Category: Melbourne

Text/Exhibition: ‘David Bowie is’ at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 16th July – 1st November, 2015

Melbourne Winter Masterpieces

Curators: Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh from the V&A’s Department of Theatre and Performance

 

Masayoshi Sukita (Japanese, b. 1938) (photographer) 'David Bowie' 1973 from the exhibition 'David Bowie is' at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, July - Nov, 2015

 

Masayoshi Sukita (Japanese, b. 1938) (photographer)
David Bowie
1973
© Sukita / The David Bowie Archive

 

 

The text Reflections on David: In a galaxy all of his own (below) was written for a special LGBTQI themed edition of the peer reviewed journal Fashion, Style and Popular Culture. At short notice, the co-editor asked me to write, and I quote, “a queer focused review of the Bowie exhibition at ACMI.” When I delivered the piece below, it was rejected as not being academic enough!

Apparently they wanted a deconstruction of the exhibition, its layout, construction, themes, lighting, and good and bad points. No mention of LGBTQI+ issues mind you.

What the kind of review they wanted has to do with a LGBTQI+ themed issue I have absolutely no idea. If they had known anything about my writing, they would have known they would not get academic speak, but something a little more interesting. Their loss, our gain.

The text focuses on Bowie’s impact on me at the time, as a gay man. Bowie is tight. Singing my all time favourite track of his, Young Americans, Bowie is a vocalist like no other. What a voice. Team that with charisma, soul, style, and all the moves … hands on hips, guitar slung backwards, padded shoulders to die for, cheekbones that you could cut with a knife and a presence that is just luminous. No wonder I loved him as an adolescent, he was my Hero. As someone commented on the YouTube live performance of the song (below), “ain’t there 1 goddam song that can make me breakdown + cry*”

This is a flawed but mesmerising exhibition. Allow three to fours hours at least. If you are a Bowie fan it’s a 100% must see; and if you are an aficionado of contemporary culture, you will be amazed at the sources Bowie draws from to create his art, his personas. It did no harm, either, that Bowie had access to some of the most creative designers in the world for his costumes and sets, but he was the inventive force. What a man, what an artist, not just a man who fell to earth, but a man who changed the world.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to ACMI for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Download the text Reflections on David: In a galaxy all of his own (1.6Mb pdf)

 

 

 

David Bowie – Young Americans

Bowie performing live on the Dick Cavett Show (4th December 1974)

 

 

Reflections on David: In a galaxy all of his own

The year was 1975. In London, six years after that seminal event of early gay liberation, the Stonewall Riots, six years after the landing on the moon, and six years after the release of David Bowie’s single, Space Oddity, I came out as a gay man age 17. At the time I felt a bit of a space oddity myself, troubled by my hidden identity and the double life I was leading. My first act of rebellion was to walk into a newsagent at Notting Hill Gate underground station, pick up a copy of Gay Times, fling the money at the store attendant and run from the place as red as a beetroot. I was so embarrassed.

Things quickly changed. I had been listening to Bowie’s music since my early days in boarding school – The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane – and now, after outing myself, I rocked up to the Royal College of Music with silver hair, wearing the most outrageous satin pink and white bomber jacket, with rings on every finger. I walked down St. Albans high street on a Saturday morning through the market in fake white fur coat and eye shadow. It’s only now, forty years later, that I realise I was channeling my inner Bowie.

This was the era of Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in England, where we had to gather in people’s lounge rooms to meet other gay men, or once a month at a disco in country Hertfordshire. Or we went to the Pan Club in Luton where drag queens peered imperiously down at us through a grill before they allowed us through the door. The best thing was going to Scandals or Adams night clubs in London, where we danced on illuminated glass dance floors (like in Saturday Night Fever) and wore our army uniforms. We could be whoever we wanted to be. And this was all influenced by the multiple persona of Bowie.

Like an intelligent bower bird, Bowie constructed his different personae through bricolage, building them from cultural signifiers such as German Expressionism, Marlene Dietrich, Sonia Delaunay, Metropolis, Hollywood, Japanese film, JG Ballard and Clockwork Orange, to name just a few. My gay friends and I did much the same. Like Bowie, for us it wasn’t so much about sexuality but about androgyny and the public play of gender (although the two are obviously interlinked). We adored David, a self-educated lad from a poor working class family, initially a Mod, who created his own universe of creatures and characters. Glam yes, but so much more than just putting on a costume like Kiss, David lived and breathed his worlds and we, his fans, believed in him. Not so much gender bender as cultural gender blender.

Critical to this time in my life was the period that followed Ziggy: Young Americans and the Thin White Duke. I got heavily into soul music, going to a basement nightclub behind Bang on Tottenham Court Road, where they played reggae, Barry White and the Love Unlimited Orchestra… and David Bowie. I used to pretend to be one of the back up singers on the song Young Americans: “Young American, young American, she wants the young American.” Bowie is tight. Singing my all time favourite track of his, Young Americans, Bowie is a vocalist like no other. What a voice. Team that with charisma, soul, style, and all the moves … hands on hips, guitar slung backwards, padded shoulders to die for, cheekbones that you could cut with a knife and a presence that is just luminous. No wonder I loved him as an adolescent, he was my Hero. As someone commented on the YouTube live performance of the song, “ain’t there 1 goddam song that can make me breakdown + cry*”. From talking to other gay men, I know that the Young Americans album was also critical for them – all cinched waist, high cheekbones, eye shadow, padded shoulders, flaming hair and soul music.

Australian disc jockey Stephen Allkins observed the same phenomena in Sydney. In a recent interview with me he commented, “My first introduction to the world of David Bowie was in 1975 when I was a 14 year old gay boy hanging out with my gay cousin, coming out unknowingly together. Young Americans was so damn funky and classy and totally different to anything that was happening in the white music world at the time. I couldn’t quite get my head around the way Bowie had gone from Ziggy and Aladdin Sane to the Thin White Duke and funk in one swoop, but I loved it. It’s hard to put into words how, as everyone else was glamming up, Bowie starting wearing suits and playing with the hottest funk band on the planet. No one else at that time moved or evolved with such speed and ease and he made me believe every look and note. He didn’t copy or just follow a trend to get noticed, he created and influenced several generations of people with his music and visual ideas. I say ideas because what he created visually was more than mere fashion, it became art. Looking back on all he’s done now, all that he did was art – musically, visually and sensually.”

