 2009Ross AdamsonMargaret AstonAndrew FreemanJoseph GaniMichael and Doris HobbsLibby Hathorn

Members Acquisition FundDeborah AllenBill AndersonMargaret E AndersonQuentin and Jan AnthonyIsabelle ArnaudMonica Clare AttridgeProfessor Peter BaileyDr Lesley BakerSuzanne J Baker-DekkerEstelle and Christopher BarnesMrs Judith BarnesHelen BarnettSam and Lois BatemanMaria BendallProfessor Jeff Bennett and Ngaire BennettVirginia BergerSheila BignellNoel BirchallPhoebe Bischoff OAMRobert BlacklowSusan Boden Parsons in memory of

Dr Robert Boden OAMGillian BorgerVera Brain


Cheryl BridgeMargaret and Geoffrey BrennanAW BuckinghamDr and Mrs Miles BurgessJohn and Judtih CaldwellRear Admiral David J CampbellRobert and Helen CampbellStewart and Iris CampbellDaphne CarlsonPhilomena CarnellMaureen ChanElaine ColsonGraham CookeDr Brian Crisp AMGeorgia CrokerPeter CurtisHenry DalrympleKathy DavisJW de B PersseDebby Cramer Research ServicesDr Maureen P DeeJames DittmarStuart Dixon-SmithHelen DouglasMr and Mrs SB DuffyKatherine EngelValerie M Farthing-BennettsEmeritus Professor Frank Fenner AC,

CMG, MBECherylllee FlanaganJo-Anne Flatley-AllenBert FlugelmanErnest FranksMorag FraserJohn BR GaleJoseph GaniJ Giddens and EA LastLindsey and David GilbertElizabeth GilchristLF GillardMax and Monica GlennRobert and Moya GnezdiloffRichard and Maryan GodsonIan and Shirley GollingsRoss GoughPeter J HackWilliam HamiltonFrank and Pat HarveyIn memory of my parents Meg and Bill

PearceSuzanne HerfortKatrina HigginsMarian HillJanet D HineBob HitchcockGraham C HobbsBeatrice Margaret Hunt OAMClaudia Hyles

M IlberyAnthony and Lynette IrwinJohn and Ros JacksonLynette JamesWayne JoassJudy JohnsonMary JohnsonIn memory of Garry John RobinsonIn memory of Ernest Edward and

Kathleen Veronica JonesMrs JurkiewiczJoan Kennedy in memory of

John Grant McCredieD and R KennemoreSir R Kingsland AO, CBE, DFC, and

Lady K KingslandLois MichellHarald and Sieglinde KorteAnn Mabel LancasterRobert Laurie AM and Diana Laurie Judy LaverDr Colin Laverty OAM and Elizabeth LavertyMarion Rose LêIn memory of Dora Margaret LewisDr Frederick and Penelope LilleyDr Stephen ListAudrey and Edward MaherMr and Mrs AB Maple-BrownBrenda McAvoyDiana McCarthyPF McCormickSelma McLarenGeoffrey and Rhonda MillerBevan MitchellJohn MitchellDr John MorrisElizabeth MorrisonJanet M MoyleDr Angus M MuirJoahanne Mulholland and David RiversRD and A MunroClaude NeumannSP and BM O’HalloranMilton Edgeworth OsborneLuciano Padina and Ingrid PadinaAngus and Gwen PaltridgeKim PatersonMarion Platt-HeppworthRon and Fay PriceAnne PrinsWendy RainbirdRonald B RainesJohn RamsayRear Admiral Max ReedEmeritus Professor Tom Reeve and

Mary Jo ReeveW Reid and J ReidJoan Richards

Shirley RichardsLyn RiddettMary E RiekJanet RobertonDr Alan RobertsWilliam RobertsonPaul and Hanan RobilliardSusan S RogersAlan and Helen RoseDr James RossRoslyn Russell Museum ServicesRaoul SalpeterMark and Ruth SampsonRobin SchallAlison ScottPaul and Linda SelzerKenneth and Audrey ShepherdAD and ML SmithElizabeth SmithPhyllis SomervilleSimone SpanoDavid and Anne StanleyStefanoff familySpectrum Consultancy Pty LtdJoy StewartNed StoreySusanne StorrierLady SynnotJason ThomasHelen ToporMs Janice C TynanDr Nancy UnderhillMorna VellacottDarren ViskaichRosemary WalshHelen WatsonMadeleine WelshGuy WernerMurrealia WheatleyJohn White and Eileen WhiteMandy WhiteShelagh WhittlestonJulia WilsonGwen WiltonTessa and Simon WooldridgeDiana WoollardMicke and Robyn WrightRon WrightEvelyn and Graham YoungGiovanna Zeroni

Treasure a TextileBrian O’Keeffe AO and Bridget

O’Keeffe AM


exhibition

At the official opening on a delightful summer evening

in the National Gallery of Australia’s Sculpture Garden,

Thérèse Rein launched Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh,

Cézanne, Gauguin and beyond. In her speech, she engaged

the audience with recollections of her own visit to the

Musée d’Orsay as well as talking about several intriguing

journeys made by nineteenth-century painters. While Paris,

of course, remained the centre for most artists, many

travelled extensively, searching for new environs and fresh

inspiration.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Masterpieces

from Paris is the way the exhibition explores the

connections between the artists we now classify as Post-

Impressionist. Many of these relationships were very close;

some, such as that between Vincent van Gogh and Paul

Gauguin, were taut, combative and highly competitive.

Relationships were maintained over substantial distances,

from different countries, and over extended periods.

Indeed, the wealth of correspondence remaining from this

period—when rail transport was widespread and the postal

services frequent—is extremely valuable to researchers, not

only in Europe but worldwide.

Van Gogh was musing about Gauguin fleeing from

Paris—from its increasing industrialisation and its busy,

competitive art world—and thought he might even travel

to Madagascar, where Gauguin planned an artists’ studio.

But just one month later, on 29 July 1890 in Auvers,

where he was living under the care of Dr Gachet, van

Gogh died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. He had

never really given up the idea that he and Gauguin might

work together again, just as they had for nine intense,

tumultuous weeks in Arles.

Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin,

Cézanne and beyond

4 December 2009 – 5 April 2010 | Exhibition Galleries

‘Certainly, the future for painting is very much in the tropics, in Java or in Martinique, Brazil or Australia, not here …’

Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh, 17 June 1890


Van Gogh dreamt of gathering his fellow painters

around him in a ‘Studio of the South’ and his plans

dominate his letters to Theo, Gauguin and Emile Bernard

in 1888. In May, he rented four rooms in a building, the

Yellow House, and set up his home with much care. On

the upper level were two tiny adjoining bedrooms and it

was with great anticipation that he welcomed his friend

Gauguin to Arles early in the morning of Tuesday 23

October 1888. Gauguin’s room, entered by passing through

van Gogh’s via the door shown at the left in Van Gogh’s

bedroom at Arles 1889, was decorated with canvases of

sunflowers. Between October 1888 and September 1889,

van Gogh drew and painted several views of his own room.

The ‘Studio of the South’ was intended as an

alternative, even rival group to the artists gathered around

Gauguin at Pont-Aven. Gauguin had travelled to Brittany

in July 1886, an existing artists’ colony since the 1860s,

searching for somewhere to work and live cheaply as well

as a way to consolidate his style. The eighteen-year-old

Bernard arrived in Pont-Aven in August that year, having

set off from Paris several months earlier on a walking

trip through Normandy and Brittany. On this first visit he

found the older artist unresponsive. Two years later, urged

on by van Gogh, he again approached Gauguin, and this

time the two artists worked side-by-side, developing the

Synthetist style of painting. They emphasised an extreme

simplification of forms, the expressive purification of colour,

large-scale pattern and decorative qualities inspired in part

by the local crafts, cloisonné enamel and stained-glass

windows.

Gauguin fell in love with Madeleine Bernard—portrayed

by her brother in Madeleine in the Bois d’Amour

1888—and sent her the ‘primitive’ ceramic shown in

his painting Portrait of the artist with ‘The yellow Christ’

1890–91. Madeleine, for her part, preferred the younger,

more romantic Charles Laval, Gauguin’s companion on

his 1887 trip to Panama. Later, however, the relationship

between Bernard and Gauguin soured, as Bernard

increasingly felt that his role in the development of

Synthetism was being ignored. Madeleine, on the eve of

Gauguin’s 1891 departure for Tahiti, accused him of being

a traitor: ‘… you have broken your pledge and done the

Masterpieces from Paris, room 4: Gauguin and the Pont-Aven School/Toulouse-Lautrec: (from left to right) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Woman with a black boa 1892 and The clown Cha-U-Kao 1895; Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian women 1891, Portrait of the artist with ‘The yellow Christ’ 1890–91, Les Alyscamps 1888 and Yellow haystacks (The golden harvest) 1889; Charles Laval’s Landscape 1889–90; Gauguin’s Seascape with cow (At the edge of the cliff) 1888; Emile Bernard’s The harvest (Breton landscape) 1888 and Bathers with red cow 1887. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ The poor fisherman 1881 is visible in the next room.


greatest harm to my brother, who is the real initiator of the

art that you claim as being your own’.

