Angus Nivison

Letters Home

6 April - 4 May, 2013

© Utopia Art Sydney

Angus Nivison

Letters Home

Angus Nivison in his studiol seated before A Song, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 192 x 688cm

Angus NivisonLetters Home by Susie Burge

Australian artist Angus Nivison describes the creative process of memory as “the world seeping in and then coming out at a different time”, a phrase oddly reminiscent of the great English poet Wordsworth’s famous “emotion recollected in tranquillity”. For Nivison, it’s the introspective nature of memory, the voyeurism, the period of observing and re-observing and thinking, an almost sensual mulling over (sometimes over years), that leads to a finished painting.

In October 2011, the artist and his wife Caroline took up a three-month residency in one of the Art Gallery of NSW studios in the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. Before leaving, Nivison promised his mother to write. A tender, almost archaic practice, handwritten letters. Also, realising the atelier would not be suited to large scale painting, he took favourite drawing paper with him – old letterhead, each 20 x 19.5 cm sheet stamped with the name and out-of-date phone numbers of the family grazing property where he lives in the New England region of NSW.

The title of the resulting exhibition - Letters Home - pushes us, the viewers, in certain philosophical and emotive directions: memory, nostalgia, homesickness, communication from one place to another place, from one time to another, from one person to another, from there to here.

Nivison is not a 19th century artist poet. He has a mobile, macbook, kindle, plus two cool kids (one’s an eco architect and one’s a street/surf/skate artist) to ground him in the contemporary world. The old-fashioned romanticism of only making small drawings, born out of the perceived practical limitations of a confined studio space, was pretty brave. For the first couple of weeks Nivison could hardly do anything at all, almost paralysed under the weight of his own expectations.

Angus NivisonLetters Home

“At first, I put a lot of pressure on myself… but then once I got into the drawing process I became absorbed by it, I almost didn’t want to leave the studio,” he says, allowing me to leaf through a humble recycled cardboard box of close to 60 drawings interleaved with pale pink acid-free tissue, the sum of three months work in Paris. These drawings in graphite and gesso and wash, fragile, delicate, intriguing in their own right, some quite figurative with tree branches and shadowy bridges, some near abstract compositions, pinned one by one on the walls of the Paris studio, led to the larger drawings and paintings made back at home in rural Australia over the 18 months that followed.

“None of these are of any particular place in Paris at all, it’s just what happened when I was there for three months,” he says simply, of the larger works. “The one thing you didn’t see (in the box) is a drawing for that painting - because there isn’t one,” he elaborates, referring to the most literal canvas in the show: A Winter Memory, Paris. Spare and elegant, with echoes of Nivison’s very early pictures, there are traces of Giacometti (the three bare trees could almost be three elongated figures).

“In the winter chill, you see the bones of things,” says Nivison. “When it got cold, the tourists just disappeared – going from the hustle and bustle to empty space, a lovely sense of loss which I adored. That’s when things started to happen for me.”

There’s a wide range of technique and mood in the drawings and paintings, from refined, spare scribbles and lines of graphite to pure indigo and lush velvety bleeding acrylic (lolly pink, acid green, smoke). A range of inspirations and influences too: Paris at night, bridges over the Seine, the colour of limestone, escargot, camembert wrappers, skyscapes of scudding clouds and rain, slender trees in the Tuileries coming in to winter, passing landscapes seen from a train to Berlin; Turner, Monet, Giacometti, Cezanne, early Picasso, Cy Twombly, the two moons in Murakami’s novel IQ84; and remembered landscapes too, Australian landscapes, New England landscapes in particular, born

out of deliberate nostalgia and melancholic bouts of homesickness.

The most radical painting in the show is Nightgarden, a trippy, topsy-turvy homage to Monet’s waterlily paintings, a mad dark velvety rainbow of drifting or falling colour. “It’s a little bit cosmos, a little bit deep Space as well,” Nivison says, as we look. We talk of British painter John Hoyland, Morris Louis stain paintings; Amy Winehouse and spray can street art. “There’s all the other lessons that I’ve learnt – there’s still the gorge country in there, but then there are these marks over the top,” Nivison points out. “It was one of those paintings that took me by the hand – I just had to go with it,” he says. “When I stood back, I was actually quite shocked.”