Which leads me on to David Bowie is, an exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. This is a fascinating but flawed exploration of the life of one of the world’s great artists. To see his early life, influences, and upbringing, and to have access to his personal archives – especially the wonderful sketches and storyboards showing his creative process – is invaluable. One of the strongest elements of the performance is how the exhibition links his art to the many cultural signifiers he used to construct it: from collage to construction. The costumes are magnificent including the additional Australian content, like the Pierrot costume from Ashes to Ashes. To see artefacts such as the original handwritten stanzas of Ziggy Stardust and Fame is as close as many of us will get to the source of greatness.

Much less successful was the thematic layout of the exhibition. Sections on film stars, 1930s, and Berlin cabaret (to name but a few), in non-chronological order, made it difficult to comprehend the development of each character and their place in the flow of time and space. While this assemblage of ideas might mimic how Bowie actually constructed his characters, quickly moving from one to another, and then reviving the same character many years later (for example, Space Oddity‘s Major Tom of 1969 and then creating a sequel in Ashes to Ashes in 1980), the imitative representation, or mimesis, of Bowie’s process in the layout of the exhibition simply did not work. Knowing how important Young Americans was to my own gay history, I searched for about 15 minutes with a guide from the exhibition looking for references to Young Americans and the influence of soul music on Bowie. We eventually found just two Thin White Duke suits tucked away right at the end of the show. In the bowels of the dark, subterranean bunker that is ACMI too many artefacts were crammed into too small a location. The artefacts, the ideas and the art have little room to breathe.

Having said that, this is still a mesmerising exhibition. Allow three to fours hours at least. If you are a Bowie fan it’s a 100% must see; and if you are an aficionado of contemporary culture, you will be amazed at the sources Bowie draws from to create his art, his personas. It did no harm, either, that Bowie had access to some of the most creative designers in the world for his costumes and sets, but he was the inventive force. What a man, what an artist, not just a man who feel to earth, but a man who changed the world. He was REAL, his personae were REAL, his art was REAL. He was an astronaut of inner space and when he looked down the barrel of the lens he spoke to young rebels in an authentic voice. He was our hero and no one else’s. As the singer Sylvester would later say: “You make me feel mighty real.” Chimerical, pansexual David, we love you!

Dr Marcus Bunyan
October 2015

Word count: 1,390

 

 

Roy Ainsworth. 'David Bowie in The Kon-rads' 1963 from the exhibition 'David Bowie is' at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, July - Nov, 2015

 

Roy Ainsworth
Publicity photograph for The Kon-rads
1963
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

David or ‘Davie’ Jones, as he was then known, became heavily involved in London’s burgeoning music scene at a young age. Before leaving school at the age of 16, he had already joined the band The Kon-rads, playing saxophone and singing vocals. Demonstrating the experimental energy that has driven his solo career, Bowie spent the 1960s trying out different musical, artistic and sartorial styles and performing with several different bands. In 1965 he changed his stage name to David Bowie. The exhibition features several objects from Bowie’s early career including sketches of set, costume and poster designs created for his first bands and footage of early performances.

 

Freddie Burretti (British, b. 1952) (designer) 'Quilted two‐piece suit' 1972

 

Freddie Burretti (British, b. 1952) (designer)
Quilted two‐piece suit
1972
Designed by Freddie Burretti for the ‘Ziggy Stardust’ tour
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

On 6 July 1972 David Bowie performed Starman, the first single from his album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, on BBC One’s Top of the Pops. This pivotal performance was crucial in making Bowie a music star and is acclaimed as a watershed moment which changed rock music and youth culture forever. Appearing on national television with flame-orange hair, make-up, multi-coloured clothing and red patent boots, Ziggy’s otherworldly look and sexual ambiguity created a seismic shift in pop culture. The exhibition features the original suit and boots created by Freddie Burretti and designed in collaboration with Bowie, who took inspiration from the costumes worn by the ‘droogs’ street gang in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange (1971).

 

 

Ziggy Stardust | David Bowie

Footage taken from BBC 4’s documentary, The Story of Ziggy Stardust

 

Kansai Yamamoto (Japanese, 1944-2020) (designer) Masayoshi Sukita (Japanese, b. 1938) (photographer) 'Striped bodysuit for the Aladdin Sane tour' 1973

 

Kansai Yamamoto (Japanese, 1944-2020) (designer)
Masayoshi Sukita (Japanese, b. 1938) (photographer)
Striped bodysuit for the Aladdin Sane tour
1973
© Sukita / The David Bowie Archive

 

Bowie first saw the work of Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto at the exhibition Kansai in London in 1971. He could not afford the original designs so copied the look instead, recruiting friends such as Natasha Korniloff and Freddie Burretti to create cheaper versions of Yamamoto’s signature bodysuits and platform boots. After the success of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie approached Yamamoto and commissioned a set of even more flamboyant stage costumes for the Aladdin Sane tour in 1973. These outfits, inspired by the style of Japanese samurai and kabuki actors, are outrageous, sculptural and eye-catching. The exhibition features several Kansai Yamamoto costumes including the black and white striped bodysuit and a white cloak with Japanese kanji lettering spelling out ‘David Bowie’. A flamboyant suit from Yamamoto’s 1971 exhibition which he gifted to the V&A at the time is also on display.

