art ew - National Gallery of Australia - Home...imants tillers • michael riley • James...

imants tillers • michael riley • James rosenquist

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14 July – 16 October 2006

9 – 30 August Wednesdays 6pmThis annual lecture series showcases the latest work of renowned Australian architects.

9 August Andrew Andersons from Peddle, Thorpe and Walker, Sydney

16 August Luigi Rosselli, Sydney

23 August Tim Jackson from Jackson Clements Burrows, Melbourne

30 August Shaun Lockyer from Arkhefield, Brisbane

$60 Series; $50 members/RAIA/concession $20 Single; $15 members/RAIA/concession

Presented in association with the ACT Chapter RAIA Sponsored by BCA Solutions

Bookings essential James O Fairfax Theatre National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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Mr Ron Radford AM, DirectorNational Gallery of Australia

requests the pleasure of your company at a Members Viewing of

Saturday 15 July 2006 6pmThe evening will commence with an introduction to the exhibitions

in the James O Fairfax Theatre by

Dr Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian Paintings and Sculptureand

Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art

Followed by a viewing of the exhibitions

Members /guests $40Light refreshments

Limited tickets – bookings essential RSVP 5 July 2006 (acceptances only)

Phone 02 6240 6528

Imants Tillers The hyperborean and the speluncar 1986 oilstick, oil and synthetic polymer paint on 130 canvasboards Cruthers collection, Perth Michael Riley Untitled, from the series Cloud [feather] taken 2000 printed 2005 pigment prints, ultrachrome chromogenic inks on Ilford Gallery Pearl photographic paper Purchased 2005 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Reproduced courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and VISCOPY, Australia

SPECIAL MEMBERS’ VIEWING

2 Director’s foreword

4 Interview with Rupert Myer, Chairman of the National Gallery of Australia Council

6 Imants Tillers: one world many visions

14 Imants Tillers discusses Terra incognita & Terra negata

16 Michael Riley: sights unseen

21 Michael Riley Kristina 1986

24 Rosenquist: Welcome to the water planet

32 Right here right now: Recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander acquisitions

38 New acquisitions

46 The Anton Bruehl Gift

50 Come rain or shine

52 Indian art: New acquisitions, directions and display

56 Conservation: The Mermaid’s Tale

58 Faces in view

60 Collection study room

contents

Publisher National Gallery of Australia nga.gov.au

Editor Alistair McGhie

Designer Sarah Robinson

Photography Eleni Kypridis Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie Steve Nebauer

Designed and produced in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia Printed in Australia by Pirion Printers, Canberra

artonview issn 1323-4552

Published quarterly: Issue no. 46, Winter 2006 © National Gallery of Australia

Print Post Approved pp255003/00078

All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

Submissions and correspondence should be addressed to: The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 [email protected]

Advertising (02) 6240 6587 facsimile (02) 6240 6427 [email protected]

RRP: $8.60 includes GST Free to members of the National Gallery of Australia

For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership contact: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6240 6504 [email protected]

front cover: Michael Riley Darrell (detail) 1989 gelatin silver photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Reproduced courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and VISCOPY, Australia

back cover: Imants Tillers installing Terra incognita 2005 at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2005

artonview

2 national gallery of australia

From my office window, Lake Burley Griffin is looking

more like Constable’s Stormy sea, Brighton 20 July 1828

which puts me in no doubt that three frosty yet clear-skied

months of winter lie ahead of us and that there are only

two weeks left to see Constable: Impressions of land, sea

and sky here in Canberra before it heads across the pond to

the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in – dare I

say it – windy Wellington.

Often, once exhibitions are up and have been on display

for a while, connections between them become more

apparent than may have been anticipated at their inception

or planning. The concurrent displays over the past months

of Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast

Asia and Constable: Impressions of land, sea and sky

– although from historically and culturally disparate sources

– had indisputable connections. Constable showed not only

the work of the master of the English landscape tradition,

but also reminded us of many Australian landscapes and

his influence on so many Australian artists from the 19th

century to today, as demonstrated by the accompanying

exhibition Constable and Australia. In Crescent Moon we

witnessed the influence not of a single artist but of Islam in

Southeast Asia from the 14th through to the 19th century

and its effect on the development of the cultural history of

our region and our nearest neighbours. Both exhibitions

have been extremely popular, well exceeding targets. I’d like

to express my thanks to the Gallery’s Voluntary Guides for

their preparation and hard work and for being available to

show the many thousands of visitors through these highly

popular exhibitions over the past three months.

Following on from the success of Crescent Moon and

Constable, for the winter season at the Gallery we present

three significant single-artist shows: Imants Tillers: One

world many visions; Michael Riley: Sights unseen; and

the paper works by American artist James Rosenquist,

Welcome to the water planet. Again, it is felicitous to

present the work of Riley and Tillers concurrently as

these two Australian artists have made such significant

contributions to the landscape and dialogue of art in this

country. Michael Riley (1960–2004) through photography,

film and video has challenged our perceptions of Indigenous

Australia, and Imants Tillers in his continuing, numbered

canvasboard panel works investigates the themes of identity

and displacement, origins and originality, and language

and landscape. I commend these two highly interesting

exhibitions of contemporary Australian art to you.

On display in the Orde Poynton Gallery is the

monumental paper work series Welcome to the water

planet and two related works by James Rosenquist

produced with printer publisher Ken Tyler from September

1988 to December 1989. When you see this exhibition I’m

sure Rosenquist’s journey from billboard painter in the 50s

to key figure in America’s Pop Art movement in the 60s will

be apparent in the scale and subject of the works. Massive,

impressive and a further demonstration of the depth of the

National Gallery’s premier American print collection.

Our other current collection-based exhibition in the

Project Gallery, Right here right now, displays for the

first time more than 80 new acquisitions to the Gallery’s

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collection purchased

over the past two years. These largely contemporary works,

including canvas paintings, bark painting, fibre works,

prints, drawings, and sculpture covering themes ranging

from the ancestral and ancient to politics and contemporary

Australian society, fully demonstrate the great diversity and

vitality of Indigenous Australian art and culture.

The lower level Asian Galleries will be closed over the

winter months for re-slating and de-cladding in order to

restore this very large space to its original function as a

sculpture gallery featuring the iconic Brancusi Birds in Space.

By the end of August, we will have opened our new Indian

and South Asian Gallery on the entrance level. This special

Indian Gallery will be the first of its kind in Australia. By

the end of September we will also have opened a larger

Southeast Asian Gallery adjoining the Indian Gallery.

We are acquiring many major works for these new Asian

displays, which will be revealed at the opening. The new

director’s foreword

Ron Radford with internationally renowned

American artist James Turrell

artonview winter 2006 3

complex and integrated displays in these Asian Galleries on

the principal level of the Gallery will be a significant step

towards our stated aim of helping to place the art of our

region centre stage in the National Gallery of Australia.

Major new Australian acquisitions, both 19th and 20th

century, will also be revealed this winter. For instance, we

take great pleasure in presenting Sydney Long’s Flamingoes

c. 1906 as the Masterpieces for the Nation acquisition.

This is a strikingly decorative oil painting by the leading

proponent of the art nouveau movement in Australia at

the turn of the 19th century. Further information on both

Long’s work and the appeal is enclosed in this edition of

artonview. Masterpieces for the Nation is the National

Gallery of Australia Foundation’s annual appeal to raise

funds to acquire a major work that will become part of

our permanent display. Over the past two years this appeal

has been extraordinarily successful and has enabled the

Gallery to acquire two significant Australian paintings: WC

Piguenit’s Near Liverpool, New South Wales (purchased with

funds raised from the 2005 appeal) and William Robinson’s

Creation landscape – fountains of the earth (purchased

with funds raised from the 2004 appeal). Please consider

being a part of this exciting initiative to assist in building the

National Collection for the enjoyment of future generations.

I hope you had a chance to participate in the Gallery’s

autumn events such as the James Turrell lecture, the

Constable symposium, the Crescent Moon cultural day,

Sculpture Garden Sunday, or the innovative Forecast: art

and fashion collaboration between CIT fashion designers,

the Quantum Leap Youth Choreographic Ensemble, video

artists, Next Hair hairdressers and makeup artists from the

Canberra Makeup Academy. The winter calendar of events

provides more outstanding opportunities for you to engage

with artists, curators and educators, through special events

developed in conjunction with our exhibitions and around

the National Collection.

There is much that is new and exciting to see and hear

at the National Gallery of Australia this winter.

Ron Radford Director

credit lines

Donations Belinda Barrett

Sheila Bignell

Peter Farrell AM

Andrew Gwinnett

Robyn Jenkins

Judith Roach

Rotary Belconnen

John Schaeffer AO

Gene Sherman

Kerry Stokes AO

Bruce and Daphne Topfer

Foundations Gordon Darling Foundation

Wolfensohn Foundation

Gifts Aranday Foundation

Josephine Bayliss

Anton Bruehl Jr

Ann Burge

Carolyn Cameron

Michael Chaney AO

Janet Dawson and Michael Boddy

Eleanor Hart

Bridget McDonnell Gallery

Lila McGrath

Ron Radford AM

William Robinson

Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Tyler

Sanong Wattanaurangkul

Grants Australia Council for the Arts

Australia-Malaysia Institute

Australia Indonesia Institute

Visions of Australia

Sponsors Casella Wines

Hyatt Hotel


In 2001 the government asked you to chair an independent inquiry into the visual arts in Australia. What was a concern that arose for you regarding the role of the visual arts or artists in our society?The Inquiry considered many issues about the circumstances

of artists and the institutional context in which they work.

The status of the artist in Australia is still a very relevant

consideration as visual artists don’t enjoy the same visibility

as other artists. By and large, it’s a solitary profession and

there is no equivalent to an audience’s applause at the

end of the creation of a piece of work. Interaction with

an audience has a very different character to it than the

interaction that performing artists have with their audience.

There are financial risks that have to be taken by

performing arts companies that relate to the magnitude

of the task and the need to bring collaborative efforts

together into performances. There is a very different funding

model for a visual artist’s practice and the financial risks

that are undertaken are on an individual level. Prior to the

Inquiry, many in the sector had sought an examination of

the circumstances in which artists were finding themselves

and, more broadly, the institutions around the country that

supported their practice.

The model of support for contemporary arts practice

through government funding, as undertaken by the three

levels of government in Australia, is widely accepted

internationally. That model is often under-recognised and we

don’t often see it portrayed as a necessary part of a creative

society. The arts are given limited media coverage and are

regularly presented as an elitist activity, with the term elitist

having implied derogatory connotations. Yet we have the

common experience here of rushing off at weekends to pay

a lot of money to watch elite sports men and women whose

elite status is celebrated. The difference is that elite sports

men and women now pull in six and seven figure salaries

whereas elite artists don’t.

So the media play a role in this? Many people can imagine what it might be like to be a

sportsperson. I don’t think it’s easy for people to imagine

what it must be like to be an artist. While exposure to

and involvement in the arts by Australians at a young age

is perhaps more limited compared to sport, the media

contribute to this by not attempting to explore the ‘artistic

life’ with the same urgency of inquiry as they choose to

explore the ‘sporting life’. Many artists wouldn’t be prepared

to share with a wider audience what it is that they do and

how they do it, nor to share with audiences the lives that

they lead. So it’s not surprising in a way that we remain

unexposed to creative lives. There is a mystery associated

with creative processes and certainly creative individuals.

We need to count ourselves fortunate that we are able to

see the end product and enjoy that. We are more likely to

recognise an artist by their work than if they walked past us

in the street but I’m sure that there are many that would like

some more personal recognition than they get.

If artists did receive more exposure would we then be able to relate better to the final product?One observation that I’d make from a personal collector’s

perspective is that it certainly adds enormously to the

experience of collecting to know something about the

person and to have met and discussed the work with the

artist. Discourse is a really important part of collecting and

the opportunity for the artist, having produced the work, to

then participate in some discussion about what it is and the

ideas and to also be part of feedback and response actually

is really valuable for the audience and the arts community.

What’s your view on the best balance between popular exhibitions aimed at generating attendance and more speculative shows?The Gallery has a responsibility to have a decent balance of

exhibitions, some of which are going to be more speculative

and less popular and others that are going to generate large

audiences that enjoy coming to galleries for those sorts of

exhibitions, and indeed look forward to them. On the more

speculative ones I think that is actually one of the assertive

roles that this institution can take. The Director’s recent

Vision Statement envisages the Gallery as an assertive,

relevant, national cultural institution that might pursue a

curatorial idea or a view about an individual or a group of

artists whose work may not be so well known. And, yes,

we should try and get sponsorship for that and, yes, we

should try to be financially responsible about putting them

on, but we should be able to balance an overall exhibition

program that allows us to do that and at the same time have

extremely popular shows. Interestingly some exhibitions that

you’d expect might not be popular become popular, and in

that sense it’s sometimes hard to know what drives audience

numbers. There are often surprises about what will draw

people to the Gallery.

How do you know the Gallery’s Council is doing a good job?One of the measures is a collaborative collegial working

environment – but not so collegial that if someone wants to

say something discordant that they feel uncomfortable in

doing so. Another is the way in which the Council manages

two very important relationships: one with the Director

Interview with Rupert Myer, Chairman of the National Gallery of Australia Council Alistair McGhie


who has a critical role to play in the success of the Gallery;

and the other with the Commonwealth Government.

The government appoints the Council so part of the role

is representing the institution back to the government

particularly in matters of recurrent funding, building

programs and other policy issues. We spend quite a lot of

time at the meetings reviewing the operational reports and

the broader strategy issues, the financial circumstances of

the institution, the process of the Acquisition Committee and

adding to the Gallery’s collection. We also work on reviewing

exhibition schedules, the role of development, sponsorship

and benefaction. Many of these have long term horizons and

outcomes may not be known for many years.

At the end of your time as Chairman what would you like to have achieved?