Nightgarden and its more accessible twin, the highly charged Rumble (a gorgeous dramatic painting about stormy weather and approaching climate change) stand diametrically opposed to A Song, the major work in the exhibition. Four panels long, with brave sections of naked canvas, pure pigment, wash and delicate graphite, it outgrew even the biggest Yalgoolygum studio wall and covered over the door. (The first time I saw A Song I had to crawl underneath a panel, whisky in hand, to get in.)

The genesis of the painting was a series of small pale drawings inspired by a sudden scudding of clouds and rain, seen through the atelier window with a view of the sky. “If I hadn’t gone to Paris I would never have figured it out,” Nivison states. “I wanted to do a follow-on from Remembering Rain (winner of the Wynne Prize in 2002) but I couldn’t think how to do it. I wanted to capture the fleetingness of how weather is. It (the painting) is planned to the nth degree but it looks very spontaneous.”

A Song is informed by the sensibility of Chinese and Japanese landscape painting and Cy Twombly pictures seen in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, among other things. “A lot of this (A Song) was painted listening to Bach,” he adds. “I had

the little drawings which were a key to doing it, but because it was such a chancy painting I did bigger drawings so I could practice. It’s probably the most risky painting I’ve ever done.”

There’s an underlying consistency here. Even when Nivison’s individual works seem very different, there’s a voice, a thumbprint, a subtle but powerful visual language at play. The willingness to experiment, to take risks, to fail, to put himself out there rather than settle into familiar patterns, to go “somewhere else” as he often says, marks him out as a painter.

A recent survey exhibition of Angus Nivison’s work travelled from Tamworth Regional Gallery to Newcastle and culminated in a highly successful season at the SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney in January 2013. Audiences and critics responded. John McDonald termed the survey exhibition a “New Year’s Revelation” in a glowing review. People came back again and again to view these major canvasses and selected drawings and attend the program of lectures and conversations. Nivison’s heartfelt, lived, emotive and even spiritual explorations and evocations of landscape and memory, landscape and abstraction, absence and presence – the solace of rain, imagined mountains, last light – continue to strike a chord.

“An achingly sad beautiful painting will do it for me every time. It transfixes me. Part of me is trying to do that ….I was looking for beauty in this lot; I was not embarrassed by the sublime. Is that a fair comment?”

It’ll do.

© Susie Burge http://artravelife.com/

Paris Winter Day, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 130 x 120cm

Paris Winter Night, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 130 x 120cm

Rumble, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 200 x 360cm

Nightgarden, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 200 x 360cm

Nightgarden, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 200 x 360cm

A Winter Memory, Paris, 2013, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 200 x 180cm

Christmas - Paris, 2013, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 200 x 180cm

Two Moons, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 160 x 155cm Barometer, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 160 x 155cm

Homesick, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 160 x 155cmBarometer, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 160 x 155cm

Study for Rumble, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on paper, 106 x 152cm

Counterpoint, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on paper, 153 x 206cm

A Song, 2012, acrylic, charcoal, pigments & gesso on canvas, 192 x 688cm

Solo Exhibitions

2013 ‘Letters Home’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘Angus Nivison: A Survey’, S.H. Ervin Gallery, NSW2012 ‘Angus Nivison: A Survey’, Tamworth Regional Art Gallery, NSW ‘Angus Nivison: A Survey’, Newcastle University Art Gallery, NSW2011 ‘Other Places’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW2009 ‘Impossible Landscapes’ Utopia Art Sydney, NSW2008 ‘Above and Below’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW 2006 ‘Learning a Language: all about the weather’, Moree Plains Gallery, Moree NSW2006 ‘Uncertain Light/Pools’, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, NSW2006 ‘ear to the ground’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW2005 ‘The Language of Mountains is Rain’, Coffs Harbour City Gallery, NSW 2004 ‘Paintings from Yalgoolygum’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW2003 Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle, NSW2002 BBA Gallery, Sydney, NSW2001 BBA Gallery, Sydney, NSW1999 Coventry, Sydney, NSW1997 Coventry, Sydney, NSW1995 Coventry, Sydney, NSW1993 Coventry, Sydney, NSW1991 New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, NSW Coventry, Sydney, NSW1989 Standfield Gallery, Melbourne, VIC1987 Bloomfield Gallery, Sydney, NSW1985 Bloomfield Gallery, Sydney, NSW1984 Parmenter Gallery, Walcha, NSW1982 Gallery A, Sydney, NSW