 

'Red platform boots for the 1973 'Aladdin Sane' tour' 1973

 

Red platform boots for the 1973 ‘Aladdin Sane’ tour
1973
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

Kansai Yamamoto (Japanese, 1944-2020) (designer) 'Metallic bodysuit' 1973

 

Kansai Yamamoto (Japanese, 1944-2020) (designer)
Metallic bodysuit
1973
Designed by Kansai Yamamoto for the ‘Aladdin Sane’ tour
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

Brian Duffy (English, 1933-2010) 'Album cover shoot for Aladdin Sane' 1973

 

Brian Duffy (English, 1933-2010)
Album cover shoot for Aladdin Sane
1973
© Duffy Archive & The David Bowie Archive

 

 

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) today launched the critically acclaimed exhibition celebrating one of the most influential artists in music, film and video, fashion and performance. David Bowie is comes to ACMI from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) for a strictly limited season from 16 July 2015 as part of the Victorian Government’s Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.

Seen by over 1 million people worldwide at sell-out shows in London, Chicago, Sao Paolo, Paris, and Berlin, David Bowie is was conceived by the prestigious V&A in London, where it premiered in March 2013 before quickly becoming V&A’s fastest selling show. This once-in-a-lifetime experience, now in its only Australasian season, is set to take Melbourne by storm.

Drawing upon unprecedented access to objects from the David Bowie Archive, the exhibition charts the extraordinary career of the boy from London who became an iconic artist and cultural innovator. David Bowie is features over 50 legendary costumes, original stage set designs, handwritten lyric sheets, album artwork, rare film, video and photographs, and interviews with key collaborators. Special displays explore the artistic chameleon’s continuing influences as a musician, stage performer, writer and actor.

ACMI Director and CEO, Katrina Sedgwick, says the groundbreaking exhibition is testament to Bowie’s profound and everlasting impact as a true pioneer in music, fashion and culture. “We are thrilled to be hosting the Australian incarnation of David Bowie is… It is an exhibition that not only illuminates the extraordinary breadth of Bowie’s creative genius and his enormous impact over the decades – but it is also a beautifully curated and staged experience that will delight the many thousands of people who will see it in the coming weeks and months.”

The V&A’s curators, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, from the Museum’s Department of Theatre and Performance, selected more than 300 objects and films for the show. Of the exhibition they said; “We are absolutely delighted to see David Bowie is travel to ACMI. Bowie himself has a long-standing relationship with Australia, including creating the music videos for Let’s Dance and China Girl there. We hope that the exhibition meets the expectations of his extensive Australian fan base.”

The exhibition offers insight into Bowie’s early years and his first steps musical greatness. The creative aspiration of the young David Robert Jones are showcased by early photographs and Bowie’s sketches for stage sets and costumes created for his bands The Kon-rads and The Delta Lemons in the 1960s. Bowie’s first major hit Space Oddity (1969) and the introduction of the fictional character Major Tom inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey granted him critical and commercial success as an established solo artist. His cinematic influences abound with his elaborate storyboards and set design for the Diamond Dogs tour (1974) inspired by Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1927).

Excerpts and props from Bowie’s on-screen performance in films including The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Labyrinth (1986), Basquiat (1996) and The Prestige (2006) show how Bowie has continually explored different notions of character and drawn together the numerous cultural influences that feed into his work. On display is the original multi-coloured suit worn for the pivotal performance of Starman on Top of the Pops in July 1972. An interactive audio-visual display presents some of Bowie’s most ambitious music videos including DJ (1979) and The Hearts Filthy Lesson (1995). Immersive, large-scale projections show recently uncovered footage of Bowie performing Jean Genie on Top of the Pops in 1973 and excerpts from D. A. Pennebaker’s film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture (1973).

Bowie’s collaborations with artists and designers in the fields of fashion, sound, graphics, theatre, art and film are explored throughout the exhibition. On display are more than 50 stage costumes including Ziggy Stardust bodysuits (1972) designed by Freddie Burretti, Kansai Yamamoto’s flamboyant creations for the Aladdin Sane tour (1973), and the Union Jack coat designed by Bowie and Alexander McQueen for the Earthling album cover (1997). An area has been dedicated to the monochrome theatricality of Bowie’s Berlin period and the creation of the Thin White Duke persona identified with the Station to Station album and tour (1976). It also investigates the series of experimental records he produced between 1977 and 1979 whilst living in Germany, known as the Berlin Trilogy.

More personal items such as never-before-seen storyboards, handwritten set lists and lyrics are also featured in the exhibition as well as some of Bowie’s own sketches, musical scores and diary entries, revealing the evolution of his creative ideas. ACMI is the exclusive Australasian venue for a strictly limited season of David Bowie is. The ACMI season includes a curated program of talks and special events, late night programs, film screenings and live performances.

Press release from ACMI

 

Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit designed by Freddie Burretti (1972)

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Alexander McQueen Union Jack coat designed in collaboration with David Bowie for the Earthling album cover

 

David Bowie (English, 1947-2016) and Freddie Burretti (British, b. 1952) (designer) 'Bodysuit with graphic print (replica)' 'Ziggy Stardust' tour and album cover 1972

 

David Bowie (English, 1947-2016) and Freddie Burretti (British, b. 1952) (designer)
Bodysuit with graphic print (replica)
‘Ziggy Stardust’ tour and album cover
1972

 

Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne showing Kansai Yamamoto striped bodysuit for the 'Aladdin Sane' tour (1973)

 

Kansai Yamamoto striped bodysuit for the Aladdin Sane tour (1973)

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'David Bowie' is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

 

Installation photographs of the exhibition David Bowie is at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Photographer: Mark Gambino

 

 

Exhibition overview

The exhibition offers insight into Bowie’s early years and his first steps towards musical success. Tracing the creative aspirations of the young David Robert Jones (born 1947 in Brixton, London), it shows how he was inspired by innovations in art, theatre, music, technology and youth culture in Britain during the aftermath of the Second World War. Pursuing a professional career in music and acting, he officially adopted the stage name ‘David Bowie’ in 1965 and went through a series of self-styled changes from Mod to mime artist and folk singer to R&B musician in anticipation of the shifting nature of his future career. On display are early photographs and Bowie’s sketches for stage sets and costumes created for his bands The Kon-rads and The Delta Lemons in the 1960s.

