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ARTS OF THE PACIFIC · FREDERICK MCCUBBIN · EAST ASIAN GALLERY

2 Director’s foreword

6 Foundation and Development

exhibitions and displays

8 Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts from the National Gallery of Australia Crispin Howarth

16 Degas: master of French art Jane Kinsman

18 Gallery of East Asian art Robyn Maxwell

24 Home at last Joanna Krabman

conservation

26 Painted by the sun: early Asia–Pacific photography Andrea Wise, Fiona Kemp and James Ward

collection focus

32 Costumes of the Ballets Russes Robert Bell

acquisitions

34 Frederick McCubbin Violet and gold Anne Gray

38 A magnificent gift of Albert Namatjira watercolours Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax

40 Owen Yalandja Yawk yawks Tina Baum

42 Deborah Paauwe From the waist down Anne O’Hehir

44 Bahau people Funerary figure Lucie Folan

46 Larsen and Lewers Silver bowl Robert Bell

47 Travelling exhibitions

48 Faces in view

published quarterly by

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

ISSN 1323-4552

Print Post Approved pp255003/00078

© National Gallery of Australia 2008

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

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

editor Eric Meredith

designer Kristin Thomas

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

rights and permissions Nick Nicholson

advertising Erica Seccombe

printed in Australia by Blue Star Print, Canberra

enquires

The editor, Artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 [email protected]

advertising

Tel: (02) 6240 6587 Fax: (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: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 Tel: (02) 6240 6504 [email protected]

(cover) Frederick McCubbin Violet and gold 1911 (detail) oil on canvas 87.0 x 144.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the generous assistance of the Hon. Ashley Dawson-Damer and John Wylie, AM, and Myriam Wylie 2008

Issue 55, spring 2008

The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government Agency

2 national gallery of australia

Director’s foreword

As we near the close of our twenty-fifth anniversary year it

is a good time to reflect on some of its high points.

Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape presented,

for the first time ever, outstanding Australian landscape

paintings within the context of their contemporaries

in Europe, America and elsewhere. The success of the

exhibition, for which the Gallery was the only venue, can

be measured in terms of the more than 180 000 visitors,

the very high proportion of first-time visitors to the Gallery,

the highest sale of catalogues per head ever and about

thirty million dollars injected into the local economy.

More recently, we celebrated the career of Richard

Larter, a Canberra artist of national repute, in a

retrospective that covers five decades of his artistic practice.

On display in our Project Gallery, Orde Poynton Gallery and

the Australian contemporary gallery, this vibrant exhibition

finishes on 14 September.

Picture paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s,

which also opened in winter, presents about five hundred

early photographs of the Asia–Pacific region, including

Australia. It is the first historic photographic survey

exhibition of our geographic region and reflects the new

emphasis of the Gallery’s photographic collection on our

region. In another of the many firsts associated with Picture

paradise, this is the first time an institution has shown

nineteenth-century photographs in a variety of appropriate

period frames. Indeed, the framing systems were developed

as part of the Gallery’s innovative reframing project covered

in this issue.

During our silver anniversary year we have made

many significant acquisitions for the national collection,

many of them announced in earlier issues. We have

already exceeded the target of twenty-five million dollars

with the help of many generous donors. For example, the

acquisition of Frederick McCubbin’s Violet and gold 1911

(on the cover of this issue) was made possible though

the generous assistance of Ashley Dawson-Damer, and

John Wylie, AM, and Myriam Wylie. Violet and gold is

a brilliant painting celebrating the light and colour of

the Australian bush at Mount Macedon on a spring

morning. It is a wonderful addition to our collection of

Australian federation landscapes and will be a feature of

the exhibition of McCubbin’s later works, which we are

planning for August next year.

The Gallery recently received a generous twenty-

fifth anniversary gift of a collection of Albert Namatjira

watercolours from Gordon Darling, AC, CMG, and

Marilyn Darling. These brilliant Indigenous paintings of

the central Australian landscape are fine examples of

Namatjira’s distinctive style, which was to inspire an entire

Hermannsburg School. It would now be impossible for us

to gather such a fine collection together ourselves.

In this issue of Artonview we also highlight the

acquisitions of Owen Yalandja’s evocative yawk yawks,

a gift of John and Janet Calvert-Jones; a new silverwork

by Helge Larsen and Darani Lewers, two of Australia’s

most senior silversmiths; a playful work of contemporary

Australian photographer Deborah Paauwe; and a stunning

Indonesian funerary figure from Kalmentan, dating from

the mid fourteenth century.

The National Gallery of Australia holds the nation’s

largest and most valuable art collection, largely acquired

over just three decades of collecting. To celebrate this

significant achievement and the twenty-fifth anniversary

of our opening we have published a handbook, Collection

highlights, which illustrates some two hundred and fifty

significant works from all parts of the Gallery’s collection. It

is available for $24.95.

The new East Asian display in gallery 10 is the final

reconfiguration of the permanent collections before

completion of Stage One of our building redevelopment

in early 2010. It features some highlights of our collection

of Chinese and Japanese art such as the pair of six-

fold screens of horses and trees by the shore from the

Muromachi period (1392–1573) and the eighth-century

Chinese tianlu and pixie earth spirit guardian figures, both

of which are illustrated in Collection highlights. In this issue

of Artonview, Robyn Maxwell, Senior Curator, Asian Art,

has written an insightful piece on this new display.

Early in our collecting history, the Gallery acquired

some outstanding works from the Pacific region, laying the

foundations of our relatively small but significant Pacific

Arts collection. We have recently revived this collection and

the exhibition Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts from the

artonview spring 2008 3

National Gallery of Australia will showcase some of the

Gallery’s most rarely seen works along with some recent

remarkable additions to this collecting area. This includes

the early nineteenth-century Maori chieftain’s cloak (see

Artonview issue no. 53). Curated by Crispin Howarth,

Curator, Pacific Arts, the exhibition focuses on sculptural

arts, old and new, including magnificent masks and figures.

This issue also features a collection focus article by

Robert Bell, Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design,

on the Gallery’s collection of Ballet Russes costumes and

their connection to Australian history and culture. As

highlighted in issue no. 54, this collection requires extensive

conservation treatment in preparation for a major Ballets

Russes centenary exhibition at the end of 2009.

In July, we celebrated NAIDOC Week. Canberra was

the focus city for the 2008 NAIDOC Week celebrations and

we were pleased to honour Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander cultures with a program of events and a renewed

display in our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gallery.

One highlight of the Gallery’s celebration was a concert

of the enchanting voice and music of Geoffrey Gurrumul

Yunupingu. We also celebrated the twenty-first birthday of

The Aboriginal Memorial.

Although our silver anniversary ends where it began

a year ago in October, we will continue to strive for

excellence. The Gallery’s December blockbuster exhibition

Degas: master of French art will be a highlight of the next

issue and will be sure to please crowds during Canberra’s

summer months.

Ron Radford

Visitors observe the ten-metre-long Holterman panorama at the media launch for Picture paradise.


credit lines

Donations

David A Adams

American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia

Australian Capital Equity

Ross Adamson

Antoinette L Albert

Robert O Albert, AO

Gillian Alderson

Robert C Allmark

William J Anderson

Judith H Andrews

Susan Armitage

Sheila Bignell

Susan Boden Parsons

Sarah Brasch

Margaret Brennan

Jennifer Brown

Berenice-Eve Calf

Debbie Cameron

Deborah Carroll

Amanda Cattermole

Vicki Clingan

Diana V Colman

Ann Cork

Lyn Cummings

Curran Family Foundation

David R Curtis

Ashley Dawson-Damer

Jennifer Doyle-Bogicevic

Doug England

Pauline Everson

R H Fleming

Rosemary Foot, AO

William P Galloway

June P Gordon

Pauline M Griffin, AM

Warwick Hemsley

William S Hamilton

James Hanratty

Natasha L Hardy

John Harrison

Elizabeth Healey

Shirley Hemmings

Neil Hobbs

Theodora E Hobbs

Laura Holt

Keith H Hooper

Reverend Bill Huff-Johnston

Claudia Hyles

Father W G A Jack

His Excellency Major General Michael Jeffery, AC, CVO, MC

Judy Johnson

Sara Kelly

King O’Malley’s

Sir Richard Kingsland, AO, CBE, DFC

Joyce E Koch

Robyn Lance

Sandra K Lauffenburger

Judith G Laver

Stephen R Leeder, AO, MD

Paul and Beryl Legge Wilkinson

Penelope E Lilley

Judith MacIntyre

Macquarie Group Foundation

Jennifer Manton

Robert Maple-Brown

Margaret J Mashford

Patricia F McCormick

Yoichi Minowa

Harold Mitchell Foundation

Shirley J O’Reilly

Greg Paramor

John V Parker

Kim Paterson

Jonathan Persse

Mara Praznovszky

Prescott Family Foundation

Jason Prowd

Ralph M Renard

Anthony Rohead

Jennifer J Rowland

Roslyn Russell

Kenneth Saxby

Gisella Scheinberg, OAM

Heather G Shakespeare, OAM

Elizabeth J Smith

Phyllis Somerville

Elizabeth Tanner, AM

Ken Taylor

Noel C Tovey

H N Truscott, AM

Caroline Turner

William Tyree, OBE

Chris Van Reesch Snr

Morna E Vellacott

Vicki Vidor, OAM


Elizabeth G Ward

Joy Warren, OAM

Peter G Webster

Joyce P West

Jenine Westerburg

Stephen Wild

Yvonne Wildash

I S Wilkey

Ray Wilson, OAM

Lady Joyce Wilson

Robine Wilson

Donna Woodhill

Evelyn Young

We would also like to thank the numerous anonymous

donors who have donated to the National Gallery of

Australia Foundation.

Gifts and Bequests

The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia

Anne Atyeo

Neville Black

Gregor Cullen

The family of the Late Peter Russell

Gordon Darling, AC, CMG, and Marilyn Darling

Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print Fund

Dr Anna Gray

Linda Gregoriou

Ross Griffith

Wenda Gu

Brent Harris

Pauline Hunter

Dale Jones-Evans

Sara Kelly

Derek Kreckler

Leonie Lane

John Loane

Andrew Lu, OAM

Marian Maguire

John McPhee

Bridget McDonnell

Peggy Muttukumara

John Neeson

Nasser Palangi

Mike Parr

Ron Radford, AM

Larry Rawling

William Robinson

The Rotary Collection of Australian Art Fund

Denis Savill

Raphy Star

Tom Trauer

Theo Tremblay

Robert Vanderstukken

Ray Wilson, OAM, and James Agapitos, OAM

Grants

Australia Council for the Arts through the Showcasing the

Best International Strategy, and through its Aboriginal

and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, Visual Arts Board

and Community Partnerships and Market Development

(International) Board.

The Gordon Darling Foundation

The San Diego Foundation

Visions of Australia through its Contemporary Touring

Initiative, an Australian Government program

supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding

assistance for the development and touring of

Australian cultural material across Australia, and

through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative

of the Australian Government and state and territory

governments

Sponsorship

BHP Billiton

Brassey Hotel of Canberra

Casella Wines

Forrest Hotel and Apartments

Mantra on Northbourne

National Australia Bank

Qantas

R M Williams, The Bush Outfitter

Sony Foundation Australia

Yalumba Wines


Foundation and Development

As we come to the conclusion of our twenty-fifth

anniversary year we are also approaching our target of

$25 million – which is very exciting. The National Gallery of

Australia’s Director Ron Radford, AM, Chair of the Council

Rupert Myer, AM, and Chairman of the Foundation Charles

Curran, AC, are thrilled with the support provided by

Australians throughout the nation. We are confident we will

make an announcement on our target in the next issue of

Artonview (available in December).

Gordon Darling, AC, CMG, and Marilyn Darling recently

gifted fifteen Albert Namatjira paintings and have pledged

ten more. This extraordinary donation has assisted the

Gallery to achieve our $25 million target. The Darlings have

been long-term supporters of the Gallery. Gordon Darling’s

vision to establish the Gordon Darling Australian and Pacific

Print Fund is the reason that the Gallery has an unrivalled

collection of Australian and Pacific prints.

Foundation directors have been extremely supportive

of the Gallery’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program.

Recently, Kerry Stokes, AC, kindly donated funds to our

travelling exhibitions program, which provides regional

areas with a range of stimulating exhibitions throughout

the year. This year, as a result of our travelling exhibitions

program, Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting

1850–1950, Grace Crowley: being modern, and Culture

Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial have been

viewed by audiences around Australia.

Council member John Calvert-Jones, AM, and his wife

Janet Calvert-Jones generously donated funds to acquire the

magnificent sculpture Ubirikubiri 2007, the remarkable work

of art that featured at the entrance to the exhibition Culture

Warriors (see Artonview no. 53 for more about Ubirikubiri).

Foundation Director Linda Gregoriou and Dale Jones-

Evans gifted Dirty manna by Mike Parr to the Gallery. This

work greatly adds to the Australian Prints and Drawings

collection.

Foundation Director Jennifer Prescott, through the

Prescott Family Foundation, donated funds so that the

Gallery was able to acquire the poignant sculpture Tusk

2007 by Ricky Swallow for the Australian Painting and

Sculpture collection. Ricky Swallow is a young but renowned

artist, and the Gallery is thrilled to have this important work

in the national collection.