I’d like to have the institution really celebrate its 25th

anniversary because it will have many achievements of

which it can be proud. It’s unusual to think that it’s not

yet 25 years old. It is the only Australian gallery of its type

created in the last century. It is worthy of celebration. I’d

like also to think that we’ll be completing or have opened

the new Indigenous Galleries with the new entrance and

have completed the reconfiguration of the gallery spaces

with the new presentation of Australian art. I’d also like to

think that any visitor to the Gallery as a matter of course will

visit the Sculpture Garden and that it becomes an integral

and integrated part of the experience. We are a national

institution derived from an Act of Parliament so we have

a responsibility to service the national capital well, but

the idea of a national gallery extends beyond the national

capital. It is both a place and an idea. The ‘place’ aspect is

obvious: it’s everything that happens here, it’s the building

and the collections, the programs and the staff. In fact, you

can’t make a comment on this institution without talking

about the outstanding staff. The ‘idea’ aspect is sometimes

less obvious. I’d really like to think that it will become a

more assertive national cultural institution where what

actually happens at the National Gallery really matters in

a broader cultural sense. In order to achieve this, it means

lending works from the collection, including the touring

of important parts of the permanent collection, like some

of the Old Masters. We recognise any such works will be

missed by those who live in Canberra, but what we’re doing

is creating an opportunity for those works to be seen in the

context of other collections. That is something that adds

enormously to the appreciation of those objects within the

broader context of all of the collections around the nation.

The Gallery has had a long association with a number

of very generous benefactors in the past and we should

be continuing to find ways to honour that benefaction

and create an environment where further acts of

benefaction will occur. One of the obvious areas is in the

continued development of the collection through strategic

acquisitions. The NGA’s own acquisition funds require

additional benefaction so that we can continue to acquire

the major works necessary as envisaged in the Director’s

recent Vision Statement.

Director, Ron Radford and Chairman, Rupert Myer in front of a set of late 19th-century ornamented doors before the official opening of Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia

a


Introduction: one and many

Imants Tillers is one of Australia’s most acclaimed

contemporary artists, who established a national and

international reputation in the early 1980s. This survey

exhibition will provide the opportunity to trace the high

points of Tillers’ artistic development over more than

two decades. The exhibition includes paintings shown in

the Venice Biennale in 1986 when Tillers was selected to

represent Australia along with other key works from the

1980s, through to the remarkable Diaspora series of the

1990s, to evocative works such as the Nature speaks series

1998–2006 and a major new work Terra incognita 2005.

The works have been carefully selected to convey

Tillers’ personal approach in his particular artistic

processes and his ongoing interest in issues of identity

and displacement. The presence and absence of self is at

the heart of Tillers’ work. It is bound up with concerns

about origins and originality that are implicit in his

quotation of images from reproductions of artworks and

other sources and the re-working of them. While issues

of authorship may be challenging, an Imants Tillers

work is easily recognisable. The personal aspects of his

approach reside in his distinctive canvasboard system

and in the specificity of his choices – be they visual,

intellectual or intuitive. The personal aspects appear

in correspondences he discovers between the sources

and his own experience; in unexpected juxtapositions

to form new realities; in the sensuous, layered surfaces

and subtleties of tone and luminous colour; in the

transformations and presence of the art.

Tillers has written that the life of an artist is

essentially a solitary one. Yet the world he inhabits in

the work itself is connected with a rich repository of

ideas and imagery. The idea of one and many, of the

unit and the multiple, of an interconnecting web-like

whole, relates to the remarkable system that Tillers

Imants Tillers: one world many visions

has developed for his art. Since 1981 this has involved

working on small amateur painters’ canvasboards that

come together in grid-like structures to form a work.

A single work can contain anywhere from three to 300

panels. This method has provided a way for Tillers to

work in relatively small studios and still create large

paintings, even though he has often not been able

to view an entire work until it is exhibited in a larger

gallery space. After coming up with the initial idea and

creating a working ‘map’ as a guide, the making of a

painting is quite intimate; the artist sitting at his studio

desk to work on individual panels which subsequently

get placed on the floor as one layer after another is left

to dry. The process of work evolving from table to floor

is performative, mirroring the subsequent installation of

the work on the wall as one panel is applied after the

next. After being shown on the wall (held on by Velcro

tabs), the canvasboards come apart again, stacked in

beacon-like formations that have a sculptural presence.

In some instances the stacks have become works in their

own right, like his recent installation Art is an action

2006 in the exhibition.

exhibitions galleries


Imants Tillers and Jennifer Slatyer installing Terra

incognita 2005 National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra 2005 photograph: Patrice Riboust

Diaspora 1992 oilstick, gouache and

synthetic polymer paint on 228 canvasboards

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Izkliede 1994 oilstick, gouache and

synthetic polymer paint on 292 canvasboards Gene and

Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney Courtesy of Sherman

Galleries

Paradiso 1994 oilstick, gouache and


The Chartwell Collection, Hamilton, New Zealand

Farewell to reason 1996 oilstick, gouache and


National Gallery of Australia, Canberra


Conversations across time

Tillers’ painting The hyperborean and the speluncar 1986,

with its visual and poetic resonances of the sea, the wind

and the cave, was the perfect work to show at the Venice

Biennale. Hyperborean refers to Greek mythology and the

people who lived in a land beyond Boreas, the north wind;

speluncar refers to one who explores caves. The dominant

sources are de Chirico’s The mysterious animal 1975 and

a painting by the 19th-century British artist, Frederick

Leighton, Greek girls picking up pebbles by the sea 1871.

In his work Tillers establishes a meeting place for artists of

different time-frames and stylistic approaches who adopted

a similar approach to his own. In both instances these

artists borrowed from classical Greek sources and adapted

them to their own ends.

Tillers has in turn edited the Leighton image for his

own ends, extracting a single figure from the group of

women, while still locating her on a beach. In keeping with

the sensuality of the original, the woman is like a figure

on a classical Greek vase: poised in her tender gesture

of collecting, invested with a sense of drama in the folds

of the drapery that wrap around her body and billow

above her head. In the more direct quotation of the de

Chirico image, classical references to houses, temples and

acropolises are treated in the manner of the 16th-century

artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo inhabiting the horse’s head that

has become the mysterious, symbolic bearer of the past.

In the spectrum of Tillers’ work de Chirico has been a

continuing source of fascination. Since the 1970s he has

been drawn to de Chirico’s interest in the metaphysical

and apparently coincidental occurrences across time and

place. A quite personal connection with this artist is found

in Tillers’ work Inherited absolute 1992, based on de

Chirico’s The painter’s family 1926. The work incorporates

a reference to a drawing by his first-born daughter

Isidore as a child. In the re-making of the work Tillers re-

traced the formation of the letters of a child learning to

write – learning, tentatively, how each letter is shaped

– observing his offspring’s early interest in numbers and

repetition. Isidore Tillers recalls that as a child she often

spent time with her father in his studio, like her younger

The hyperborean and the speluncar 1986 oilstick, oil and synthetic polymer

paint on 130 canvasboards Cruthers collection, Perth


sister Saskia later on, she often had a go at making her

own canvasboard works. In Tillers’ adaptation of de

Chirico’s intimate family group, the added lines across the

surface suggest the passing of time. There is also a shared

connection with the processes of making art (in references

to the painter’s materials) and with architecture – in the

figures that do not inhabit the buildings but are inhabited

by them. In Tillers’ correspondence with de Chirico there is

always a shared fascination with serendipity and with the

idea of the past being alive in the present.

The Diaspora works

Although born in Australia, Tillers’ experience growing

up as a child of Latvian refugees who migrated from a

Displaced Persons camp in Germany in 1949, left him

with a sense of fragmentation and an awareness of

psychic exile. The feeling of his own ‘in-betweenness’

– belonging partly to two cultures and not fully to either

– has informed his art and life. When he was growing up

in Sydney Tillers attended Latvian school on weekends

in addition to his normal schooling during the week. As

much as he may have felt some ambivalence as he moved

from his parental home into the wider world, at times

wanting to free himself from the shadows of a past he

could only imagine, as a child of refugees he had a sense

of responsibility to his parents’ memories.

Tillers described his Diaspora series of the 1990s

as introducing ‘a new paradigm’ in his work. The four

major paintings in the series collectively represent an epic

statement relating to diasporas – to the dislocation of

peoples from their original homelands (including within

their own lands due to colonisation) and the coming

together of disparate cultures that is so much part of

the stories and legacies of communities in the 20th and

21st centuries. Seen collectively the Diaspora works are,

to quote Pierre Restany, like a vast ‘epigraphic fresco’

enfolding many visions.1 Taking into account the broad

sweep of the series from the first painting Diaspora 1992,

through Izkliede 1994 (Latvian for diaspora), to Paradiso

1994 (an anagram for diaspora), to Farewell to reason

Inherited absolute 1992 oilstick, gouache and synthetic polymer paint on 115 canvasboards Orange Regional Gallery, Gift of the Friends of the Orange Regional Gallery


1996, the most striking change in Tillers’ art appears in the

way that he includes many small paintings nesting within

each large work. Another distinctive element of these

paintings is that they include more text references than

previous works, locating language as a potent source of

identity: suppressed, fractured, regained and reworked as

poetry, political activism, performance art, ritual and lament.

Tillers’ monumental painting Diaspora 1992 came about

in part as a response to dramatic political events. After

growing up with the view that the fate of Latvians was to be

perpetually subsumed by a colonising culture or to go into

exile in Siberia, the newfound freedom of the Baltic States

that occurred with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991

seemed to Tillers to be remarkable, a sudden turnaround.

The first small painting that he included in Diaspora was

a reference to The Madonna Oriflamma 1926 by Nicholas

Roerich, a Russian artist inspired by Tibetan mysticism,

theosophy and Russian icons. He was also the originator of

the Roerich Peace Pact, signed by President Roosevelt and

other world leaders in 1935, that sought the preservation of

cultural institutions around the world in times of war. The

flag held by the Madonna in the painting is The Banner of

Peace, the symbol of the Pact. In contrast, the trauma of

shared memory is alluded to in the section containing four

pale heads on long flexible necks probing space like radars,

inspired by Georg Baselitz’s Oberon 1963–64 and re-

inscribed with the word RIGA; the red and white reflecting

the colours of the Latvian flag. This segment refers in part

to the suppression of the Latvian language under Soviet

annexation and the loss of a public voice.

The title of the fourth work in the Diaspora series

Farewell to reason (p.7) 1996 comes from a book by

Paul Feyerabend. The anchoring power of the work is

the dignified presence of the Aboriginal man locating

the centre of the work in Australia and suggesting the

displacement of indigenous peoples. The work also

incorporates multiple voices and visions from other places

(New Zealand, France, Latvia, South America and Germany,

to mention a few). There are numerous symbols relating to

mortality and ritual across different cultures including the

cross in Colin McCahon’s The five wounds of Christ no.3

1977–78 and another symmetrically placed cross on the

vibrant green chasuble (a vestment worn at mass) originally

designed by Matisse for the chapel at Vence. The word

‘Nezinams’ refers to a tombstone for unknown Latvian

soldiers set amongst several other funerary images.

On the one hand patterns of rupture are present in

large and intimate signs of remembrance. On the other

hand the cycles of nature are metaphors for regeneration:

in allusions to rocks and clouds in McCahon, in the spiky


yellow flowering details on the Matisse vestment, in the

unexpected inclusion of four superimposed panels of leaf

imagery based on photocopies of actual leaves that Tillers

made and repainted, and in a cut-out shape of a flowering

iris that is one of the first references to the German

Romantic artist Philipp Otto Runge. In the epic picture of

Farewell to reason the Runge image is a modest inclusion.

Yet his interest in this artist who found new ways of re-

conceptualising landscape through nature symbolism would

flow in wave upon wave through the next phase of Tillers’

art: in works such as the Nature speaks series 1998–2006.

Nature speaks: when locality prevails

By 1998 the groundwork was set for a dynamic

interweaving of two aspects of Tillers’ approach to

painting: the web of interconnections between all things

and an increasing recognition of the significance of

place. The shift in subject matter towards locality was

inseparable from the move Tillers made with his family

to Cooma in late 1996 where he became inspired by the

varied local environment: the garden at their family home

Blairgowrie; the expansive terrain of the surrounding

Monaro region; and the proximity to the Snowy Mountains.

Correspondences with landscape make their presence felt

in a non-literal way – as evocations of nature through text

references including place names and excerpts of poetry

and sensuous layered visual elements.

Drawing upon a poetic analogy of symbolist poets and

artists, the title Nature speaks suggests that nature has its

own voice or language. In particular Tillers was referring

to the Latvian poet Ilze Kalnãre who wrote: ‘The rock

speaks, the mountain speaks, every ear of corn speaks,

every tree and field, in a language so intimate and familiar.’2

The Nature speaks series comprises over one hundred

sixteen-panel works that contain multiple variations as

well as certain constants. As Tillers noted: ‘At first glance

the series appears to proceed like an algorithm because of

the repetition of certain elements within each work – like

the word “horizon”; the Mallarméan mantra “A throw of

the dice will never abolish chance”; the Tau cross of Colin

McCahon’s “load-bearing structures”; and the ubiquitous

cherubim of Philipp Otto Runge from his unfinished

Gesamtkunstwerk “The Times of Day”.’3

In the Nature speaks series some works allude to Tillers’

ongoing connection with a German Romantic tradition

as in Nature speaks (Kosciusko) and Nature speaks: D.

Both include a figure that closely resembles Caspar David

Friedrich’s Wanderer above a misty sea c.1818. If Tillers

allows the cool romantic light of the Snowy Mountains

to envelop the dream-like atmosphere of Nature speaks

Diaspora 1992 oilstick, gouache and synthetic polymer paint on 228 canvasboards Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington

Nature speaks: AU 2002 synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 16 canvasboards, Private collection, Melbourne

Nature speaks: D 2000 synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 16 canvasboards, Private collection

Nature speaks: AT 2002 synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 16 canvasboards, Canberra Museum and Gallery

Nature speaks (Kosciusko) 1999 synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 16 canvasboards, Private collection, Melbourne

Imants Tillers and Michael Jagamara Nelson Nature speaks: AD 2002 synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 16 canvasboards, Private collection, Brisbane

Nature speaks: AQ 2001 synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 16 canvasboards, Australian National University, Canberra


(Kosciusko), in Nature speaks: D he also reminds us that

painting is an illusion. The abstracted dot-screen over the

landscape suggests different ways of seeing and thinking

about art, evoking constellations piercing the night sky. In

other works in the series there is an almost Dada sense of

absurdity, as in Nature speaks: AU where the silhouette

of a man on a bicycle perched on a weather vane over

the horizon suggests the variability and strangeness of

existence as we try to navigate through the labyrinth of

memory and contemporary experience.