This opening section concludes with a focus on Bowie’s first major hit Space Oddity (1969) and the introduction of the fictional character Major Tom, who would be revisited by Bowie in both Ashes to Ashes (1980) and Hallo Spaceboy (1995). Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the single was released to coincide with the first moon landing and was Bowie’s breakthrough moment, granting him critical and commercial success as an established solo artist.

The exhibition moves on to examine Bowie’s creative processes from song writing, recording and producing to his collaborations on costume designs, stage sets and album artwork. Showing how Bowie works within both established art forms and new artistic movements, this section reveals the scope of his inspirations and cultural references from Surrealism, Brechtian theatre and avant-garde mime to West End musicals, German Expressionism and Japanese Kabuki performance. This section traces the influence of these movements on Bowie’s own work, including the evolution of the lavishly produced Diamond Dogs tour (1974), the design of which was inspired by Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1927) and George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). The tour combined exuberant choreography and a colossal set design, taking the combination of rock music and theatre to new heights. On display are previously unseen storyboards for the proposed musical that Bowie would eventually transform into the Diamond Dogs album and touring show.

In addition, this section chronicles Bowie’s innovative approach to creating albums and touring shows around fictionalised stage personas and narratives. 1972 marked the birth of his most famous creation; Ziggy Stardust, a human manifestation of an alien being. Ziggy’s daringly androgynous and otherworldly appearance has had a powerful and continuous influence on pop culture, signalling a challenge of social conventions and inspiring people to shape their own identities. On display is the original multi-coloured suit worn for the pivotal performance of Starman on Top of the Pops in July 1972, as well as outfits designed for stage characters Aladdin Sane and The Thin White Duke. Costumes from The 1980 Floor Show (1973), album cover sleeves for The Man Who Sold the World (1970) and Hunky Dory (1971), alongside fan material, highlight Bowie’s fluid stylistic transformations and his impact on social mobility and gay liberation.

Excerpts from Bowie’s on-screen performances in films including The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Labyrinth (1986), Basquiat (1996) and The Prestige (2006) show how Bowie has continually explored different notions of character and drawn together the numerous cultural influences that feed into his work. Footage and photography of recording sessions for Outside (1995) and ‘Hours…’ (1999) as well as handwritten lyrics and word collages inspired by William Burroughs’ ‘cut up’ method of writing that have never previously been publicly displayed, reveal Bowie’s working processes from writing to recording.

This expansive retrospective also celebrates David Bowie as a pioneering performer concentrating on key performances throughout his career. An interactive audio-visual display presents some of Bowie’s most ambitious music videos including DJ (1979) and The Hearts Filthy Lesson (1995). Immersive, large-scale projections show recently uncovered footage of Bowie performing Jean Genie on Top of the Pops in 1973 and excerpts from D. A. Pennebaker’s film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture (1973).

An area has been dedicated to the monochrome theatricality of Bowie’s Berlin period and the creation of the stylish Thin White Duke persona identified with the Station to Station album and tour (1976). It also investigates the series of experimental and pioneering records he produced between 1977 and 1979 whilst living in Germany, known as the Berlin Trilogy. Finally, David Bowie is features a display of striking performance and fashion photography taken by photographers including Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts and John Rowlands. These professional portraits are juxtaposed with a collage of visual projections illustrating Bowie’s immense creative influence and ubiquitous presence in music, fashion and contemporary visual and virtual culture.

Press release from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image website

 

Freddie Burretti (British, b. 1952) (designer) 'Ice-blue suit' 1972

 

Freddie Burretti (British, b. 1952) (designer)
Ice-blue suit
1972
Designed for the ‘Life on Mars?’ video
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

 

David Bowie – Life On Mars? (Official Video)

 

Kansai Yamamoto (Japanese, 1944-2020) (designer) 'Asymmetric knitted bodysuit' 1973

 

Kansai Yamamoto (Japanese, 1944-2020) (designer)
Asymmetric knitted bodysuit
1973
Designed for the ‘Aladdin Sane’ tour
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

Photograph by Terry O'Neill with colour by David Bowie (English, 1947-2016) 'David Bowie with William Burroughs, February 1974' 1974

 

Photograph by Terry O’Neill with colour by David Bowie (English, 1947-2016)
David Bowie with William Burroughs, February 1974
1974
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

Terry O'Neill. 'Promotional photograph of David Bowie for 'Diamond Dogs'' 1974

 

Terry O’Neill
Promotional photograph of David Bowie for ‘Diamond Dogs’
1974
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

 

David Bowie – BBC Live – Diamond Dogs & John, I’m Only Dancing (January 1975)

 

David Bowie (English, 1947-2016) 'Photo-collage by David Bowie of manipulated film stills from The Man Who Fell to Earth' 1975-1976

 

David Bowie (English, 1947-2016)
Photo-collage by David Bowie of manipulated film stills from The Man Who Fell to Earth
1975-1976
Film stills by David James
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive, Film stills
© STUDIOCANAL Films Ltd., Image
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

'Cut up lyrics for 'Blackout' from "Heroes"' 1977

 

Cut up lyrics for ‘Blackout’ from “Heroes”
1977
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

'Print after a self‐portrait by David Bowie' 1978

 

Print after a self‐portrait by David Bowie
1978
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

Brian Duffy (English, 1933-2010) 'David Bowie during the filming of the 'Ashes to Ashes' video' 1980

 

Brian Duffy (English, 1933-2010)
David Bowie during the filming of the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video
1980
© Duffy Archive & The David Bowie Archive

 

'Original storyboards by David Bowie for the 'Ashes to Ashes' video' 1980

 

Original storyboards by David Bowie for the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video
1980
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
© Victoria and Albert Museum

 

 

David Bowie – Ashes To Ashes (Official Video)

 

 

Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia

Opening hours:
Open daily, 10am – 5pm (Closed Christmas Day)

ACMI website

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Exhibition: ‘Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget’ and ‘Impressions of Melbourne’ at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 17th July – 20th September, 2015

National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition

Curator of Impressions of Paris: Jane Kinsman, National Gallery of Australia’s Senior Curator of International Prints

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) 'No title (Brocanteur)' c. 1898-1905 from the exhibition 'Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget' and 'Impressions of Melbourne' at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, July - Sept, 2015

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927)
No title (Brocanteur)
c. 1898-1905
Albumen silver photograph
17.8 x 21.9cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980

 

 

Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget is a particularly dry and uninspiring National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition, which was only enlivened for me by the enlightened presence of 20 or so vintage Eugène Atget photographs, specifically added for this showing at the Monash Gallery of Art, the home of Australian photography.