Foundation Director Sandy Benjamin, who is also

the Chair of the Decorative Arts and Design Collection

Development Fund, donated funds to the Foundation so

that the Gallery was able to strengthen our collection of

contemporary glass by purchasing Sea urchin I 2007 by

Kevin Gordon. Ms Benjamin’s efforts in garnering support

for the Gallery’s Decorative Arts and Design collection is

highly appreciated.

The Decorative Arts and Design collection has been

generously supported through donations made by

Raphy Star. Most recently, he donated two glass works

by Brian Hirst, Cycladic series guardian II vase 1987 and

Cycladic series vase 1988, which strengthen the Gallery’s

contemporary glass collection.

Masterpieces for the Nation appeal 2008

The appeal is progressing very well and we are most

grateful for the support provided from donors throughout

the country. This year, donations are going towards the

acquisition of two paintings: Doreen Reid Nakamarra’s

Untitled 2007, which will be an important addition to

the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art collection,

and Autumn moon festival [Sharad Purnima], a pichhavai

for the Asian Art collection. If you would like to receive a

brochure about this program, please contact the Foundation

Office on (02) 6240 6454. Also, for more details on the

Masterpieces for the Nation appeal 2008, see Artonview

issue no. 54.


Bequest Program

We are very excited about launching an official bequest

program at the National Gallery of Australia. More details

about this program will be available in the next issue of

Artonview. If you are interested in being involved or would

like more information please contact Annalisa Millar,

Executive Director, National Gallery of Australia Foundation,

on (02) 6240 6691.

2020 Summit Dinner at the National Gallery

of Australia

In an atmosphere charged with creative energy, we were

delighted to welcome participants of the 2020 Summit to

a champagne supper and private viewing of the exhibition

Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape.

The evening was hosted by Chair of the Council Rupert

Myer, AM, and Director Ron Radford, AM, who were both

delegates of the Creative Australia stream of the 2020

Summit. The Gallery was also represented at the Summit by

Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander Art, a delegate of the Indigenous Australia stream.

We would like to thank Champagne Pol Roger and

Yalumba for their support of this evening. The mood was

relaxed and jovial allowing informal discussion to continue

into the night.

Corporate Members Program & Yalumba Rare and

Fine Dinner

Yalumba and the National Gallery of Australia’s Corporate

Members Program held an evening of fine art, wine and

dining on 27 May in conjunction with the exhibition Turner

to Monet: the triumph of landscape. The evening was a

great success with various Canberra businesspeople turning

out to enjoy the exhibition and a delicious dinner with six

of Yalumba’s finest wines to be tasted. A highlight was the

guest speaker Jane Ferrari. Ms Ferrari is the internationally

renowned Yalumba crusader. She is a born storyteller

whose infectious enthusiasm and outstanding knowledge

of wine ensured the evening was both informative and

entertaining. We thank everyone who attended this

premier event. Also a special thank you to Yalumba for

providing rare and fine wines, entertainment and prizes on

the night.

The Corporate Members Program offers businesses

the opportunity to become involved in arts sponsorship

at an entry point level. If you are interested in hearing

more about the program please contact Frances Corkhill,

Sponsorship and Development Officer, on (02) 6240 6740.

We are grateful to the following corporate members

for their continued support: Mantra on Northbourne, The

Brassey of Canberra, Forrest Hotel and Apartments, Casella

Wines, Champagne Pol Roger and Yalumba.

Mr Rupert Myer, AM, Mr Ron Radford, AM, Mr Hugh Jackman, and The Hon. Peter Garrett, AM, MP, at the 2020 Summit Dinner at the National Gallery of Australia.

Mr Dan Bisa, Mrs Jo Bisa, Mrs Anna Bezos and Mr George Bezos, at the Corporate Members & Yalumba Rare and Fine Dinner at the National Gallery of Australia.

(opposite) Mr Kerry Stokes, AC, and Mrs Christine Stokes, at the 2020 Summit Dinner.


exhibition

Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts from the

National Gallery of Australia

10 October 2008 – 11 January 2009 Orde Poynton Gallery and Project Gallery

The Pacific covers one third of the Earth’s surface. It is the

largest and deepest ocean on the planet; the landmass of

Australia is dwarfed by its size and could fit into the Pacific

Ocean at least twenty times.

Australia has strong connections to the Pacific through

historical, political and geographical ties. We are the

western border to this watery expanse in which many

thousands of islands break the deep blue surface in chaotic

patterns like stars in the sky until the Pacific is hemmed in

again, to the west, by the eat coast of the Americas.

So large is the Pacific and vast the distance between

island groups that each is distinctive in its own right for

the array of animals, plants and the people that live there.

Many Pacific Island communities were and are connected

to one another through trade and social links even when

the distance between islands is considerable. Some cultures

also developed in isolation, such as the Rapa Nui people

of Easter Island. Papua New Guinea supports hundreds of

distinct yet interconnected cultures but the country is still

large enough for relatively isolated communities to have

developed unique arts.

The National Gallery of Australia’s first Director, James

Mollison, was instrumental in developing the Pacific Arts

collection. With great foresight, he acquired many of the

works in the exhibition Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts

from the National Gallery of Australia. Being judiciously

careful in his selection, Mollison acquired a number of

the most iconic objects in the collection, including the

Ambum stone, the Double figure from a housepost [To-reri

uno] from Lake Sentani and, in 1985, Max Ernst’s private

collection of non-western art – some of which is displayed

in the exhibition. It was not until 2006 that the Gallery

regained its focus on Pacific arts and, in the past two years,

several works of great importance have been acquired,

including a bridal veil from Papua New Guinea, a war club

from the Marquesas Islands and the cloak of a Maori chief.

The Gallery holds collections of traditional and

contemporary Pacific arts – the latter includes the largest

collection of contemporary prints from Papua New

Guinea in Australia. Both of these spheres of the Pacific

Arts collection are radically different in many respects yet

very similar in others. While the traditional arts consist of

masks, shields and ancestral sculptures that (for the main

part) are not still in use among Pacific communities, the

artists working today sometimes draw on this heritage

as a source of identity. The exhibition Gods, ghosts and

men focuses firmly on the traditional sculptural arts as

the recent travelling exhibition Imagining Papua New

Guinea featured many great works from the contemporary

collection. Discussions on the classification or divisions

between art and artefact, traditional or contemporary may

seem to be required but are not necessary; any culture that

an artist works within is subject to change. It is the very

nature of human cultures to change due to internal and

external influences. For the Pacific region great changes

were experienced for centuries prior to the introduction of

Western expeditions in the eighteenth century.

The recognition of traditional Pacific arts as art rather

than examples of material culture has a fairly short history,

shorter than one might expect. During the late nineteenth

century, the anthropological understanding was that

unravelling the differing forms, motifs and designs would

assist in delineating one tribal community from another;

it was not an admiration of the aesthetic values of a work

and its ability to affect the viewer.1

Such an appreciation for Pacific arts has, in part, a

debt to the contemplation of African art by artists in the

cubist and expressionist movements during the early 1900s.

The championing and occasional appropriation by artists,

mainly in Europe, of what were seen to be the exotic arts

of cultures living in distant lands did not address any real

understanding of the Pacific arts or the people who created

them. It was more the dynamic of the exotic tribal object

being a touchstone or visual cue to connect with, or unlock

an artist’s innate sense of primitivism.

By the 1920s, art from the Pacific struck a chord with

members of the surrealist movement who were attracted

by the less structured almost subconscious plasticity

inherent to Melanesian art compared to the seeming

rigidity of African masks and figures. Melanesian figurative

Iatmul people Papua New Guinea, East Sepik

Province, Tambanum village Gable mask from a haus

tambaran 1920–50 wood, ochre, shell 124.0 x

100.0 x 50.0 cm National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra Purchased 2008



sculpture, especially those of Papua New Guinea’s Sepik

River region, often depict mythical beings with both

animal and human attributes along with flowing surface

designs that surrealist artists likened to having dream-like

qualities – which fired their discussions and creativity in

the arts. During the mid twentieth century in Australia,

artists were introduced to and inspired by the Pacific arts

in various situations beyond the large cluttered cases in

museums. William Dobell and Guy Warren’s experiences in

wartime New Guinea left lasting impressions, as it did for

many Australians who served in the Pacific Islands during

this time. Far removed from the Pacific itself, other artists

working in Britain during the 1940s, such as James Gleeson

and Robert Klippel, were exposed to a wealth of Pacific

arts through their mutual friend, the ‘primitive’ art dealer

William Ohly.

Pacific arts as an influence to artists from outside

the Pacific has been well documented from a Western

viewpoint, beginning with the activities of Robert Louis

Stevenson and Paul Gauguin; however, interest in the

motivations and actions of indigenous artists whose names

are now lost is very much a later twentieth-century move in

the study of Pacific arts.

A pioneer in observing Pacific arts to gain an indigenous

viewpoint of the artistic process was Professor Anthony

Forge of the Australian National University, whose seminal

studies in the mid-to-late twentieth century of Abelam art

still hold impact today.2 The National Gallery of Australia is

very fortunate to have received a gift in memory of Forge.

The gift is formed of many works Forge purchased from the

Abelam people and other communities during his work in

Papua New Guinea.

Several works from this gift are exhibited in Gods,

ghosts and men along with works that Sir William Dargie

collected directly from the communities and individuals

during his expeditions to Papua New Guinea in the late

1960s. The Gallery is very lucky to have collections formed

in ‘the field’ as information about the works is usually

recorded. An important collection gathered in the late

nineteenth century is the Fellows collection of Massim art.

This collection of art from south-eastern Papua New Guinea

comprises of works made for or given to Reverend Samuel

Fellows and his wife Sarah in recognition of the Kiriwinian

people’s embrace of Christianity.

When viewing works in the exhibition Gods, ghosts

and men, we are really looking at only the husks, the

physical elements, of rituals and festive events – which are

still remarkably moving even though they are now silent.

The dramatic spectacle of song, dance and the sense of

immediacy the audience experienced when viewing masked

performers cannot be contained and collected.

The bridal veil (ambusap) with its painstakingly applied

shell decorations would have been a treasured item by

its owner. The veil formed a major part of a series of

adornments a bride would wear for the important event of

entering her husband’s house for the first time. How the

wearer of this particular veil (presumably the envy of other

women in the community for wearing attractive finery)

must have felt upon this occasion in her life we cannot

guess at, yet the work itself, its flowing intricacy, conveys

a sense of elegance befitting the event it was made for.

Religious beliefs for Pacific communities prior to the

twentieth century were linked by the earnest need to

connect with, placate, charm and control the influences

Mathew Salle Papua New Guinea,

New Ireland Bird and snake fighting [Turu]

2004 wood, ochres, shell

38.0 x 104.0 x 12.0 cm National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra Purchased 2008

Tigoana Solomon Islands

Figure of a spirit being [Adaro] c. 1940

wood, patinas, shell 82.0 x 19.0 x 16.0 cm

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Purchased 2008


of spirits and the cosmic order though the use of magic

and rituals.

For the majority of Melanesian cultures their spiritual

beliefs could broadly be considered animist in the sense

that all things are equal: humans are on an equal footing

to every living thing in their environment and each object

has a soul or spirit connected to it. In the Eastern Solomon

Islands, people believed – and, in places, still believe – in

water spirits that can manipulate the sea and travel on

rainbows. These spirits are called adaro. The Gallery’s adaro

figure has porpoise- or dolphin-like, which the water spirit

can control. Where he steps, shoals of fish follow. The

figure, carved by Tigoana, is not only a representation of an

adaro spirit but can also be thought of as the adaro spirit

itself; the sculpture is a vessel for the spirit to enter when

called upon for assistance.

Another two works that, now silent, can only hint

at their once pivotal and chaotic importance for their

audience are the Susu masks from New Britain. These

masks are not just striking in their appearance; while worn,

they are the very spirits themselves – through performance,

they become the manifestation of a particular spirit, if only

for the briefest of moments.

To ‘activate’ a mask, a figure or other object and make

it alive with the spirit it was intended to house involved

convincing the spirit or ancestor to enter the work through

invocation and ritual adherences. The use of magical

ingredients play a major role in activating these vessels:

special herbs, pieces of animal meat, powdered lime, shells,

money and even bodily fluids are some of the symbolically

offered ritual substances that could be spat or smeared

on objects to energise the connections between worlds


to a spirit or an ancestor. In some instances, the process

involved the application of colour as certain colours have

magical importance and the act of painting a work would

entice the desired spirit to take residence in the object.

Strict rules needed to be observed by the artist,

including the abstention from eating certain foods or

entering into sexual or social activity until the process

of producing the work of art was completed. The idea

of activating or breathing life into a mask or figure of

an ancestor for it to be communed with, supplicated

or implored to assist in some way was common across

the Pacific although each community developed distinct

approaches – from simple rituals to elaborate ceremonies –

to procure the support of the ancestors, gods and spirits.

The exhibition includes several shields from Papua New

Guinea and one from Awyu people of West Papua from

the Max Ernst collection. Each shield is highly decorated;

indeed, it is rare to encounter shields from Melanesia

without carved or painted designs across their surfaces.

The meandering designs on the small leaf-shaped Awyu

people shield may depict body adornments, geographical

locations or even a rapidly moving river but, without

solid information, the intent behind the motifs remains

cryptographic while the imagery remains bold. Nonetheless,

each shield’s design identified the community or clan of

their owner and, through the strength of the designs, fear

could be instilled into an opponent.