In a series that reflects upon the significance of

landscape Tillers felt that he could not overlook the power

of much contemporary Aboriginal art. While Nature

speaks: VI recalls the paintings of Emily Kam Ngwarray,

works such as Nature speaks: AD are the result of

collaborations with Michael Jagamara Nelson. In these

works space is seen from above. In contrast to repeated

references to the horizon, the alternative inscription

appears in a number of works: ‘There is no horizon’,

conveying an alternative way of conceptualising place.

In Nature speaks: AT, Tillers locates us in the landscape

through glowing yellow tones and through place names

such as The ‘Jenny’ Brothers, Cooroo, Kybeyan and on to

Myalla, Nimmitabel and Gaerloch in the region around

Tillers’ home. With the additional inscription of ‘out)back’

in this work we are reminded of a journey that he made

into the interior of Australia in 2000 (also recalled in Nature

speaks: BK 2004). The experience was an enlivening one

for him, coming at a time when his deepening feeling for

place was resonating in his art. As he wrote, ‘it was an

exhilarating and panoramic experience that changed my

perception of our vast and beautiful continent’.4

Throughout the Nature speaks series, the mantra from

Mallarmé’s late daring poem Un coup de dés, ‘A THROW

OF THE DICE WILL NEVER ABOLISH CHANCE’, inscribed in blue

around the edges of the works is a continual reminder

of the importance of chance correspondences that run

through all of his works. The exhibition Imants Tillers: one

world many visions reveals that it is possible to engage

with multiple correspondences and transformations on a

journey through different stages and aspects of the artist’s

works from 1984 to the present. It opens up intriguing

possibilities for our engagement with a distinctive and

intriguing approach to art-making in Tillers’ canvasboard

system: in stacks on the ground; in an intimate installation

of the boards on music stands titled Telepathic music

1994, in the fluctuating rhythms of the Nature speaks

series and in some of the largest and most accomplished

paintings undertaken in Australia.

Deborah HartSenior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture

notes1 Pierre Restany in Diaspora in context: connections in a fragmented

world, Pori Art Museum, Finland, 1995, p. 732 Imants Tillers, ‘When locality prevails’, Heat 8, new series, ed. Ivor

Indyk, Giramondo Publishing Company, Artarmon NSW, p. 1153 Imants Tillers, ‘When locality prevails’, Heat 8, new series, p. 1144 Imants Tillers quoted in Ashley Crawford, ‘Centre grounds Tillers’,

The Age, sighted in the following website on 5 December 2005: www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/05

a

Telepathic music 1994 synthetic polymer paint, gouache 9 double-sided canvasboards 9 K brand music stands, randomly grouped Collection of the artist


As Heiner Bastian has pointed out, Mallarmé wanted

to write poetry similar in concept to the composition of

a painting: ‘Painting – not the thing, but the effect it

creates. Verse should not be composed of words, but

of intentions, and should destroy all words for the sake

of sensation.’ Thus the meaning of a poem can only be

evoked by an inner reflection of the words themselves.

In my own works, particularly over the last decade,

words, phrases and sentences (some of which come from

Mallarmé) float not on the white space of a page but

in and amongst the colours, the forms and the imagery

of a painting. As in Mallarmé, they are not there to be

decoded, to arrive at a precise meaning predetermined

by the author or the artist but rather to generate allusions

and sensations in the reader/viewer.

During the 1980s I was very fortunate to be making

frequent visits to New York and on several notable

occasions I found myself standing in front of one of

Jasper Johns’ masterpieces: Map 1961 in the collection

of the Museum of Modern Art. What appealed to me

particularly was how the structure of the boundaries and

names of the 52 states of the United States (together

sometimes with adjoining bits of Canada and Mexico)

allowed Johns a new kind of freedom with his gestural

brushstrokes. Here, by virtue of some novel constraints,

the Abstract Expressionism of de Kooning was given

a new twist, a new life and a new relevance. It is

perhaps not surprising, given my postmodern bent at

the time, that this work gave me the idea of doing my

own series of Johns’ ‘maps’ (both the paintings and

the prints), a repainting and reconfiguring of his work

from an Antipodean viewpoint. I only completed two

Imants Tillers discusses Terra incognita & Terra negataworks: Prophecy 1989 and Mystic America 1989 which

I exhibited in my fourth and last solo exhibition at the

Bess Cutler Gallery in New York in 1989. (Bess was

disappointed that neither work contained the name of

her birthplace: Saskatchewan.)

Subsequently I experimented with the map of

Australia but found its contour too distinctive and its

subdivisions too few and too plain. It was only with the

discovery of David Horton’s Map of Aboriginal Australia at

the beginning of the new millennium that I found a way

to go forward on this front – for here was not only an

alternative map to the familiar, boring one I had grown up

with at school but the 460 subdivisions demonstrated the

rich diversity of the language/tribal/nation groups of the

Indigenous people of Australia – a fact which had been

largely invisible or unknown to most white Australians

and the rest of the world. Here also, was the palpable

lie to the misguided colonial idea of terra nullius – the

so-called empty, unoccupied continent of 1788. While

the regional divisions on Horton’s map were panoramic,

diverse and fascinating (the Northwest, Southwest,

Desert, Spencer, Kimberley, North Arnhem, Fitzmaurice,

Gulf, West Cape, Torres Strait, East Cape, Rainforest,

Northeast, Eyre, Riverine, Southeast and Tasmania to

name them all), it was the individual names themselves

that most attracted me. I recognised words like Ngarigo,

Arrernte, Luritja, Badjala, Wiradjuri, Adnyamathanha as

a kind of eloquent readymade poetry that I would like to

include in my future paintings.

After about three years’ work on this project, I have

completed two major paintings, both composed of 288

canvasboard panels and measuring 120” x 336” each:

Terra incognita 2005 synthetic polymer paint

and gouache on 288 canvasboards

Collection of the artist


Terra incognita in March 2005 and Terra negata in

November 2005. Terra incognita is of a golden hue and

described by my friend, the semiotician Anne Hénault,

as being ‘syntactical’ while Terra negata is of a red

bronze hue and described as being ‘paradigmatic’. In

Terra incognita I have isolated just the Aboriginal names

themselves (without their defining boundaries) from

Horton’s map and distributed them spatially across the

painting so that they correspond approximately to their

actual geographical locations within the continent of

Australia. In Terra negata the same names are arranged

in the form of an alphabetical list from A to Y, beginning

with the name Alyawarre and ending with Yiman. The

background image in both works – the tangled network

or web of lines derives from a famous painting by the

Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Ngwarray who appeared on

the art scene like a cloudburst in the early 1990s. Her Big

yam dreaming 1995 in the National Gallery of Victoria in

Melbourne is a work to rival Blue Poles or indeed the best

of American Abstract Expressionism be it Pollock or de

Kooning. Furthermore, her painting is a kind of psychic

and yet geographical mapping of the land and in this has

a strange and unexpected affinity with the Jasper Johns

Map 1961 that once had me spellbound in New York.

Thus both Terra incognita (shown for the first time

in this exhibition) and Terra negata (selected for the

Sydney Biennale in 2006) are for me a kind of homage to

Indigenous Australia, a lament for the tragedies of all the

lost tribes, languages and cultures of Australia but also,

simultaneously, a kind of honour roll for the spectacular

resurgence of their culture. This has been revealed to the

wider world largely through art and especially through the

medium of painting – an amazing phenomenon to which

all Australians have borne witness over the last 30 years.

Imants Tillers

Terra negata 2005 (details) synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 288 canvasboards Collection of the artist

Emily Kam Ngwarray Big yam dreaming 1995 synthetic polymer paint on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the Art Foundation of Victoria by Janet and Donald Holt and family, Governors, 1995

a


exhibitions galleries

Michael Riley: sights unseen14 July – 16 October 2006


Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Michael Riley (1960–

2004) was one of the most important Indigenous visual

artists of the past two decades. His film and video work

challenged our perceptions of Indigenous experience,

particularly the experience of disenfranchised

communities in rural and remote eastern Australia,

which he brought to the forefront of international

contemporary art. Riley’s work gained increasing critical

acclaim in the early 21st century, highlighted by his

selection for the 2003 Istanbul Biennial. Riley has been

selected as one of eight artists who will be represented

in the significant Australian Indigenous Art Commission

at the new Musée du quai Branly, due to open in Paris

in June 2006.

Riley’s work draws on both European and North

American traditions – as well as his Indigenous heritage

in Australia. He studied film-making and photography

and was concerned by the contradictions imposed by

European beliefs on the Indigenous people in Australia.

His early photographs are imbued with an aesthetic

beauty, and his subjects possess a sense of dignity and

grace. The black-and-white portraits, with their sensitive

styling and ambient lighting, are the very opposite of the

gritty, socio-political documentary style that emanated

from the Black Power and Indigenous self-determination

movements of the 1970s and ‘80s, often taken by non-

Indigenous photographers.

These sensitive informed portraits of families and

communities are the antithesis of the bleak photojournalist

studies of contemporary Aboriginal life in towns and

cities favoured by the media. There is an obvious warmth

between subject and photographer. It is evident that the

photographer knew his subjects well and shared their

experiences. Throughout all Riley’s work is a sense of

exploration, of using the media of film and photography

to represent the diverse aspects of contemporary

Aboriginal life accurately and to get away from the

stereotype of the drunk in the streets or marching in

protests, and not being involved in everyday life.

All Michael Riley images reproduced courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and VISCOPY, Australia

Untitled from the series cloud [cow] 2000 (detail) printed 2005 chromogenic pigment photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005

Untitled from the series flyblown [galah] 1998 Epsom ultrachrome ink on Ilford Gallerie Gloss photographic paperNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005

Untitled from the series flyblown [gold cross] 1998 Epsom ultrachrome ink on Ilford Gallerie Gloss photographic paperNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005


Michael Riley was born in Dubbo, western New South

Wales, and spent his early childhood on Talbragar

Aboriginal Reserve outside Dubbo, moving to Sydney

in 1976. He was represented in the first Indigenous

photographic exhibition, the NADOC ‘86 Exhibition

of Aboriginal and Islander Photographers, held at the

Aboriginal Artists Gallery in Sydney in September 1986.

In 1987, with nine other Sydney-based Indigenous artists,

he founded Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative,

a seminal force in the contemporary Indigenous visual

arts movement throughout the 1990s. A number of his

films and photo-media work won major national and

international awards. Riley’s work is also represented in

various major public and private collections throughout

Australia, and his early black-and-white photography is

highly sought after by collectors.

His first conceptual body of work was the languidly

beautiful series of 15 gelatin silver images comprising

Sacrifice 1993. It is in this series that the symbol of

the cross – that most potent of Christian icons – first

appeared, looming large against a turbulent sky. Riley

returned to the subject of Christianity in later work, such

as the series flyblown, 1998 and the video Empire, 1997.

Riley’s images reflect what he has described as the

‘sacrifices Aboriginal people made to be Christian’.

They resonate with loss – experienced not only by the

individual, but also by entire Indigenous communities

– loss of culture and land in an enforced or sometimes

embraced exchange for Christianity. Biblical elements

abound in Sacrifice: the cross laid on the chest and

standing out sharp against the sky in an unseen cemetery;

the shimmering skin of the fish is in stark contrast to the

parched earth; the oozing liquid in the dark palms of the

black Christ-like figure evoking his struggle on the cross;

and the granules of sugar, flour and coffee echoing the

rations meted out to Aboriginal people on missions and

hinting at the struggles present-day communities face with

the onslaught of drugs.

In early 1998 Riley was diagnosed with renal failure

and this debilitating illness impacted on his professional

and personal life. Riley’s last and most significant body

of work, cloud, 2001, shifted from terra firma to other

worldly locations, including the paranormal. A dream-like

quality is evoked in the seductive, digitally manipulated


images of the Magritte-like bovine seraph from the

Mission as it floats in mid-air against a background of

clouds; the flight of the boomerang (or barrgan/balgarrn

in Wiradjuri), which is echoed in the wings of the angel, its

back turned to the viewer, face averted; and again in the

splayed wings of the blackbird, the eaglehawk or crow,

and in the crucifix-like span of the native Galang-galang,

or locusts’ wings. There is irony and wit in this image.

Michael Riley: sights unseen reveals the prolific

talents of a quiet observer. Riley’s video, film and

photomedia works continue to have a profound effect

on contemporary representation and comprehension

of Indigenous Australia. The exhibition draws together

a comprehensive body of work, chronicling a period of

intense cultural development and achievement.

Brenda L CroftSenior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Untitled from the series Sacrifice [single fish, cracked earth] 1993 gelatin silver photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the assistance of the KODAK (Australasia) PTY LTD Fund 1993

Untitled from the series cloud [angel with full wings], taken 2000, printed 2005 pigmented prints, ultrachrome chromogenic inks on Ilford Gallery Pearl photographic paper National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005

a

Michael Riley Darrell 1989 gelatin silver photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra


In September 1986 Michael Riley’s moody Hollywood-

style glamour portrait of Kristina (Nehm), a Sydney-

based Black Australian woman, was used on the

invitation card for the opening of the NADOC ‘86

Exhibition of Aboriginal and Islander Photographers at

the Aboriginal Artists Gallery in Clarence Street, Sydney.

The exhibition was part of NADOC ’86, the annual

National Aboriginal Day of Commemoration programs –

now known as NAIDOC Week (National Aboriginal and

Islander Day Observance Committee). The 1986 NADOC

photographic exhibition included some 60 works by

Riley and nine other Indigenous photographers: Mervyn

Bishop, Brenda L. Croft, Tony Davis, Ellen José, Darren

Kemp, Tracey Moffatt, Chris Robinson, Terry Shewring

and Ros Sultan. The style and form varied from artist

to artist across portraiture, landscape, protest marches

and press photographs, including images by Bishop, the

eldest of the group and then the only long-established

professional who had made a famous 1975 Aboriginal

land rights recognition image with then Prime Minister

Gough Whitlam pouring soil in to the hands of Gurindji

Michael Riley Kristina 1986

traditional owner Vincent Lingiari, at Daguragu in the

Northern Territory. The prints were mostly black and

white and the content addressed a wide range of issues

and notions of Aboriginality. Riley and Tracey Moffatt

presented staged portraits that turned upside down

the stereotypes that inhibit the lives and futures of

Indigenous people. For them identity involved issues of

dress and undress and reduction would be dependent

on inserting the unfamiliar dark face and body in the

familiar white scenario. Both Moffatt and Riley worked

outside what they saw as constraints of ‘straight’

photography preferring to stage their images and evoke

earlier types of stereotyped photographic images of

Aboriginal people. Both would also later work in film.