Atget’s photographs have an almost ether/real quality to them in their visual representation and, physically, an ephemeral feel to the quality of the paper – as though the images are about to dissolve into nothing – even as he photographs solid objects such as stairways, doors and door knockers. Observe the photographs Hôtel du Maréchal de Tallard, 78 rue des Archives (c. 1898-1905), A la Grâce de Dieu, 121 rue Montmartre (c. 1900) and Heurtoir, 6 rue du Parc Royal (c. 1901-1914), below, to witness this shimmering phenomenon. It is as if the emulsion of the plate is insufficient to capture the light of life.

In an accompanying exhibition in the smaller gallery, Impressions of Melbourne, photographs by Nicholas Caire, Charles Kerry, Max Dupain, Mark Strizic and Noel Jones investigate the city of Melbourne… but it is the stunning photographs by Atget that make the long drive out to Wheeler’s Hill worth the visit.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) 'Versailles, Grand Trianon' c. 1901-1925 from the exhibition 'Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget' and 'Impressions of Melbourne' at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, July - Sept, 2015

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927)
Versailles, Grand Trianon
c. 1901-1925
Gold-toned silver chloride photograph
17.6 x 22cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) 'Hôtel du Maréchal de Tallard, 78 rue des Archives' c. 1898-1905

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927)
Hôtel du Maréchal de Tallard, 78 rue des Archives
c. 1898-1905
Gold-toned silver chloride photograph
22 x 18.1cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) 'A la Grâce de Dieu, 121 rue Montmartre' c. 1900

 

Eugène Atget (France 1857-1927)
A la Grâce de Dieu, 121 rue Montmartre
c. 1900
Printing out paper photograph
22 x 17.7cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1984

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) 'Heurtoir, 6 rue du Parc Royal' c. 1901-1914

 

Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927)
Heurtoir, 6 rue du Parc Royal
c. 1901-1914
Gold-toned silver chloride photograph
21.9 x 17.8cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980

 

 

Monash Gallery of Art is delighted to present its major international exhibition of 2015, Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget featuring over 120 prints, posters and photographs drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget examines the major contribution to French art made by key figures: Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808-1879), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and includes a selection of photographs by Eugène Atget (1857-1927) specially conceived for Monash Gallery of Art.

Newly appointed Gallery Director Kallie Blauhorn states, “I’m thrilled that for my first exhibition at MGA we are able to present a major international show, Impressions of Paris. Residents of Monash and art lovers across Melbourne will experience the extraordinary works by household names, Toulouse Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Honore Daumier and the wonderful photographer Eugène Atget.”

“This is a first for MGA and a true testament to the reputation of the gallery that we can host this important and significant exhibition,” said Blauhorn.

A generation apart, Lautrec, Degas and Daumier were consummate draughtsmen whose innovative compositions and embrace of modern subject matter played a significant role in artistic developments in France over the nineteenth century. Atget, the only specialist photographer among these artists, spent much of his life documenting the streets of Paris as they underwent modernisation. His photographs show us how modern life was expressed in the architectural experience of France, giving us a glimpse of what modernity left behind.

The generation of French artists who followed Daumier in the nineteenth century were inspired by his critical observations, which became an extraordinary reservoir of ideas. Both Degas and then Lautrec were enthusiastic admirers of French caricature, delighting in its animated qualities, stylistic freedoms and contemporary themes. They were particularly enamoured of Daumier’s caricature.

Degas adopted themes of modern French life, the ballet, the race course, the café-concert and the demi-monde and played an important role in the rejection of mythological and historical subjects favoured by the Impressionists. Many of Degas’ ideas on composition and subjects were, in turn, drawn from Daumier. This French satirist was both extraordinarily gifted and prolific, making a name for himself by lampooning the affectations, stupidities and greed of members of the French bourgeois society in caricatures, which Degas avidly collected.

The youngest of the artists, Lautrec, who sadly dies before reaching 37, borrowed themes and compositions from Degas, an artist he much admired and emulated. Images of drinkers at a table, ballet and cabaret scenes and nudes reveal the powerful influence that Degas had on the younger artist, as well as Lautrec’s own considerable originality, particularly as a portrayer of individuals rather than the depiction of types often favoured by Degas.

For the most part, Atget’s pictures of streets, parks, courtyards, buildings and their ornamental motifs record remnants of Old Paris. While there is a nostalgic aspect to these views, for contemporary viewers these pictures were about modern Paris. They recorded and helped make sense of changes to the city as it struggled to cope with modernism. Atget’s views of modern Paris focussed on its intimate places, those spaces of the everyday in which people had always worked, loved and lived.

These four artists captured the spirit of Paris in their prints, posters and photographs. Through the examination of this work, we find clues as to why dramatic changes took place in French art over the nineteenth century. They formed part of other generations of artists who admired Daumier and who adapted the caricaturist’s critical lithographic observations. In this way Daumier’s legacy was a brilliant journalistic record of the modern capital and contributed to an era in France ripe for a new art.

Press release from the MGA website

 

Eugène Atget: growth and decay in the great city

After an unspectacular career in the theatre, Eugène Atget (1857-1927) began to take photographs of Paris in 1892. By 1897 he had established a successful business photographing the spaces that remained of Old Paris. In all, Atget made over 10,000 images of Paris and its surrounds, each taken with a straightforward approach that laid the basis for much of the documentary photography that followed. Atget’s pictures were immensely popular: he sold thousands of prints, satisfying a strong demand for views of a city undergoing massive social and architectural transformation.