One of the contemporary works in the exhibition is

a shield painted by Kaipel Ka. The shield is actually quite

old with a pecked design below its more recently painted

surface. Ka has produced series of shields with identical

designs for warring groups, maintaining the collective

identity of the fight group in much the same way football

colours are worn. The shield depicts two birds of paradise

perched upon a skull with glaring eyes and below is the

slogan ‘six 2 six’ which, in the Wahgi Valley area, is an

invitation to party all night long; although, in this context,

it has become an aggressive statement intended to unnerve

the opponent – ‘we will fight you from dawn until dusk,

six to six’.

Weapons across the Pacific were also embellished

beyond their brutal function as bludgeoning clubs to a

level where many communities, particularly in Polynesia,

enlisted specialist carvers to produce beautifully balanced,

immaculately finished weapons that played a great part in

communicating the high esteem accorded to the owner.

The face-like business end of the U’u club from the

Marquesas Islands is a superb example of the elaboration

and care taken by specialist artists in producing war clubs.

The U’u club is immediately one of the most iconic works

of art from the Pacific. It couples functionality with a

delicate attention to detail; and those details have been

adapted from the socially important temporal art of body

decoration, tattoo.

Several of the Polynesian works exhibited relate in some

way to their owners status and prestige, none more so

than the objects that were once associated to those of high

social rank. The stool No’oanga from the Cook Islands, with

Cook Islander people Cook Islands, Aitu Island Seat for a noble [No’oanga] 19th century wood 16.0 x 50.0 x 23.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2007

(opposite) Kaipel Ka Papua New Guinea, Western Highlands Province, Banz Six to six shield 1990–95 wood, paint, wire, rattan 148.0 x 47.0 x 12.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1996

Awyu people Western New Guinea, Papua Province, Mappi or Ederah River Parrying shield 20th century wood, ochre, lime 95.5 x 27.0 x 8.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Max Ernst Collection, purchased 1985



its four legs reminiscent of a crouching animal poised and

ready to move, was the property of an ariki (a hereditary

chieftain). It was used during meetings to ensure no-one

else’s head was higher than that of the chief.

In pre-Christian Polynesian societies, the head was

the most important part of the body as it has strong

connections with mana, a spiritual quality that generates

great respect. People and objects can both hold levels

of mana. Older objects absorb mana though their long

histories and connections with people and this mana can

still sometimes be felt or sensed by people who identify

particular works as part of their heritage.

A singularly magnificent work from the Pacific Arts

collection is the Maori cloak Huaki – fibre arts are rare in

Polynesia compared to objects produced in wood, stone

and bone. Cloak-making was an art whose secrets where

closely guarded by women who acquired the specialist skill

and knowledge to work flax into such robes of splendour.

Huaki are the rarest of all cloaks from New Zealand and

the Gallery’s example undoubtedly was owned by a leader

of great importance, a person with strong mana whose

majesty was visually communicated through wearing

the huaki.

Gods, ghosts and men divulges the richness and

diversity of this region but still barely scratches the surface

of the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of over two

thousand works from the Pacific. It reveals, however, the

greatest works by artists who were recognised within their

communities for their ability to create.

The names of many Pacific artists have been lost

over time or were simply not recorded when a work

was traded out of a community’s circles. However, this

lack of knowledge regarding the names of the artists or

the people who wore, danced, consulted or used these

works lends a certain enigmatic charisma. And it is these

small but magical mysteries that can enhance our ability

to contemplate and suspend our beliefs. In a similar vein

to the Surrealists, who contemplated Pacific arts with far

larger gaps in their understanding than we have today, we

can make closer connections between the works and the

ancestors and spirits that have been said to inhabit them.

We can imagine, for instance, that the housepost figure

Mogulapan is actually the spirit of Mogulapan himself and

that a mask is not just a mask but a spirit in physical form.

These intangible qualities affect our senses when

assessing the aesthetics of the Pacific arts – particularly so

with the expressive forms of Melanesian art – that set apart

the sculptures of ancestors and spirit beings from so many

of the other spheres of art within the National Gallery of

Australia.

Currently inanimate, these objects were once – and, in

some cases, possibly continue to be – more than superb

works of art. They are the spiritually charged places, the

lightening rods, where the ancestors themselves and

otherworldly spirits could interact with and influence the

human world. Although dormant, these charged works of

art can speak for themselves.

Crispin Howarth Curator, Pacific Arts, and curator of Gods, ghosts and men

Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts from the National Gallery of Australia is proudly supported by the National Gallery of Australia Council exhibitions fund.

notes1. A C Haddon, The decorative art of British New Guinea: a study in

Papuan ethnography, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1894. For the period in which it was produced, Haddon’s book remains an exemplary work dealing with a comparative analysis of the visual arts of British New Guinea.

2. Anthony Forge, ‘Style and meaning in Sepik art’, in A Forge (ed.), Primitive art and society, Oxford University Press, London, 1973, pp. 169–92.

Kamakaing Papua New Guinea, Tami Island, Wonam village Bowl in the form of a fish [Njul potipah] 20th century wood 14.0 x 8.3 x 24.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1969

(opposite) Iatmul people Papua New Guinea, East Sepik Province, Kanganaman village Orator’s stool [Kawa rigit] 1920–50 wood, ochre, shell 122.0 x 51.0 x 45.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008


for thcoming exhibition

Degas: master of French art

12 December 2008 – 22 March 2009

Horses, ballerinas, laundresses are [Degas’] predilections and of all the things in the world which surround him seem to preoccupy him exclusively. But what truth there is in his draughtsmanship, and how astute is his understanding of colour.1 Jules-Antoine Castagnary, 1874

The exhibition Degas: master of French art spans the period

from Edgar Degas’ early portraiture and historical subject

matter to his late experimental paintings and photographs

of the 1890s. It also examines the rich visual and literary

sources that Degas drew upon in his early years.

A major theme of the exhibition is the transformation

of Degas as an artist and his experimentation, which

contributed to the developments of his singular style. It

traces his development from finely crafted paintings to

those that possess a brilliant palette and loose brushwork

and concludes with radical works that include finger

painting. This makes him an influential figure in the

evolution of modern art – an artist whose work was both

admired and collected by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.

One particular focus is on Degas’ work after he became

an artist of modern life, when his art was increasingly

exploratory in its composition and its execution. On 15

April 1874 he was one of a group of young artists who

came together as the Société Anonyme des Artistes,

Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc. with the view to

showing their work independent of the official Salon. The

timing for their first exhibition was crucial. Degas, along

with Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir,

Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley and others, chose a date prior

to the Paris Salon of the that year. In this way it could not

be considered as just another Salon des Refusés – a display

of rejects from the official art exhibition of the Académie

des Beaux-Arts, which was renowned for its conservatism.

Though the exhibiting group varied in their art style, all

were keen to establish an art that related to their day rather

than dressing up figures in fanciful costumes with fanciful

themes of the past. What they wanted to do was establish

a new art for a modern France. The artists arranged for

the display of their work on the second floor of the large

studios (formerly belonging to the photographer and

balloonist Nadar) at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, close to

the new opera house in Paris. In a review of the exhibition

in Le Charivari on 25 April 1874, critic Louis Leroy

pejoratively described the group as ‘Impressionists’. Many

adopted the title as a badge of honour, although Degas

found the term distasteful. It was also on this occasion that

the critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary made his comments on

Degas in the journal Le Siècle.

From this time Degas came to be known for his

thoroughly modern French subject matter – the ballet,

behind the scenes at the opera, the racecourse, the

café-concert, milliners, laundresses, brothels and bathers.

Later, his art became more exploratory in its composition

and its execution while taking on the appearance of

greater intimacy and more informality. Unlike other artists

associated with the Impressionists, Degas did not set out to

capture a fleeting moment or to work en plein air. Despite

the spontaneous appearance of his subjects, the art of

Degas was carefully contrived and composed – the sense

of liveliness achieved through a thoughtful pastiche. As his

art evolved, it gained a new sense of spatial arrangement,

moving away from mathematical perspective to a more

radical, flattened space in some instances.

The exhibition Degas will explore other relevant themes

such as the influence of French caricature, japonisme,

literature and the theatre. Through modelling wax figures

of horses, ballet dancers and bathers (later cast in bronze),

Degas constantly searched for ways to depict movement

and form. The relationship of his sculpture to his paintings

and drawings will be examined in this exhibition.

Degas was a consummate painter, draughtsman,

printmaker and sculptor, who in his later years

also undertook experiments in the new medium of

photography. The exhibition Degas will include all these arts

and their interrelationships.

Jane Kinsman Senior Curator, International Art, and curator of Degas

note1. Jules-Antoine Castagnary, ‘Exposition du Boulevard des Capucines:

les Impressionnistes’, Le Siècle, 29 April 1874, p. 3; translated by Mark Henshaw.

Edgar Degas The dance class began 1873,

finished 1875–76 oil on canvas

85.0 x 75.0 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris


display

Demonstrating the creative skills of East Asian artists,

past and present, works of art in the National Gallery of

Australia’s reinstallation of the East Asian Gallery range

from Neolithic ceramics to twentieth-century works on

paper. The new and expanded permanent display in the

intimate lower gallery adjacent to the National Australia

Bank Sculpture Gallery is loosely arranged by regional

and cultural themes. Although the national collection of

works from China, Japan and Korea is not large, it covers

a diversity of styles, forms and functions, in materials

important to Asian artists.

Together, the displays illuminate significant forces

behind the creation of great art in the region. They include

early funerary vessels and lively tomb figures, Buddhist

images from traditions as diverse as those of Mongolia and

Japan, and works that demonstrate the close visual and

scholarly connections that informed the art of the literati.

Also explored is the Japanese fascination with theatre and

responses to urban modernism, especially through the

ancient but enduring art of the print.

The oldest objects on display – incised, painted and

glazed earthenware – were created to be buried with

the dead. Beliefs that the fortunes of states and peoples

depended on the appeasement of ancestral spirits, and

the honouring of those immortals, resulted in elaborate

funerary rituals accompanied by beautiful objects to usher

the deceased into the afterlife. In China, dedication to

ancestor worship led to the creation of an enormous range

of grave goods modelled on the wealth and luxury that

surrounded a ruler in life. These include representations of

highly prized animals, particularly camels and thoroughbred

horses, which were an important part of the deceased’s

retinue. Such objects were buried with departed rulers to

demonstrate status and fulfil needs in the afterlife.

Ceramics were an integral part of this tradition, initially

as inexpensive substitutes for bronze and jade items, and

later as important objects in their own right. A rich array of

pottery images, including soldiers, courtiers and animals,

have been found in tombs from as early as the Western

Han period (206 BCE – 8 CE), although the custom

reached its zenith during the Tang dynasty (618–907). One

unusually large mortuary figure from the Han dynasty, with

detachable head and saddle, depicts a breed of central

Asian horse introduced into China. In contrast to domestic

Mongolian ponies, the imported horses were prized for

their strength and size. Known as ‘celestial horses’, objects

such as this became a testament to the rank, wealth and

social status of the deceased. Like many of the Chinese

funerary objects in the Gallery’s collection, this is part of a

generous gift from Hong Kong-based businessman and art

patron T T Tsui.

While early ceramics were decorated with painted

designs, one of the great achievements of the Chinese

ceramic artisan, glazed decoration, completely transformed

earthenware surfaces. Perhaps the most striking example is

a huge pair of protective earth spirits that originally stood

guard at the entrance to the tomb of a Chinese ruler.

Drawn from real and mythical animals and birds, each

figure displays an amalgam of ferocious and threatening

features. The glazed head of the lion-shaped, clawed pixie

figure sprouts curving antlers and a flame-like mane, while

the man-lion tianlu figure displays cloven hooves, enormous

flared ears and a single spiralling horn. Its unglazed head

would probably once have been painted. Coated in

brilliant amber, green and straw sancai glazes – perfected

by the Tang-dynasty potters – the guardian figures crouch

expectantly on tall, rocky outcrops.

Less imposing but equally superb is the fifth – sixth

century duck-shaped earthenware vessel from Korea. A gift

of a former Korean ambassador to Australia, it was also

created as a funerary object. Ducks are thought to have

been worshipped in the small southern Korean kingdom

of Kaya (42–562), which is noted for its duck-shaped

funerary vessels. Symbolising a plentiful food supply for the

deceased in the afterlife, the vessels were naturalistically

rendered, especially in the expressive details of the head

and beak.

Buddhism was another important impetus for the

creation of art in East Asia. Over time, the religion spread

from India along the Silk Route to China, Korea and across

the sea to Japan. As Buddhism developed and adapted

to new cultures and circumstances, different philosophies

and schools rose to prominence. Although the teachings

of the earthly Buddha Shakyamuni formed the basis of

the traditional sects of Theravada Buddhism, the Southern

Buddhism still followed in Southeast Asia today, a second

Gallery of East Asian art

A pair of Tang dynasty Chinese Earth spirit guardian

figures, pixie and tianlu, in front of Pine trees by the

shore, a sixteenth-century Japanese screen given to

the Gallery by Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett and the

National Gallery of Australia Foundation.


movement, known as Mahayana, emerged in the first

century. As its influence was mainly felt in Nepal, Tibet,

China, Korea and Japan, it became known as Northern

Buddhism.