Photographs taken at the opening by Sydney

photographer William Yang show there were indeed

plenty of beautiful and chic Black women and men

present. It was in fact an historic event; the first

exhibition ever held of contemporary art exclusively by

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander photographers. It

was an art opening like any other but that note of style

Kristina 1986 gelatin silver photograph printed 2001National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005 Image exhibited at the NADOC ‘86 Exhibition of Aboriginal and Islander Photographers, Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney 1986


and confidence in that inviting image set the tone of the

show and the future role of Indigenous photographers

in Australian and international art. Riley, Moffatt, Bishop,

Croft and José in particular developed high profile

national and international careers over the next decade.

The NADOC ’86 show was preceded by Koori Art

’84, the pioneering show of Indigenous urban-based

artists which had included several photographers

including Riley and Shewring.

Of the photographers in the 1986 Aboriginal Artists

Gallery show the photographer and nascent film-maker

Tracey Moffatt, attracted the most media attention. She

showed a complex but coolly classic black and white

portraits of dancers from the Islander Dance company

called the Some Lads series and a now iconic colour

portrait of dancer/actor David Gulpilil sprawled on a

car bonnet at Bondi Beach with tinnie in hand, ghetto

blaster at his side and traditional white painted body

markings. Regarding this image the artist made a rare

categorical statement to the media: ‘Why shouldn’t

Aboriginal people go to the beach like anyone else’.

The point was lost on some. Moffatt was to receive quite

a bit of flak for allegedly representing an Aboriginal

person as a drinker of alcohol in a public setting.

One of Riley’s first major works was prominent in

the NADOC ’86 exhibition. This was the dark-toned

head and shoulders portrait of young woman wearing

a luminous white shell or bone necklace which was

marked by an elegiac beauty and other-worldliness

which would become the artist’s signature. It recalled,

and at the same time overwrote, the well-known 19th-

century photographs of Tasmanian Aboriginal woman

Truganinni wearing the maireener shell necklace unique

to the Islander’s craft. After Truganinni’s death her shell

necklace and bracelet were acquired by the Royal Exeter

Museum in England and repatriated to Hobart in 1997,

along with another maireener shell necklace held in

the South Australian Museum. Riley would have been

aware of the issues of violation of Trugannini’s body and

repatriation of her remains from museums. The image

also recalled a 19th-century image by German-born

photographer JW Lindt of a beautiful Grafton Aboriginal

woman wearing a white bone necklace which was

widely reproduced. Lindt made his name and fortune

in the 1870s with sales of staged tableaux photographs

taken in his Grafton studio of local Aboriginal people in

‘authentic’ ethnographic settings.

Riley’s images of Kristina (with and without

sunglasses) in the 1986 exhibition were selected from

a number taken throughout the mid to late 1980s. The

exhibition notice image shows Kristina in a languid

pose leaning on her crossed arms. It seems ‘retro’,

recalling 1930s images of Black American Blues singers

hanging over the piano player. The sunglasses she wears

accentuate the hung-over, I-cant-stand-the-light look of

that genre. Anthony (Ace) Bourke, then Director of the

Aboriginal Artists Gallery, and co-curator of the show

with Moffatt, recalls the picture ‘was very political, black

girls weren’t meant to be seriously chic’. Looking again

at the image, we can’t see her eyes and despite her

small frown imparting a note of anxiety, Kristina oozes

confidence and spirit, no victim here, she flaunts her

sunglasses as a fashionable, not functional artefact. Yet

no Australian fashion magazine then would have hired

a Black model despite the profile of Black singers and

models overseas.

The NADOC ’86 show marked the beginning of

a public profile within the art world for contemporary

Indigenous photographers. The National Gallery acquired

a 2001 print of Kristina 1986 and another portrait

from slightly later, Darrell 1989 in 2005, the latter is

very enigmatic with the young man’s soft-lit face, eyes

lowered and closed, in a Zen-like meditation. At this

time Riley had become a professional artist, he had

taken classes at the Tin Sheds in photography and was

working as Assistant to teacher Bruce Hart at Sydney

College of the Arts. In the 1993 Riley would make his

Sacrifice series of overtly symbolic tableaux ramping up

the spiritual and multilayered readings of his work.

An earlier generation of Australian non-Indigenous

photographers in the seventies had imagined themselves

taking up a ‘new’ medium. For this first generation

of highly directed Indigenous artist-photographers

to begin meant inevitably that first there would be

some backtracking. The medium had a history as an

accomplice to injustice which needed rewriting. Other

Indigenous photographers shows followed in the next

five years aided by the establishment of other dedicated

venues such as Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative

in 1987. New Indigenous photo-based artists and

curators appeared. Issues of dress and undress, which

are central to how the native is seen (and not seen),

remained topical for many.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Australian and International Photography

a

Kristina (no glasses) 1984gelatin silver photographNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005 Vintage print exhibited Koori Art ‘84, Artspace, Sydney


orde poynton gallery

‘All I hAve to be Is brIllIAnt’The American artist James Rosenquist was pleased he was

now exhibiting with the prestigious New York Gallery,

Acquavella. ‘All I have to be now is brilliant’, he recently

mused in conversation. In his career the elusive ‘need to

be brilliant’ is something the artist has constantly searched

for. Sometimes it seemed he was successful, sometimes

he wasn’t, and he could never quite work out why, other

than it sold.1 Rosenquist has an unusual modus operandi

to achieve his goal, art historian Judith Goldman calls it a

‘taste for a convoluted idea’.2 He likes to draw together

visual elements or notions that fascinate or intrigue, which

he then places together to form a complex composition.

With this process, whether the artist is brilliant or not can

only be judged on completion.

In the mid 1980s, when Rosenquist agreed to work at

the print studio at Tyler Graphics Ltd at Mount Kisco, in

New York State, he was required ‘to be brilliant’. The artist

had been invited by Ken Tyler, printer and publisher, to

explore the idea of making some paper pulp works. These

came to form the series Welcome to the water planet

and the works House of fire and Time dust which were

produced in 1988 and 1989. Rosenquist had been a long-

time admirer of Tyler and his working methods. ‘Ken liked

to get his hands dirty’; he was ‘voracious’ in the studio

in his enthusiasm for new ideas about printmaking, new

techniques, new materials.

Tyler’s approach was in stark contrast to Rosenquist’s

early experience in printmaking, when he made his first

lithographs in 1965 and 1966 with publisher Tatanya

Grosman at Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip,

New York. He found the atmosphere of the studio ‘old

fashioned’ with more traditional technical methods used,

leisurely lunches and no sense of urgency.

As a young man Rosenquist had long desired to

become an artist. Born in provincial Grand Forks in

North Dakota in 1933, he studied at the University

of Minnesota, supporting himself by painting Phillips

66 Gasoline signs as he travelled to the border of the

State of Iowa. Rosenquist then graduated to painting

billboards, including the billboards advertising Davy

Crockett, ‘King of the Wild Frontier’, the film first released

in 1954. He painted two versions of this up and down

the highways leading to Minneapolis. The following year

he left the Midwest for New York to pursue an artistic

career, winning a scholarship to attend the Art Students

League in New York. There he continued painting

billboards to support himself. His work now graced the

skyline of New York’s Times Square and Brooklyn and

Rosenquist gained a certain notoriety when he was

featured in an article published on 6 June 1960 and

dubbed, ‘Broadway’s biggest artist’. In this article, not

noted for its understatement, the overly enthusiastic UPI

journalist commented further that while ‘bigness isn’t

always greatness, his creations nonetheless dwarf the

most grandiose artistic accomplishments of Rivera and

Michelangelo’.3

By the 1960s, the experience of painting on a large

scale influenced his own art. Rosenquist began working

on huge canvases and incorporating figures from the mass

media. Because of their very size, the individual forms

became abstracted when viewed close-up. The effect that

scale changed figures from realistic images to abstract

ones was something Rosenquist delighted in.

Rosenquist’s growing popularity as an artist had him

regularly showing at Pop Art’s mecca, the Leo Castelli

Gallery in New York. The Castelli stable of artists included

Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns

and Andy Warhol. All were in some way associated with

Pop Art. This was a movement which evolved in the late

1950s, which embraced ideas, subjects and techniques of

Rosenquist: Welcome to the water planet

James Rosenquist represented by VAGA and

VISCOPY, Australia

Sky hole 198933 colour pressed paper pulp

with lithographic collageon white, handmade, hand-

coloured, TGL paper and white, mould-made Rives

BFK paperpublished by Tyler Graphics

Ltd Purchased with the assistance

of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002

10 June – 12 September 2006



popular culture. Pop saw the adoption of forms, colours

and methods of mass culture drawn from advertising,

television, film, music, comics, pulp novels and magazines.

Rosenquist was one of the central artists who drew

inspiration from such sources. However, unlike other Pop

artists, Rosenquist’s art method of the convoluted idea

made his imagery not immediately clear. It was an art of

fragments juxtaposed in often apparently bizarre, but at

the time oddly pleasing, sequences.

Rosenquist’s association with Ken Tyler goes back

many years to the time when he was keen to be further

involved in printmaking to reach a wider audience through

using new media. The artist and printer had planned

to work at Gemini GEL in Los Angeles decades earlier.

However, as fate would have it, Rosenquist had a car

accident in 1971 in which the artist, his wife and child

were seriously injured and so nothing came of their first

attempt to work together in the early 1970s. In 1974 they

met in Bedford New York when Tyler had moved to the

east coast of the USA, but again nothing eventuated.4 The

1970s were a testing time for Rosenquist, both personally

and as an artist, and he said of these years that they were

‘not a very good time in my art work at all’.5

As Rosenquist’s career advanced both as a painter and

maker of prints, his progress in each medium was decidedly

uneven. In fact, the artist had become disillusioned with

printmaking. He found painting more immediate, on a

larger scale, and a more inventive way of making art. In

contrast, he came to consider that prints were too small,

too rigid in technique and lacked spontaneity. When, in

1987, Tyler wrote to Rosenquist inviting him to work at his

new purpose-built workshop at Mount Kisco in upstate

New York, he needed to be convinced the experience

would be worthwhile – that making paper works and

lithography with Tyler would be different from his earlier

experiences. In response, Tyler promised Rosenquist that he

would provide handmade paper as big as the artist could

imagine and then sent him sketches of his premises and

equipment. By the next year, Rosenquist had agreed to

work at Tyler’s studio.

The new premises at Mount Kisco were established to

further Tyler’s desire to provide the utmost assistance for

artists who worked with him on print projects. In discussion

it became apparent that the intention was that Rosenquist

and the printer would develop a project – perhaps to make

some paper pulp works. Tyler had a long held an interest in

handmade papers. He had worked on collaboration in 1973–

74 with Robert Rauschenberg at the Richard de Bas paper

mill in France, where the artist made 12 paper works. Tyler

then continued with paper pulp projects in the 1970s with

artists Elsworth Kelly, Keith Noland and later, in 1979, David

Hockney. Hockney produced spectacular paper pulp works,

notably in his Paper Pools series, which brought paper works

to new heights in terms of scale, colour and textures.

Time dust 199282 colour pressed paper pulp, lithograph, screenprint, relief, etching, stamping and collage

printed from one copper plate, 59 aluminium plates, four magnesium plates and 12 screens on seven sheets of white, handmade, hand-coloured, TGL paper; white,

mould-made Rives BFK paper; black/gold marble Dri-Print

metalized foilpublished by Tyler Graphics LtdPurchased with the assistance

of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002



When he arrived, Rosenquist had an idea, a convoluted

one, which he hoped would develop as an image – slow

heating popcorn taking its time – and tying this notion

together with his growing concern about the state of

planet earth – the only water planet known in existence

in the universe at this time. Arriving at the workshop,

Rosenquist had the same need ‘to be brilliant’. He mulled

over such disparate thoughts. Telling Ken of his initial idea,

Tyler joked, ‘Well, that was one idea, where are the rest

of your ideas?’. As an artist Rosenquist liked to work with

fluid concepts initially for what became the Water planet

project, which would then take shape during his time at

the Tyler studio: ‘So then we’re getting into this print called

The bird of paradise approaches the hot water planet. He

says, “What’s the next idea?” So I brought them the next

idea. He says, “Oh great! That’s fabulous. Where’s the next

one?” I said, “I don’t have any idea yet”.’6

In fact, Rosenquist wished to remain as spontaneous

as he could, untrammelled by long-held or preconceived

ideas. ‘I wanted them to come right out of the air’.7 To

work in this manner required a print workshop which could

be innovative and on the spot. Rosenquist was pleased

to be working with Tyler on such a momentous project

because he considered him ‘probably the best printing

technician in the world’. Unlike other printers who, when

faced with a difficult task put to them by the artist, would

shake their heads and say sorry they couldn’t deal with the

new ideas, ‘with Ken – he’d look at you, walk away and

the next day he would have devised something to make

the new idea work. Nothing would stop him … he would

go to any length … He would never say no.’ For the project

Tyler devised a huge deckle box to make hand-made

papers some 150 x 305 cm, and a giant printing press for

lithography and etching (305 x 610 cm).

Over the months as the pair worked together a series of

large-scale paper pulp works evolved, using huge sheets of

handmade paper made on the TGL premises. The project

was inspired by the exotic vegetation of Florida where his

studio was in Aripeka on the Gulf of Mexico and reflected

Rosenquist’s disquiet with what was happening to the

earth. All this combined to project Rosenquist’s concern,

‘We all live on the water planet’, the artist discussed at an

interview, ‘John Glenn [the first American astronaut to orbit

the earth] said when he went into space he turned around

and looked at Earth, and he wondered why so many people

were spending so much money on blowing it up, and they

actually lived on it. It seems very bizarre’.8 Rosenquist’s

series of paper works were intended to act both as a

celebration and a warning to what might happen to the

water planet.

Rosenquist included imagery which evoked the

colourful and sensual riches of the earth and brilliant

flora from Florida, set within a wondrous star-lit universe.