In April 1891, Gauguin sailed from Marseilles to Tahiti,

his plans for a ‘Studio of the Tropics’ in Madagascar having

come to nothing. In his first months on the island, he

painted the magnificent Tahitian women 1891. En route,

the steamer Océanien docked in Adelaide, Melbourne and

Sydney. Shortly after leaving Australia, some 400 kilometres

from Sydney, Gauguin described his experiences to his wife

Mette in a letter of 4 May 1891:

Many calls on the way. The last two were truly astonishing,

Melbourne and Sydney. Imagine two towns hardly 50

years old, of 500 000 inhabitants, with houses of 12

storeys, steam trams and cabs as in London. The same

smart clothes and abounding luxury. Fancy coming 12 000

miles to see that! At Sydney a dock labourer earns 20 to

25 francs a day and meat costs 4 sous a pound. It is very

easy to earn money in Australia, but even on 25 000 francs

a year, you can only live very modestly. In spite of all these

caustic remarks, I am obliged to admit that the English

people have truly extraordinary gifts for colonising and

running up great ports. A burlesque of the grandiose!

Paul Cézanne also fled Paris, but for quite different reasons.

His contributions to the Impressionist exhibitions of 1874

and 1877 were singled out for particularly harsh criticism,

and he was increasingly isolated from the art world after

1886. In Aix-en-Provence, he repeatedly painted the

dramatic limestone peak of Mont Sainte-Victoire. Ever the

painter’s painter, Cézanne’s work was well known and

much respected by other artists. In Homage to Cézanne

1900, Maurice Denis shows himself and his contemporaries

admiring a still-life by Cézanne, while, elsewhere, Cézanne

records his own tribute to the great nineteenth-century

painter Eugène Delacroix.

In Paris, Georges Seurat developed a ‘scientific’

approach to painting: his monumental A Sunday afternoon

on the island of La Grande Jatte 1884–86 stole the show

when included in the final Impressionist exhibition of

1886, and gathered him admirers further afield when seen

in Belgium the following year. Established artists such as

Camille Pissarro and Maximilien Luce also came under the

spell of Pointillism. Paul Signac expanded Seurat’s ideas

even further, especially when he moved to the south of

France in 1892, where he used larger dots of saturated

colour and his technique became freer.

Another of Gauguin’s encounters launched a new

group of artists. Paul Sérusier arrived in Pont-Aven in

September 1888, and the painting he produced there

under the guidance of Gauguin, The talisman, the Aven

Emile Bernard Madeleine in the Bois

d’Amour or Portrait of my sister 1888

oil on canvas 138 x 163 cm

Musée d’Orsay, Paris, purchased 1977

© RMN (Musée d’Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski

© Emile Bernard. ADAGP/Licensed by Viscopy, 2009

Paul Sérusier The talisman, the Aven at the

Bois d’Amour 1888

oil on wood panel 27 x 21.5 cm

Musée d’Orsay, Paris, purchased with assistance

from PM Through Fondation Lutèce, 1985

© RMN (Musée d’Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski


at the Bois d’Amour 1888, proved a revelation to his

fellow students back in Paris. Calling themselves the Nabis,

this group of young artists gathered as a secret society,

influenced by idealist philosophies and Symbolist literature.

They took Gauguin’s lessons in the use of unmodulated

colour and the simplification of forms, and emphasised

art not as an imitation of reality but as an expression of

the artist’s subjective, even interior experience. Painting,

according to the Nabis, should move beyond the easel

to become part of the architecture, to become pure

décoration. Masterpieces from Paris includes tiny, painted,

jewel-like vignettes of everyday life, as well as large-scale

panels commissioned for specific domestic interiors, muted

palettes and fresco-like surfaces.

In Masterpieces from Paris, works by Pierre Bonnard,

Maurice Denis, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton and

Edouard Vuillard are juxtaposed against those of older

Symbolists painters such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes,

Gustave Moreau and Odlion Redon to suggest the range

of influences on the Nabis. Sérusier shows Paul Ranson

elaborately costumed in mystical garb, while Bonnard’s

portrait of Vuillard is shaped to fit in an architectural

setting, perhaps around a chimney. Vuillard painted his

brother-in-law Roussel, his friend Vallotton, sleeping figures

or children playing in the public gardens, watched over by

their nannies and the ladies who converse on park benches.

Two women named Marthe—Denis’s wife and Bonnard’s

life-long companion—are painted over and over again: at

the piano, as muses, or as a luxuriously reclining nude.

Post-Impressionism, as an umbrella term, provides a

useful way of understanding the complexity of the art

world at the end of the nineteenth century. Movements

such as Pointillism, Synthetism and Symbolism developed

from this intricate web of friendships, exchange and rivalry.

Post-Impressionism also suggests the ways artists built on,

and reacted against, the Impressionist painters.

As well as famous painters like van Gogh, Cézanne and

Gauguin and groups such as the Nabis and the School of

Pont-Aven, Masterpieces from Paris includes marvellous

works by individuals such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and

Henri Rousseau. We experience pure colour, great handling

of paint and a certain exoticism; we discover the reduction

of forms to their simplest components: the surface of the

water becomes an arabesque, an apple becomes a circle.

Masterpieces from Paris shows how these artists’ radical

experiments in Paris and elsewhere are the basis of Modern

art in the twentieth century.

Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture

The book Masterpieces from Paris, published in conjunction with the exhibition, is available at the Gallery Shop for $39.95 and at selected bookstores nationally for RRP $49.95.

Pierre Bonnard Woman dozing on a bed (Indolent woman) 1899 oil on canvas 96 x 106 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris purchased ex Félix Fénéon collection, 1947 © RMN (Musée d’Orsay)/Thierry Le Mage © Pierre Bonnard. ADAGP/Licensed by Viscopy, 2009

Edouard Vuillard In bed 1891 oil on canvas 73 x 92.5 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris, verbal bequest of Edouard Vuillard executed by Mr and Mrs Ker-Xavier Roussel, 1941 © RMN (Musée d’Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski © Edouard Vuillard. ADAGP/Licensed by Viscopy, 2009

display

New look National Gallery of Australia

Southeast Asian gallery at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.


November 2009 was an important moment for the

National Gallery of Australia and the end of a four-year

journey to relocate and refurbish most of the Gallery’s

collection displays. In addition to our earlier relocation

of the Indian, Southeast Asian and refurbished East

Asian displays, the realignment and refurbishment of our

International Modernist galleries and the re-established

and restored National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery, we

recently opened eight new displays, most of them made

possible by the relocation of the Gallery Shop.

In my vision statement of 2005, which can be viewed

on the Gallery’s website, I wrote about how vital a

collection and its display are to any national gallery in the

world. Indeed, a gallery’s permanent collection is, and must

remain, the core focus of the institution. For this reason,

the highest standards have been set for the acquisition,

conservation, protection, interpretation and of course,

relevant here, the display of the collection.

In Australian art, we have changed many of the spaces

and wall arrangements and used historic wall colours

for nineteenth-century works. We have also finished

restoring, partitioning and re-lighting gallery 3 on the main

entry level, which is now used again for contemporary

international art, bringing our international collection

displays to the present day.

Our most popular and famous Australian work, Sidney

Nolan’s Ned Kelly series, always deserved a specially

designed space and now the series is among the first works

you see when you enter the National Gallery of Australia on

the principle display level. They are now in a newly created

oval space. The Australian furniture designer Khai Liew has

designed two refined ottomans especially for the space.

The upstairs space in the Australian galleries where the

Ned Kelly series used to hang is now devoted to Australian

Surrealist works, the Gallery having been given, fairly

recently, the large Agapitos/Wilson collection of Australian

Surrealism.

In the area where the Gallery Shop once was, we

also opened our first permanent space for the art of

photography, which has long been a significant part of the

collection, made more significant by the recent extensive

acquisitions of early Asian and Pacific photography. Our

first photography display in this new space is the gift by the

eminent photographer John Gollings of his own striking

iconic New Guinea series of the early 1970s.

Also in this space, we have new showcases dedicated

to decorative arts that highlight aspects of the Gallery’s

collection of twentieth-century fashion by some of the

field’s leading designers. The first display focuses on the

work of three of the most influential figures in fashion in

the late twentieth century: Japanese designers Issey Miyake,

Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo. We also show some

of our significant traditional Asian costumes. The costume

displays are complemented by a new large showcase to

permanently display highlights from the National Gallery of

Australia’s extensive Australian and international jewellery

collection.

The Gallery is also breaking new ground by dedicating

an entire gallery (be it small) to the art of Polynesia,

the first in Australia. Immediately upstairs above it is a

gallery devoted to our larger collection of Melanesian

art. These regions have been underrepresented for so

long in Australian art museums. We have a small but

very high-quality collection of art from our neighbouring

Polynesian nations and islands, including Maori New

Zealand, the Cook Islands, Marquesas Islands, Fiji and the

Austral Islands. This is also important as there are so many

Polynesian people now living in Australia. The Polynesian

gallery takes the place of the small Childrens Gallery. Earlier

this year, we opened a bigger Childrens Gallery upstairs,

more conveniently located near the Small Theatre, where

events and activities for children can be held. Directly above

the Polynesian gallery is our new display of Melanesian art,

which includes such treasures as the enigmatic Ambum

stone, the oldest object in the national collection. This and

our Lake Sentani figures are our most significant Pacific

Arts works. In this small gallery we feature works from

Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New

Caledonia.

These refurbished spaces now allow the Gallery to show

an extra 400 works, a significant increase from the 1000

works for which the Gallery was originally designed to

show. It is a momentous achievement for all involved and

I would like to express my appreciation to our own staff

and contractors for their great efforts and whose great

professionalism, teamwork and camaraderie have helped

realise, in four short years, the vision for the Gallery’s

collections.

In addition to these new displays, as part of our

Stage 1 building project, this time last year, we opened

vitally needed new spaces for registration, mount cutting,

exhibition preparation, quarantine, packing, a new art

loading dock and a new goods loading dock, and other

essential behind-the-scenes functions.

Noticeably absent from these new displays is the

presence of our significant collection of Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander art. This will only be temporary. When

the new building opens later this year, we will have ten

new Indigenous galleries for the dedicated display of the

world’s largest collection of Indigenous Australian art.



Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly paintings

Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly paintings are among the first

works that visitors now encounter when they visit the

National Gallery of Australia. The recently opened, oval

space on the entry level was specially constructed to display

these iconic paintings—some of our most significant

Australian works—to best advantage and to make them

easily accessible to local and international visitors alike.

Highlighting these works makes the point that

Australian art is part of the world, with its own stories

to tell. This dual emphasis of connectedness and

distinctiveness in relation to culture and place is integral to

Nolan’s Ned Kelly series. On one hand, Nolan was keenly

aware of European Modernism; on the other, he tapped

into a quintessential local legend: the escapades of the

anti-authoritarian nineteenth-century bushranger, Ned

Kelly, and his gang. While Nolan’s paintings are by no

means literal, blow-by-blow depictions of the story, the

group is held together by key aspects of the drama and by

the now iconic imagery Nolan developed for Ned Kelly.

Centred in the new gallery space is Nolan’s classic

image of Ned Kelly wearing his armour and seated on his

horse in the open sun-drenched landscape. As Nolan said

in a conversation with Elwyn Lynn in 1984, ‘This is Kelly

the defiant. I put Kelly on top of the horse in a particularly

orderly manner. I wanted an air of perfect authority, so

the cloud appears through the aperture of the mask’. One

of the distinguishing aspects of Ned Kelly was his feel

for symbolism. His homemade armour, now housed in

the State Library of Victoria, concealed and transformed

his image. It became his image. It is this idea that Nolan

captures brilliantly. One of the astonishing things about

the painting Ned Kelly is that we believe in Nolan’s Ned,

even though he has an aperture in place of eyes. This

poetic transformation is symbolic not only in terms of Kelly

as an individual but also in the way it unites him with the

environment.

The landscape is often the backdrop for Nolan’s

take on the stories and conflicts of a settler society that

in turn reflect broader concerns. He understood the

human condition as profound and absurd. He grasped

the tension between the hero and anti-hero in Kelly and

recognised Kelly as a distinctly Australian symbol of anti-


authoritarianism and anti-convention with a keen eye for

history—attitudes mirrored in aspects of his own life and

personality. While Ned Kelly is ultimately centre-stage in this

story, Nolan’s approach is not one-dimensional. His own

grandfather was a member of the police in pursuit of the

Kelly Gang and he depicts the tribulations of the various

protagonists. As we take in the final scenes, including the

trial when the young Ned Kelly was sentenced to hang, we

find tragedy and defiance.

Taking an overview of the Kelly paintings on display,

we can marvel at the inventiveness of the imagery and

the way the works are painted: the boldness of forms and

landscape; the intricacy of patterning; the way the shiny,

dense surface of the enamel matches the stark, unflinching

bravura of execution and imagination. In doing so, we

come to realise that this new gallery space provides a

wonderful new arena for reconsidering Nolan’s Ned Kelly

works, for appreciating the interrelated drama of the

paintings and for contemplating our stories afresh.

Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture post-1920

(from left to right) Sidney Nolan’s Constable Fitzpatrick and Kate Kelly 1946, Morning camp 1947, Township 1947, Steve Hart dressed as a girl 1947, Quilting the armour 1947, Death of Constable Scanlon 1946, Stringybark Creek 1947 and Death of Sergeant Kennedy at Stringybark Creek 1946 in the Sidney Nolan – Ned Kelly series gallery near the main foyer of the National Gallery of Australia.


Photography

The National Gallery of Australia’s photographic art

collection, comprising 25 000 Australian and international

photographs, acquired since collecting began in 1972, is

the most extensive in Australia. It includes works dating

back to the beginning of photography in the 1840s, and

major names and developments in the history of the

medium as an art form are well represented.

Australian, European and American photographs

dominated the acquisition program until 2006, when a

new vision for the collection was introduced recognising

Australia’s position in the Asia–Pacific region. The first

phase of this new program, the first in the world to

show the history of photography as an art across the

Asia–Pacific region, has significantly expanded the Gallery’s

photography collection by over 8000 works.

Since 2006, special efforts have been made to acquire

works from the first century of photography in the Asia–

Pacific region, from the 1840s to the 1940s. Significant

works by the first generation of Australian photographers

of the 1840s and 1850s have been acquired, including

daguerreotypes from 1847 and 1848 by Douglas Kilburn in

Victoria and Thomas Bock in Tasmania, which are among

the earliest portrait photographs made in Australia. The

pioneer generation of Asian-born photographers from

the mid to late nineteenth century—such as Francis Chit

of Thailand, Kassian Cépahs of Indonesia, Kusakabe

Kimbei of Japan and Lala Deen Dayal of India—are now

well represented in the national collection. Works by

photographers of the twentieth century have also been

sought after so that studies by Sri Lankan Modernist Lionel

Wendt in the 1930s join the well-known works of his

Australian and American contemporaries Max Dupain and

Edward Weston.

What has been lacking until now is a space in which

to show the Gallery’s Australian, European and American

photography, as well as the more recently acquired works

that reveal the rich heritage of photography in the Asia–

Pacific region.

The first display in the new Photography gallery is of a

selection of large colour prints by Melbourne photographer


John Gollings from his New Guinea suite 1973–74, which

acquired in 2008 under the Australian Government Cultural

Gifts Program. Gollings is best known for his photographs

of contemporary Australian architecture and of the ancient

monuments of Southeast Asia. His interest in ancient

cultures came early in his career, following trips made in

1973 and 1974 to Papua New Guinea, where he stayed

with villagers in Mt Hagen in the Western Highlands,

Goroka in the Eastern Highlands and Morobe on the north-

east coast. During his time there, he photographed the

tribal dance performances known as ‘sing-sings’. While

Gollings has researched Papuan culture, these photographs

are not anthropological records. He used wide-angle and

telephoto lenses and special processing to heighten colour

and background effects and to give viewers a sense of

being there.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography

John Gollings’s New Guinea suite is the first display in the Photography gallery.

(opposite) John Gollings Mt Hagen (woman having her face painted for a sing sing) fromNew Guinea suite 1973–74 colour ink jet photograph on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper image 59.6 x 84.4 cm sheet 61 x 93.9 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra gift of John Gollings, 2008


Asian costume

The new showcases near the Gallery foyer provide an

opportunity to display the Gallery’s diverse collection of

Asian costume and accessories for which there has never

been a suitable space to exhibit in three-dimensional form.

The costumes in the national collection are drawn from

many cultural locations across a wide geographic region.

For the initial displays, costumes from Central, South and

Southeast Asia have been selected to illustrate the breadth

of the Gallery’s Asian art collection. Together the garments,

each distinct and beautiful in its own way, reveal the great

variety in forms of dress and adornment to be found across

the region.

Recently the Gallery acquired its first items of royal

costume from Pakistan. The Talpur Mirs who ruled Sindh,

a province in southern Pakistan from 1783 to 1843, were

famous for their sumptuous court apparel. Under the

dynasty’s patronage, the arts and crafts flourished and royal

workshops, particularly in the important court centre of

Hyderabad, produced fine cottons, silks and brocades for

extravagant royal attire. A rare complete court ensemble

worn by a nobleman for ceremonies and public receptions

at the Talpur Mir courts is on display. The costume

comprises a very ornate robe (angarakha), waist wrap

(lungi), trousers (shalwars) and hat (topi). The combination

of bright bold colours and gold threads in the brocades and

embroideries evokes the splendour of South Asian royal

attire in the nineteenth century.

The Gallery’s significant collection of costume from Central

Asia is characterised by boldly coloured dramatic designs.

A key element of the traditional dress of Tekke Turkmen

women of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan is

the chyrpy, a loose-fitting cloak worn over the head and

shoulders. A unique feature of the chyrpy is the purely

decorative vestigial sleeves that hark back to an earlier use by

Turkmen women of coats and robes as head coverings. The

art of embroidery suited the nomadic lifestyle of the Turkmen

peoples and was their dominant textile technique. The motifs

embroidered on the cloaks range from geometric shapes to

stylised flowering shrubs, simple tree of life forms and tulips

(often associated with fertility). The colour of a chyrpy is closely

related to the age of the wearer: dark blue or black for young

women, yellow for a mature woman and white for the elderly.


Drawn from the Gallery’s world-class collection of

Indonesian textiles are examples of traditional ceremonial

costume from Lampung, south Sumatra. There, Abung

noblewomen wear heavily ornamented cylindrical skirts

(tapis) as symbols of wealth and high status at ceremonies

that celebrate rites of passage. Such skirts, typically formed

from narrow bands of striped hand-woven cloth in muted

colours, are sumptuously embroidered with gold threads,

sequins and mirrors. Geometric designs and stylised ships,

animals and human forms decorate the surfaces. The small

creatures on one of the skirts appear to represent water

buffaloes—a symbol of wealth.

The garments in the new showcases mark the

beginning of rotating displays that aim to reveal the

diversity of costume in Asia, and to demonstrate the

complex textile techniques used to create sophisticated and

culturally significant forms of dress.

Beatrice Thompson Assistant Curator, Asian Art

Showcases displaying (from left to right) costumes from Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Talpur Mir dynasty (1783–1843) Hyderabad, Sindh, Pakistan Nobleman’s ceremonial hat (sindhi topi) early–mid 19th century silk, cotton, gold and silver thread, sequins; embroidery 13 x 25 x 25 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009

Tekke Turkmen people Uzbekistan Woman’s mantle (chyrpy) 1950–1960 rayon, silk, cotton lining, braid, fringing; embroidery 110 x 64 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2008


Fashion

The selection of fashion on display in five large showcases

highlights aspects of the National Gallery of Australia’s

extensive collection of late-nineteenth- and twentieth-

century fashion and textiles by some of the field’s leading

designers and couturiers. Their work reflects wider social

change and shows how fashion has interconnected with

other arts as an expressive, challenging and entertaining

form of contemporary design practice.