Selected Group Exhibitions

2013 ‘The Salon’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW2012 ’25 Years – the Rio Tinto Retrospective’, Muswellbrook

Regional Art Centre, NSW ‘Ground Up – A Fundraising Exhibition’, Damien Minton

Annex Space, NSW ‘Voices of Art 3: An Evening of Art for Animals’, NSW ‘paperworks’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘Art for Humanity: Painting and Jewellery for Australian

Red Cross’, Depot Gallery, NSW ‘Best of Coventry: Coventry’s Artists’, New England

Regional Art Museum, NSW‘Repertoire’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSWDobell Prize for Drawing, AGNSW, Sydney, NSWMosman Art Prize, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney, NSW

2011 ‘Angus and Friends’, Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, NSW‘Up Close and Personal: works from the collection of Dr Peter Elliott AM’, S. H. Ervin Gallery, NSW‘Fleurieu Art Prize’, Hardys Winery, McLaren Vale, SAMosman Art Prize, Mosman, NSW

2010 ‘Water’ King Street Gallery, NSW Inaugural exhibition, Defiance Gallery, Paddington,

NSW ‘Museum III’ Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘Salon des Refuses’, S.H. Ervin Gallery, NSW ‘Black is the Colour’ Shoalhaven City Arts Centre, NSW ‘Melbourne Art Fair 2010’, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, VIC ‘First Exhibition of Contemporary Arts’ Kabul, Afghanistan2009 ‘pinned & framed’ Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘Abstraction’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘A Combined Exhibition of Local Artists’ Walcha

Gallery of Art, NSW ‘Countryscapes 2009’, Lismore Regional Gallery, NSW ‘Countryscapes 2009’, The Glashouse Arts,

Conference and Entertainment Centre, Port Macquarie, NSW

2008 ‘Australian Abstraction’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘Melbourne Art Fair’, Royal Exhibition Building, VIC ‘Countryscapes 2008’, Country Energy art prize,

Wentworth Gallery, NSW ‘Pairs of Paintings’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW

‘Fifty Years of the Muswellbrook Shire Collection 1958 – 2008’, Muswellbrook Regional Art Centre, NSW

2007 ‘The 22nd Annual Packsaddle Exhibition’. New England Regional Art

Museum, NSW ‘Country Energy Art Prize For Landscape Painting’,

Dubbo Regional Gallery, NSWDobell Prize for Drawing, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW

‘Archibald Prize’, AGNSW, Sydney, NSWArchibald Prize Regional Tour’ Manning Regional Gallery, NSW

‘Archibald Prize Regional Tour’, Bega Valley Regional Gallery, NSW

Angus NivisonBiography

“Turning 20”, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW2006 ‘The Year In Art’ S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, NSW ‘Melbourne Art Fair 2006’, Royal Exhibition Building,

Melbourne, VIC ‘Regional Encounters’, Tamworth City Art Gallery, NSW ‘Walcha City of Art/ Contemporary Australian Art’, Karlovy Vary Art Gallery, Czech Republic ‘Same Place, Many Views’, Defiance Gallery, Sydney, NSW

‘Bits and Pieces abstract art’ Utopia Art Sydney, NSW2005 ‘from big things little things grow’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘Redlands Westpac Art Prize’, Mosman Gallery, Sydney, NSW ‘Sydney v Melbourne’, Silvershot, Melbourne, VIC ‘Sydney Art on Paper Fair’ , Byron Kennedy Hall, Sydney, NSW ‘Museum II’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW ‘New Ideas 2005’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW The Wynne Prize’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, NSW Winner ‘Art on The Rocks’, Sydney Visitor Centre, The

Rocks, Sydney, NSW ‘Hazelhurst Art Award 2005 - Art on Paper’, Hazelhurst

Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Sydney, NSW ‘Agri/Culture: Re-creating The Living

Landscape’,Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, NSW ‘Country Energy Art Prize for Landscape Painting’,

Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW2004 ‘Melbourne Art Fair 2004’, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, VIC Tattersals Club Prize, Brisbane, QLD Jacaranda Drawing Prize, Grafton Regional Gallery, Grafton, NSW Walcha City of Art, New Contemporaries Gallery, Sydney, NSW Surface Memories, Tamworth Regional Art Gallery, Tamworth, NSW2003 Archibald Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW

Wynne Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW2002 Wynne Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW2001 Wynne Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW2000 BBA Gallery, Inaugural Exhibition, Sydney, NSW Federation, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, ACT (touring) Wynne Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW1999 Wynne Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW

1998 Archibald Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW Salon des Refusee, S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney, NSW Kedumba Drawing Award, Blue Mountains, NSW1996 Wynne Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW ‘Salon des Refusee’, S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney, NSW1995 Salon des Refusee’, S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney, NSW

‘Dobell Drawing Prize’, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW Salon des Refusee, S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney, NSW Chandler Coventry:Obsession, Campbelltown City Art Gallery(touring), NSW

1993 ‘Chandler Coventry: A Private Collection’, Campbelltown City Art Gallery, NSW

1991 ‘New Art Five’, Coventry, Sydney, NSWMuswellbrook Art Prize, Muswellbrook, NSW

1988 Contemporary Views of New England, NERAM, Armidale, NSW1986 Artists from the North West, Blaxland Gallery, Sydney, NSW

1984 Bloomfield Gallery, Sydney, NSW1982 Regional Artists of New England, NERAM, Armidale &

Tamworth City Art Gallery, NSW1978 Gallery A, Sydney, NSW

NSW Travelling Art Scholarship, Blaxland Gallery, Sydney, NSWSydney Morning Herald Art Prize, David Jones Gallery, Sydney, NSW

1974 National Art School, Sydney, NSW

Awards/Grants

2011 AGNSW Cite Studio Residency, Paris, FRANCE Winner Eutrick Memorial Still Life Award (EMSLA) Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, NSW2005 Art on The Rocks, Sydney Visitor Centre, The Rocks,

Sydney, NSW2002 Wynne Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW2002 Muswellbrook Art Prize, Muswellbrook, NSW1998 Kedumba Drawing Award, Blue Mountains, NSW1992 Gold Coast Art Prize, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, QLD1991 Muswellbrook Art Prize, Muswellbrook, NSW1979 The Sydney Morning Herald Heritage Art Prize Artist in Residence, Owen Tooth Memorial Cottage, Vence, FRANCE1977 Narrabri Art Prize, Narrabri, NSW1976 Mercedes Benz Award, Royal Art Society Maitland Art Prize, Maitland, NSW

Angus NivisonBiography - continued

Collections

Art Gallery of New South WalesArtbankAustralian Consolidated Press Gold Coast City Art GalleryHawkesbury Regional GalleryKedumba CollectionMacquarie Group CollectionMaitland City Art GalleryMEPC AustraliaMuswellbrook Regional Art GalleryNew England Regional Art MuseumNew Parliament HouseNewcastle Region Art GalleryTamworth Regional GalleryThe Australian ClubUniversity of NSWUniversity of New England

Bibliography

February 2 2013, The Planner, Sydney Morning HeraldFebruary 1 2013, Sharne Wolff, ‘Angus Nivison: A Survey’, The Art Life [online]January 19 2013, Brooke Lewis, ‘Memories of landscapes’, McGrath: The Weekly MagazineJanuary 12-13 2013, John McDonald, ‘New Year’s Revelation’, Spectrum, Sydney Morning HeraldDecember 21 2012, Elizabeth Fortescue, ‘Bushie’s reluctant brush with fame’, The TelegraphNovember 3 2012, Jill Stowell, ‘Drawing on landscapes’, Review, Newcastle HeraldJuly 2012, Susie Burge, ‘Angus Nivison: A Survey’, online, artravelife blogJune – July 2012, Sandra McMahon, John McDonald, Barry Pearce, ‘Angus Nivison: A Survey’, Tamworth Regional Gallery, exhibition catalogueMarch 2012, Sandra McMahon, ‘Angus Nivison: Featured Artist’, New England Country StyleAugust 2010 – January 2011, Lisa Slade, ‘Paper trail: drawings from the collection’, Artemis, Newcastle Art Gallery Society Magazine, vol. 41, no. 221 August 2010, Jill Stowell, ‘Drawing Attention’, Newcastle Herald