This he combined with the contrasting ideas about the

artonview autumn 2006 27


mistreatment and destruction of the earth represented

by detritus, pots and pans, rocket ships, fighter planes or

missiles of destruction with the addition of torpedos in

the form of ruby red lipsticks or jet engines as acid green

pencils. ‘The water planet is earth. A visitor from another

universe comes by, and we say, “hey, welcome to this

mess! It’s hell, it’s burning up, but come on in!”’9

The first idea Rosenquist came to form was The bird

of paradise approaches the hot water planet. From his

early days as a billboard artist it was Rosenquist’s habit

to work from a small drawing, often a collage of various

images, and upscale the composition and develop this

to be a gargantuan size. Deconstructing the image into

its component parts, artist and printer decided to make

the curved lines of cross-hatching, so characteristic of

Rosenquist’s work in general at this time, and it would

then be printed in colour lithography. These lithographic

elements would then form a collage which would be

laid for a brilliantly coloured paper pulp sheet. The

separate colours were made by filling different moulds

with paper pulp placed on top of the large sheets of

handmade paper which were cut out in metal according

to Rosenquist’s design.

At the initial stages of the project the method of

using metal moulds, or ‘cookie cutters’, was clumsy, time-

consuming, and the paper pulp lacked consistency – it

was just ‘so awful’, Rosenquist remembered. The paper

pulp was messy and not easy to control. Rosenquist was

also frustrated by the lack of spontaneity in the whole

procedure. He was loosing momentum. To counteract these

problems, Tyler worked on the consistency of the pulp and

the shapes of the moulds, but still there were problems

in translating Rosenquist’s designs into paper form. The

artist developed a group of templates which took a great

deal of time to make, based on his drawings and cut for

each form he wanted. Tyler drew on his own technical

expertise and the constant desire for experimentation and

innovation to solve problems in the workshop. For the

large areas of graded colour, impossible to achieve using

mould shapes, Tyler proposed to use a spray gun, used for

applying stucco to walls in houses which could spray the

gradations of brilliant and unusual colour across the pulp

on which the lithographic elements were collaged. The

technique was a success and the results were glorious with

a look of apparent spontaneity and effortlessness, which

belied the hours of preparation and a technique born of

experimentation.

Rosenquist was delighted with his paper pulp works.

‘The wonderful thing about paper pulp is the colour. If

you take a magnifying glass, you’ll see a little fuzz rising

like smoke off the surface of this handmade paper – like

doing giant watercolours and letting this watercolour seep

together at the perfect moment … ’10

Jane KinsmanSenior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

notes1 James Rosenquist in conversation with Jane Kinsman, 9 March 2006.

All quotes with text refer to this interview unless otherwise indicated.2 Judith Goldman, ‘Whenever you’re ready, let me know’, in James

Rosenquist: Welcome to the water planet and house of fire 1988–1989, Mount Kisco, United States: Tyler Graphics Ltd, 1989, p. 13. For further reading see Constance W. Glenn, Complete Graphic Works 1962–1992, New York: Rizzoli, 1993, cat. nos. 214–23, Time dust, illustrated, pp. 160–68.

3 United Press International, 6 June 1960, quoted in Judith Goldman, James Rosenquist, New York: Viking Penguin, 1985, p. 25.

4 Ken Tyler in correspondence with Jane Kinsman, 18 April 2006.5 James Rosenquist referring to the years 1971 to 1977, quoted in

Constance W. Glenn, Time dust: James Rosenquist, Complete Graphics: 1962–1992, New York: Rizzoli, 1993, p.51.

6 James Rosenquist in Welcome to the water planet (Documentary film) (New York: Seven Hills Production, 1989)7 James Rosenquist (Documentary film) 1989 8 James Rosenquist (Documentary film) 19899 James Rosenquist quoted in Walter Hopps and Sarah Bancroft, James Rosenquist: A retrospective, New York: Guggenheim, c. 2003, pp. 126–27.10 James Rosenquist (Documentary film) 1989

previous page:Space dust 1989

20 colour pressed paper pulp with lithographic

collageon white, handmade, hand-

coloured, TGL paper and white, mould-made Rives

BFK paperpublished by Tyler Graphics

LtdPurchased with the

assistance of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002

James Ronsenquist working with Ken Tyler on Skull

Snap, state I at Tyler Graphics Ltd, 1989

The bird of paradise approaches the hot water

planet 198933 colour pressed paper

pulp with lithographic collage on two sheets

of white, handmade, hand-coloured, TGL paper and

white, mould-made Rives BFK paper

published by Tyler Graphics Ltd

Purchased with the assistance of the Orde

Poynton Fund 2002

a



Right here right now: Recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander acquisitions presents a selection of works from

across the breadth and depth of Indigenous visual art and

culture in Australia over the past two centuries, acquired

during the last two years, which have not yet been on

public display. Media include bark painting, fibre-work and

textiles, print-making, drawing, painting and sculpture,

with themes ranging from the ancestral and ancient in

Indigenous and European time, to the cutting edge of

political society in Australia today.

Works are by leading contemporary artists such as

bark painter and lorrkon (hollow log) maker, Kuninjku

artist John Mawurndjul, whose work has been selected

for the prestigious Australian Indigenous Art Commission

(AIAC) at the new Musée du quai Branly in Paris; a series

of oils on canvas with a specifically Indigenous perspective

on Christianity by Julie Dowling (Yamatji/Badimaya

people), the edgy satire of Waanyi/Waanjiminjin artist

Gordon Hookey; to memento mori in the work of Kuku/

Erub artist Clinton Nain, in a stunning series of panels

by Ungkum artist Rosella Namok and a recent canvas by

renowned Waanyi artist Judy Watson, whose work is also

represented in the AIAC.

A group of paintings by emerging Kudjla/Gangalu

artist Daniel Boyd, visually pun on the concepts of

terra nullius, buccaneering and stolen wealth, drawing

inspiration from 18th-century portraiture filtered through

the artist’s 21st-century perspective.

These works are shown alongside a stunning body

of canvases by established and emerging Papunya

Tula artists; paintings by emerging artist Ngoia Pollard

Napaltjarri from Utopia in central Australia; Bidyadanga

and Parnggurr communities in north-east Western

Australia, and Peppimenarti in the Northern Territory; and

superb lorrkon and larrikitj [hollow logs] by rising artists

from Maningrida and Yirrkala, Timothy Wulanjbirr and

Naminapu Maymuru-White, respectively, whose work

has gained increasing notice in the past year. Tiwi artists

Jean Baptist Apuatimi and Timothy Cook present their

distinctive vision rendered in ochre.

Works on paper by foremost Torres Strait Islander

print-maker, Dennis Nona (Kala Lagaw Ya people), are

highlighted by the innovative approach to working with a

diversity of media on paper by senior Arnhem Land artist

Paddy Fordham Wainburranga (Rembarrnga people).

A whimsical approach is evident in the objects of

south-eastern artist Lola Ryan, and Blackstone, Western

Australian artist Kantjupayi Benson (Ngaanyatjarra people),

whose individual approaches to their work encompass

intimate and recent history. Other objects and textile

works include two rare late 19th-century bicornual baskets

from Far North Queensland, a magnificent burial basket

by renowned Ngarrindjeri weaver, Yvonne Koolmatrie,

textiles by local and regional artists, and a series of vibrant

weavings by Maningrida artists.

Such contemporary works complement recent

acquisitions of historical works, which include a stunning

19th-century Torres Strait Islander mask by an unknown

maker; a wonderful carving of the wife of Gurrmirringu,

the ancestral hunter by David Malangi Daymirringu; a

series of spectacular painted boards created in the early

1970s by Wadeye (Port Keats) artists; and paintings by

renowned Warmun artists, the late George Mung Mung

and his contemporary, Hector Jandany, elder statesman in

the community today.

Brenda L Croft Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Right here right now Recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander acquisitions13 May – 13 August 2006

project gallery

13 May – 13 August 2006

Unknown Maker Rainforest people

Jawun basket [bicornual] 1900s lawyer cane

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005

Julie Dowling Badimaya/Yamatji people

Laid in his tomb oil on canvas


a

Daniel Boyd Kudjla/Gangalu people

Captain no beard oil on canvas


Dennis NonaKala Lagaw Ya people Awai Yithuyil (Badu Island Story) relief National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005


Unknown Maker Torres Strait Islander people Mask wood, shell, resin, human hair, fibre string, white pigment National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2006

Doreen Reid Nakamarra Pintupi people, Nakamarra subsection Untitled synthetic polymer paint on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2005 © Doreen Reid Nakamarra and Papunya Tula Artists


Shane Cotton Three-quarter view

In recent years Shane Cotton has emerged as one of

Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant contemporary

painters. Working within postmodern and post-colonial

frameworks, Cotton combines appropriated imagery from

Maori and pakeha (non-indigenous New Zealanders) sources

to create hybrid, poetic paintings, which investigate the

shared experience of the country’s two cultures.

Three-quarter view is dominated by the moko (facial

tattoo) of 19th-century British flax trader, Barnet Burns. The

striking physical transformation of the Englishman resulted

from his extraordinary decision to live amongst the Maori

from the 1830s. Cotton used a 19th-century etching of

Burns as his source, yet his painting process transforms the

original. Removing all signs of Burns’ Englishness, the artist

has reproduced only his moko in two-tone blues. Hovering

around the disembodied face are targets, sparrows and

a goldfinch. The avian motif has particular importance

in Maori cosmology and the goldfinch symbolises the

passion of Christ in western religious art. The captivating

combination alludes to the complex relationship between

Christianity, colonialism, and contemporary culture.

Three-quarter view is the final painting in a series of

three works based on historic etchings and photographs.

Each work presents a portrait painted from a different angle:

a frontal view, a profile view, and a three-quarter view. The

first painting depicts the carved self-portrait of 19th-century

Maori chief, Hongi Hika. Hika displayed great interest in

European culture and travelled to England in 1820. The

interrelation between the narratives of Hika and Burns is of

particular interest to Cotton: ‘it reflects ideas associated with

gain and loss, which encircle racial and cultural exchange.

Between the spaces of the frontal and profile view, is the

three-quarter view; a space of difference: a space of change’ (‘Trans-former’, Keynote address, AAANZ conference, Power

Institute, 2005). In this way, Three-quarter view creates

a ‘liminal’ space in which colonial narratives are blurred

and new cultural possibilities are engendered. Cotton’s art

questions the notion of indivisible cultural identity, looking

instead to the indeterminate space between Maori and

pakeha perspectives.

Olivia SophiaIntern, Australian Painting and Sculpture, from the Australian National University

new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Shane Cotton Three-quarter view 2005

acrylic on canvaspurchased 2005


In the early decades of the colony watercolour was one of

the few media for recording Australia’s natural history and

landscape. One of the most successful artists of this period

was John Lewin, the first professional artist to reside in

Australia as a free settler, who arrived in the fledgling

colony in January 1800. Trained by his ornithologist father

in England, Lewin was skilled in the art of natural history

painting. He rarely had the luxury of painting subjects of

his choice, but readily accepted commissions from those

interested in the natural oddities of flora and fauna or

those who wanted ‘portraits’ of their houses as proof of

their success in this strange new land. The National Gallery

holds several watercolours by Lewin and his Government

House Parramatta. December 1806 is the earliest

watercolour painted in Australia in the collection. Lewin

was fortunate to come under the successive patronage

of governors Hunter, King, Bligh and Macquarie, and

accompanied field expeditions, documenting many natural

John Lewin Studies of a remora fish c. 1807 watercolour on paper

history subjects, including the first known depiction of a

koala following an 1801 expedition to the Hunter River.

The most recent addition of Lewin’s work to the

collection is his Studies of a remora fish c. 1807. This

watercolour shows two studies of a remora fish – one is a

full-length view from above and the other is the underside

of the head. The fish is painted in a monotone grey

watercolour in delicate detail, with particular attention

given to the head and mouth and underside of the head.

There is no background to distract from this faithfully

rendered natural history study. The work is inscribed

across the top of the sheet “16 inches in length & 5 in

Girth – Black on the Back with a Black Stripe on the side”

and “Under side of the Head” above the view of the

fish’s head. This work was originally in the collection of

Governor William Bligh and was held by the family until

recent times.

Anne McDonaldCurator, Australian Prints and Drawings

John Lewin Studies of a remora fish

new acquisition Australian Prints, Drawings and I llustrated Books


new acquisition International Photography

Shinzo Fukuhara was the most prominent and influential

amateur art photographer in Japan between the world

wars and the driving force behind various camera societies,

exhibitions and publications. He was very western in

business having completed his education in America as well

as having spent time in Paris in 1913 where he mixed with

avant-garde artists and pursued his own art photography.

Recalled to Japan at the advent of the First World War,

Fukuhara took over direction of the old family pharmacy

business, and during the 1920s created the international

cosmetics corporation Shiseido. His personal art, however,

was very romantic and his first photobook – published in

Japan in 1922 – was of soft-focus impressionistic studies

from his pre-war sojourn in Paris.

In 1930 Fukuhara travelled to China and photographed

the long-established tourist destination of the West Lake

at Hangzhou. The sub-title came from his influential 1923

Shinzo Fukuhara photogravure plate from

Beautiful West Lake: the light with its harmony Tokyo: Nihon Sashin-kai [Japan

Photographic Society] 1931

essay ‘The Light with its harmony’ in which Fukuhara

promoted a manifesto for photographic art reflecting

national character (Japaneseness) based on the abstract

qualities of light merged with the aesthetics of traditional

arts and culture. Fukuhara’s various photobooks were very

other-worldly, usually about places by water with literary

associations. His last published book The Sunny Hawaii

(1935) embraced a more modernist clarity of light and form.

Fukuhara’s advocacy of an international style of

Pictorialist art photography while seeking to define a

national character parallels the activities of Harold Cazneaux

and his Australian contemporaries in founding the Sydney

Camera Circle in 1916 to promote an Australian school of

sunshine photography expressing the national character.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Australian and International Photography

Shinzo Fukuhara Beautiful West Lake: the light with its harmony


Since 1990, Jake and Dinos Chapman have successfully

worked as a sculptural team who employ shock tactics

to make statements about, amongst other things, the

warmongering of the capitalist West. When the Chapman

Brothers decided to produce a series of prints in 1999 the

result was a portfolio of 83 exquisitely executed etchings

that takes both its name, and its inspiration, from Francisco

Goya’s famous cycle of prints Los desastres de la guerra

[The disasters of war], 1810–20.