Responding to advances in textile technology and

manufacturing processes, twentieth-century European,

American, Japanese and Australian designers have been

innovators in fashion’s core disciplines of cutting, tailoring

and construction and in the commissioning, management

and orchestration of craftworkers and technicians in areas

such as textile printing, embroidery and beading. Selections

of their work will be supported by displays of fashion

illustration and accessories such as costume jewellery, shoes

and hats.

The current display focuses on the work of three of

the most influential figures in fashion of the late twentieth

century: Japanese designers Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto

and Rei Kawakubo. Six garments from the 1980s and

1990s show their radical approach to design for the body.

Rei Kawakubo created her brand name Comme

des Garçons in 1969 through which she revolutionised

concepts of fashion. By the late 1970s, and by then

well known in Europe as part of a group of avant-garde

Japanese fashion designers, her radical designs for

crumpled, torn and asymmetrically-shaped garments

in black and sombre tones and coarse materials gained

acceptance in the fashion world. Her designs for women’s

and men’s clothing and accessories shared these concepts

and were translated into more marketable ready-to-wear

ranges.

Yohji Yamamoto’s first fashion collection, shown in

Japan in 1976, established his unique approach to design

based on loose, unstructured and asymmetrical elements.

Avoiding decoration and using coarse, textured and dark

materials not previously associated with high fashion,

Yamamoto crafted a radically different clothing aesthetic


that blended abstraction, asceticism and modesty with

technological modernity.

Issey Miyake established his Miyake Design Studio

in 1970 and showed his first collection in New York in

1971. His design work revolutionised fashion through

his unconventional construction techniques, production

processes and use of materials. Tightly pleated fabrics used

in myriad forms have become a specialty of the design

work for his Pleats Please brand. Miyake has created a new

language of fashion that fuses Eastern and Western design,

drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as African tribal

design, Japanese origami and vernacular clothing, industrial

work wear and the organic forms of nature.

Dr Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Fashion display, including (from left to right) Yohji Yamamoto’s Spring/Summer outfit 1986, Issey Miyake’s Minaret, dress spring–summer 1995 (purchased 1995 with funds donated by Eva and Marc Besen through the Besen Charitable Foundation)and Plastic body, bustier 1980, and the design collaboration between Issey Miyake and Yasumasa Morimura, Dress from Pleats Please Issey Miyake Guest artists series no 1 autumn–winter 1996–97 (gift of Issey Miyake and Yasumasa Morimura, 1997).

(opposite) Rei Kawakubo designer Comme des Garçons manufacturer Ensemble 1983 wool centre back 68 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 1983 with funds donated by Eva and Marc Besen through the Besen Charitable Foundation


Jewellery

Jewellery forms a significant part of the Gallery’s Decorative

Arts and Design collection, with 565 Australian and

65 international works demonstrating the design and

craft skills of Australia’s and the world’s most innovative

jewellers. The first display in a sweeping new jewellery

showcase is a selection of 108 pieces of historical and

contemporary jewellery from the mid nineteenth century

to the present. This group introduces Gallery visitors to a

part of the collection that until now has had little regular

exposure.

The works on display show the result of the changing

creative engagement with materials and with the human

body as a site and point of reference. While intimate in

scale, these works command our attention through their

unconventional approaches to form and function and the

sometimes surprising juxtaposition of materials. Many

of the works celebrate the visual qualities of rare and

precious materials and the exercise of traditional skills

such as silvermithing and goldsmithing, forging, casting,

carving and stone setting that form the foundation

of the jeweller’s craft. Other works demonstrate the

use of newer technologies, such as computer-aided

design and production and the innovative exploration

and manipulation of industrial and synthetic materials,

continually extending the practice and understanding of

jewellery.

Gallery visitors will see how these practices have

allowed some jewellers to explore themes of environmental

and social narrative, history, memory, intimacy and humour,

while other jewellers explore structure, assemblage and the

expressions of colour and texture to create new territories

of thought and design.

Highlights of the current display include selections of

Australian gold and silver jewellery from the late nineteenth

and early and mid twentieth centuries by makers such as

Henry Steiner, Jochim Wendt, Charles Brown, James Linton,

Dorothy Wager, Emily Hope and Matcham Skipper. These

works form a historical context for a number of large and

complex works from the inventive Australian crafts revival

period of the 1970s and 1980s.

Recent works by contemporary Australian jewellers

have expanded the conceptual framework, including those


by Marian Hosking, Mari Funaki, Bridie Lander, Helen

Aitken-Kuhnen, Margaret West, Sally Marsland and Dulcie

Greeno. Among the contemporary New Zealand jewellery

on display are works by Warwick Freeman, Alan Preston,

Paul Annear and Hamish Campbell, revealing their strong

commitment to the use of indigenous materials.

Late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century European

jewellery is represented with works by the Italian firm of

Castellani, William Comyns from Britain and the Danish

designers Georg Jensen and Henning Koppel. Major

works from 1980 to the present by some of the world’s

most influential contemporary jewellers—Arline Fisch,

Robert Smit, Giovanni Corvaja, Giampaolo Babetto, David

Watkins, Wendy Ramshaw, Georg Dobler, Daniel Kruger,

David Freda, Peter Chang, Hermann Jünger, Tone Vigeland,

Svenja John, Nel Linssen, Gerd Rothmann—show how

the traditions and conventions of jewellery are continually

being interrogated and transformed though complex

narratives and explorations of material and form.

Dr Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Jewellery gallery, highlighting works by the world’s finest designers.

Wendy Ramshaw White Queen’s neckpiece 1975 18 carat yellow gold, sapphires, moonstone, agate, amethysts and white vitreous enamel 25 x 14.8 x 0.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 1979

Hermann Jünger Boxed necklace with four interchangeable pendants c 1990 stainless steel, tombac, silver, lapis lazuli, haematite, granite, brass, lacquered medium density fibreboard case 1 x 15 x 15 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra gift of American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Inc, New York, NY, USA, made possible with the generous support of Helen Drutt English, 2005

Helen Aitken-Kuhnen Ocean blue (necklace) 2009 sterling silver, cast glass pâte-de-verre, stainless steel circumference 65 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009 with funds from the Meredith Hinchliffe Fund


Polynesian art

In a first for Australia, the National Gallery of Australia has

opened a gallery dedicated to the art of Polynesia. The

first display in this new space will go beyond considering

Polynesian art as purely anthropological objects to

showcasing them in the context of world-class art. From

the Gallery’s small but very fine collection of works

from the nineteenth century or earlier, 22 of the most

interesting Polynesian pieces have been selected. These

are complemented with eight contemporary prints by

John Pule, Patrice Kaikilekofe and Shane Cotton from the

Australia Pacific Print collection.

The display is dominated by intricately carved

Maori objects and includes works from New Zealand, Fiji,

the Cook Islands, the Marquesas Islands, Hawai‘i and the

Austral Islands. Some of the older objects in this first display

were used in rituals—the newly acquired Fijian bulutoko

sanctified fork for instance (see p 45)—or were imbued

with spirit beings or gods (atua)—which may be the case

for the eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Maori war

canoe figure that stands at the entrance to the gallery.

A number of visitors to the Gallery have already

experienced a presence that is much greater than the

figure’s physical size. But perhaps this presence is a trick of

light reflecting off the surface of the work. Whatever the

case, it is undoubtedly the work of a master carver.

A more recent figure attributed to the gifted Maori

carver Raharuhi Rukupo, who died in 1873, stands alone

on a plinth at the end of the gallery. This pensive character

stands with his head bent in respect, his hands clutching

his chest, his tattooed body braced to support the weight

of the post which once soared above his head. He has

strength and dignity, balance and poise and a powerful

ethereal presence.

Other superbly carved objects populate the long display

case. Works of art from a number of different regions

highlight the cultural and artistic practices that many

Polynesian islands share, despite the distance between

them. The most meaningful group is dominated by a deeply

carved, long, horizontal panel of the type generally known

to the Maori as paepae, which means ‘threshold’—as in


‘threshold to another world’. Underneath this is a group

of three lively hei tiki, almost dancing in their bright green

nephrite, and two whalebone clubs.

The Maori treasure box is itself a treasure. The Hawaiian

necklace (lei niho palaoa), the paddle from the Austral

Islands, the no’oanga (seat for a noble) from the Cook

Islands and the fan from Marquesas Islands are all finely

crafted, world-class works of art. The Maori cloak, which

stands apart in its own showcase is exquisite in its detail

and has the unique feature of three taaniko decorative

borders—most cloaks of this kind only have two. The cloak

is very delicate so, to keep it on display for as long possible,

while preserving it, a timer to control the light has been

installed.

The contemporary prints are also exquisite in their detail

but they depict a very different side of Polynesia, a side that

is more intellectual, more pensive, more questioning. These

are the images of Polynesia today.

Dr Michael Gunn Senior Curator, Pacific Arts

Polynesian gallery, including (from left to right) Poutokomanawa (attributed to the 19th-century carver Raharuhi Rukupo), a central door panel c 1885, a Maori cloak and a showcase of objects from various Polynesian peoples.

(opposite) Maori people, Aotearoa New Zealand Canoe guardian (huaki) 17th–18th century totara pine, ochre 43.5 x 49.5 x 46.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 1978

Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia Fan (tahi’i) 1800–1850 wood, pandanus, coconut fibre 38 x 30 x 2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 1972


Melanesian art

The National Gallery of Australia fulfilled one of its long-

term aims when it opened this gallery space solely for

the display of Melanesian. By doing so, the Gallery has

distinguished itself among the world’s art museums, only a

few of which have similar focused displays.