For the most part, Atget’s pictures of streets, parks, courtyards, buildings and their ornamental motifs record remnants of pre-Revolutionary Paris. While there is a nostalgic aspect to these views, for contemporary viewers these pictures were about modern Paris. They recorded and helped make sense of changes to the city as it struggled to cope with modernism. Street traders and other workers are seen selling their wares along old streets and laneways; ancient buildings stand in laneways and courtyards undergoing physical transformation; cafes and shops await bustling crowds. Atget’s views of modern Paris focussed on its intimate places, those spaces of the everyday in which people had always worked, loved and lived.

 

Impressions of Melbourne

17th July 2015 – 20th September 2015

In response to the photographs by Eugène Atget (1857-1927) included in the National Gallery of Australia’s touring exhibition, Impressions of Paris, this exhibition offers views of Melbourne’s streets, laneways and urban landscape. Drawn from the Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection, this selection traverses a period from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century.

Atget photographed Paris during a time when the French capital was undergoing significant transformation. From the 1850s through to the 1920s, the dark medieval neighbourhoods of the city were demolished to make way for the wide avenues and open public spaces that Paris is known for today. Atget’s ambition was to produce clear and detailed photographs that would document the heritage of Paris before it disappeared. Typically taking his photographs in the early morning when the streets were empty, Atget imbued the city with ghostly nostalgia.

The earliest photographs in Impressions of Melbourne, taken by Nicholas Caire and Charles Kerry in the late nineteenth century, are contemporary to those of Atget. While Atget focused longingly on the past, however, these Australian photographers celebrated the civic accomplishments of modern progress in the colonies. The portrayal of Melbourne as a civilised metropolis, attractive to both immigrants and tourists, persisted through the twentieth century. Max Dupain captured the city as a lively and enterprising place, while Mark Strizic lingered on the shimmering ambience of window shopping and city strolling.

Impressions of Melbourne showcases a range of photographic responses to our urban environment, revealing some of Melbourne’s many moods and highlighting the city as a rich photographic subject. The exhibition includes photographs by Nicholas Caire, Charles Kerry, Max Dupain, Mark Strizic and Noel Jones.

Nicholas Caire

Nicolas Caire was born in Guernsey and arrived in Australia, settling in Adelaide, in 1858. He set up his first photographic studio in Adelaide in 1867. He moved to the Victorian goldmining town of Talbot in 1870 before relocating to Melbourne in 1876. At this time, Melbourne was the largest Australian city.

While Caire is best known for his picturesque landscape photographs of the Victorian countryside, he also produced photographs of major city thoroughfares, public buildings, parks and gardens. These subjects were common amongst photographers in the second half of the nineteenth century, conveying a sense of local pride and achievement. Caire’s photographs were often mounted in albums and accompanied by individual descriptive texts, a format that was popular amongst local and overseas visitors at the time.

Charles Kerry

Charles Kerry grew up in country New South Wales before moving to Sydney at the age of 17 to begin his photographic career. After a failed studio partnership, which left him with a lot of debt, Kerry rebuilt his business and by 1890 found himself running a successful studio that had a monopoly on the popular postcard market. By 1898 Kerry’s studio was the largest in Australia, housed in a three-storey building at 310 George Street, Sydney.

Throughout his career, Kerry photographed a broad range of subjects including social and sporting events, portraits of Indigenous people, city streets as well as the New South Wales countryside. He also spent a year documenting every station homestead in New South Wales. Kerry retired in 1913.

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) 'View of Bourke Street, Melbourne' 1877-1878

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918)
View of Bourke Street, Melbourne
1877-1878
From the series Views of Victoria
Albumen print
13.4 x 18.7cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987

 

Original album caption: Bourke Street is the principal business thoroughfare in the great City of Melbourne. It is about a mile in length, extending from the Parliament House to the Spencer Street Railway Station. On the left hand side of the picture is the Post Office, and at the extreme end of the street can be seen the Parliament House.

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) 'The Government Domain of Victoria' 1877-1878

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918)
The Government Domain of Victoria
1877-1878
From the series The public buildings of Melbourne and suburbs
Albumen print Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987

 

Original album caption: The Governor’s Residence is on an eminence near the Botanical Gardens, and occupies one of the best positions around the City of Melbourne. Looking westward from the front of the Domain, a splendid view is obtained of Hobson’s Bay, with the townships of St Kilda, Emerald Hill, Sandridge, and Williamstown on the coast. On the north side can be seen the City of Melbourne, with its busy suburban towns – Hotham, Carlton and Fitzroy. From the rear of the building towards the east, in the distance, the retired towns of Richmond, Hawthorn, and Toorak can be distinguished. The building, as seen in the illustration, was completed in the year 1876. Sir G F Bowen, GCMG, being the Resident Governor at the time.

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) 'The Royal Mint, Melbourne' 1877-1878

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918)
The Royal Mint, Melbourne
1877-1878
From the series The public buildings of Melbourne and suburbs
Albumen print
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987

 

Original album caption: The Royal Mint of Victoria is situated in the north-easterly part of William Street, West Melbourne. This Government Building is not thrown open to the public for visitation at any time; but an inspection by visitors can be effected on an order from a Member of the Ministry, conditionally that there be no fewer than eight persons at each visitation; one of the number being required to become responsible for the conduct of the party.

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) 'The Post Office, Melbourne' 1877-1878

 

Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918)
The Post Office, Melbourne
1877-1878
From the series The public buildings of Melbourne and suburbs
Albumen print
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987

 

Original album caption: This imposing structure is erected at the junction of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, which may be considered perhaps the most central position in Melbourne. It is provided with a very long corridor for the posting and delivery of letters, & c. The Telegraph Department, as also the Post Office Savings Bank and Money Order Office, are all conducted in connection with the General Post office, Melbourne, of which the Hon. R Ramsay, MLA, is at present Postmaster-General.