In a highly skilled but idiosyncratic application of

aquatint, drypoint and hard and soft-ground etching,

The Disasters of war seems to herald a return to the time-

honoured techniques and perfection of process found

in traditional etchings. However, this intimate aesthetic

contrasts profoundly with the relentless repetition of

swastikas, mutilated bodies, scenes of torture and devilish

figures that the Chapmans present as subject matter.

Their view of the world is that it is one that has gone

completely mad, a dystopia of human depravity and moral

deterioration. Re-translating Goya’s war imagery and re-

contextualising their own sculptural works, the Chapman

Brothers have created nightmarish image upon nightmarish

image, the culmination of which is a powerful statement

about human evil in the 21st century. If you feel sick, you’re

supposed to. If you want to look away, but can’t, the

Chapmans have succeeded again.

In many of the etchings, the postmodernist combination

of infantile humour and profound horror allows the artists

to simultaneously seduce and revolt their audience. Not an

easy task when you consider, as the Chapmans do, that

the audience is made up of desensitised spectators. The

Chapmans’ tactic is to position their audience as voyeurs,

only to disgust them with the depravity of the world in which

they live. As a result, the Disasters of war portfolio affects

the viewer with the full force of a visual slap across the face.

Offensive? Distressing? Yes. And that’s the point.

Jaklyn BabingtonAssistant Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

new acquisition International Prints, Drawings and I llustrated Books

The Chapman Brothers Disasters of war

Jake and Dinos Chapman plate 14 from the Disasters of war portfolio 1999 etching, drypoint and aquatint The Orde Poynton Bequest, 2005


new acquisition Asian Art

While the great architectural complexes of Angkor Wat and

Borobodur have ensured that the Hindu-Buddhist sculpture

of Southeast Asia is well known, the art created for rituals

related to the earlier but enduring animist beliefs of the region

is often overlooked. This is especially the case for the sculpture

of Vietnam which has always been eclipsed in western art

collections by the arts of neighbouring Cambodia.

This striking stylised image of a bird, probably representing

a peacock, was made for a burial site of one of the ethnic

minorities, primarily dry rice cultivators, who inhabit the

forested highland areas of central and northern Vietnam. Left

to disintegrate after the graves are ritually abandoned, few

such sculptures have survived. This fine example has been in

a private collection in France since it was collected in the early

20th century. As a result, unlike most Jarai funerary sculpture,

which is often badly eroded and grey in colour from being

exposed to the elements, the surface of the bird is polished

and well preserved.

For the animist Jarai, a year or so following a death,

an elaborate ceremony is performed when a large house-

like tomb structure of wood and basketry is constructed.

The grave site in the village of the dead is surrounded by

sculptures of birds, animals and, more commonly, human

figures, sometimes with overt genitalia and depicted in sexual

acts. Two fretwork wooden panels from the top of such a

tomb-house, in the Gallery’s collection of ancestral art once

belonging to the Surrealist artist Max Ernst, depict birds and

human figures in erotic poses. This starkly angular bird is

perched on a pair of oxen horns or tusks, the tips of which are

now missing. A small cavity on the top of its head indicates a

missing crest.

Unlike many Southeast Asian cultures, figurative sculpture

is only created by the Jarai for these secondary funerary rites.

Also unusual for a region where pilgrimages to the grave

sites of ancestors are considered vital to the wellbeing of the

spirit of the deceased and the living descendants, the Jarai

neglect the village of the dead with its tombs and surrounding

sculptures after the ceremony of closure. Both the dead and

the living move on, the community returning to the village

of the living and its everyday activities, while the spirit of the

dead moves westward, perhaps to return in the future as dew

at the birth of a child to the family of the deceased.

Ron Radford Director

possibly Jarai people, Vietnam

Funerary bird early 20th century

teak

Last rites: funerary bird from Vietnam


The maker of this extremely rare and highly significant

cultural object is unknown, but it is immediately

recognisable as being from the Torres Strait Islands, and

as having been created during the 19th century, if not

earlier. The majority of Torres Strait Islander masks were

used and worn during sacred ceremonies, initiations,

sorcery and other customary rituals. This particular mask

may have come from the north-western part of the Torres

Strait, possibly Saibai Island, or been traded from a nearby

coastal village in Papua New Guinea.

Nineteenth-century Torres Strait Islander objects

are rarely found in either private or public collections in

Australia due to the destruction of cultural material that

occurred as a result of the arrival of Christian missionaries

in the late 1800s. Torres Strait Islanders faced significant

historical, cultural and social change when Reverend

Samuel MacFarlane of the London Missionary Society

brought Christianity to the Torres Strait on 1 July 1871.

This is referred to by the Islanders as ‘Coming of the

Light’ and is celebrated annually on 1 July by all Torres

Strait Islander communities throughout the Torres Strait

and mainland Australia.

Examples of 19th-century Torres Strait Islander masks

are held in the collections of the Cambridge University of

Archaeology and Anthropology, UK (Haddon Collection);

the Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA; the de Young

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, USA; Horniman

Museum, London, UK; the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford,

UK; and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa,

Wellington, NZ.

This acquisition emphasises the importance of building

upon Torres Strait Islander representation within the

National Collection. The work is on display in Right here

right now: Recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

acquisitions, Project Gallery, National Gallery of Australia

13 May – 13 August 2006.

Brenda L Croft Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Simona BarkusTrainee Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

19th-century Torres Strait Island mask

new acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Unknown Maker Torres Strait Islander Mask – 19th century Torres Strait Islander 19th centurywood, shell, resin, human hair, fibre string, white pigment purchased 2006


Combining engaging and surreal subject matter with

consummate craftsmanship, Sergei Isupov’s painted figural

ceramics alarm us at first glance, as we realise that they

are revealing only one of several contradictory faces to

the viewer. In the theatre of his imagination, heads sprout

secondary figures, horns and hybrid animal limbs while faces

and bodies become screens for a flotilla of painted figures

that seem to have escaped from the world of Hieronymous

Bosch. Isupov’s subjects exude calm repose, making the

theatre of anguished humanity painted on them even more

poignant as bizarre figures play out themes of birth, love,

sex, jealousy, anxiety and death.

Each porcelain work is hand-built and painted with

stained porcelain slip and glazes before being fired, a

time-consuming and exacting process that Isupov tackles

with equal measures of playfulness and discipline. Born

in Stavropole, Russia in 1963 and trained in classical

painting and ceramics in Kiev, Ukraine, and Tallin, Estonia,

before taking residency in the United States of America

in 1993, Isupov has personal experience of two very

different cultures. His graphic visualisation of that duality

is encapsulated in To be object of attentions, with its two

faces looking in opposite directions, apparently unaware

of each other but linked by figures that seem to have

materialised from a shared imagination.

Sergei Isupov’s ceramics were first seen in Australia

in the National Gallery of Australia’s 2005 exhibition,

Transformations: the language of craft, during which he

spoke on his work at the Gallery before undertaking a

studio residency at the JamFactory Contemporary Craft

and Design Centre in Adelaide. This work, one of the most-

discussed in the exhibition, was acquired in 2005, adding a

new dimension to the Gallery’s collection of contemporary

ceramics.

Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Sergei Isupov To be object of attentions

Sergei Isupov To be object of attentions

2004 painted and glazed porcelain

Purchased 2005 Photograph: Katherine Wetzel, courtesy Ferrin

Gallery

new acquisition International Decorative Arts and Design

travelling exhibitions winter 2006

Place made: Australian Print Workshop Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia

This exhibition is a snapshot of the involvement of Australian artists in the production of prints and their concerns stylistically, technically and politically produced at the Australian Print Workshop between 1981 and 2002. The works are selected from an archive of 3,500 works acquired by National Gallery of Australia in 2002 through the assistance of the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund. nga.gov.au/Placemade

Geelong Gallery, Geelong Vic., 7 April – 4 June 2006

MOIST: Australian watercolours Moist is a rare glimpse into the National Gallery of Australia’s extraordinary collection of Australian watercolours. While the title refers to the liquid nature of watercolour, the word ‘moist’ elicits images of an atmospheric, physical or emotional state of being. The watercolours in Moist will demonstrate how Australian artists have created visual representations of such states, from the highly figurative to the purely abstract and intensely emotional. While each has its own story there are also common threads that draw them together. nga.gov.au/Moist

Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery, Townsville QLD, 26 May – 9 July 2006

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington Vic., 25 July – 24 September 2006

An artist abroad: the prints of James McNeill Whistler James McNeill Whistler was a key figure in the European art world of the 19th century. Influenced by the French Realists, the Dutch, Venetian and Japanese masters Whistler’s prints are sublime visions of people and the places they inhabit. nga.gov.au/Whistler

University Art Museum, University of Queensland, St Lucia QLD, 6 August – 1 October 2006

Tim Maguire Hollyhocks 1991 (detail) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Australian Print Workshop Archive 2, purchased with the assistance of the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2002

The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions: The 1888 Melbourne Cup and three suitcases of works of art: Red case: Myths and Rituals includes works which reflect the spiritual beliefs of different cultures; Yellow case: Form, Space, Design reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue case: Technology. The suitcases thematically present a selection of art and design objects for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres that may be borrowed free-of-charge. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn

Red case: Myths and Rituals and Yellow case: Form, Space and Design Australian Embassy in Washington, Washington DC, USA, 10 April – 25 June 2006

Coffs Harbour City Gallery, 10 July – 24 September 2006

Blue case: Technology Australian Embassy in Washington, Washington DC, USA, 10 April – 25 June 2006

Barossa Regional Gallery, Barossa SA, 3 July – 30 July 2006

Caloundra Regional Art Gallery, Caloundra QLD, 7 August – 17 September 2006

The 1888 Melbourne Cup Australian Embassy in Washington, Washington DC, USA, 10 April – 25 June 2006

Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change. Please contact the gallery or venue before your visit. For more information please contact (612)6240 6556 or email: [email protected].

Seated Ganesha Sri Lanka 9th–10th century (detail) from Red case: myths and rituals National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibitions Program is generously supported by Australian airExpress.


Kenneth Macqueen Summer sky c. 1935 (detail) watercolour and pencil on paper Purchased 1965 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © The Macqueen family

James McNeill Whistler Portrait of Whistler 1859 (detail) etching and drypoint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Karl Lawrence Millard Lizard grinder 2000 (detail) brass, bronze, copper, sterling silver, money metal, Peugeot mechanism, stainless steel screws National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

David Wallace Stockman and horse 1997 recycled materials including wire, fabric, plastic, buttons National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The 1888 Melbourne Cup (detail) The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift National Gallery of Australia, Canberra


From the late 1920s in New York, Anton Bruehl

(1900–1982) was the doyen of advertising photography.

He is best known today as a pioneer of brilliant colour

photography produced under exclusive contract to the

Condé Nast magazine group. Bruehl also specialised

in theatre studies, often recreating sets and scenes

from musicals in his studio for absolute quality

control. He was equally acclaimed internationally in art

photography salons and in 1933 published an award-

winning book of photographs of Mexico in a classic

straight documentary style.

Despite his German name, Anton Bruehl was not

one of the many European photographers drawn or

driven to America in the 1930s; instead he was from

the dry regions of South Australia, born in Hawker in

1900. His German-born father was a well-respected

and technically inventive medical doctor, a skill passed

on, as Anton was a meticulous technician and skilled

craftsman.

In February this year, businessman and San Francisco

art collector Anton Bruehl Jr presented his personal

collection of his father’s work to the National Gallery of

Australia through the American Friends of the National

Gallery of Australia. The Anton Bruehl Gift is the highest

in value ever to have been presented to the photography

collection. Now in the art store at the Gallery, Anton

Bruehl’s work keeps company with that of his Australian

contemporary Max Dupain, as well as a gem-like

collection of mid 20th-century American advertising

photography.

While in Australia in 2001, Anton Bruehl Jr visited

the National Gallery of Australia after hearing of the

Gallery’s purchase of a selection of iconic Bruehl prints,

in part with funds from Dr Peter Farrell. We viewed the

Gallery’s collection of American advertising photography

and maintained contact through the following years. In

2004 I visited the Bruehls in San Francisco where, sitting

on their couch, I first heard that Anton Jr wanted his

collection to come to Australia. The Bruehl Gift of 112

photographs including some 20 original colour images

covers Bruehl’s career from the 1920s through to the

figure studies of the 1950s. Although he has travelled to

Australia a number of times on business, Anton Bruehl

Jr has no strong connections with Australia; his singular

gesture is in recognition of his father’s birthplace, simply

saying ‘it felt right’.

Anton Bruehl first took up photography as a

teenager after his older brother Martin gave him a box

camera. He developed his skills in Melbourne where

he trained as an electrical engineer and worked for an

American engineering firm with colleagues who were

also interested in camera art. Bruehl immigrated to New

York in 1919 to work for Western Electric. Some years

after his arrival in New York, Bruehl was inspired to make

photography his vocation after studying and teaching at

Clarence White’s School of Photography in New York.

Bruehl was in partnership briefly with Ralph Steiner,

who worked with Bruehl on launching a hugely popular

series of photographic tableaux advertisements for

Weber and Heilbroner fabrics in the pages of the New

new acquisition

The Anton Bruehl Gift

all works Gift of Anton Bruehl Jr, 2006, through

the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia

Anton Bruehl Lexington Avenue New York studio logo

Martin Bruehl

Portrait of Anton Bruehl in the studio, New York 1937

as published in a Condé Nast magazine article on ‘Cinema

Arts’ in 1937

Anton Bruehl Swimsuit advertisement

1950s dye transfer colour photograph


Yorker in 1927–30. In these images cut-out paper figures

of three men in suits were seen carrying on through

various travels and adventures throughout which their

clothing triumphed. The ‘Fabric Group’ ads won Bruehl

the Art Directors Club Medal for 1928. Bruehl opened

his second, larger studio on Lexington Avenue in 1927

and persuaded his brother Martin, a structural engineer

in Australia, to immigrate to New York. The brothers

then brought their parents to live in America.