Melanesia covers the nations of Vanuatu, the Solomon

Islands, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea, and the

arts from the region have been considered a priority for

the national collection since 1966. To describe concisely

the traditional arts of Melanesian communities is difficult

as there are at least 400 distinctive art traditions on the

Island of New Guinea alone; however, there are a number

of commonalities.

Many of the works in the Pacific arts collection are

connected in someway to religious and social activities.

Some works were quite literally the abodes of spirits,

ghosts and ancestors. Masks of bark cloth and carved

wood were danced to great effect and sculptures of

impressive size were revealed to audiences in elaborate

ceremonies designed to build up the a very real anticipation

that one was in the presence of entities from other realms.

Often, the idea behind these works was to leave a life-

long impression on the viewer, so there is great care taken

to create works that can seize and hold your gaze. Some

visitors to the Melanesian gallery may feel certain works still

posses a resonance or energy of a spiritual nature, which is

not entirely unexpected.

The Double figure from Lake Sentani exudes a particular

calmness, or perhaps an empathic serenity, in its gentleness

of form and the physical stances of the couple. Quite the

opposite, the Spirit mask from the lower Sepik River has an

air of malevolent foreboding befitting its purpose as the

carved face of a spirit capable of inflicting great illness to

those who did not give it the appropriate respect.

The majority of works in the Melanesian gallery were

made for indigenous use, even the colossal disc-eyed tree-

fern figure Mague ni hirwir, which was created only a few

years ago to celebrate the successes of a chief on the Island

of Ambyrm in Vanuatu. Only one sculpture on display was

not created for indigenous use, The drummer. It is the work


of the artist known as Mutuaga, the only identified artist

active in Papua New Guinea during the nineteenth century

whose body of work is known. Mutuaga was a master

carver of the highest order. He carved possibly the earliest

‘souvenir’ arts in Papua New Guinea for visiting Westerners,

and his work can now been found across the world in

important museum and gallery collections.

The National Gallery of Australia’s collection of

Melanesian art is quite large at around 1700 works. Now

that there is a dedicated gallery for Melanesian arts, the

display will periodically change to ensure audiences have

the opportunity to see as many of these works as possible.

Crispin Howarth Curator, Pacific Arts

Melanesian gallery, featuring (from left to right) Mogulapan c 1600–1900, a spirithouse post from the 1950s–60s, a prehistoric mortar, a 20th-century decoration for a ridge pole, Gilbert Bantor’s grade figure and a centrepost for a ceremonial house.

Kapriman people Chambri Lakes area, East Sepik province, Papua New Guinea Female figure 1850–1950 wood, fibre, pigment, patina 70 x 16 x 10 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

Mutuaga The drummer ebony, lime 36.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2009

Iatmul people Tambanum village, East Sepik River, Papua New Guinea Gable mask from a Haus Tambaran cane, sago leaf fibre, pigment 124 x 100 x 50 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2008


Australian Surrealism

André Breton, the great French Surrealist thinker,

famously remarked, ‘The marvellous is always beautiful.’

For Breton, the idea of the marvellous related to dreams

and imaginings that could be grotesque, erotic, visceral,

or confronting. For European Surrealists the imaginative

possibilities of the mind were endlessly fascinating,

transcending fixed notions of beauty. The pre-eminent

Australian Surrealist, James Gleeson, concurred. In 1940,

he wrote in Art and Australia: ‘The theory of Surrealism

is based upon a belief that the logical mind, with its

prescribed formulas of thought, is incapable of expressing

the entire range of human experience and aspiration’.

Some of Gleeson’s major paintings are on display in a

dramatic new space dedicated to Australian Surrealism.

This space has been made possible by the perspicacity and

generosity of Ray Wilson OAM and the late James Agapitos

OAM. Since 1990 they focused on acquiring works from

the Surrealist movement, homing in on well-known and

lesser-known artists to amass a particularly fine collection

of paintings, drawings, photography, collage, sculpture

and prints. After more than 15 years, they made the

momentous decision for the majority of their collection to

come to the National Gallery of Australia. Agapitos and

Wilson had carefully considered the new home for their

collection. They had been excited by the Surrealism by night

exhibition held here in 1993 and by the accompanying

catalogue. Their collection was truly national in scope,

corresponding with the aim of the national collection. They

were also mindful of the ways in which their collection

would complement the Gallery’s important holdings of

international Surrealism to make this the foremost Surrealist

collection in Australia, drawing the attention of local and

international visitors, curators and scholars.

While the Gallery already had a very strong collection

of Australian art from the 1940s, there were significant

gaps in Surrealism. It was also recognised that works

from the Agapitos/Wilson collection would correspond

brilliantly with some Surrealist works already in the Gallery’s

collection. This integration is evident in the current display.

For instance, powerful works by Gleeson such as Neo-

organic figuration describing entities 1939 and Spain 1951

work well with the Gallery’s earlier acquisition The citadel

1945. Many works from the Agapitos/Wilson collection

dramatically strengthen and deepen our holdings, including


paintings, drawings and collages by Sidney Nolan and

highly evocative photographs by Max Dupain.

While some artists, such as Dupain, Nolan, Albert

Tucker and John Perceval drew upon Surrealism sporadically

for specific subjects; others, such as Gleeson and Dušan

Marek, remained committed Surrealists throughout their

artistic lives. Marek is an artist who deserves to be much

better known. While his works are often intimate in scale,

they are among the treasures of the Surrealist collection.

Taking an overview of all the works on display in the

new Gallery confirms Breton’s idea of the power of the

fantastic or the ‘marvellous’, transporting us from the

ordinary to the extraordinary and unveiling a surreal feast

of visual and psychological possibilities.

Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture post-1920

Australian Surrealism gallery, highlighting works by James Gleeson on the far wall (right), Inge King on the plinth nearest the far wall, Dusan Marek on the plinth in the foreground and Herbert McClintock, Jeffrey Smart, Hein Heckroth, Douglas Roberts, Sydney Nolan, John Perceval and Albert Tucker.


exhibitions and displays

Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire

A travelling retrospective of Australia’s first home-grown artist

Robert Dowling was Australia’s first major colonial-trained

professional artist. Within Australian art historical terms,

this was a milestone of great significance. It may seem

surprising, then, that the National Gallery of Australia

travelling exhibition Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of

Empire is the first retrospective of the artist’s comprehensive

body of work. This exhibition shows his portraits,

including his portraits of pastoralists and their properties,

portraits and compositions of Indigenous people, biblical

subjects, social history subjects and his Oriental subjects.

The exhibition opens on 6 March at the Queen Victoria

Museum & Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania, where

Dowling arrived in Australia in 1834 at the age of seven.

Dowling gave up his saddlery trade to launch himself

as a professional portrait painter in Launceston in 1850. It

was still pre-gold rush Australia, and our first locally formed

professional painter emerged at the age of 23. Dowling

made claims of being self-taught but, despite the fact that

the colonies had no academies of art for formal training

or public art collections to study, the young artist had

opportunities to learn from other colonial artists, including

Frederick Strange and Thomas Bock, and from the work of

Henry Mundy.

In Tasmania, a balanced colonial microcosm of

late-Georgian English culture supported sophisticated

architecture, furniture makers, silversmiths, frame makers

and, importantly for Dowling, a surprising number of

portrait painters—as well as still-life, marine and landscape

painters. Indeed, Tasmanian art from the 1830s to the early

1850s was richer and more diverse than that of any other

Australian colony.

Dowling’s interesting early portrait oils and miniatures

executed in Tasmania appear superficially sophisticated, yet

their often oversized heads and undersized hands betray

the fact that he was deprived of the benefits of academic

training and life drawing. Even so, his understanding

of modelling and use of colour at this early stage of his

professional career and his grasp on the character of his

subjects was already more advanced than that of many of

his colonial forebears and contemporaries.

John Jones curated the exhibition and is the author of

the accompanying book published by the National Gallery

of Australia. The book is the first dedicated to the work

of this central and critical figure in late colonial art. Jones

delves into Dowling’s early career in Tasmania (1850–54),

his time in Victoria (1854–57), his London years (1857–84),

and his return to Victoria (Melbourne) (1884–86) before

he died back in London in 1886. He is now placed highly

as Australia’s major portrait and figure painter of the late

colonial period of around 1850–85.

The exhibition has been sponsored by the National Gallery

of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund, which is based upon

generous personal donations from members of the Gallery

Council made for the particular purpose of sponsoring

special exhibitions. The publication has been generously

sponsored by the American Friends of the National Gallery

of Australia Inc, New York, with the special support of Dr

Lee MacCormick Edwards.

The exhibition also has generous support from the Federal

Government’s Visions of Australia and the National

Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program.

I sincerely thank these funding bodies.


Excerpt from the introduction to the book Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire, published in conjunction with a major travelling retrospective and available at the Gallery and exhibition venues for $39.95 and at selected bookstores nationally for $49.95.

Robert Dowling Tasmanian Aborigines 1856–57

oil on canvas 63.6 x 118.6 cm

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

purchased 1949

Robert Dowling Egyptian banana seller 1878 watercolour with bodycolour

over graphite on paper on board 71.7 x 50.7 cm

private collection


acquisition

Miyuki: the imperial outing and hunt

The Gallery has recently acquired a spectacular pair of six-

fold screens (rokkyoku byobu) inspired by an episode of the

classic Japanese novel Tale of Genji. Created in the early

seventeenth century, their subject matter attests to the

enduring popularity of the court epic and the great skill of

Momoyama-period artists.