 

Charles Kerry (Australia, 1858-1928) 'Collins Street, looking south' c. 1890

 

Charles Kerry (Australia, 1858-1928)
Collins Street, looking south
c. 1890
Albumen print
14.5 x 17.5cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1984

 

Max Dupain (Australia, 1911-1992) 'Melbourne with rain' 1946

 

Max Dupain (Australia, 1911-1992)
Melbourne with rain
1946
Gelatin silver print
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987

 

Max Dupain

Max Dupain began his photographic career in 1930 as an apprentice in the studio of Cecil Bostock. In 1934 he established his own studio in Sydney and continued to produce a broad range of commercial work over the course of his life. Dupain was strongly influenced by modernist photographic principles and is renowned for his architectural photography as well as his iconic images of Australian beach culture.

While he primarily worked in Sydney, the photographs exhibited here are among several he took of otherAustralian cities. They highlight his interest in documenting city life as well as his use of light, shadow and aerial perspective. They were taken during the post war period; in the year that Dupain was commissioned by the Department of Information to photograph Australia’s way of life as part of a campaign to increase migration to Australia. This period marked a shift in Dupain’s practice, away from advertising and fashion toward social documentary.

 

Mark Strizic (born Germany 1928; arrived Australia 1950; died 2012) 'Near 101 Collins Street, Jan 1963' 1963

 

Mark Strizic (born Germany 1928; arrived Australia 1950; died 2012)
Near 101 Collins Street, Jan 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
36 x 53.5cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
Donated by the Bowness Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2008
Reproduction courtesy of the artist

 

Mark Strizic (born Germany 1928; arrived Australia 1950; died 2012) 'Collins Street at McPherson's building - 1, 1967' 1967

 

Mark Strizic (born Germany 1928; arrived Australia 1950; died 2012)
Collins Street at McPherson’s building – 1, 1967
1967
Gelatin silver print
53.8 x 36cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
Donated by the Bowness Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2008
Reproduction courtesy of the artist

 

Mark Strizic

Mark Strizic was born in Berlin and migrated to Melbourne from Zagreb, Croatia in 1950. Strizic had no formal training in photography, but began taking photographs of Melbourne in the 1950s. He abandoned his studies in physics to become a full-time photographer in 1957, taking up subsequent commissions in architectural, industrial, interior design and portrait photography.

Among Strizic’s most widely recognised images are those he created of Melbourne between 1955 and 1970. Strizic documented the streets of Melbourne, showing many sides of the city, from derelict back alleyways to the grand arcades and buildings of Melbourne’s ‘Paris end’. Strizic’s photographs were produced during a period of dramatic change, a time when Melbourne’s Victorian-era buildings were being replaced by modern architectural developments. The images not only serve to document this change but also provide significant and important records of Melbourne pre-modernisation.

 

 

Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill
Victoria 3150 Australia
Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500

Opening hours:
Tue – Fri: 10am – 5pm
Sat – Sun: 10pm – 4pm
Mon/public holidays: closed

Monash Gallery of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great’ at NGV International, Melbourne, Part 2

Exhibition dates: 31st July – 8th November, 2015

Melbourne Winter Masterpieces 2015

Curator: Dr. Mikhail Dedinkin, curator from the State Hermitage Museum supported by NGV Director Tony Ellwood and Dr. Ted Gott, Senior Curator of International Art at the NGV

 

Hermitage Museum, the Winter Palace in Winter, St Petersburg Photo: Pavel Demidov

 

Hermitage Museum, the Winter Palace in Winter, St Petersburg 
Photo: Pavel Demidov

 

 

Some beauty to cheer me up from my sickbed.

These are the official press photographs for the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great. To see my installation photographs of the exhibition go to this posting.

The paintings look as fresh today as when they were first painted, some of them in the early 1500s. To see the thumbs up gesture in Diego Velázquez’s Luncheon (c. 1617-1618, below) echoing down the centuries, is worth the price of admission alone.

We cannot imagine what life would have been like back then… no medication, rampant disease and malnutrition, little law enforcement with danger lurking around each turn (see Matthew Beaumont. Night Walking: A Nocturnal History of London, Chaucer to Dickens. London and New York: Verso, 2015).

And yet these talented artists, supported by the elite, produced work which still touches us today.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the art works in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the art works. See Part 1 of the posting.

 

 

Chinese. 'Cup' early 17th century from the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne, July - Nov, 2015

 

Chinese
Cup
early 17th century
Silver, enamel
4 x 3 x 7cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ЛС-133, ВВс-250)
Acquired before 1789

 

Chinese. 'Teapot with lid' 17th century from the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne, July - Nov, 2015

 

Chinese
Teapot with lid
17th century
Silver, enamel
18.0 x 5.5cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ЛС-80 а, б, ВВс-219)
Acquired before 1789

 

Sevres Porcelain Factory Sèvres (manufacturer) France est. 1756 'Cameo Service' 1778-1779

 

Sèvres Porcelain Factory
Sèvres (manufacturer) France est. 1756
Cameo Service
1778-1779
Porcelain (soft-paste), gilt
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Commissioned by Catherine ll as a gift for Prince Grigory Potemkin in 1777; Potemkin’s Taurida Palace, St Petersburg from 1779; transferred to the Hofmarshal’s Office of the Winter Palace after his death; 1922 transferred to the State Hermitage Museum

 

Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna (Russian, 1795-1828) (engraver) Russia (manufacturer) 'Catherine the Great as Minerva' cameo 1789

 

Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna (Russian, 1795-1828) (engraver)
Russia (manufacturer)
Catherine the Great as Minerva
1789
Cameo
Jasper, gold
6.5 x 4.7cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. К 1077)
Acquired 1789

 

James Tassie, London (England, 1735-1799) (workshop of) 'Head of Medusa' 1780s

 

James Tassie, London (England, 1735-1799) (workshop of)
Head of Medusa
1780s
Coloured glass, gilded paper
7.6 x 9.2cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. R-T, 3296 a)
Purchased from James Tassie 1783-88

 

Chinese. 'Toilet service' early 18th century

 

Chinese
Toilet service
early 18th century
Glass, mercury amalgam, paper, silver, filigree, parcel-gilt, wood, velvet, peacock and king-fisher feathers, mother-of-pearl, crystals
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ЛС-472/ 1,2, ВВс-373)

