The optic nerve of the eye is happy

There a fair few Australian women painters and I had been meaning to do a post on them at some point. The death of Margaret Olley last week precipitated this post. It is by no means a critique, neither does it touch on lesser known painters, it's just a picture post.  Some of the painters belong to the first half of the twentieth century; my interest in them is largely because of their representations of Australian life from that period.

Olley herself is a bit of an icon and quite singular judging from her interviews.  The reason I chose this painting is because by some coincidence it was the first in my search and matches a cyclamen plant I bought this morning.

Yesterday the ABC ran a documentary on Olley and of course being a bit of a clothes obsessive, I was charmed by her liberal use of colour in her clothing even at an old age.  And also charmed by her faded beauty - the only comparison I can think of is an unkempt rose bush :-)

Margaret Preston is arguably the best known of the artists, there have been retrospectives of her work, much discussion on her aboriginal influences and the like.  Her paintings (many are woodcuts actually) make liberal use of the Australian landscape which in a way keeps drawing me back to her. I often think of this woodcut when I am walking around the harbour, for e.g. And of course her floral still lifes are both extensive and beautiful.

Thea Proctor is not as well known but her woodcuts have a languorous air and are tasteful. Though The Rose is the woodcut you often find in merchandise, I like this one of the swing.

AGNSW had a retrospective of Grace Cossington Smith awhile back and though the collection was not as extensive as Preston's there's something intrinsically harmonious and pleasing in her paintings.  There's a slight domesticity to her work (though she does have a few on city life and the making of the Harbour Bridge) but it's the colours that draw you in.  The Lacquer Room is her most famous painting but I also like her yellow interiors.

Last of course there is Mirka Mora who is still very much around and had a book out that made clutter seem quite seductive (Olley seems equally at home with clutter).  A lot of her work is also colour saturated and in her words "the optic nerve of the eye is so happy" when you look at these.

A Few Paintings

Hogarth Galleries has shut shop.  Which is a bit sad as I used to enjoy going there once in awhile and they also had decent newsletters.  Here are a few paintings from recent newsletters.  The first painting below is from the Northern Territory and is a "desert painting".  The paintings below that are from Cape York. Samantha Hobson was a well known part of the original Lockhart River Gang (she was successful enough to leave the Gang and work on her own and often paints more contemporary themes) while Denise Fruit, also from the same region, was shown as a part of an exhibition called Old Girls, Young Grandmothers.

Separately, the design collaboration between aboriginal and Kashmiri artists appears to be flourishing. Saw plenty of crewel work cushions, papier mache boxes and the like in the better tourist shops yesterday. No idea about its authenticity though Better World Arts, whose label appears on the products, presumably has some kind of check.

Lockhart, Moree and Warmun

Works by indigenous artists in Australia are generally pushed under the label of "aboriginal art" but they differ quite a bit in different parts of the country. Of course the underlying themes of country and family loosely bind them but these are by no means confining.  I thought I would put up a few pieces - mostly culled from Hogarth Galleries - to illustrate how different they are.  This is merely a sampling of course.

The Lockhart River Gang is fairly young and a lot of their work has attracted quite a bit of interest because it draws from tradition and yet breaks away from it.  I saw some of their work in Queensland (they are from the Cape York region of the state). Namok is probably the most famous and the most collectable of the group but I quite liked Fiona Omeenyo's work (Family Gathering right below).

There are also newer areas that are drawn into the  aboriginal art scene in the country. I don't recall anyone from northern NSW at the Garma Festival in 2003 but Brent Beale (below) appears to be from that region.  His work seems to draw heavily on country, the picture to the left is titled Roads and Paddocks whilst that to the right is a representation of the Mehi River in the region.

Paintings by Warmun artists were some of the first that I saw and they remain artwork that I am  most responsive to.  It sounds a bit precious but I do find a certain desert purity and spirituality about these paintings. Picture to the left is Waterholes by Tommy Caroll and to the right is Mabel Juli's work.