Genji Monogatari or Tale of Genji was written in the

early eleventh century, at the height of the Heian period

(794–1185), by a noblewoman known as Murasaki

Shikibu. Although scholars disagree on the details of Lady

Murasaki’s real identity (such as her first name), she was

born into the powerful Fujiwara family in the late tenth

century and became a lady-in-waiting to Empress Akiko.

Tale of Genji, often referred to as the world’s first novel,

is widely considered a masterpiece of Japanese literature.

Its narrative centres on the talented and extraordinarily

attractive aristocrat Genji, son of an emperor, and several

generations of his family. While Genji is a fictional

character, Lady Murasaki’s tale was likely based on real

people and events. Her text conjures up the atmosphere of

Heian court life, particularly the great appreciation of the

arts, beauty and courtly refinement for which the period is

renowned. Divided into 54 chapters, the novel relates

court events, complex social relationships, love affairs,

scandals and political intrigues. Heian-period courtiers,

the author’s contemporaries, eagerly sought instalments

of the novel as they were written. Images from the tale

became an important theme in Japanese art and were

Momoyama period (1573–1615), Japan

Miyuki: the imperial outing and hunt 1600–10 (details)

pair of six-fold screens (rokkyoku byobu), colour

and gold on paper 168 x 366 cm (each)

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

purchased with the generous assistance of Andrew and Hiroko

Gwinnett, 2009


especially prevalent in the later Momoyama period

(1573–1615).

The Gallery’s screens illustrate Miyuki: the imperial

outing and hunt, chapter 29 of the epic tale, and capture

the rich pageantry of Japanese court life. The magnificent

procession that appears on the left screen is a royal

hunting party travelling from the Imperial palace to visit

a shrine at Oharano, west of old Kyoto. The emperor,

Genji’s illegitimate son, is hidden from public view inside

a bullock-drawn carriage. As the excursion was a major

official and social court event, the emperor is accompanied

by an impressive entourage of mounted guards, servants

and costumed courtiers. Dressed in white, a group of

attendants carry large parasols to unfurl on arrival in

Oharano. A crowd of children, farmers, samurai and

aristocratic men and women has gathered to enjoy the

colourful spectacle. In contrast to the stately procession,

the right screen shows the chaos of the hunt. Falconers,

men on horseback, and courtiers in ornate dress pursue

deer, pheasants and wild boar across an atmospheric

landscape.

While Tale of Genji describes an earlier time, the scene

presented on this pair of screens is set in the seventeenth

century. Despite the temporal shift, the painting retains

much of the essence of Murasaki’s novel, particularly in

terms of an overall sense of elegance, and attention to

the details of ceremonial events and personal adornment.

All the characters are in exquisite Momoyama-period

Momoyama period (1573–1615), Japan

Miyuki: the imperial outing and hunt 1600–10

pair of six-fold screens (rokkyoku byobu), colour

and gold on paper 168 x 366 cm (each)

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

purchased with the generous assistance of Andrew and Hiroko

Gwinnett, 2009


dress, with textile designs and hairstyles represented in

stunning detail. The blossoming cherry trees are another

embellishment to the original story, reflecting the growing

popularity of cherry blossom viewing in seventeenth-

century Japan.

In the Momoyama period, painted screens were

generally commissioned by wealthy patrons and designed

to appeal to individual interests and social position. The

creator of this painting was likely an artist of Japan’s

celebrated Kano school, which was established in the

sixteenth century and thrived for over 300 years. Kano

paintings are characterised by sweeping abstracted natural

settings, detailed depictions of figures and animals, and the

use of gold leaf. Here, the extensive gilding and embossing

of the clouds gives the landscape a luminous quality.

Purchased with the assistance of Andrew and Hiroko

Gwinnett, generous supporters of Japanese art in Australia,

Miyuki: the imperial outing and hunt enhances the Gallery’s

small but fine collection of Japanese screens. It is currently

on display in the gallery of East Asian Art.

Lucie Folan Curator, Asian Art


acquisition

Thomas Bock Portrait of two boys

The first commercially available photographic portraits in

the 1840s were daguerreotypes. By the mid 1850s, a wide

range of middleclass sitters across the world could have a

high-quality image—often beautifully hand-coloured—of

themselves and their loved ones. These images were

especially poignant in distant European colonial societies

where settlers might rarely or never again see their families.

The daguerreotype was first demonstrated in Australia

in Sydney in May 1841. Late the following year, London’s

George Goodman set up the first commercial studio in

Sydney, claiming to have an exclusive license to use the

daguerreotype in the colonies. Goodman was working

in Hobart in August 1843, where he came in direct

competition with British convict artist Thomas Bock.

Although an engraver by trade, Bock had a keen

interest in photography and, in the Hobart Town Advertiser

of 29 September 1843, he advertised that ‘in a short time

he would be enabled to take photographic likenesses in the

first style of the art’. Infuriated, Goodman threatened legal

action and Bock promptly withdrew until five years later

when he opened a portrait photography studio in Hobart.

Bock’s stepson Alfred assisted him in the photography-

side of the studio business. They had seen daguerreotype

portraits brought from London by Reverend Francis Russell

Nixon in Hobart in June 1843—before Goodman’s arrival in

Tasmania—and had purchased a camera from a Frenchman

in Hobart so that they could learn the new art form using

photographic formulas published in English magazines.

Their lack of proper training, however, shows in Hobart

dignitary GTYB Boyes’s records of August 1849, in which he

comments, ‘Bock understands the nature of his apparatus

but very imperfectly!’ Despite this and other unfavourable

remarks between 1849 and 1853, Boyes continued to visit

Bock’s studios for daguerreotype portraits.

Bock’s portrait of two freckle-faced boys dressed in

matching outfits shows that he was a skilled photographer

by 1848—a year before Boyes’s initial disparaging remark.

Any parent would have been thrilled by such a vivid image

of their sons, especially as, like many colonial sons, they

might be getting ready to be sent ‘home’ to the United

Kingdom for schooling. The image of the boys was a

memento for their parents as well as proof for relatives in

Britain that colonial society could produce the same

well-dressed and well-bred young boys as the old country.

The sitters are as yet unidentified but the daguerreotype

has been dated by comparison with several identified

examples of double portraits of children that have survived

out of the hundreds of images made by the Bock studio.


Thomas Bock Portrait of two boys 1848–50

daguerreotype plate 7 x 6 cm

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009


acquisition

Portrait of three Californian goldminers

Americans embraced the daguerreotype from its

first appearance in New York in the early 1840s and,

in the West in particular, hundreds of thousands of

daguerreotypes were made in California during the peak

gold rush years of 1849 to 1864. This output was far

greater in number, quality and variety of examples than for

any other place in the Asia–Pacific region.

The first generation of miners in California, known as

49ers, created a particular style of occupational portrait in

which they were portrayed in confident, even swaggering

poses—wearing their working gear of wool over-shirts,

buckskin trousers, bandannas and special miners buckles.

The miners were often shown holding their tools, pans,

gold nuggets, pistols and knives. Many miners portraits

were made outdoors on the diggings.

The example, recently acquired by the National Gallery

of Australia, is identifiable as a miners portrait by the

buckles and shirts. However, it is distinctive because of

the male camaraderie or brotherly affection that is shown.

Double or triple portraits were cheaper but it is perhaps

that desire to show their bond that made these three burly

young men have their collective likenesses taken. Their

hair is longish, a practical choice on the fields but this also

imparts a rather romantic air to the young men. The image

is both very attractive and of a high level of clarity and

brightness.

Possession of such an image became a badge of

fraternity among the miners or an essential proof of

wellbeing and success to send back home. The genre was

so popular that photography studios began supplying

clothes for tourists to have their pictures taken as ‘miners’.

No similar genre of miners daguerreotypes is known in

Australia—or even any single identified miners portrait.


Photographer unknown not titled (portrait of three Californian gold miners) 1/4 plate daguerreotype plate 10.6 x 8.1 cm case 11.7 x 95 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009


acquisition

Philip Wolfhagen Autumn equinox; the loss of the sun

Philip Wolfhagen is widely regarded as one of Australia’s

most significant contemporary landscape painters. He won

the prestigious Wynne Prize in 2007 and is part of a new

generation of painters who are presenting fresh visions of

the Australian landscape and rethinking the traditions of

this age-old genre. His works, inspired by the atmospheric

landscape of northern Tasmania, explore the representation

of time and natural phenomena.

Autumn equinox; the loss of the sun 2009 is an

outstanding and powerful work from his latest series. It

highlights Wolfhagen’s skill and sensitivity in rendering

the subtleties and emotive qualities of light, mood and

texture. During a fleeting moment of mid-autumn twilight,

Wolfhagen has captured the view over a darkened

domestic garden and beyond into a farmed landscape.

The large trees in the foreground are silhouetted against

the cloudless sky—a velvety, glowing surface of cool blue

and the fading remnants of a golden sunset. Wolfhagen’s

characteristic combination of oil paint and beeswax creates

a luscious surface and adds a physical quality to the work.

The spindly branches of the largest tree are scored into

this surface, to reveal a charcoal-coloured, darker under-

layer. There is a sense of both melancholy and romance in

the title and tonality of this landscape; a scene infinitely

suspended between night and day, during the short

passage of time when both are roughly equal in length,

and on the verge of the colder darker months of winter.

Wolfhagen draws inspiration from the regions

surrounding his home in northern Tasmania, many of

which he has known since childhood. For example, the

domestic garden in the foreground of Autumn equinox; the

loss of the sun is the artist’s own and the trees all planted

by his hand. However, rather than painting en plein air,

Wolfhagen works primarily in the studio from photographs

and from what he identifies as an ‘imagined or partly

remembered space’. He begins to paint after contemplating

and absorbing his observations and emotional responses to

a certain landscape. In this regard, his works simultaneously

embody and transcend a specific place.