The doctrinal expansion of Mahayana Buddhism was

mirrored in its art. In a burst of creative energy fed by

intense mystical and visionary experiences, pantheons

of celestial Buddhas, saviours (bodhisattvas), saints and

other divine beings inhabiting heavenly realms became the

focus of prayer and devotion. Japanese Mahayana deities

were among the most diverse, mixing forms belonging

to Daoism, Confucianism and the native Shinto religion.

One of the great Buddhist sculptures in the collection is

the Japanese thirteenth-century gilded lacquer image of

Amida (Amitabha in Sanskrit). Regarded as one of the most

compassionate figures in Buddhism, Amida the Buddha

of Infinite Light was a popular figure in the Kamakura

period (1185–1392) and is the principal deity of the Pure

Land Buddhist sect in Japan. Followers believe that faith in

Amida, as well as contemplating his image and chanting

his name, will enable rebirth in the Pure Land, a Buddhist

paradise in the west. The Gallery’s figure gazes down

benevolently as he welcomes reborn souls. Sometimes

considered an attendant of Amida is the Buddhist saviour

known in Japan as Jizo Bosatsu. Jizo is a bodhisattva, a

being who delays personal enlightenment to assist others.

In the Gallery’s Edo-period (1603–1868) image, Jizo is

shown as a monk wearing monastic robes and with his

head shaved. He holds the six-ringed staff of a mendicant

and a sacred jewel, a symbol of spiritual wealth. A

protector of travellers, samurai and fire fighters, Jizo is most

widely worshipped as a guardian to mothers and children,

particularly infants who are ill or have died.

In China, where Mahayana beliefs were similarly

confronted by Confucian and Daoist philosophies, many

local sects developed and Daoist immortals and Buddhist

sages (lohan or arhat) appeared in both religious and folk

art. The concept of the lohan spread from India, where

there were originally sixteen in number, to China, where

the group expanded to eighteen, and even to five hundred.

Now on display is a set of eighteen lohan from China, the

most recognisable of which are Rahula, the son of Buddha,

with a figure of Buddha emerging from his chest, and

Pindola, with extremely long eyebrows. One side of a very

large and opulent Satsuma jar, a late nineteenth-century

export from Japan to Europe, also depicts three Buddhist

sages (rakan in Japanese) modelled in high relief, while the

lid is topped by a dancing hermit.

In Tibet, a particular form of Buddhism developed from

both indigenous and Indian tantric doctrines. This form

View of the East Asian Gallery with a vibrant ikat-dyed man’s

robe from Uzbekistan in the foreground.


was absorbed into a number of Chinese Mahayana sects.

With iconography similar to that found on Tibetan religious

scrolls, a small Mongolian painting on display in the East

Asian Gallery shows the dakini Dechen Gyalmo. Dakinis

are female, demonic and quasi-divine beings in Hindu and

Buddhist esoteric art. In tantric belief, voluptuous women

are seen as the vessels of primary creative and spiritual

power. This naked dakini is holding ritual symbols – a drum

and a chopper – in her hands. She wears fine jewellery, a

garland of flowers and a crown of skulls. The dakini stands

on a lotus pedestal enclosed by a downward-pointed

triangle, a magic and potent female symbol.

Ascetic schools of Buddhism, such as Zen (Chan in

Chinese), also had enormous impact on the visual arts.

The Gallery is fortunate to own a sculpture by the famous

Japanese Buddhist monk Enku. He entered a Buddhist

monastery as a youth but during much of his life appears

to have followed an ancient tradition of ascetic practice in

the mountains. Such men were believed to have developed

supernatural power and were often sought out to heal or

to avert crises. Enku’s religious practice involved producing

works of art and he is best known for thousands of

sculptures, carved mainly with an axe, made as offerings,

gifts or charms. Most of his sculptures are still located in

Japanese villages and shrines. An inscription on the back of

the Gallery’s sculpture identifies it as Zenzai Doji, a youth

who travelled the Buddhist world from one teacher to

another seeking wisdom.

Resplendent in the new East Asian display is a rare

example of a pair of Japanese painted and gold leaf screens

from the sixteenth century. The folding screens demonstrate

the meeting of function and beauty, an exquisite painting

that serves as a utilitarian room divider. The evergreen pine

tree (matsu) is a symbol of youth, longevity and dignity, and

the subject of pine trees by the shore is a recurring theme

in Japanese art. Possibly a narrative, the scene shows lively

horses on the right screen and fast-moving fishing boats on

the left, balanced by the tranquillity of the pines twisting

across both screens. Because of conservation requirements,

pairs of folding screens from the collection will be rotated

on a regular basis.

Across Central and East Asia, boldly decorated

costumes and textiles were created for court, ritual and

theatre. The sultanates or khanates that arose along the

famed Silk Road in the great trading towns of Bukhara,

Khiva, Tashkent and Samarkand displayed their wealth

in handsome apparel and furnishings. Men and women

wore robes and coats of various cuts carefully constructed

with imported linings and decorative tablet-woven ribbon

trim. The cut of many flowing garments is similar for both

A Han dynasty Chinese funerary sculpture of reclining dog, a gift from T T Tsui, in front of works of art including an ancient Japanese pot and an Iranian ceramic male figure.


sexes, although men’s garments include bulky outer coats

worn over thinner robes. Complementing simple tailoring,

the colours are rich and luminous and the designs bold

and abstract. Motifs range from the geometric to ancient

stylised tree and floral imagery also found on other art

forms from Central Asia, such as jewellery and carpets.

In Japan, the theatre inspired artistic innovation and

was a source of wonderful imagery. Woven from silk and

gold foil paper, an ornate brocade outer-robe for a male

actor in a Noh drama performance demonstrates the links

between palace and theatre. Literally meaning ‘hunting

cloak’, the awase kariginu robe developed from the

informal jacket worn by Japanese male courtiers. During

the Edo period, however, the awase kariginu became the

most important outer garment for certain male characters

in the Noh drama, and the costume worn by strong gods,

ministers and the bird-like tengu demons. Those made for

the stage are larger than the original form used for daily

apparel, and additional padding and the small masks used

in Noh theatre create an effect of size and bulk.

The theatre continued to be popular in modern Japan

with many visual artists and their actor contemporaries

creating bold images for a broader urban middle-class

audience. In the East Asian Gallery, the ukiyo-e prints of

Natori Shunsen (1886–1960) portray prominent actors

in iconic roles drawn from popular new forms of kabuki

theatre which dramatised well-known events and folk

legends. Another consummate printmaker, Tsukioka

Yoshitoshi (1839–1892), created extraordinary and often

disturbing prints of supernatural stories ranging from

a homesick palm uprooting itself and walking out of a

garden, to an ailing samurai confronted by his past victims

in the form of giant skulls.

While social structures and hierarchies changed in

twentieth-century East Asia, many ancient sources of

imagery continued to inspire modern artists. Munakata

Shiko (1903–1975) combined spontaneity and a sense of

joyous discovery with stories and images familiar from the

canons of Japanese Buddhism and Chinese Daoism. The

woodcuts in his 1939–40 series Life of Prince Shotoku

took figures from the legendary story of Prince Shotoku

(574–622) who dedicated himself to public service and

Buddhist teachings. Shotoku is remembered as the

founding father of the Japanese state and as an ideal

Buddhist king. In complete contrast, a late twentieth-

century print by Masami Teraoka (b. 1936) acknowledges

both American Pop art and Japanese ukiyo-e woodblocks.

In Catfish envy 1993, the artist humorously sets subject

matter typical of Edo-period prints in an American beach

scenario to comment on current morals and attitudes in

Japan and the West.

Together the vibrant and enormously varied displays

in the refurbished gallery provide visitors with illuminating

insights into the arts and histories of the diverse East

Asian region.

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

A row of Chinese bone sages, lohans, which were a gift from Mr Louis Berthet and Mrs Suzette Bertolozzi.

(opposite above) View of the East Asian Gallery featuring a Han dynasty Chinese watchtower, a gift from Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett, beside the gilded Japanese screens Pine trees by the shore.

(opposite below) View of the calligraphy on the back of a Japanese sculpture by Enku, shown between a Japanese Noh robe and a series of actor portraits by Natori Shunsen. The prints were a gift from Jennifer Gordon.


children’s exhibition

Home at last

13 September – 1 February 2009 Children’s Gallery

For young children, the home is the centre of their world

and the focus of family life and, as they grow, they

branch out into the wider world from this home base. The

exhibition Home at last provides a child’s eye view of the

Australian home across time, place and culture. It features a

range of new and familiar media, techniques and objects by

Australian artists in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection.

The home is a popular subject for artists, particularly

their own home, which is easily accessible, relevant, known

and loved. Grace Cossington Smith’s Interior with veranda

doors 1954 captures the intimate, memory-filled spaces

of her family home. One of the artist’s sketchbooks (an

intimate, portable and affordable format for drawing in and

around the home) is included in the exhibition.

For many it is the relationships within the household

that make a house a home. The prints, paintings and

photographs in the exhibition explore every day moments

of home and family life, including extended family, friends

and much loved pets. Through the familiar process of

photography, Robert McFarlane portrays a warm family

gathering in Grandmother Lily McFarlane (nee Gelsthorpe

Brimage) at a dinner for her 77th birthday at our family

home at Downing Street, Brighton, Adelaide 1964.

Atmospheric light captures the faces of family watching

and waiting in anticipation as the candles are lit.

Some artists comment on the place of the home in

Australian society. Howard Arkley’s painting Floral exterior

1996 explores the Australian dream of the suburban home.

Elaine Russell Little orphans 2004

synthetic polymer paint on paper 97.0 x 78.0 cm


Purchased 2004


Inspired by advertising and magazines, Arkley imposes

interior decoration on the exterior of the house. The stencil

process is also used by Adrian Doyle, who presents a

nostalgic Australian childhood memory in Boy on a clothes

line 2003. Another Australian icon is introduced to the

children in Margaret Dodd’s Holden with lipstick surfboards

1977 – a famous Australian family car with a twist.

Objects reveal the times and experiences of their maker.

Art is often made at home and for the home. Furniture and

toys in the exhibition reveal the resourcefulness of artists

who ‘make do’ and ‘make a bob’ by creating art from

recycled materials in hard economic times. Chest of drawers

c. 1920 from the Australian folk art collection is a delightful

piece creatively assembled from kerosene tins and packing

cases by an unknown South Australian artist.

The Indigenous Australian works of art in the exhibition

show the artists’ close connections to home through their

choice of materials and techniques and the function of

their work. Golbordok (traditional bush honey collecting

bag) 1989 is closely woven from pandanus fibre and

embedded with wax to ingeniously prevent leakage. The

bag was woven by Margaret Rinybuma and decorated with

ochres by her husband Michael Gadjawala from Maningrida

in Central Arnhem Land.

Elaine Russell’s painting Little orphans 2004 illustrates

an episode from her childhood at Murrin Bridge Mission on

the Lachlan River in central New South Wales in the 1940s

and 1950s. In this scene she depicts herself being followed

home from a swim in the pond by a family of ducklings.

The image alludes to a childhood spent growing up in a

loving family, living in difficult circumstances. The painting

is displayed alongside a work from the Frances Derham

collection of child art, Mt Margaret Mission, Western

Australia 1939 by thirteen-year-old Boongie Nindarngar.

The annotated drawing includes a photograph of the artist

and is a map of his mission home, defining his world.

Leaving home and starting again in an unfamiliar place

is an experience common to many Australians throughout

history. Abraham Solomon’s painting Second class – the

parting: thus part we rich in sorrow parting poor 1854

and David Moore’s photograph Migrants arriving in Sydney

1966 introduce children to the migration experience.

They reveal the mixed feelings associated with leaving the

familiar and encountering the new.

Inside the homelike exhibition space, preschool and

primary children are encouraged to take a fresh look at the

familiar and imagine the experience of others by engaging

with art. Children have the opportunity to make a creative

response to the exhibition by drawing and building small

homes. Visitors can attempt to identify secret sounds and

the works of art that match them, and can try to guess

the functions of mystery objects. Many of the works evoke

sensory associations and memories of the sights, sounds,

smells, tastes and feel of the home environment. Take a

journey through the exhibition with someone of a different

age to yourself and talk about your diverse and shared

experiences.

Joanna Krabman Educator, Family and School Programs, and curator of Home at last

To coincide with the opening of the exhibition Home at last, the website Picture my world will go online. Relating to the concept of home, the website will feature local school projects and children’s responses to works of art in the exhibition. People can add their own responses and more on the website. nga.gov.au/PictureMyWorld

Howard Arkley Floral exterior 1996 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 174.5 x 134.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2001


conservation

Painted by the sun: early Asia–Pacific photography

Picture paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s

11 July – 9 November 2008 Exhibition Galleries

The National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition Picture

paradise surveys the first hundred years of photography

in the Asia–Pacific region and features a rollcall of

technical processes – from rare, early, delicate salted

paper photographs printed in sunlight and jewel-like

daguerreotypes formed over a noxious vat of hot mercury

to more recent gelatin silver and pigment process prints.

The exhibition includes an unusual range of photographic

formats other than the ubiquitous single framed print:

ornately bound travel albums, elegantly cased images and

spectacular panoramas such as the impressive ten-metre-

long Holtermann panorama, Panorama of Sydney Harbour

and suburbs from the north shore 1875. The images in

Picture paradise predate the widespread application of

commercial colour photographic processes. Visitors will

see meticulously applied hand-colouring achieved with

watercolour pigments, inks and early synthetic dyestuffs.