Merrepen Arts

I went to the Garma Festival in the winter of 2003. The festival is held in August of every year in Gulkula (in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory) and is an indigenous cultural event. It showcases indigenous issues like health, poverty and the like but is also a celebration of being indigenous and in this world. The site is fairly remote (the nearest airport is Nhulunbuy, a small mining town in NT) but it attracts a motley crowd of academicians, NGOs, artists and casual visitors both from Australia and abroad. The year we went, the festival showcased indigenous art from various regions of the country.

At the festival we met Meng Hoeschle, who at that time ran the Merrepen Arts Centre and were very impressed with her work with the Centre. The Centre's artists, the McTaggart brothers, were also present and did a panel of the collaborative art project at the Festival. Most people associate indigenous art with "dot" paintings, which are not always common - if at all they are synonymous with anything, it is desert paintings. The Daly River region, where the Merrepen Arts Centre is located, is verdant and lush with a fairly plentiful supply of food and the art produced there reflects this and is fairly removed from the "dot" stereotype. Meng showed a short film that was a sweet ode to the region - it was filled with images of billabongs, water lilies, the soft blue of Northern skies and the sound of women singing. Meng had sent me a catalogue which I unfortunately misplaced when I moved and I find there are few images of the Merrepen Centre's paintings on the Net, in particular those that relate to water spirits. The two I located give some idea of the paintings I saw.

Link to a film on basket making from the merrepen plant here.

Geoffrey Bardon's 2004 book (Papunya-A Place Made After the Story), though primarily on desert art remains the best first source on indigenous painting in Australia, for anyone interested.

Rusty Peters' Waterbrain

My interest in aboriginal art first arose due to a write up on the east Kimberely paintings in a Qantas inflight magazine. The paintings had a sparse, spiritual quality and used natural ochres (in fact each region in Australia has its characteristic art and I will try and post on them from time to time) and something drew me to them. Subsequently, I caught the exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery. One of the paintings caught my attention because it was a visual philosophy tract - though we needed a written explanation. The 12 metre long painting was called "Waterbrain" and the artist was Rusty Peters.

Waterbrain

The painting takes you from the time before you are born, when your spirit resides in water to the development of consciousness, initiation into adulthood and finally a return to the waters when you die. The way I put it does not do justice to it, below are some excerpts from the description (copyright for this text rests with Rusty Peters, Frances Kofod and Jirrawun ).

"We all start out as babies lying down, then we crawl, then we walk as here in the middle (of panel three), then we start to run. This is the same for black and white. Our brain comes from the water."

"Here at the top (of panel three) it shows how we progress from walking to running. When we were in the water we did not think about anything, but once we start running we start to understand and have our own ideas. The water brain leaves us and our parents and teachers start to tell us how to live. We grow up and start talking. We regain our memory and begin to think. This is shown by the brown part in this panel."

"The next part (panel five) is about our education for life. My grandfather taught me how to live......All knowledge is passed on from old to young by black and white."

That exhibition also made me (till then a collector of junk prints) look at art and its collection in a new way. As one of the artists writes "we don't want people to say look isn't that a lovely picture that the aboriginal has painted? We want things to be real and we want places of importance to be left alone so people can go through and see it. And then sit down in peace and think clearly of the happiness of the surroundings, of how we pass through our generations".

At Work

It is a pity that the painting is now most likely in a private collection and few photos exist apart from a small one at the Art Gallery site (it was chosen as a Director's favourite). The painting is not a drawing room centrepiece but one that should belong to the nation.

The Remaker of Signs

Last week, the ABC's Sunday Arts program profiled Rosalie Gascoigne. Her career really started at age 57 - I remain fascinated by people whose work peaks at a late age (e.g. Penelope Fitzgerald). It is as if the chaos and disorder of youth is suddenly distilled and perfect. The materials Gascoigne worked with are quite "tough" and large - road signs, fences and the like - not exactly watercolours of flowers.

Her initial work has the exuberant, brilliant yellow of road signs but her later work is more quiet and contemplative. Gascoigne's husband explained the link between landscapes around Canberra and the art pieces, which was quite interesting as it explained the patterns she chose for her work.

Brief bio at wiki.
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