The Bruehl studio began to supply images regularly

for the Condé Nast publications – Vogue, Vanity Fair

and House and Garden. At Nast’s instigation and despite

the cutbacks in most magazines during the Depression,

Bruehl worked with photo-technician Fernand Bourges

on developing very high quality colour photographs. The

first of 195 Bruehl–Bourges process colour photographs

appeared in the May 1932 issue of Vogue. The cost of

production was enormous but so were the meticulous

and inventive tableaux Bruehl designed for each job.

Bruehl became an American citizen in 1940 when he

married journalist Sara Barnes. They had three children,

Steven, David and Tony (the donor of the Bruehl Gift).

The Bruehl studio remained in operation until 1966.

Anton retired to Florida in the 1970s and died in San

Francisco in 1982. The Bruehl family never returned to

Australia, but, interestingly, Anton named the beloved

sailboat he built, the Yarra. The National Gallery is

undertaking a major retrospective and publication on

Bruehl’s career.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography

a

Anton Bruehl Christmas pageant

advertisement 1950s dye transfer colour photograph

Anton Bruehl

‘Four Roses’ Whiskey advertisement c. 1950 dye transfer colour photograph

Anton Bruehl

Unidentified man in workshop c. 1925 gelatin

silver photograph


Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in

Southeast Asia

The Gallery has been delighted with the partnership

formed with Santos – the major sponsor of Crescent

Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia. The

Managing Director, John Ellice-Flint spoke at the opening

and demonstrated a keen interest in and a support for

Southeast Asian Art.

The Gallery would also like to take this opportunity

to thank the Gordon Darling Foundation for providing a

grant towards the curator’s research for the catalogue.

Without this generous contribution, the production of this

exquisite catalogue would not have been possible. The

Myer Foundation also provided a grant for the educational

resource that has been received with much enthusiasm

from teachers and students and public program events.

I hope you were able to attend the Crescent Moon

Cultural Day on 13 May. This unique and exciting occasion

was kindly supported by the Myer Foundation, Australia-

Malaysia Institute and the Australia-Indonesia Institute.

Constable: Impressions of land, sea and sky

We would also like to thank Booz Allen Hamilton who

supported the exhibition through a contra arrangement

and have been providing consulting services to the Gallery.

Once again, we thank our committed and long-term

supporters: Qantas Freight and Channel Seven for assisting

with transport and promotion of the exhibition.

The National Gallery of Australia Foundation

The Gallery relies heavily on the financial support of

individuals to assist in acquiring works of art for the

National Collection. Most donations to assist collection

development are channelled through the National

Gallery of Australia Foundation. Other fundraising

initiatives include the ongoing Treasure a Textile program,

supporting the conservation of the Gallery’s renowned

development office

Ron Radford and John Ellice-Flint at the opening of Crescent Moon: Islamic Art and Civilisation in Southeast Asia

collection of Southeast Asian textiles and the annual

Masterpieces for the Nation Appeal. For more information

on the Foundation please contact the Development Office

on (02) 6240 6454.

Sculpture Garden Sunday

The Rotary Club of Belconnen has been a continuing

supporter of the Gallery. We would like to thank them for

the Children’s Easels that were purchased for use on the

Sculpture Garden Sunday on 5th March 2006, they will

also be used at other children’s events held by the Gallery.

Masterpieces for the Nation Appeal

This year an oil painting by Sydney Long, Flamingoes

c. 1906, has been selected for our Masterpieces for

the Nation Appeal 2006. Enclosed with this edition of

artonview is information about the work and the Appeal.

This is your opportunity to make a donation and share

the excitement of knowing this exceptional work will

bring pleasure to many future generations. All donors

will be invited to an event, hosted by the Director, to

celebrate this acquisition. Please forward your donation

(on the enclosed form) to Silvana Colucciello in the

Development Office or telephone her on (02) 6240 6454

with payment details.

Farewell to Lyn Conybeare

Lyn Conybeare, Head of Development and Sponsorship

(and previous author of this column), worked at the

Gallery for 14 years and had devoted the last five years to

expanding the Sponsorship and Development programs

at the Gallery. Lyn has moved to Sydney and her ideas,

energy and dedication will be greatly missed by all staff,

donors and sponsors of the Gallery.

Annalisa MillarCoordinator, Development and Sponsorship


children’s gallery

Come rain or shineUntil 16 July 2006

Curating an exhibition for children is always a challenge.

Firstly curators, educators and exhibition designers get

together to consider what it might be like to be a child

visiting this large grey cement building in search of

something friendly, small, interactive and fun. Secondly

we take a concept, often related to an exhibition at the

Gallery or a theme that we hope will appeal to a young

audience. Then, using works of art from the collection,

we design an interactive environment that takes the

experiences of children as the starting point: the under

fives love three-dimensional objects that remind them of

their fantasies and engender wonder or intrigue, whereas

older children might prefer two-dimensional or more

conceptually challenging works.

The theme of Come rain or shine is the weather and

is linked to the major exhibition, Constable: Impressions

of land, sea and sky. Many of John Constable’s paintings

have skies full of cumulous storm clouds, grey sheets of

rain coming or going, or rainbows, sunshine and shade.

Through the process of examining how artists represent

weather conditions using paint, video and sculpture,

young children are prompted to become more aware of

the world around them, to imagine what clothes they

should wear for protection and comfort and to create their

own artistic works at home or at school.

To select the works for the show, we trawled

through hundreds of contact sheets of black-and-white

photographs of works in the National Collection, works

that are often seldom if ever on display. We selected

works of art that have a connection with weather and

that would appeal to children. For Come rain or shine we

found dramatic 19th-century paintings of ships foundering

on rocky shores; a huge video of a skilful skateboarder

dancing on his board against a stormy sky; a massive

snowscape; two ‘hot’ paintings, one dusty and one

green; a small naïve painting of a monsoonal storm; and

the amazing 800-year-old rain god, Tlaloc, from Mexico

whose snake-ridden head forms a neat connection with

Mitec culture, MexicoTlaloc the Rain God

1200–1300 Veracruz / Mexicoceramic, earthenware,

pigmentNational Gallery of Australia,

Canberra


the Rainbow Serpent from Arnhem Land, installed next

to him. Tlaloc sits at the entrance to the exhibition, arms

folded, teeth bared. A push of a button enables children

to hear his story accompanied by the sounds of thunder,

rain and wind.

Works of art are displayed with questions on

accompanying labels that encourage a Gallery mini visitor

to explore the way artists create the sense of weather

in their paintings. For example, the monsoonal storm in

the small painting The channel country no. 3, by James

Fardoulys is graphically represented by cyclonic clouds and

windswept trees and the heat of Russell Drysdale’s Emus

in a Landscape is almost palpable.

Although the exhibits have been carefully chosen to

connect with three- to seven-year-olds, the interactive

components also enrich the experience for children of any

age. Pressing buttons that change coloured light on the

Constable landscape print demonstrates how an artist can

use colour to enhance the mood of a landscape, a magnet

board demonstrates how artists create an illusion of space

in their landscapes and flip boards encourage children to

think further about how we must wear the right clothes or

we will get sunburnt, wet or cold.

We enjoy the task of transforming the Children’s

Gallery into a magical experience for these special

visitors. And, of course, we hope that they will have fun,

remember the magic and bring their own children to the

Gallery in the future.

Jenny ManningActing Manager, Education

James Fardoulys The channel country no. 3 1965 oil on canvas on plywood National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

a


The opening of a new Indian Gallery off the entrance

foyer in August provides a perfect opportunity to reveal

recent additions to the National Collection. It also

refocusses attention on works of art from South Asia

acquired over 30 years of collecting Asian art. One of

the most spectacular of the recent additions is a series

of massive wooden brackets which act as a major

architectural feature drawing visitors into the newly

refurbished spaces and creating a series of niches within

which to display small miniature paintings, illuminated

manuscript folios and small textiles. The angles of the

intricately carved late 15th–16th century teak brackets echo

the structure of the Gallery building, while the combination

of Hindu and Mughal and Persian inspired ornamentation

is a subtle introduction to the works displayed within. In

fact a number of sculptures, such as the white marble Jain

arch which surrounds the seated jina provide elaborate

depictions of very similar architectural structures and

ornamentation. Both the brackets themselves and their

recurrence in many sculptures attest to the centrality of

Indian art: new acquisitions, directions and display

temple and palace architecture for South Asian artists.

A stone ceiling panel in the form of a lotus further

demonstrates the way in which key decorative elements

are shared by the major religions of India: even the eight

grotesque kirtimukha faces of glory, with bulging eyes,

small pointed horns, and distinct fangs are found in the

temple architecture of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism.

Forming an introduction to the antiquity of certain

key images in South Asian art is an image of the nagaraja

serpent king, depicted in anthropomorphic form sheltering

beneath the seven hoods of a cobra-like snake. A rare

instance of a three-dimensional stone sculpture in the

Gallery’s collection, the intermeshed coils of the serpent

are sinuously depicted down the back of the red sandstone

image. While derived from early nature worship, the naga

serpent is a recurring image in Indian art, sheltering the

meditating Buddha or buoying up the reclining Vishnu.

A smooth oval egg shaped rock – a self born lingam – is

also testament to the continuity of primal sexual imagery,

restated in terms of the worship of the great god Shiva.

Inside the entrance to the new gallery, Buddhist

and Jain art predominates. Among the earliest surviving

sculptures from the Indian subcontinent are those from

the great Buddhist stupas, and the marble frieze from the

vicinity of the Amaravati stupa in central east India shows

the adoration of the empty throne, an iconic image of the

earthly Buddha dating from the 3rd century ad. Another

early image is an imposing standing figure of a richly

apparelled bodhisattva from Gandharan Pakistan revealing

a very different early Buddhist style. Dating from around

300 ad, the powerful influence of the forays of Alexander

the Great into this region of South Asia is evident in the

strong Hellenistic features of the saviour, his drapery and

stance. Also in white marble, the tall figure is a superb

example of the syncretism of Greek and local iconography.

Other Gandharan objects already in the collection include

a fine stupa gable depicting a scene from one of the Jataka

tales of the previous lives of the Buddha.

collection focus

Eastern Rajasthan, India Lotus ceiling

11th – 12th century stone National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra

Kota school, Rajasthan, India Temple hanging (pichhavai) Krishna’s fluting summons

the entranced gopis c.1840 opaque watercolour, gold

and silver on cotton National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra


While the Gallery’s collection of Jain objects is small,

two sculptures of serene enlightened conquerors or

liberators (jina) provide a fine introduction to the intricacy

of Jain temple art: the serene white marble seated image

of a simply robed jina and the stark standing ‘sky-clad’

figure, completely unadorned in the abandonment pose,

represent the two main orders of Jainism. In contrast the

Gallery’s internationally renowned Indian textile holdings

includes a number of Jain works, the most famous of

which shows a series of female courtiers in sumptuous

costume. The hand-drawn 5 metre long cloth, dated

1500, echoes on a large scale the imagery of illuminated

Jain manuscripts of medieval west India. Textiles in

various techniques – double ikat, mordant painting, and

pigment printing – are displayed throughout the new

Gallery.

Also prominent are large pigment paintings which

have been a recent collection development. The pichhvai

hangings are created for rituals celebrating the Hindu

deity Krishna. They contain some of the most charming

images in Indian art – the popular blue god Krishna

(an avatar of Vishnu) surrounded by adoring milkmaids

and their herds of cows. Other subjects for the very

large Indian paintings are scenes of royal progress,

such as the Maharana’s hunt, vibrant maps of popular

pilgrimage centres and tantric cosmological diagrams. The

dimensions of the Gallery building are ideally suited to the

display of such large paintings.

The collection of Hindu sculpture has also grown

over the past year with the addition of a number of

important works from the southern Indian 9th–13th

century Chola period. Arguably the pinnacle of Indian

bronze sculpture, the recent acquisitions of a fine large

image of the child saint Sambandar and a delicate

rendition of the fierce deity Kali seated beneath the large

trident of the god Shiva add significantly to the Gallery’s

existing collection of Chola bronzes which includes the

popular dancing Shiva Nataraj. However, the Chola

also were famed for their stone images, and the recent

addition to the collection of the voluptuous lion-headed

goddesss Pratyangira demonstrates the superb skills of

early Tamil Nadu artisans.

The Gallery’s collection of Hindu art has been enriched

by the addition of these images of the Great Goddess,

one of the most revered deities who takes a wide variety

of forms, both benign and threatening. The centrality of


female deities, alone or paired with male gods as consorts

and shaktis, has been surprisingly under-represented in

the Gallery’s collection. The Chola sculptures join works

in paper, textile and stone featuring Durga, the demon

slaying goddess. In another recent purchase, Lakshmi,

the Goddess of Abundance is shown in a lithe sensual

embrace with her consort Vishnu.

Another aspect of the art of the Indian sub-continent

which has been a target of recent acquisitions is Islamic art.

The Gallery has good holdings of richly decorated textiles

displaying Mughal designs, ornamentation which is also

present in Islamic architecture and other arts. An intricate

openwork pierced stone screen from the 17th century

reign of great Mughal emperor-architect Shah Jahan

– remembered best for his architectural masterpiece, the

Taj Mahal – demonstrates the shared imagery: the design

of floral buds within a diagonal grid, subtly set within a

mihrab arch is found on numerous early Indian textiles in

the collection, examples of which will be displayed in this

section of the Indian Gallery. The jali screen is presented so

that visitors can appreciate the quality of the stone carving

on both front and back surfaces.

In the new entrance-level Indian Gallery recent

acquisitions join old favourites. In juxtaposing works of

different media – stone, wood, paper, metal and cloth

– visitors are introduced the spectacular art of South Asia

through fine examples of key images from the major

strands of Indian culture and religion. In this process

existing holdings in the collection are enhanced by

conversations with new works located close by, such as

the huge 12th-century Pala dynasty stone stele depicting

a majestic Vishnu flanked by two diminutive images of

his consorts Lakshmi and Sarasvati, now shown beside

the newly acquired panel showing Vishnu and Lakshmi

in a dynamic embrace of more earthly proportions. The

addition of recently acquired works also encourages a

deeper appreciation of the range of cultural, religious

and stylistic representation and imagery in the art of the

Indian sub-continent. Along with the physical move to a

more central and accessible location off the main foyer,

it is hoped that the displays in the new Indian Gallery will

more successfully engage, excite and inform visitors about

the arts of Asia.