The exhibition celebrates the diversity of photographic

ingenuity in its first century of development. In true

entrepreneurial style, Bernhardt Otto Holtermann

(1838–1885), a photographer and politician, began his

life in Australia as a prospector. In 1875 he collaborated

with Charles Bayliss (1850–1897) to produce the largest

photographs the world had seen. In a purpose-built room

in the tower of Holtermann’s Lavender Bay house, Bayliss

used large-format cameras to photograph the harbour.

The Holtermann panorama comprises a mammoth plate

format (52.5 x 42.8 cm), with twenty-three albumen print

panels on a single cotton backing. It is acknowledged as

being the finest surviving example of its kind. Although

some of the images have faded edges – typical damage

related to this process – the main concern for conservation

was the work’s inherent structural weakness. While records

indicate that Holtermann routinely transported selections

of panoramic works on a single rolled canvas (1.5 x 24

metres) for ease of viewing and display, this panorama was

bound in a concertina format which folded flat. Evidence

suggests that the unusual concertinaed format may be a

later intervention, implying that the marbled paper and

bookcloth may be additions.

The final three panels, while attached to the Sydney

panorama, are not part of it, but form a separate

panorama depicting a gun placement at Middle Head in

Sydney. The Middle Head images were originally attributed

to Holtermann, but have since been reassigned to Bayliss.

While the panels in the Holtermann panorama are correctly

bound in the portrait orientation, the panels in the second

panorama form the complete image only when placed

Bernard O Holtermann, commissioner

Charles Bayliss, photographer

Panorama of Sydney Harbour and suburbs from the north

shore 1875 (detail) 23 albumen silver

photographs 52.5 x 985.0 cm (overall)


Purchased 1982


in the landscape orientation and could not, therefore,

be viewed as a complete image in the current format. In

order to display the Holtermann panorama in its entirety,

the second panorama needed to be folded behind and

concealed in the mounting system. This complication,

together with the extreme length and the inherent

fragilities, posed the most serious problems for display.

In previous exhibitions, the panorama had only been

partially displayed due to the size limitations of available

showcases. On one occasion it had been supported on

an angle in a custom-made frame – again, only partially

displayed. For Picture paradise, however, the curator, Gael

Newton, requested the entire panorama be displayed

vertically. In the concertinaed format, this form of display

was problematic to achieve as, due to the nature of the

mounting, damage was caused each time the panorama

was unfolded or re-folded.

The edges of many panels were creased and abraded

from wear associated with repeated folding and unfolding

of the binding. This action was complicated by the

advanced deterioration of the cloth hinges, which had split

in a number of areas, and further contributed to abrasion

of the photographic emulsion surface.

A dramatic decision was taken jointly by the curator

and Conservation to separate the panels. These were

not joined directly to each other, but linked only with the

cotton lining, making this choice easier. This alleviated

much of the handling damage and immediately created

more options for safe display. An added bonus was that

the second panorama could be displayed, for the first

time, with the images united in the correct orientation.

Once separated, it was necessary to carry out some surface

cleaning recto and verso, to stabilise torn and creased

edges and to infill and retouch areas of loss. The original

paper lining and fabric were left intact. The final step in

the treatment was to develop a safe system for display. The

display strategy was based on edge lining each panel onto

a separate rigid support to minimise handling, particularly

during installation. Wide strips of Japanese paper were

adhered to the cotton lining on the verso of each image

using a synthetic adhesive to avoid introducing moisture.

Once each image was adhered to a rigid panel it was

easily attached to the wall using Velcro. When the entire

panorama had been installed on the wall, a large window

mount and modular frame was constructed around it. The

Gallery’s Conservation and Exhibition Design staff liased

and planned extensively to address the many complications


of the project. The final frame comprised two long metal

struts above and below the panorama to support the four

two-metre-long acrylic glazing panels that slid into the

struts from one side. A decorative, gold-painted wooden

frame was placed over the top to complete the structure,

which had been predrilled to avoid creating debris.

Another photographer working with oversized formats,

J W Lindt, is represented by two characteristically imposing

carbon prints depicting life in New Guinea, Mourners

and dead house at Kalo, New Guinea 1885 and Moto

water carrier, Port Moresby 1885. Carbon prints are not

silver-based images but pigmented gelatin. The nature of

the process allows the photographer latitude to develop

richness and variety in the colour and topography of the

gelatin layers. As both of these works were exposed to

poor environmental conditions prior to being acquired by

the Gallery, their substantial gelatin layers had become

swollen, sticking to the interior of the glazing in their

frames. Unfortunately, the glazing had been removed,

taking with it some areas of image emulsion. Treatment

involved ‘rescuing’ the detached emulsion and re-adhering

it. Cleaning the surface of the print and final retouching

using watercolours unified and enhanced the image. The

original frames were also restored and provide appropriate

historical context.

A variety of travel albums also feature in the exhibition.

Albums were compiled by early tourists to the Asia–Pacific

region and by local commercial photographic studios.

The photographs in these albums were often annotated,

providing insight into a particular photograph’s subject

matter. Many albums are surprisingly large and heavy and

have gilt cloth bindings appropriate to the period. More

unusual are those that use different binding materials,

such as Stafhell and Kleingrothe’s album Sumatra, which

has an intricate cover finished in lacquer-ware inlaid

with mother of pearl and ivory. During treatment by

the Gallery’s conservation team, the albums in Picture

paradise necessitated a cross-disciplinary approach, with

book conservators addressing structural problems, objects

conservators integrating missing areas of inlay and paper

conservators undertaking minor treatments and providing

appropriate display mechanisms.

Cased images such as daguerreotypes and ambrotypes

require darkened spaces and precise lighting with

Paper conservators James Ward and Fiona Kemp unfold and examine the ten-metre-long

Holtermann panorama.

(opposite above) Installing the Holtermann

panorama for the exhibition Picture paradise at the

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

(opposite below) Paper conservator Andrea Wise carefully patching a section of

the Holtermann panorama.


minimal reflection. These works epitomise the magical

nature of early photography. Captured on either a metal

(daguerreotype) or glass support (ambrotypes), they are

small, highly detailed, often intimate portraits – and,

occasionally, landscapes. Daguerreotypes, in particular,

remain vulnerable to physical and chemical damage, so

traditionally the photographic plate would be sealed and

housed in a shallow, hinged case that opened like a book.

Commonly, cases were fabricated from leather-covered

wood, papier-mâché or alternatively, moulded from an

early type of thermoplastic (sawdust and shellac) and

lined with silk or velvet. A metal mount, glass glazing and

decorative, imitation-gold pinchbeck edging provided these

works with extra protection against scratching and damage

from pollutants. As each of the materials in this composite

object have very different vulnerabilities and parameters

for exhibition, cased photographic images require special

consideration. Historically they were viewed in subdued

light by the atmospherically appropriate light from a single

candle. Conservation worked closely with the exhibition

designers to create new modular showcases for these

works, incorporating fibre-optic lighting to allow for their

full appreciation.

‘Photography, like electricity, was one of the miraculous

scientific discoveries of the 19th century. Its impact was

immediate and profound.’1 Originally developed and used

by scientists, photography was rapidly adopted by people in

every strata of society, as a sublime documentary tool.

Acceptance of photography as a branch of the arts

took longer. During the twentieth century, photographs

as objects, and photographic technique as a form of

legitimate artistic expression, have made only gradual

ingress into museum and gallery art collections.

Similarly, the impact of photographic treatment

and display in conservation has been one of continuing

absorption and adaptation. Early photographers were

endlessly inventive, constantly exploiting materials and

techniques to suit the circumstances in which they found

themselves. The extraordinary range of works in Picture

paradise reminds the audience that an idiosyncratic

approach was commonplace. Conservators of photographic

images need to be equally creative and resourceful. The

preparatory period for Picture paradise brought both

satisfaction and delight as we rose to the challenges set by

some of the world’s first photographic artists.

Andrea Wise, Fiona Kemp and James Ward Paper Conservation

The exhibition is presented in conjunction with Vivid, Australia’s inaugural National Photography Festival, which celebrates photography’s vital role in Australian life and history.

A book published in conjunction with the exhibition Picture paradise is available from the Gallery Shop. For further information, telephone (02) 6240 6420 or send an email to [email protected].

note1. Shar Jones, J W Lindt: master photographer, Currey O’Neil Ross, South

Yarra, 1985, p. 1.

Fiona Kemp retouching J W Lindt’s Moto water carriers, Port Morseby.

(opposite) J W Lindt Moto water carrier, Port Moresby 1885 carbon print 70.9 x 60.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

After treatment by the Paper Conservation.


collection focus

Costumes of the Ballets Russes

The National Gallery of Australia has a renowned

collection of costumes from the Ballets Russes (the

Russian Ballet), which was founded by the flamboyant

Russian arts producer Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929). By

integrating design, music and dance, and encouraging

the artistic experimentation and collaboration of painters,

choreographers and composers, Diaghilev created the new

art of modern ballet. From 1909 to 1929, his company

Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev performed in Paris,

throughout Europe (although never in Russia) and in North

and South America.

Based in Paris from 1909, Diaghilev created opera

and dance productions that brought the exoticism of

Russian culture to a wider Western audience, and with

it the work of Russian artists and designers such as Léon

Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail

Larionov; choreographers Michel Fokine and Léonide

Massine; composers Igor Stravinsky, Alexander Borodin,

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Nicholas Tcherepnin; and

dancers such as Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova, Adolph

Bolm, Serge Lifar and Vaslav Nijinsky. Through the work of

these artistic collaborators and performers Diaghilev was

able to orchestrate and bring to life a new vision of the

Slavic, oriental, baroque, romantic and later constructivist

elements of Russian culture.

Diaghilev’s association with the wider world of the arts

led to him commissioning artists such as Pablo Picasso,

Henri Matisse, André Derain, Robert and Sonia Delaunay,

Georges Braque, José Maria Sert and Giorgio de Chirico

to design costumes and scenery for a number of his

productions. The costumes reveal aspects of these artists’

work as designers and provide insights into the nature

of collaboration between the performing and visual arts.

Valuable works such as Léon Bakst’s The blue god costume

worn by Nijinsky in Le dieu bleu in 1912, Henri Matisse’s

design for Costume for a mourner in the 1920 production

of Le chant du rossignol and Giorgio de Chirico’s Costume

for a male guest in the 1929 production of Le bal are some

of the many highlights of the collection.

The costumes designed and worn by Diaghilev’s

designers and dancers from 1909 to 1929 form the

main part of the Gallery’s Ballets Russes collection, and

complementing these are costumes from some of the

Léon Bakst, designer Les Ballets Russes de Serge

Diaghilev, producer Costume for The blue god in the

Ballets Russes production of Le dieu bleu [The blue god] c. 1912

silk, metal, gelatin tunic length: 76.6 cm

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1987


Henri Matisse, designer Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev, producer Costume for a mourner in the Ballets Russes production of Le chant du rossignol c. 1920 cotton and wool felt, cotton and silk velvet tunic length: 166.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1973

productions of his successor Colonel Wassily de Basil,

whose companies revived much of Diaghilev’s repertoire

from 1932 to the late 1940s.

With Diaghilev’s untimely death in Venice in 1929, the

Ballets Russes disbanded, and a diaspora of its dancers

and choreographers formed new and influential dance

companies in North America and Europe. In 1932 de Basil

and René Blum formed a new company, Les Ballets Russes

de Monte Carlo, which de Basil took over as sole director

in 1935. This company (under various names and business

arrangements) toured to Australia in 1936, 1938–39

and 1939–40, creating a sensation with its repertoire

of Diaghilev and newer productions and its integration

of avant-garde design with innovative performance

and music. The legacy of the Ballets Russes is its role in

the introduction of modern dance in Australia, led by a

number of the company’s dancers and choreographers who

remained in Australia or returned to work here. This legacy

is currently being examined during a four-year collaborative

research project between the National Library of Australia,

The Australian Ballet and the University of Adelaide, which

will provide a further Australian dimension to the National

Gallery of Australia’s collection.

Following the demise of de Basil’s company in 1951, its

rich remaining stock of Diaghilev’s original costumes and

those from de Basil’s earlier companies, maintained in Paris

long after their arduous life on the stage, eventually found

their way into several major museum collections during

the 1960s and 1970s, including that of the then fledgling

Australian National Gallery (now the National Gallery of

Australia), which acquired a large group of Ballets Russes

costumes in 1973 and again in 1976.1 The Gallery’s

collection of Ballets Russes costumes is one of its major

assets and is one of the world’s largest collections of this

material. The last exhibition of these costumes, From Russia

with love, was staged by the National Gallery of Australia in

1999. Selections from the collection, focusing on individual

productions of the Ballets Russes, are regularly displayed in

the International Art galleries to show their relationship to,

and influence on other design and decorative arts of the

early twentieth century.

Many of these costumes have been restored during

the past twenty years by the Gallery’s textile conservators.

Their painstaking work continues on a group of costumes

not previously exhibited due to their degraded condition.

The conservators’ long experience with the particular

characteristics of the Ballets Russes designers’ materials

and construction methods allows for the complex and

sometimes seemingly impossible reconstruction of

costumes that have had little care since they were last

donned for performance. The conservators’ brief is to

maintain the working and visual condition of costumes that

have been used, while repairing and replacing elements of

their fabric that have been lost or damaged by insects or

extended exposure to light.

Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

This renowned collection of Ballets Russes costumes will be shown in a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia from 14 December 2009 to 14 March 2010. This exhibition will celebrate the centenary of the first Paris performances of the Ballets Russes by Diaghilev, and the work of the many artists with whom he collaborated over a twenty-year period at the beginning of the twentieth century.

note1. For accounts of the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of Ballets

Russes costumes see: Roger Leong, From Russia with love: costumes for the Ballets Russes 1909–1933, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1998; and Christine Dixon, ‘Museum pieces? The Russian Ballet collection’, in Pauline Green (ed.), Building the collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2003, pp. 176–89.


acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Frederick McCubbin Violet and gold

The National Gallery of Australia’s recent acquisition Violet

and gold 1911 is a brilliant light-filled work. We can see

here how the artist focussed on light and colour rather

than subject. In 2001, Ron Radford, then director of the Art

Gallery of South Australia, wrote about this work as being

‘One of McCubbin’s most beautiful Macedon paintings’,

remarking that ‘there is no narrative, only poetry’.1

Does this surprise you? Do you think of Frederick

McCubbin as one of the great Australian Impressionists,

alongside Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles

Conder? Do you consider him to be an artist who had his

heyday in the 1890s, painting images of the bush extolling

the life of pioneers and the sadness of lost children? Do

you regard him as playing a major role in the development

of the Australian landscape, painting works that are part of

the fabric of Australian culture? All of this is certainly true.

But do you also believe that his best days were over

by the twentieth century, and that he carried on as the

‘good old Proff’, philosophising and teaching others? If so,

you need to think again. Of course McCubbin was one of

the great Australian Impressionists. However, as Australia

became a federation and began to move into modern

times, McCubbin just got better and better. While Roberts,

Streeton and Conder did their best works in the 1880s

and 1890s, McCubbin came into his own in the twentieth

century, particularly after his first and only trip to Europe

in 1907, when he spent five months abroad. During this

visit he was inspired by the works of J M W Turner and

Claude Monet, especially the late paintings of Turner, which

were being shown for the first time at the Tate Gallery

in London.2 McCubbin observed, ‘as Monet says, “Light

is the chief sitter everywhere”.’3 Violet and gold amply

demonstrates this.

In this work, McCubbin created an image of cattle

drinking at a pool surrounded by tall trees; but, more than

that, he depicted a beam of light reaching through the

trees and onto the cattle. Light glows through the trees.

As Radford has observed: ‘Rays of dappled light flickering

through the dark trees animate the surface of the painting

with flecks of colour’.4 Indeed, the way he captured the

light radiating through the trees and across the ground is

miraculous.

Violet and gold is an example of how, during the

early years of the twentieth century, McCubbin changed

his approach and began to paint pure images, focussing

on nature, on light, the time of day and the season. He

painted flickering light, hazed light, dazzling light – light

in all its manifestations. As McCubbin wrote of Turner, he

‘realized the quality of light … no theatrical effect but mist

and cloud and sea and land drenched in light … They glow

with a tender brilliancy’.5

McCubbin also began to depict modern life and

modern times: wharfs, factories and city streets. He started

to portray his subjects using pure colour applied with a

palette knife. And, he used paint in a most advanced and

abstracted fashion, creating painterly surfaces. If you stand

closely to Violet and gold (or look at the detail opposite),

you will see what I mean. You will find portions of the

picture in which McCubbin has almost splattered his paint

over the coarse canvas. He animated the surface of the

painting with flecks of colour. His free handling of paint and

his layering of pure colours are remarkable.

McCubbin gave Violet and gold an abstract, poetic

title – possibly a result of having looked at and admired

James McNeill Whistler’s work in London in 1907.6 The title

may have come from a line in a poem by the American

poet Stephen Crane: ‘In little songs of carmine, violet,

green and gold. A chorus of colors came over the water’.

But in giving it the abstract title of ‘Violet and gold’ he was,

more importantly, suggesting that it was a painting about

colour and paint and light rather than about cows. While

he named other works ‘The coming of Spring’, ‘Afterglow’

(both National Gallery of Australia), ‘Winter’s morning’

and ‘Autumn morning’ (both National Gallery of Victoria,

Melbourne), emphasising the time of year or time of day,

this is one of only a few works to which he gave a colour title.

Violet and gold was painted about one kilometre

from McCubbin’s country retreat Fontainebleau at Mount

Macedon, on the nearby property of Ard Chielle. McCubbin

found this area inspirational and painted many images

there that capture his interest in atmospheric effects. They

derive from his deep knowledge and love of the place and

his lived experience. Violet and gold is one of the most

painterly and evocative of these works – full of pastoral

charm and end-of-day ease.

Frederick McCubbin Violet and gold 1911

oil on canvas 87.0 x 144.5 cm National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra Purchased with the generous assistance of the Hon. Ashley

Dawson-Damer and John Wylie, AM, and Myriam Wylie 2008

Frederick McCubbin Violet and gold 1911 (detail)


The area below Mount Macedon where McCubbin

painted Violet and gold was low-lying and swampy and

full of tall gum trees. McCubbin was fascinated by the

Australian eucalypt, and suggested that other Australian

artists did not appreciate its qualities. He wrote:

The subtle way in which it responds to varying effects

of light and shadow was lost on them … the varieties in

shades and colours, the Gum tree presented, from the

violet grey tints of the stringy bark to the transparent

sheen of the White Gum, upon which colours disport

and change in a hundred subtle ways as they would

upon a mirror. Yet our trees and our faded flora are such

component parts of our Australian landscape.7

Some of McCubbin’s late works are among Australia’s

finest Federation landscapes. ‘They glow with a tender

brilliancy’ (as McCubbin described the work of Turner).8

The shimmering, dazzling light in Violet and gold shows

how much McCubbin learnt from Turner. It has a rich

painterly surface – which reflects the subtle harmonies of

the Australian bush. And, as Turner often did, McCubbin

makes the small shining orb of the sun the central,

dominating force of the composition.

Among McCubbin’s late works are two other Macedon

paintings in the Gallery’s collection, Hauling rails for a

fence, Mount Macedon 1910, which McCubbin painted

one year before Violet and gold, and Afterglow 1912,

painted one year afterwards. In comparing these works

we can see that Violet and gold is the more daring and

adventurous work. Whereas Violet and gold is a long,

narrow canvas, the other two works are more rectangular.

And where in Violet and gold McCubbin focused on a

thicket of trees, emphasising the denseness of the bush and

hardly showing any sky, in both Hauling rails for a fence

and Afterglow he adopted a more traditional composition,

placing a clump of trees on one side and open sky on the

other. In Violet and gold McCubbin used the reflections

in the pool to add to the internality of the work – with

the reflections an illusionist echo of the trees. In all three

paintings he created dynamic compositions by contrasting

the strong verticals of the tree trunks with diagonals: in

Hauling rails for a fence and Afterglow, the diagonals are

essentially those of the hillside, but in Violet and gold he

used a more complex composition with the diagonal fall of

the shaft of light coming down across the picture towards

the right, contrasted with the dark shape of a jagged

branch rising diagonally from the left.

The three paintings also show McCubbin’s interest in

different times of day: Violet and gold capturing a low sun

Frederick McCubbin Hauling rails for a fence, Mount

Macedon 1910 oil on canvas 71.5 x 101.5 cm


Purchased 1964


shining through an early morning mist, Hauling rails for

a fence portraying the middle of the day and Afterglow

depicting the rosy afterglow of the setting sun. McCubbin

did not just vary his compositions in painting these three

subjects, but also his range of colours and his brush (or palette

knife) strokes – each used to create a different atmospheric effect.

McCubbin played with the use of figures in each of

the paintings, from the workers in Hauling rails for a

fence to the animals in Violet and gold and to the classical

nudes of Afterglow. However, the figures are not there to

create a story so much as to give a sense of space to the

composition. Although Violet and gold becomes flatter

if we were to take out the cattle, it also becomes more

obviously an adventurous paint-laden picture surface,

showing nature experienced from within.

The generous support of Ashley Dawson-Damer and

John Wylie and Myriam Wylie has made possible this major

purchase of Violet and gold for the Gallery’s twenty-fifth

anniversary year. They have helped us represent more

strongly one of Australia’s most important artists at the

turn of the century and, in doing so, have provided a great

service to the Australian public.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art

The National Gallery of Australia will be holding an exhibition from 2 August to 27 November 2009 of Frederick McCubbin’s later paintings. Anne Gray would welcome being contacted by owners of works by McCubbin painted after 1907.

email: [email protected] tel: +61 (0) 2 6240 6405

notes1. Ron Radford, Our country: Australian Federation landscapes

1900–1914, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2001, p. 84.

2. McCubbin did know of Turner’s work before visiting Europe. Indeed, he wrote to Tom Roberts on 8 January 1906, commenting that ‘I am painting a Turnerian gem …’; in Andrew McKenzie, Frederick McCubbin 1855–1917: ‘The Proff’ and his art, Mannagum Press, Lilydale, 1990, p. 243.

3. Frederick McCubbin, in James MacDonald, The art of Frederick McCubbin, Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1986, p. 84.

4. Radford, p. 84.5. Frederick McCubbin, letter to Annie McCubbin, 19 July 1907, in

McKenzie, p. 259.6. Whistler was a leading proponent of the credo ‘art for art’s sake’. He

famously titled many of his works ‘harmonies’ and ‘arrangements’, such as Arrangement in grey and black: the artist’s mother (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

7. McCubbin, in MacDonald, p. 84.8. McCubbin, in McKenzie, p. 259.

Frederick McCubbin Afterglow 1912 oil on canvas 91.5 x 117.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1970


acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings

A magnificent gift of Albert Namatjira watercolours

The Finke River begins its 600-kilometre journey amid a

stand of tea trees and river gums at Ormiston Gorge in

Central Australia and continues as a string of waterholes

that stretch towards the edge of the Simpson Desert. The

riverbed carves its way through the MacDonnell Ranges at

Glen Helen, curves around the whitewashed buildings of

the Lutheran mission clustered at the base of Mount

Hermannsburg, before heading southwards through the

sandstone gullies of Palm Valley. This is the traditional

territory of Western Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira, who

translated the ancient beauty of his country through his tin

box of watercolour paints. As an artist, he saw the desert

landscape as filled with light and colour – from sap-stained

trees to the translucent mauve of the distant ranges –

as an Indigenous artist, he was aware of the physical

presence of ancestral beings embodied in the giant ghost

gums and in the forms of surrounding mountains and gorges.

It is this numinous quality that entranced Gordon and

Marilyn Darling who, over the last twenty years, have

formed an extraordinary collection of watercolours by

Namatjira, from his early paintings of fleeing kangaroos to

the mature landscapes of the 1950s. They are generously

gifting the first fifteen of twenty-five paintings to the

National Gallery of Australia to be displayed in The Gordon

and Marilyn Darling Gallery of Hermannsburg Painting,

which promises to be one of the highlights of the new

Albert Namatjira Redbank Gorge, MacDonnell

Ranges, Central Australia 1936–37

watercolour on paper 27.5 x 25.0 cm


Gift of Gordon and Marilyn Darling, celebrating the National

Gallery of Australia’s 25th anniversary, 2008


Albert Namatjira Ghost gum 1945–53 watercolour over pencil on paper 42.0 x 32.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Gordon and Marilyn Darling, celebrating the National Gallery of Australia’s 25th anniversary, 2008

Indigenous galleries that form part of the Stage One

building expansion. These works were previously lent to

the National Gallery of Australia for the 2002 retrospective,

Seeing the centre: the art of Albert Namatjira 1902–1959,

curated by Alison French whose research was supported by

the Gordon Darling Foundation. This landmark travelling

exhibition brought together works from state galleries and

private collections to provide a long overdue opportunity

for the critical reappraisal of Namatjira’s works on paper.

Early interest in the art of the Central Desert area

was centred on a group of artists based at the Lutheran

Mission Station at Hermannsburg, or Ntaria, who came

to be called The Hermannsburg School. At the forefront

of this attention was Albert Namatjira, who was the first

to become interested in the medium of watercolour after

seeing several exhibitions by Rex Battarbee and John A

Gardner, who regularly visited the mission during painting

trips through South Australia and Central Australia.

In 1936, Albert arranged to work as Battarbee’s

cameleer on two month-long excursions to Palm Valley and

the MacDonnell Ranges in exchange for painting lessons.

During these trips he quickly picked up the rudiments

of perspective and technique, having shown himself to

be a natural draftsman in his early pokerwork drawings

of local plants and animals on mulga wood plaques,

boomerangs and woomeras for the mission’s small craft

industry. Battarbee was so impressed with his instinct for

composition and colour that he chose three watercolours

to display alongside his own at the Royal South Australian

Society of Arts Gallery in 1937. The following year he

organised a solo exhibition at the Fine Arts Society Gallery

in Melbourne, for which Albert added his father’s tribal

name, Namatjira, to his signature. His paintings sold out

within three days, establishing a pattern of commercial

patronage that continued throughout his exhibiting career.

This success and further painting expeditions by

Namatjira and Battarbee inspired others at the mission

to follow in his footsteps including the Pareroultja and

Raberaba brothers, Walter Ebatarinja and Adolf Inkamala.