Across the darkened paddock depicted in Autumn

equinox; the loss of the sun, our eyes are drawn to the

glimmer of a fire and wisps of smoke—a suggestion of

distant human activity. In his 2005 monograph on the

artist, Peter Timms states that Wolfhagen is one of few

contemporary Australian painters to explore ideas of

the picturesque within the cultivated landscape, despite

there being little romance left in rural toil. Wolfhagen’s

atmospheric explorations of this subject are underpinned by

a love of both the wild and changed landscape and, most

significantly, a strong sense of our responsibilities towards

the natural world.

This work is on a scale just large enough to envelope

our vision and provokes an immediate reaction from the

senses. We are momentarily transported from the gallery by

the illusion of realism. Yet, the sense of profound mystery

this work also possesses gives us the impression that

Wolfhagen is seeking to draw us further beyond the realm

of the physical world. On close inspection, the initial illusion

is dissolved and abstracted by the exquisite painterly quality

of Wolfhagen’s mark making.

Autumn equinox; the loss of the sun is an important

new work by this prominent Australian painter. It is a

superb addition to the National Gallery of Australia’s

collection of recent landscape painting and to our

representation of contemporary Tasmanian artists.

Miriam Kelly Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture

Philip Wolfhagen Autumn equinox; the loss of

the sun 2009 oil and beeswax on canvas

200.4 x 160.3 cm National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra purchased 2009


acquisition

Murray Griffin Self-portrait

Murray Griffin’s early linocut Self-portrait 1932 captures

the confident, debonair attitude of the artist through a

distinctly modern articulation of classical form and Art

Deco stylistic devices. Griffin was an innovative printmaker,

painter, teacher and active member of the Melbourne art

community for over four decades. He first experimented

with different printing techniques in the 1920s and soon

focused on the linocut process as it was simpler than

woodcut, with the lino easier to use and more obtainable.

In 1932, Griffin produced two self-portraits, the first of

which was a forceful direct frontal portrayal. The second,

Self-portrait, is a three-quarter profile reminiscent of the

glamorous photographic studio portraits of the 1920s and

1930s. The print explores a range of tonal techniques,

with the definition of the artist’s cheekbones emerging

from the stippled surface of shadow, while delicate cross-

hatching is employed to indicate the contours of the face.

The artist has picked out sweeps of hair in sinuous curved

lines and uses strong hatching on the casually upturned

collar. The un-inked background creates a luminous halo

effect, hinting at later works that were deeply influenced

by his anthroposophical beliefs based on the teachings of

Rudolf Steiner. Griffin was more approving of this second

representation, having destroyed all but one impression of

the first.

Born in Melbourne on 11 November 1903, Griffin

studied drawing from 1919 to 1920 and painting from

1921 to 1922 at the National Gallery School. His first

experiments with linocuts were in 1921, but these did

not reach fruition until the early 1930s, when he learnt

the process of multiple-block colour printing from Napier

Waller. It is possible Self-portrait was made under the

direction of Waller as studies such as this were often set

as student exercises. During this time, Griffin also became

familiar with Japanese woodblocks through exhibitions

held in Melbourne, the collection of American architect

Walter Burley Griffin and the work of Austrian printmaker

Norbetine Bresslern-Roth, who had a decisive effect on his

later work.

Though Griffin is primarily known for his luminous,

glossy-inked colour prints of birds and animals, Self-portrait

is an accomplished and engaging work that shows the

vitality of line and attention to detail so celebrated in his

linocuts.

Emma Colton Assistant Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

Murray Griffin Self-portrait 1932

linocut, printed in black ink from one block, on paper

21.5 x 16.5 cm National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra purchased 2009


acquisition

Fiji A priest’s fork

This newly acquired Fijian priest’s fork represents the zenith

of the carver’s art in pre-European contact Fiji. The sleek,

ergonomically designed handle has a flared pommel and

ringed section with floral-like decoration before expanding

out to three gracefully elongated tines. The artist has

shown consummate skill in making each tine elegantly

twist along its length. Typical of the finest Polynesian arts,

the priest’s fork balances form and function perfectly. Its

squid-like appearance and glass-like patinated surface

(from many years of use) lend an understated attraction

that transcends a mere utilitarian nature. However, behind

the beauty of this object lies a macabre purpose.

While forks such as these were notoriously known

as ‘cannibal forks’, this unflattering epithet is misleading

and obscures their true purpose. Before the mid 1870s,

cannibalism was an accepted, normal part of Fijian life, but

certain rituals were exclusive. Only priests, for instance,

used these forks and only during the ritual consumption of

meat, which was not always human flesh, to honour the

gods and to act as their medium, receiving their wisdom

and instruction. Priests, literally, became the mouthpieces of

the gods. Records also indicate that an attendant might be

employed to carefully place morsels of food into the priest’s

mouth without touching his lips, as even the priest’s lips

were sacred.

The fork dates to at least the first quarter of the 1800s

as it looks to be carved without the use of iron tools. Also,

the undulating zigzag patterns, reminiscent of a snake in

motion, may represent female tattooing common in the

18th and early 19th centuries. The production and use

of these forks declined from the 1850s to 1876, when a

British punitive campaign brought colonial administration

to every part of Fiji. Only a dearth of indigenous cultural

knowledge regarding these objects survived the mass

transition to Christianity; the accounts of early travellers,

such as whalers, sandalwood traders and missionaries, are

all that remain to provide insight (however Euro-centric)

into the pre-Christian arts of Fiji.

This work sits superbly among the other fascinating

objects in the Gallery’s new dedicated space for Polynesian art.

Crispin Howarth Curator, Pacific Arts

Fiji A priest’s fork (bulutoko) early 1800s wood 48 cm, 3 cm (diam) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009

1 2

3

4 5

faces in view

1 The Hon Peter Garrett, Minister

for the Arts in the Sidney Nolan

– Ned Kelly series gallery at the

National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra, 26 November 2009.

2 National Summer Art Scholar

Kenna Reid-Clark reveals his

print at a special workshop

on the 13 January 2010 at

the School of Art, Australian

National University, Canberra.

3 Artist Peter Vandermark

discusses his work and process

with National Summer Art

Scholars at his studio, 14

January 2010.

Guest enjoying the celebrations at the

opening of Masterpieces from Paris,

3 December 2009:

4 Mark Muller and Caroline Mills

with Maurice Denis’s The Muses

1893 in the exhibition space.

5 Johnnie Walker, Michael

Desmond and Gene Sherman

enjoy the Champagne Pol Roger

in the Sculture Garden.

6 Melissa Moss, Maurice Reilly,

John McKay, Allan Williams and

Jessica Wright.

7 Michael Chaney and Avi Rebera.

8 Roger and Helen Allnutt.

9 Adelina La Vita, Kim Giddings,

Helen Curzon and Jo Verden.

6

8

9

7


travelling exhibitions program

Art and about with the Wolfensohn Gift suitcases

The cases brought a world of ‘treasure’ to students up here in the remote regions of WA and the students looked on in absolute wonder. Many students would never see such objects ever again, especially those [objects] from other parts of the globe.

Helen Capsalis, art teacher, St Mary’s College, Broome, WA

In early February 2009, the Gallery packed its Elaine and

Jim Wolfensohn Gift of art-filled suitcases—Red case: myths

and rituals and Yellow case: form, space and design—for a

six-month trip to the northern parts of Western Australia.

The suitcases covered a mighty 10 229 kilometres and were

enthusiastically received by over 2740 children from schools

and centres in Broome, Derby and Kununurra. It was the first

time that the gifts have travelled to this part of Australia.

Over the same period the Blue case: technology had a

different emphasis. Its tour focused on students and adults

living with a disability and commenced with a six-week

program at the Royal Institute for the Deaf and Blind in

Sydney. Julie Kaney, Director at Rockie Woofit Preschool,

which is part of the Institute, commented that the case ‘…

provided an opportunity for our children to view sculptures

from an art gallery—this was a first for many of our

children … it was a wonderful experience for our sensory

disability children as well as our community children’. The

tour continued south to the Victorian College of the Deaf

and to Arts Access Victoria, both in Melbourne, where

trainers used the case as part of extension activities for

adults living with a disability.

The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift, which comprises

three suitcases and the 1888 Melbourne Cup, is an

important outreach initiative and an integral part of

the National Gallery of Australia’s Travelling Exhibitions

program. Generously supported by the Wolfensohns since

1990, the gifts have travelled to most parts of Australia and

to a wide variety of venues, from single-teacher schools to

large metropolitan art galleries. They have also travelled to

places as far afield as Thursday Island, Norfolk Island and to

Washington in the United States.

In 2010, the focus of the tour shifts to central Australia

as all three suitcases travel through South Australia and on

to Alice Springs. Once again, children and adults from all

backgrounds will have the chance to engage meaningfully

in their local galleries, community centres and classrooms

with museum-quality works of art from the National Gallery

of Australia in Canberra.

Mary-Lou Nugent Project Officer, Travelling Exhibitions

Students at St Mary’s College in Broome,

Rhiannon, Emily and Kheshan discover the

works of art in the Red and Yellow cases of the Wolfensohn Gift, 2009.


Travelling exhibitions autumn 2010I

ABC Local Radio is the

proud Media Partner

of the National Gallery

of Australia’s Travelling

Exhibitions program.

Exhibition venues and dates may be subject to change. Please contact the Gallery or venue before your visit. For more information on travelling exhibitions, telephone (02) 6240 6525 or send an email to [email protected].

The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn GiftThe Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift enables people from all around Australia to discover and handle treasured objects. Made

possible by Jim Wolfensohn, the gift comprises three art-filled suitcases and the 1888 Melbourne Cup. The Gallery has been touring

the Wolfensohn Gifts to schools, libraries, community centres, regional galleries and nursing homes since 1990.