Robyn MaxwellSenior Curator, Asian Art

Gandhara region, Pakistan Standing bodisattva 300ad stone National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vijayanagara period, Tamil Nadu, India Door guardian (dvarapala) 15th century stone National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Shah Jahan period, Mughal empire, India Open-worked pierced screen (jali) 1628-1658 red sandstone National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

a


Situated on the north coast of west Java, the royal

palace Kraton Kasepuhan in Cirebon is one of the

oldest surviving royal centres in Indonesia. The art of

the sultanate incorporates an exciting range of regional

and international motifs. The distinctive Cirebon designs

draw on ancient indigenous symbols, Hindu Javanese

narratives, and a strong Chinese influence in compositions

of layered rocks and clouds. Fanciful landscapes are

often depicted in carving, stone, metalwork, textiles,

and painted on the sheaths of ceremonial keris daggers.

Such scenes are thought to have been inspired by the

18th-century royal retreat Sunyaragi in Cirebon, although

they also appear on intricately carved panels in the royal

palace collection dating from as early as the 16th century.

This rocky landscape, however, is most often depicted on

cotton batiks of the Cirebon region. The fragrant garden

designs (taman sari or taman arum) comprise horizontal

bands of rocky mountains, filled with a mixture of real

and mythical creatures. Shrines for pilgrims and grottos

for meditation can often be found among the mountain

peaks and forest groves.

The Mermaid’s Tale

Dr H Maulana Pangkuningrat, Sultan Sepuh of Cirebon,

Indonesia with the Skirt cloth at the opening of Crescent

Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia

Cirebon, IndonesiaSkirt cloth

19th centurycommercial cotton fabric, natural dyes; hand-drawn

batikConserved with the

assistance of the Maxwell family in memory of Anthony

Forge 2005

Worn by men and women of the royal court, this

rare 19th-century skirt cloth displays the distinctive

blues, purples and pinks of Cirebon natural dyes. Close

inspection reveals elephants, spotted kijang deer, snakes

and serpents, rabbits, monkeys, other quadrupeds

– possibly the kancil mouse-deer or babi rusa wild

boar – various types of birds and, in between, fish and

crustaceans swim in pools among the lotuses. The most

prominent figure in the design is the shrimp mermaid

archer, Dewi Urang Ayu, daughter of a great sea god and

the wife of the Mahabharata hero Bima. The appearance

of shrimps on local batik may be an allusion to the name

of the port city, Cirebon, which translates as Shrimp River.

In Java different batik-making regions developed

distinctive styles and dye combinations. This textile is

typical of the area around Cirebon, which was renowned

for the quality of its hand-drawn wax batik. During much

of the 20th century, however, Cirebon batik production

was in decline and it was only in the 1960s and 70s that

the region’s distinctive batik styles, especially the fragrant

garden designs, were revived.

conservation


When the Gallery purchased this extraordinary textile

in 1989 it was stained and had many holes as well as

extensive splits and 28 cobbled repairs throughout the

work. While small sections of the textile’s unusual design

have been published, its display was hampered by its

poor physical condition. In 2003 it was possible to display

only a section of the cloth in the Gallery’s exhibition Sari

to Sarong: 500 years of Indian and Indonesian textile

exchange.

Seven different types of stitch repairs, in a range of

threads and executed with varying sewing ability, were

identified on the batik. Close examination of these repairs

allowed us to formulate a textile repair history, piecing

together its use by different owners. The repairs, although

holding the textile together, caused additional problems

of creasing and distortion and were removed as part of its

treatment. The initial conservation of the work focussed

primarily on cleaning and realignment, and was followed

by extensive structural repair of splits and holes. The

entire top third of the cloth was found to be completely

detached from the rest of the textile.

Early on, spot treatment of isolated stains was

undertaken and then all original repairs were carefully

removed, releasing the areas of puckering. The textile was

then placed on a suction table and, section by section,

flushed with cleaning solution. While this washing method

removed the overall discolouration from the fibres, it also

enabled the creases to be carefully relaxed and flattened,

allowing the distorted areas of the design to be realigned.

Then it was possible to join the sections of the textile and

to fill in areas of loss by fixing patches of cotton fabric

to the back of the textile using a fully reversible adhesive

heat set method.

The spectacular textile, fondly known by the

conservation department at the Gallery as the mermaid

batik, was a centrepiece of the recent exhibition, Crescent

Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia, shown

at the Art Gallery of South Australia, in Adelaide and the

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Charis Tyrrel Textile Conservator

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

Before treatment long horizontal tears and loss in top right-hand corner

Before treatment (detail) old stitch repairs, tears and in-ground grime

After treatment (detail) textile cleaned and new adhesive fabric repair

a

3 4 5

1 2

8 9 10

6 7

11 12

13

14

15 16

1 Barbara Poliness, Maria Gravias and Leanne Burrows from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts at the opening

of Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia 2 Senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne with guests at the opening of Constable:

Impressions of land, sea and sky 3 AGSA Curator of Asian Art and Crescent Moon curator James Bennett with Richard and Mary Owens at the

Crescent Moon Members night 4 Constable co-curators Anna Gray, NGA Assistant Director, Australian Art and British art scholar John Gage at

the media launch of Constable 5 NGA Senoir Curator, Photography Gael Newton and Assistant Director, Access Services Adam Worrall with artists

Paula Dawson and David Sequeira at the opening of Constable 6 Gallery Council Members Lee Liberman, Roslynne Bracher and Roslyn Packer at

the opening of Crescent Moon 7 NGA Director Ron Radford, Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark and Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander Art Brenda Croft 8 AGNSW Head Curator of Asian Art Jackie Menzies with QAG Head of Asian, Pacific and International Art Suhanya

Raffel at the opening of Crescent Moon 9 Former Ambassador of the Republic of Korea HE Mr Cho Sang-hoon and Mrs Cho with guests at the

opening of Crescent Moon 10 Anna Gray presenting Helen Clark with a Constable exhibition catalogue 11 Sculpture Garden Sunday

12 Forecast: Art and Fashion 13 Forecast: Art and Fashion 14 Gallery Council Member Ashley Dawson-Damer with former Gallery Foundation

Chairman Tony Berg and Carol Berg 15 Sculpture Garden Sunday 16 NGA Voluntary Guide Rosanna Hindmarsh, Jennifer Prescott and Maureen

Bremner at the farewell dinner for Tony Berg

faces in view


access services

The Collection Study RoomVoluntary Guides,

Els Sondaal and Phoebe Jacobi, and Collection Study Room Officer, Joanne Tuck-

Lee, view an illustrated book by Gilbert and George in

the Collection Study Room

Voluntary Guides, Sylvia Shanahan, Setsuko Kennedy

and Jan Smith, view a collection of works by

Gilbert and George in the Collection Study Room

As set out in the Director’s Vision Statement for

the Gallery, ‘the collections have long outgrown the

building and lack of display space is overwhelmingly the

Gallery’s greatest problem’. Meeting public demand for

access to a collection of over 110,000 works in a building

originally designed to house only a thousand leads to

an increasing reliance on resources such as travelling

exhibitions, the internet and storage study facilities.

With over ninety per cent of the National Collection

now in storage, the Collection Study Room (CSR) remains

one of the Gallery’s most popular research facilities since

its establishment in 1984. It is a free service for anyone

wishing to view works of art not on display or on loan.

The number of collection study rooms in Australia and

overseas is increasing and involve staff from curatorial,

conservation, art storage, education, public programs

and visitors’ services departments. Many institutions

provide specialist services. For example, they might

concentrate on works on paper or limit access to tertiary

students or qualified researchers. However, the nature of

a collection that belongs to the nation justifies an attempt

to process as many collection access requests as possible.

The Gallery’s study room adjoins the on-site storage

facilities and is utilised by staff, researchers, curators from

other galleries, student groups, art and craft societies

and members of the public. The most frequent request

for the CSR is The Rajah quilt, an iconic work produced

by convict women on board The Rajah, during its journey

towards Hobart Town in 1841. The quilt, which has

captured the imagination of visitors since its acquisition

in 1989, is too light-sensitive for regular exhibition and

has only been accessible through CSR request. At 325.0

x 337.2 cm in size, it is too large for the study room

tables and remains folded in its box during viewings. The

Gallery’s textile conservation staff, having spent several

years researching the techniques and fabrics used in the

quilt, recently advised that it will only be brought out

once a year for public requests due to its fragility and

the resources involved in transporting and displaying it.

‘Unfolded: the Rajah Quilt on view’ is a CSR initiative,

whereby the quilt will be unfolded and displayed for

viewing between 11am and 12pm daily, 7–13 August 2006

(additional talks will be advertised in the events calendar).

Public talks are regularly held in the CSR, allowing

visitors to learn about the collection, particularly those

works of art, such as illustrated books, that are difficult

to view in their entirety when on display. Visitors are

encouraged to refer to the Gallery’s online catalogue

and publications (many of which are also available

online) to select the works that they wish to view, and

will be referred to the appropriate curator if specialist

expertise is required. Some works of art will be too

large, fragile or light-sensitive to be available for private

viewings, but it is always worth asking. To closely inspect

the detail of a watercolour that is not under glass, or

a rare book of botanical prints in its original box, is

all part of the Collection Study Room experience.

Joanne Tuck-LeeCollection Study Room Officer

For Collection Study Room bookings, phone (02) 6240 6524 or email [email protected]. The catalogue is available online at nga.gov.au/CollectionSearch

a

B A R T O N

The Brassey of CanberraBelmore Gardens and Macquarie Street, Barton ACT 2600

Telephone: 02 6273 3766 • Facsimile: 02 6273 2791Toll Free Telephone: 1800 659 191

Email: [email protected] http: //www.brassey.net.auCANBERRAN OWNED AND OPERATED

• Canberra’s Premier Boutique Heritage Hotel (est 1927)

• 4 Star Property• Located within

the Parliamentary Triangle

• Close to All Major Attractions

• Bar & Licensed Restaurant

• Foxtel (Heritage Rooms only)

• 24 Hour reception

The National Galleryis a short Walk away.

John Constable: Impressions of Land, Sea and SkyNational Gallery of Australia until 12th June 2006

Salisbury Cathedral from Bishops grounds 1863

reawaitedrefurbishedrefreshedregard

open seven dayslunch 12.00–2.30 pm weekend brunch 9.30–11.30 amavailable for private events t: 02 6240 6666

2 IMPRESSIONS AT ONCE!

PICASSO AND PASTA PACKAGE.

Stay in a fully self contained apartment in the heart of Lygon Street Carlton – Australia’s Restaurant capital - with over 300 restaurants, cafes, coffee shops and boutiques at your door. Walk off the extra calories around the National Gallery of Victoria Picasso Exhibition.

Package includes:2 nights accommodation in a 1 bedroom apartment2 adult passes to the Picasso exhibition

1st July – 8th October 2006

Subject to availability (No availability during AFL Finals) When booking please quote – “Picasso and Pasta”

$350.00 all inclusive

Phone: 03 9349 9700 Email: [email protected] 255 Drummond Street, Carlton Vic 3053

THE FINE ART OF HOSPITALITY

FOR AN INDULGENT GETAWAY CALL 13 1234 OR BOOK AT HYATT.COM

COMMONWEALTH AVENUE YARRALUMLA ACT

TELEPHONE 02 6270 1234 EMAIL canber ra@hyatt .com.au

canber ra .park.hyat t .com

the bell gallery proudly presents our 2006 ‘winter’exhibition with a special selection of fine paintingsand sculpture starting sunday 18th june from 11am

HEREAFTER IMANTS TILLERS

4 AUGUST – 3 SEPTEMBER 2006

CHAPMAN GALLERy CANBERRA31 Captain Cook Crescent Manuka 2603Hours: Wed to Sun 11am–6pmTel: 02 6295 2550 www.chapmangallery.com.au

Imants Tillers Portrait of a thought 101.6 x 213.36 cm 2005

Gallery Shop open 7 days 10am–5pm Phone 02 6240 6420 ngashop.com.au

Indigenous arts and craft * books and

catalogues * calendars and diaries * prints

and posters * gifts * jewellery * fine art cards

* accessories * desirable objects * toys

New bags from Melbourne Designer Nicola Cerini $105 - $140

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S E E A M A S T E R P I E C E C O M E T O L I F E .

A magnificent expression of modern architecture, The Waterfront has already

experienced unprecedented demand. Construction is now underway, so this

is the ideal time to secure your place at Canberra’s most prestigious address,

located on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin.

To learn more about this residential work of art, visit The Waterfront

Marketing Suite today.

View The Waterfront Marketing Suite and Display Apartment, open daily 1-5pm.

On The Lake - Cnr Wentworth Avenue & Telopea East, Kingston Foreshore

C a l l 1 8 0 0 0 9 8 8 3 1 w w w.t h e -w a t e r f ro n t .c o m . a u

STANKF6668A_2_FP_AV_FA.indd 1 13/4/06 11:51:32 AM

9 – 30 August Wednesdays 6pmThis annual lecture series showcases the latest work of renowned Australian architects.

9 August Andrew Andersons from Peddle, Thorpe and Walker, Sydney

16 August Luigi Rosselli, Sydney

23 August Tim Jackson from Jackson Clements Burrows, Melbourne

30 August Shaun Lockyer from Arkhefield, Brisbane

$60 Series; $50 members/RAIA/concession $20 Single; $15 members/RAIA/concession

Presented in association with the ACT Chapter RAIA Sponsored by BCA Solutions

Bookings essential James O Fairfax Theatre National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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Mr Ron Radford AM, DirectorNational Gallery of Australia

requests the pleasure of your company at a Members Viewing of

Saturday 15 July 2006 6pmThe evening will commence with an introduction to the exhibitions

in the James O Fairfax Theatre by

Dr Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian Paintings and Sculptureand

Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art

Followed by a viewing of the exhibitions

Members /guests $40Light refreshments

Limited tickets – bookings essential RSVP 5 July 2006 (acceptances only)

Phone 02 6240 6528

Imants Tillers The hyperborean and the speluncar 1986 oilstick, oil and synthetic polymer paint on 130 canvasboards Cruthers collection, Perth Michael Riley Untitled, from the series Cloud [feather] taken 2000 printed 2005 pigment prints, ultrachrome chromogenic inks on Ilford Gallery Pearl photographic paper Purchased 2005 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Reproduced courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and VISCOPY, Australia

SPECIAL MEMBERS’ VIEWING

imants tillers • michael riley • James rosenquist

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