These camps could last for weeks, which allowed Namatjira

to paint the ever-changing light over the course of a day

or across the seasons. He journeyed by foot, camel and

car to sites all around the MacDonnell Ranges and outside

Western Arrernte country as far as Haast’s Bluff, Uluru and

Mount Connor. When he had found a suitable vantage

point, he would sit cross-legged with a sheet of paper

tacked to a wooden board and a billy can of water and

begin with a wash of sky. This combination of Namatjira’s

direct experience of the land and his unerring eye for

colour gives the viewer the full fierce blaze of ochre rock,

the thirsty expanse of scrub-mottled plains and the purple

shadows that spread like bruises in the folds of the ranges.

For many Indigenous artists, their sense of self is bound

to the ancestral country that holds their Dreaming story.

For Albert Namatjira and his kinsfolk, this connection

to the land was manifested through representational

watercolours. After Namatjira’s death in 1959, the

Hermannsburg School was largely overlooked, particularly

following the emergence of the symbolic acrylic paintings

of the Papunya Tula collective during the 1970s. It was

not until the first retrospective of Namatjira’s painting was

held in 1984 at the Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs

that his vision of country was accepted and both realistic

and symbolic approaches have now been recognised as

different ways of depicting the creation stories embodied

in the landscape. This has encouraged other Indigenous

artists to tell their story through watercolour painting,

and Namatjira’s artistic heritage continues through his

descendents and those that he inspired.

Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings


acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Owen Yalandja Yawk yawks

The Kuninjku people in the Maningrida region of Central

Arnhem Land believe that yawk yawks are mermaid-like

manifestations of young female ancestors. They have

slender undulating bodies, fine scales, forked tails, pointed

breasts and long, almost featureless faces. If disturbed

or frightened, the shadowy figures of these magnificent

water creatures can be seen fleeing into the depths of

Mirrayar billabong, an important yawk yawk site and sacred

Yirritja moiety place. The Dangkorlo clan are custodians of

this billabong.

Owen Yalandja, a Kuninjku (eastern Kunwinjku) artist

and a senior member of the Dangkorlo clan, is a renowned

sculptor and is well known for his carving and singing at

yawk yawk ceremonies. He was born in 1962 and is the son

of Kuninjku ceremonial leader, painter and carver Crusoe

Kuningbal (1922–1984) and brother to Crusoe Kurddal (b.

1961). It wasn’t until the death of their father that Yalandja

and Kurddal began carving mimih spirits. Their sculptures

were similar to those of their father, but they produced the

figures at a larger scale to better represent the size and

form of mimih – tall, slender spirits that live in the rocky

environment of the Arnhem Land plateau.

My father … taught me and my brother … how to carve.

He only did mimih spirit figures and when I first started

as an artist I used to make mimih figures as well. Then, I

decided to change and to start representing yawk yawk

spirit figures.1

Yalandja began experimenting with the painted designs

and use of colour and, while Kurddal continued carving

mimih, Yalandja began carving yawk yawk. He would carve

their bodies like those of the mimih – tall, very slender and

often with intricate detail over their sometimes twisted

bodies. Today, however, his yawk yawk sculptures are more

distinct and refined from his mimih figures.

Yawk yawk is a bit the equivalent of a mermaid in balanda

[white] culture. Yawk yawk is my Dreaming and she lives

in the water at Barrihdjowkkeng near where I have set

up my outstation. She has always been there. I often visit

this place.

I love making these sculptures and I have invented a way

to represent the fish scales on her body. The colours I use

have particular meanings [which are not public]. I make

them either red or black. I am now teaching my kids to

carve, just like my father did for us.

I make it [yawk yawk] according to my individual ideas …

My father used to decorate them with dots. A long time

ago, he showed me how to do this. But this style is my

own; no one else does them like this.2

Yalandja uses only kurrajong (Brachychiton diversifolius)

wood, the same wood his father used, and natural earth

pigments with PVA (polyvinyl acetate) fixatives to create the

stunning designs on his figures. He selects unusual trunks

that are thin and curvilinear, giving his figures a sinewy

appearance and creating the impression of movement

in the body and tail. The natural fork in the tree often

provides the fork of the yawk yawk’s tail.

Yalandja is now passing on his knowledge by teaching

his son Dustin Bonson to carve mimih spirits.

These three exquisite yawk yawk figures, along with

three others, were first featured in the exhibition Culture

Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial, which is

currently on tour around Australia and will open and

the Art Gallery of Western Australia, its second touring

venue, on 20 September 2008. They were kindly gifted

by Janet and John Calvert-Jones and are fine additions to

the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of six other

stunning yawk yawks.

Tina Baum Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

note1. Owen Yalandja, interview with Apolline Kohen, Cadell Outstation,

Northern Territory, 4 February 2007.2. Yalandja.

Owen Yalandja Yawkyawks 2007

natural earth pigments and PVA fixative on Kurrajong

(Brachychiton diversifolius) (l–r) 280.0 x 16.7 cm (diam);

225.0 x 14.3 cm (diam); 240.0 x 15.8 cm (diam)


Gift of Janet and John Calvert-Jones, 2008


acquisition Australian Photography

Deborah Paauwe From the waist down

When she was recently asked which art work of any ever

made she would most like to live with, Deborah Paauwe

chose the image Vale Street 1975 by the Australian

photographer Carol Jerrems.1 On the face of it, an

unexpected choice. With its defiantly bare-breasted female

figure and her attendant satyr-like teenage boys, it has

come to be regarded by many as a stridently feminist

iconic image – somehow a more forthright and unromantic

work than I would have expected. And yet Vale Street

also has a pervading mystery, a sense of a story unfolding

that remains unresolved and unknowable. It also has an

intriguing atmosphere of vulnerability underneath the

assertiveness: a suggestion that violence and brutality lie

behind beautiful surfaces. This mixture is found in much of

Paauwe’s imagery. From the waist down 1998, dating from

early in her career, is particularly powerful in its subtlety,

ambiguity and inscrutability.

Of Dutch and Chinese heritage, Paauwe was born in

Pennsylvania in the United States of America and came to

Adelaide in 1985 after an unusual childhood spent mostly

travelling and living in South-east Asia with her Bible-

Presbyterian missionary parents and two older brothers. It

is to her childhood in the 1970s that Paauwe most often

turns for inspiration. Not a literal retelling so much, but

more so her ability to access the feelings experienced at

that time and to reconstruct that psychic landscape in her

imagery. The body here is seen from the perspective of

a child and the skirt blocks out what is behind. It is too

close to the camera, crowding in on the viewer, the colour

simplified and overblown. It is this ability to reconstruct

memory with an emotive and dreamlike intensity that often

gives her work its allure.

From the waist down is an image Paauwe recreated

from looking through family photograph albums, tapping

into that rich and fascinating area of photography

concerned with questions of history and memory, both

personal and cultural. In making the series Blue room,

from which this image comes, Paauwe looked back to

her own childhood and was also inspired by her mother’s

adolescence in the 1950s, a time that seems to speak

to Paauwe of a simpler and happier existence. Paauwe

conjures up the 1950s through fashion references and

by using a palette of bright, saturated colour. Given the

rupture she experienced coming to a new country at the

age of thirteen, her desire to recreate a perfect upbringing

is not surprising: she has said that she felt that her

childhood had been taken away from her.2

The photographs of Deborah Paauwe are concerned

with exploring identity and how it is formed, particularly at

that time in a girl’s life when she makes the transition from

the world of childhood to adolescence – themes that have

been more overtly explored as her oeuvre has developed.

Traditional feminine preoccupations are frequently

explored. She revels, for instance, in the inclusion of her

own collection of vintage clothes and fabrics. Her images

frequently re-present rituals of play and dressing up, which

are perhaps innocent to the girls themselves but not always

to the eyes of others.

Paauwe may talk of the ingenuous nature of childhood

play but she knows that is not how the images will

necessarily be received; she knows that contemporary

depictions of beautiful and sensual images of childhood

are always fraught. That Paauwe, a woman, makes these

images radically affects our reaction to the works, a

strategy that other contemporary photo-media artists –

most famously perhaps Sally Mann, Francesca Woodman,

Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman – have also played with to

effective and, at times, controversial outcomes.

The sexual ambiguity in Paauwe’s work is calculated

and subversive and one that engages with contemporary

theoretical writing on the body. As writer Anne Marsh

has said about her work: ‘Paauwe is teasing the gaze,

underlining the voyeurism of the spectator, and thus

planting trouble through the image’.3 Through isolating

parts, the body is depersonalised and objectified. Much of

Paauwe’s work operates in an arena of disjunction and loss:

a beautiful world of nostalgia and longing in which danger

and the unknown lurk beneath the surface.

Anne O’Hehir Curator, Photography

notes1. Deborah Paauwe, interview with Maria Zagala, ‘New work: Deborah

Paauwe’, Art World, no. 2, April 2008, p. 110.2. Wendy Walker, Deborah Paauwe: beautiful games, Wakefield Press,

Adelaide, 2004, p. 8.3. Anne Marsh, ‘Through a veil brightly: recent works by Deborah

Paauwe’, Double Dutch, exhibition catalogue, Greenaway Art Gallery, April 2002, n.p.

Deborah Paauwe From the waist down 1998

Type C colour photograph 75.0 x 75.0 cm


Gift of Paul Greenaway, OAM, 2008


acquisition Asian Art

Bahau people Funerary figure

This striking wooden hampatong sculpture is the newest

addition to the National Gallery of Australia’s growing

collection of fine animist art from Southeast Asia. Although

textiles from the animist cultures of the region are a

renowned strength of the Asian art collection, the Gallery

holds only a few outstanding examples of sculpture from

peoples who have continued to follow ancient beliefs in the

power of nature spirits and ancestors.

The term ‘hampatong’ refers to a wide range of

figurative sculptures created by the various indigenous

groups of Borneo collectively known as Dayak peoples.

Rather than one homogeneous society, Borneo is home to

numerous communities with differing customs, languages

and distinct art traditions. These include the Bahau of

central Borneo, whose stylised figurative sculpture is among

the most powerful in Dayak art. In traditional communities

such as the Bahau, many people still hold strong beliefs

in benevolent and malevolent supernatural forces, usually

embodied by spirits of nature, natural phenomenon (such

as disease) and the souls of deceased ancestors. Festivals

and rituals, and the art associated with such activities, are

strongly focussed on ensuring that these forces remain in

balance to protect communities and encourage prosperity.

The form and function of hampatong vary between

different Dayak groups, but they are generally carved

from hardwood and include amulets and small figures for

domestic use and large sculptures that are sometimes over

two metres in height. The latter are placed near houses and

village entrances, around agricultural fields and at funerary

sites. Hampatong of all sizes are considered to have

magical powers and may be used to predict future events

and provide spiritual defence. Sculptures placed in fields

usually remain in position until harvest time to strengthen

the crop. Domestic images and hampatong placed close to

communal houses often depict recently deceased ancestors

and may have individualised human features in detailed

carving. These sculptures provide a temporary home for

the souls of the dead and are a personal expression of

remembrance for deceased individuals. The ornate ancestor

carvings also serve a protective spiritual function – they

are a primary means of preventing disease from entering

homes.

Conversely, village guardians and funerary sculptures

are designed to ward off powerful evil spirits and are

therefore more stylised, with aggressive facial expressions

and imposing proportions. While anthropomorphic figures,

animals, demonic beings and birds may be represented,

they display common iconographic devices used to

represent hostility. Most notable of these are protruding

tongues, sharp fangs and prominent, staring eyes. Images

of this type are closely related to funerary sculptures

created by various animist groups across Southeast Asia.

Funerary rites are of central importance in the

cultures of Borneo, and the hampatong sculptures play

an important role as spiritually charged objects providing

protection and are a means of communicating with the

realm of the ancestors. Textiles, jewellery and ritual utensils

are also essential tools in the precisely orchestrated funeral

ceremonies. Secondary burials, where bones are exhumed

after a period of time to be ritually purified, are considered

to be of particular cultural significance. These mortuary

rituals traditionally include codified mourning practices,

offerings and animal sacrifices. Their main purpose is to

honour the dead, allowing the soul to journey safely to the

afterlife, thus guaranteeing that it does not become an evil

and bothersome spirit.

Recent radiocarbon testing reveals that the Gallery’s

hampatong was created in the early to mid fourteenth

century. Remarkably well preserved for its age, especially

considering the typical effects of a tropical environment,

it is likely to have been situated in a burial cave or under

a large shrine structure for centuries. A rare and elegant

animist sculpture, the Gallery’s hampatong is over a metre

in height, and has an angular, stylised body. The large,

round eyes, sunken cheeks and open mouth with bared

teeth suggest that it originally served as a protective village

guardian or a grave-marker. The frightening geometric

facial imagery is characteristic of sculpture created by the

Bahau people of east Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo.

Lucie Folan Assistant Curator, Asian Art

Bahau people Kalimantan, Indonesia Funerary figure

[hampatong] 1300–68 wood 114.0 x 18.0 x 18.0 cm


Purchased 2008



acquisition Australian Decorative Arts and Design

Larsen and Lewers Silver bowl

The fluid and austere form of this large bowl shows the

continuing influence in Australia of the sculptural organic

design that characterised the form of Scandinavian

jewellery and metalwork from the 1950s. Helge Larsen,

Danish-born and trained in this tradition, was instrumental

in the establishment of these principles in Australia

and, with Darani Lewers, has developed jewellery and

metalwork that expresses a highly individual interpretation

of the built and natural Australian environment.