Blue suitcase: technology

Country Arts SA, Mount Gambier, SA, 3–31 March 2010

Mount Gambier Public Library, Mount Gambier, SA, 1–19 April 2010

Millicent Art Gallery, Millicent, SA, 20 April – 27 May 2010

Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide, SA, 28 May – 5 July 2010

Red suitcase: myths and rituals and Yellow suitcase: form, space and design

Arts Access Victoria, Melbourne, Vic, 15 February – 13 April 2010

Disability Information and Resource Centre, Adelaide, SA, 14 April – 14 May 2010

Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide, SA, 14–24 May 2010

Country Arts SA, Port Lincoln, SA, 25 May – 25 June 2010

1888 Melbourne Cup

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tas, 6 March – 8 April 2010

Burnie Regional Art Gallery, Burnie, Tas, 8 April – 12 May 2010

Devonport Regional Gallery, Devonport, Tas, 12 May – 19 July 2010

Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha 9th–10th century, in Red suitcase: myths and rituals, The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift

McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 11 December 2009 – 29 March

2010

Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Vic, 24 April – 25 July 2010

Discover Frederick McCubbin’s rarely displayed later works and experience his

striking use of colour in the first McCubbin exhibition to be held in almost 20 years.

See this iconic Australian artist in a new light as he depicted a modern Australia in

cityscapes, sea views, landscapes and portraits. nga.gov.auy/mccubbin

Proudly sponsored by R.M.Williams, Exhibition Benefactor the Hon Mrs Ashley Dawson-Damer and Media Partner ABC Local Radio.

Frederick McCubbin The old slip, Williamstown 1915 private collection

In the Japanese manner: Australian prints 1900–1940Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Booragul, NSW, 18 June – 1 August 2010

This exhibition presents a rare opportunity to observe how Australian artists

adapted the Japanese woodblock technique printing of ukiyo-e to form a distinctly

Australian aesthetic. It features works by Paul Haefliger, Margaret Preston, Thea

Proctor, Ethel Spowers, Lionel Lindsay and many other important Australian artist.

nga.gov.au

Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia. Also proudly supported by Hindmarsh.

Paul Haefliger Sublime Point above Bulli 1936 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra gift of the artist, 1978

Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of EmpireQueen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston, Tas, 6 March – 25 April 2010

Geelong Gallery, Geelong, Vic, 8 May – 11 July 2010

Robert Dowling holds a special place in the history of Australian art. He was the first

artist to be trained in Australia and was renowned for his paintings of pastoralists and

their properties, Indigenous people and biblical themes. This is the first major exhibition

of his oeuvre, including his much-lauded oriental subjects. nga.gov.au

The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges funding support from the Australian Government through the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach program. Also supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia, and by the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund.

Robert Dowling Mrs Adolphus Sceales with Black Jimmie on Merrang Station 1855–56 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased from the Founding Donor Fund 1984


education program

Mandala workshops in rural schools

Education is a key part of the National Gallery of Australia’s

role within the national community. Every year, Gallery

educators and volunteers conduct seminars, workshops,

lectures, tours, training sessions and special study days.

These programs aim to connect people in meaningful ways

with the national collection and, more generally, with the

creative potential that art brings to everyday life. In 2009,

the Gallery supported a grant for two of its educators to

conduct visual art workshops for school children in the

drought-affected West Wyalong region.

Jo Krabman and I arrived at the beginning of November

into a sun-scorched landscape to conduct art workshops at

Weethalle Primary and Ardlethan Central School. Weethalle

is a small community on the Mid Western Highway and

their primary school, from kindergarten to year 6, has only

41 children. The nearby town of Ardlethan has a larger

school with 87 students from kindergarten to year 12.

Inspired by works of art which respond to the natural

environment such as Buddhist sand mandalas and Land art,

the idea behind the workshops was to promote a sense of

community. The students collaborated to produce a large,

ephemeral work of art made to represent the land in which

they live. Students collected a range of natural materials to

produce a mandala-style work of art.

At both schools, students worked in groups to

design the rings for their mandala, which consisted of

grains, seeds, earth, grasses, hay, red peppercorns, leaves

and flowers. As part of the workshops, students were

encouraged to produce their own visual and written

responses—drawings, collages, mini mandalas, poems

and prose—to the materials they had selected for their

mandalas. The use of local materials helped students to

connect with and express their feelings about their local

landscape and their relationships to it.

At the end of the workshop, students gathered to

discuss the finished work of art and were inspired by the

variety of colours and textures. At Weethalle, a five-year-old

excitedly exclaimed, ‘Awesome!’, while an older student

interpreted the design as a vast Australian landscape,

from the rainforest to the dry countryside and crops. The

students had remarkable insight into what it meant for

them to create and place these visually stunning mandalas

in the context of their own environment.

This education initiative continued the ongoing

relationship that the National Gallery of Australia has

fostered over the last five years with the drought-effected

rural community of the West Wyalong region.

Lucy Quinn Education Officer

A colourful mandala created by students at

Weethalle Primary.

Ardlethan Central School students form

a cirle around their mandala

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Acknowledgements (clockwise from top left): Maringka Baker Anmangunga 2006 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 136.5 x 202.5 cm. Courtesy of Art Gallery of South Australia. Featured in Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial developed and toured by the National Gallery of Australia. © Maringka Baker | Mavis Ganambarr Basket 2006 (detail) Pandanus fibre, natural dyes, fibre string 48 x 38.2 cm (diameter). Photo: Peter Eve | Belinda Winkler Swell Slipcast ceramic vessels, dimensions variable. Photo: Phil Kuruvita | The Ngurrara Canvas painted by Ngurrara artists and claimants coordinated by Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, May 1997, 10 x 8 m | Anne Zahalka The Bathers 1989 type C photograph 74 x 90 cm

www.arts.gov.au/visions

Contemporary Touring InitiativeA wide range of Australian collecting institutions and other organisations can apply for funding to develop and tour contemporary Australian visual arts and craft exhibitions.

The program guidelines are now broader and we encourage eligible institutions and organisations to apply for funding.

Closing date: Check our websiteThe program guidelines and application form can be obtained from: www.arts.gov.au/visionsEmail: [email protected] Phone: 02 6275 9519

The Contemporary Touring Initiative aims to:

• encouragewideraudienceaccess to contemporary Australian visual arts and craft;

• promotecontemporaryAustralian visual arts and craft through quality publications, education and public programs and fora held as part of the touring exhibition; and

• encouragecuratorialpartnerships and collaborationbetweenfunded organisations and collecting institutions.

The Contemporary Touring Initiative is managed by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia Program.

Visions of AustraliaA national touring exhibitions program making high quality cultural exhibitions accessible to more Australians.

Closing dates for funding applications:1 April for projects commencing on or after 1 September that year.

1 September for projects commencing on or after1Februarythefollowingyear.

Program guidelines and application forms can be obtained from: www.arts.gov.au/visionsEmail: [email protected] Phone: 02 6275 9517

Funding is available to assist eligible organisations to develop and tour exhibitions of Australian Cultural Material across Australia.

‘Australian Cultural Material’ is material relevant to Australian culture due to its historical, scientific, artistic or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander significancewhich:

• hasapredominantlyAustralian theme; or

• isby/featurespredominantly Australian artists; or

• isfromacollectionheldbyan Australian organisation.

The Visions of Australia Program is administered by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

ART12.1209

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melbourne exhibition thursday 18 – tuesday 23 march 11.00am – 6.00pm daily 105 commercial road south yarra 3141 03 9865 6333 [email protected]

catalogue online early march • www.deutscherandhackett.com

on viewimportant aboriginal and oceanic art auction melbourne • 24 march 2010

DANIEL WALBIDIborn 1983

All the Jila, 2007 106.5 x 106.5 cm

EST: $10,000 - 15,000

sydney exhibition thursday 11 – sunday 14 march 11.00am – 6.00pm daily 55 oxford st (cnr pelican st) surry hills 2010 02 9287 0600

for obligation-free appraisals, please contact

sydney melbourne Damian Hackett Chris Deutscher Merryn Schriever Richard Ennis 02 9287 0600 03 9865 6333

important australian and international fine art auction sydney • 28 april 2010

final call for entries

IAN FAIRWEATHER(1891 – 1974)

Figure Group IV, 1970 96.0 x 75.0 cm

EST: $180,000 – 240,000

Proud supporters of creativity and excellence in performance, arts and design.

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open 7 days 10.00 am – 5.00 pm Parkes Place, Canberra ACT 2601 | free call 1800 808 337 | (02) 6240 6420

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TheGallery Shop has temporarily been relocated to near the entrance of the Asian galleries but still offers a great

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$39.95 special NGA price $49.95 RRP

ROBERT DOWLINGTasmanian son of Empire

Robert DowlingTasmanian son of Empire

John Jones with an introduction by Ron Radford 192 pages | 235 x 175 mm | flexibind full colour ISBN 9780642334107

$39.95 special NGA and venue price $49.95 RRP

ngashop

Available at the Gallery shop and selected bookstores nationallly and internationally and by mail order.

The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government Agency

Media Partner

National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund

6 March – 25 April 2010 Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston, Tas

8 May – 11 July 2010 Geelong Gallery, Geelong, Vic

24 July – 3 October 2010 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT

National Collecting Institutions Touring & Outreach Program

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Robert Dowling Mrs Adolphus Sceales with Black Jimmie on Merrang Station 1855–56, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased from the Founding Donor Fund, 1984

2010.Q1 | artonview 61 Autumn 2010

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Transcript of 2010.Q1 | artonview 61 Autumn 2010