September 2010, Susie Burge, ‘Fair Trading’, Harpers Bazaar (illustration)May 2010, John McDonald, ‘small mercies’, Sydney Morning HeraldMarch 2008 Tracey Clements, Metro, Sydney Morning HeraldMarch 2008 John McDonald, “There’s magic in these spectacular works’, Sydney Morning Herald, SpectrumCountryscapes 2008, Country Energy Catalogue, The Gunnery, 2007 Country Energy Art Prize for Landscape Painting, Western Plains Cultural Centre, CatalogueMarch 2007 John McDonald, ‘’A Brush with Mediocrity’, Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum‘Natural Talent’, Hoof & Horns, 2006, Words, Richard Zachariah, Photos, Lizzi O’ConnorJune 2006 John McDonald, ‘A reality Czech from Walcha’, Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum-Arts & Entertainment,p16-17‘Insight’, Issue 1, 2005, Westpac MagazineJune 2005 Hawkesbury Regional Gallery ‘Re-Creating the Living Landscape’ CatalogueJuly 2005, Sydney Morning Herald, John McDonald, ‘Westerly Directions’‘New England Picture – In what they paint I see’, new England Regional Art Museum, 9th July – 29th August 2004, Curated by Amanda Cachia2004 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award Catalogue, Grafton Regional GalleryAfter Hours, The Weekend Australian Financial Review, John McDonald, ‘Archibald’s close brush with fame’, June 2002June 2002, The Sydney Morning Herald, Bruce James, ‘Death’s great frame of reference’June 2002, The Daily Telegraph, Elizabeth Fortescue, ‘Hard-earned Wynne’October, 2002, Daily Telegraph, ‘Farmers turn to art for solace’Muse, August 2001, Rocks and Flesh, Ann McMahonSun Herald, December 2000, Hannah Edwards, ‘Art and Soul of Australia’ ‘Canberra Times’, ‘A Remarkably High Standard’, Sasha Grishin, ‘Rocks and Flesh’ at Artists Ties GalleryOctober 2, 1999, Sydney Morning Herald, Bryce Hallett, ‘Sent to Coventry, now he’ll hang for his mentor’Sydney Morning Herald, 1999, ‘The Galleries’ section, ‘The Big Picture’, Sebastian SmeeJohn McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, ‘The Misfits: Hermits, but Brothers in Arts’November, 1995, The Armidale Express, Wend Fitzgibbon, ‘Donation caps great week for NERAM’

Angus NivisonBiography - continued

1995 Sydney Morning Herald, John McDonald, ‘Along The Path to Understanding’ ‘Landscape without Figure’, 1991, Joe Eisenberg, Director, NERAMJune, 1991, Coventry Gallery, ‘Angus Nivison – Landscape Without Figure’ Catalogue

TalksAngus Nivison in conversation with Christopher Hodges, S.H. Ervin Gallery, 10 February 2013

Q&A session with Angus Nivison and photographer R. Ian Lloyd, S.H. Ervin Gallery, 3 February 2013 Bryan Hooper exhibition floor talk at S.H. Ervin Gallery, 27 January 2013Interview, ‘Canvas’, FBI Radio, 20 January 2013‘Studio 2’ at the State Library of NSW with Wendy Sharp, 18th September, 2008‘Studio’ an evening with John McDonald and Angus Nivison, Tamworth Region Art Gallery, 19 July, 2011

Angus NivisonBiography - continued

Utopia Art Sydney2 Danks StreetWaterloo NSW 2017

Telephone: + 61 2 9699 2900email: utopiaartsydney@ozemail.com.auwww.utopiaartsydney.com.au

© Utopia Art Sydney

6 April - 4 May, 2013

Angus Nivison

Letters Home

Utopia Art Sydney2 Danks StreetWaterloo NSW 2017

Telephone: + 61 2 9699 2900email: utopiaartsydney@ozemail.com.auwww.utopiaartsydney.com.au