The genesis of the design of this bowl can be seen in

Larsen and Lewers’s silver objects from the early 1980s

in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection, many of

which draw from the study of the details and materials

of Australian vernacular design and architecture. The

sweeping form of this bowl, the largest work made by

these artists, is a technical tour de force that has been

achieved by raising (hammering, planishing and polishing)

the shape from a single sheet of sterling silver. Its apparent

weightlessness and asymmetrical folded form suggest the

lightness and effortlessness of origami and the directness

of functional tinware, yet its weight, solidity and surface

colour link it to the functional and technical traditions

and visual language of silver hollowware. The artists have

paid particular attention to the way that reflected light

emphasises the undulating and attenuated form of the

object, leading the eye from its inner to its outer surfaces.

Helge Larsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark,

in 1929, and trained in the Danish silversmithing

apprenticeship system and at the College of Art and Design

in Copenhagen from 1949 to 1955. He furthered his work

and studies at the University of Colorado in Denver in the

United States of America from 1955 to 1957. He then

returned to Copenhagen to establish his own jewellery

business, Sølvform, where he employed Australian jeweller

Darani Lewers from 1959 to 1960. In 1961 he migrated

to Australia, married Lewers and set up a workshop

partnership with her in Sydney. He was appointed as the

founding Head of Jewellery and Silversmithing at the

Sydney College of the Arts in 1977, becoming an Associate

Professor and its Head of School from 1991 until his

retirement to full-time private studio practice in 1994. In

recognition of his work in craft education, he received an

Australia Council Emeritus Award in 1999.

Darani Lewers, the daughter of artists Gerald and

Margo Lewers, was born in 1936. She trained at East

Sydney Technical College and in the studio of Estonian

jeweller Niina Ratsep in 1958 before moving to Denmark

to work with Helge Larsen from 1959 to 1960. She was

awarded an Order of Australia in 1982 for her contribution

to the Australian contemporary crafts movement.

Larsen and Lewers have worked in partnership on major

commissions, metalwork and jewellery since 1961,

mounting thirty-nine solo exhibitions in Australia and nine

in Europe, and contributing to twenty-one international

jewellery and metalwork exhibitions.

This new work from two of Australia’s most senior

silversmiths celebrates their fiftieth year of practice. It

joins other silver hollowware works in the collection from

established Australian silversmiths, adding strength to the

Gallery’s holdings of Australian metalwork, both historical

and contemporary. Its acquisition was funded from the

Meredith Hinchliffe Fund, which focuses on contemporary

Australian craft, and it is a major new Australian

contemporary decorative arts and design acquisition in the

Gallery’s silver anniversary year.

Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Helge Larsen and Darani Lewers

Bowl 2008 sterling silver 12.2 x 39.0 x

28.0 cm Purchased 2008 with funds from

the Meredith Hinchliffe Fund


Exhibition venues and dates may be subject to change. Please contact the Gallery or venue before your visit.

For more information on travelling exhibitions, telephone (02) 6240 6525 or send an email to [email protected].

Maringka Baker Kuru Ala 2007 (detail) synthetic polymer paint on canvas 153.5 x 200.0 cm National Gallery of Australia © Maringka Baker

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial

Proudly supported by BHP Billiton; the Australia Council for the Arts through its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Board, Visual Art Board and Community Partnerships and Market Development (International) Board; the Contemporary Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program; and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and state and territory governments; the Queensland Government through the Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency; and Australian air Express

Culture Warriors, the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, presents the highly original and accomplished work of thirty Indigenous Australian artists from every state and territory. Featuring outstanding works in a variety of media, Culture Warriors draws inspiration from the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals) and demonstrates the breadth and calibre of contemporary Indigenous art practice in Australia. nga.gov.au/NIAT07 Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 20 September – 23 November 2008

Arthur Streeton The selector’s hut (Whelan on the log) 1890 (detail) oil on canvas 76.7 x 51.2 cm National Gallery of Australia

Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950

The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition

Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia. The exhibition is also proudly sponsored by R.M.Williams The Bush Outfitter and the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund

To mark the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Australia, Director Ron Radford, AM, curated this national touring exhibition of treasured works from the national collection. Every Australian state and territory is represented through the works of iconic artists such as Clarice Beckett, Arthur Boyd, Grace Cossington Smith, Russell Drysdale, Hans Heysen, Max Meldrum, Sidney Nolan, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Eugene von Guérard. nga.gov.au/OceantoOutback

Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs, NT, 9 August – 19 October 2008 Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle, NSW, 8 November 2008 – 1 February 2009

Otto Dix Ration carriers near Pilkem 1924 (detail) plate 43 from the portfolio War etching, aquatint 24.8 x 29.8 cm National Gallery of Australia The Poynton Bequest 2003 © Otto Dix. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2008

War: the prints of Otto Dix

Otto Dix’s Der Krieg cycle, a collection of 51 etchings, is regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the twentieth century. Modelled on Goya’s equally famous and equally devastating Los Desastres de la guerra [The disasters of war], the portfolio captures Dix’s horror of and fascination with the experience of war. nga.gov.au/Dix

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 22 August – 26 October 2008 Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Qld, 7 November 2008 – 1 February 2009

Grace Crowley Abstract painting 1947 (detail) oil on cardboard 60.7 x 83.3 cm National Gallery of Australia

Grace Crowley: being modern

One of the leading figures in the development of modernism in Australia, Grace Crowley’s life and art intersected with some of the major movements of twentieth-century art. This is the first exhibition of Grace Crowley’s work since 1975 and includes important works from public and private collections. Spanning the 1920s through to the 1960s, the exhibition traces her remarkable artistic journey from painter of atmospheric Australian landscapes to her extraordinary late abstracts. nga.gov.au/Crowley

Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 14 June – 21 September 2008 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tas., 2 October – 23 November 2008

Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950 (detail) oil on canvas 89.0 x 117.0 cm Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest 2004

Colin McCahon

A National Gallery of Australia Focus Exhibition

This exhibition showcases the National Gallery of Australia’s holdings of one of the Australasian region’s most renowned and respected artists – Colin McCahon. It includes paintings and works on paper spanning the period from the 1950s to early 1980s. The exhibition’s tour of Australia and New Zealand is significant as it coincides with the thirtieth anniversary of the New Zealand Government’s gift to Australia in 1978 of the iconic work Victory over death 2 1970, which has become a destination work for the Gallery. nga.gov.au/McCahon

Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand, 5 July – 19 October 2008

Seated Ganesha Sri Lanka 9th–10th century (detail) bronze 10.0 x 6.8 x 4.4 cm in Red case: myths and rituals The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift

The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions

Three suitcases of works of art: Red case: myths and rituals includes works that reflect the spiritual beliefs of different cultures; Yellow case: form, space, design reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue case: technology. These suitcases thematically present a selection of art and design objects that may be borrowed free-of-charge for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn

For further details and bookings telephone (02) 6240 6589 or email [email protected].

Karl Millard Lizard grinder 2000 (detail) brass, bronze, copper, sterling silver, money metal, Peugeot mechanism, stainless steel screws 10.0 x 8.0 x 23.5 cm in Blue case: technology The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift

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

Inverell Shire Library, Inverell, NSW, 1–26 September 2008 Gympie Regional Gallery, Gympie, Qld, 1–28 October 2008 Young District Arts Council, Young, NSW, 3 November – 16 December 2008

Blue case: technology

South West Arts, Hay, NSW, 4 August – 22 September 2008 Coomoora Primary School, Coomoora, Vic., 6 October – 3 November 2008

The 1888 Melbourne Cup

The Western Australian Museum, Kalgoorlie, WA, 1 September – 10 October 2008 The Western Australian Museum, Perth, WA, 20 October – 26 November 2008

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

Travelling exhibitions spring 2008


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faces in view

1. Children participating in the Gallery’s Character clues workshop.

2. Janet Meanie and Lyn Gascoigne at the opening celebrations for Picture paradise.

3. A child hold up her mask at Character clues workshop.

4. Laila Shouha and her mother Luiza Urbanik at the opening celebrations for Richard Larter.

5. Rhys Muldoon, Belinda Cotton and Hugh Jackman at the 2020 Summit Dinner at the National Gallery of Australia.

6. Chantelle Woods, Assistant Curator, with Visiting Indigenous curators from Canada: (l–r) Steven Loft, Ryan Rice, Bonnie Devine, Jim Logan, David Garneau, Michelle LaVallee, Ramses Calderon.

7. Peter Boreham, Sarah Bryan and Penny Boyer at the opening celebrations for Picture paradise.

8. Richard Nipperess, Ong Niennatfrakul, LinLin Kearney, Selena Kearney and Chris Lilley at the special Members’ opening for Richard Larter.

9. Bill Henson opening the Gallery’s exhibition Picture paradise.

10. The Siam Thai Dance Troupe performing at the opening of Picture paradise.

11/ Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu 12. performing in the James O Fairfax Theatre at the National Gallery of Australia during NAIDOC Week.

13. David Foxwell, Ruth Foxwell and David Patterson at the opening celebrations for Picture paradise.

14. Stefan Fuchs, Alexander Chapman, Mark Huck and Frances Corkhill, Sponsorship and Development Officer, at the opening celebrations for Richard Larter.

15. Helen Eager, Richard Larter, Christopher Hodges and exhibition curator Deborah Hart at the opening celebrations for Richard Larter.

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Emily

Kam

e K

ngw

arre

yeUtopia

The genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Her name is spoken in the same breath as Modigliani and Monet, yet she never

saw their work.

Her work is seen in major galleries around the world, yet she never left Australia.

Direct from Tokyo, the National Museum’s highly

acclaimed international exhibition of paintings by one of Australia’s greatest contemporary

artists is on show at one Australian venue only.

22 August – 12 October 2008

Tickets at www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions

Exhibition costs apply. Open 9 am – 5 pm daily (closed Christmas Day)Lawson Crescent Acton Peninsula Canberra ACT 2600

Freecall 1800 026 132 www.nma.gov.auThe National Museum of Australia is an Australian Government Agency

Untitled 1993 (detail)©Emily Kame KngwarreyeCollection of Phillip and Jenny LawrenceLicensed by Viscopy 08

important fine art auctionsydney november 2008

call for entriesfor obligation-free appraisals, please call

Sydney MelbourneDamian Hackett Chris Deutscher Merryn Schriever Tony Preston

02 9287 0600 03 9865 6333

www.deutscherandhackett.com

experience expertise integrity results

clockwise from top left

JEFFREY SMARTSunbathers at Construction SiteSOLD NOVEMBER 2007 $600,000 COLIN MCCAHONClouds 5SOLD NOVEMBER 2007 $360,000 JOHN BRACKUp in the Air (Small Version)SOLD NOVEMBER 2007 $288,000

ROSALIE GASCOIGNENews BreakSOLD AUGUST 2007 $300,000


important fine art auctionsydney november 2008

call for entriesfor obligation-free appraisals, please call

Sydney MelbourneDamian Hackett Chris Deutscher Merryn Schriever Tony Preston

02 9287 0600 03 9865 6333

www.deutscherandhackett.com

experience expertise integrity results

clockwise from top left

JEFFREY SMARTSunbathers at Construction SiteSOLD NOVEMBER 2007 $600,000 COLIN MCCAHONClouds 5SOLD NOVEMBER 2007 $360,000 JOHN BRACKUp in the Air (Small Version)SOLD NOVEMBER 2007 $288,000

ROSALIE GASCOIGNENews BreakSOLD AUGUST 2007 $300,000

SYDNEY 02 8344 5404 MELBOURNE 03 9822 1911 GOLD COAST 07 5591 7134 WWW.MENZIESARTBRANDS.COM

let us steer you in the right directionAt Menzies Art Brands we help you make the right decision. Our expert

specialists happily provide assistance in buying, selling and collecting.

Menzies Art Brands are the leading Australian Art Auctioneers. Upcoming

Sydney auctions are Deutscher~Menzies 17 September & Lawson~Menzies

18 September, followed by our December auctions.

ME

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JEFFREY SMARTFirst Study for The Directors 1977

oil on canvas on board 19.0 x 45.5 cm

SOLD DM June 2006 $84,000(including buyer’s premium)

play by your rules

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FRESH, APPROACHABLEAND EASY TO PICK UP.


ngashop publications

ISBN 064254204-X

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Richard LarterDeborah Hart184 pp., illustrated in colour, softcover 290 x 240 mmRRP $44.95Special NGA venue price $34.95

Printed images by Australian artists 1885–1955

Roger Butler315 pp., illustrated in colour, hardover, 290 x 240 mm RRP $89.00

Culture WarriorsNational Indigenous Art Triennial

Brenda Croft (ed.)218 pp., illustrated in colour, softcover, 298 x 245mm RRP $55.95

Australian artists booksAlex Selenitsch128 pp., illustrated in colour, softcover, 225 x 225 mm RRP $39.95

Picture paradiseAsia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s

Gael Newton88 pp., illustrated in colour, softcover 270 x 220 mmRRP $29.95Special NGA venue price $24.95

Collection highlightsNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Ron Radford (ed.)272 pp., illustrated in colour, softcover 250 x 176 mmRRP $24.95

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Arthur Streeton 1867-1943, Golden summer, Eaglemont 1889, oil on canvas 81.3 x 152.6 cm.

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Documents

2008.Q3 | artonview 55 Spring 2008