 

Chinese. 'Table decoration in the form of a pair of birds' 1740s-50s

 

Chinese
Table decoration in the form of a pair of birds
1740s-50s
Silver, enamel, silver-gilt
26.0 x 26.0 x 15.0cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ЛС-26, ВВс-189)

 

Chinese. 'Crab-shaped box on a leaf tray' 1740s-50s

 

Chinese
Crab-shaped box on a leaf tray
1740s-50s
Silver, enamel, silver-gilt
(a) 4.0 x 14.0 x 13.0cm (box)
(b) 3.0 x 22.0 x 17.0cm (stand)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ЛС-9 а,б, ВВс-186)

 

Marie-Anne Collot (French, 1748-1821) 'Voltaire' 1770s

 

Marie-Anne Collot (French, 1748-1821)
Voltaire
1770s
Marble
49 x 30 x 28cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. Н.ск. 3)
Acquired from the artist, 1778

 

Jean-Antoine Houdon (French, 1741-1828) 'Catherine II' 1773

 

Jean-Antoine Houdon (French, 1741-1828)
Catherine II
1773
Marble
90 x 50 x 32cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. Н.ск. 1676)
Transferred from the Stroganov Palace, Leningrad, 1928

 

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725-1805) 'Head of an old man. Study for The paralytic' 1760s

 

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725-1805)
Head of an old man. Study for The paralytic
1760s
Red and black chalk
49.3 x 40cm (sheet)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ОР-14727)
Acquired from the artist in 1769 for the Museum of the Academy of Arts. Transferred to the Hermitage in 1924

 

François Boucher (French, 1703-1770) 'Study of a female nude' 1740

 

François Boucher (French, 1703-1770)
Study of a female nude
1740
Red, black and white chalk on brown paper
26.2 x 34.6cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ОР-382)
Acquired from the collection of Count Cobenzl, Brussels, 1768

 

Charles-Louis Clérisseau (French, 1721-1820) 'Design for the paintings in the cell of Father Lesueur in the Monastery of Santissima Trinità dei Monti in Rome' 1766-1768

 

Charles-Louis Clérisseau (French, 1721-1820)
Design for the paintings in the cell of Father Lesueur in the Monastery of Santissima Trinità dei Monti in Rome
1766-1768
Pen and black and brown ink, brown and grey wash
36.9 x 53cm (sheet)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ОР-2597)
Acquired from the artist by Catherine II on 5 May 1780, Provenance: before 1797

 

Carlo Galli-Bibiena (Austrian, 1728-87) 'Design for the interior decoration of a library' 1770s

 

Carlo Galli-Bibiena (Austrian, 1728-1787)
Design for the interior decoration of a library
1770s
Pen and ink, grey wash and watercolour over pencil
32 х 44cm (sheet)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ОР-231)
Acquired before 1797

 

Giacomo Quarenghi (Italian, 1744-1817) 'Façade of the Hermitage Theatre' 1780s

 

Giacomo Quarenghi (Italian, 1744-1817)
Façade of the Hermitage Theatre
1780s
Pen and ink, watercolour
33 х 47cm (sheet)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ОР-9626)
Acquired from Giulio Quarenghi in 1818

 

Konstantin Ukhtomsky (Russian, 1818-1881) 'The Raphael Loggia' 1860

 

Konstantin Ukhtomsky (Russian, 1818-1881)
The Raphael Loggia
1860
Watercolour
42 х 25cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ОР-11741)
Acquired from the artist, 1860

 

 

Over 500 works from the personal collection of Catherine the Great will travel to Australia in July. Gathered over a 34-year period, the exhibition represents the foundation of the Hermitage’s collection and includes outstanding works from artists such as Rembrandt, Velasquez, Rubens and Titian. Exemplary works from Van Dyck, Snyders, Teniers and Hals will also travel, collectively offering some of the finest Dutch and Flemish art to come to Australia. The exhibition, presented by the Hermitage Museum, National Gallery of Victoria and Art Exhibitions Australia, is exclusive to Melbourne as part of the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.

The Premier of Victoria, the Hon. Daniel Andrews MP said: “Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great will showcase treasures from one of the largest, oldest and most visited museums in the world. Another major event for Melbourne, this exhibition will provide visitors with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see first-hand the extraordinary personal collection of Catherine the Great, drawn from the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.”

NGV Director, Tony Ellwood said, “This exhibition celebrates the tenacity and vision of a true innovator in the arts. Catherine the Great’s inexhaustible passion for the arts, education and culture heralded a renaissance, leading to the formation of one of the world’s great museums, the Hermitage.”

“We are delighted that we have the good fortune of bringing one of the world’s most important collections to Australian audiences. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to be immersed in the world of Catherine the Great and her magnificent collection of art,” Tony Ellwood said.

Catherine the Great’s reign from 1762 to 1796 was known as the golden age and is remembered for her exceptional patronage of the arts, literature and education. Of German heritage, Catherine the Great was well connected in European art and literature circles. She saw herself as a reine-philosophe (Philosopher Queen), a new kind of ruler in the Age of Enlightenment. Guided by Europe’s leading intellectuals, such as the French philosophers Voltaire and Diderot, she sought to modernise Russia’s economy, industry and government, drawing inspiration both from classical antiquity and contemporary cultural and political developments in Western Europe.

A prolific acquirer of art of the period, Catherine the Great’s collection reflects the finest contemporary art of the 18th century as well as the world’s best old masters of the time, with great works by French, German, Chinese, British, Dutch and Flemish artists. Notable in this exhibition are entire groups of works acquired from renowned collections from France, Germany and England representing the best collections offered for sale at the time. The exhibition will feature four Rembrandts, including the notable Young woman with earrings, known as one of most intimate images Rembrandt ever created. The exhibition will also include 80 particularly fine drawings by artists including Poussin, Rubens, Clouet and Greuze.

Exquisite decorative arts will be brought to Australia for this exhibition, including 60 items from the Cameo Service of striking enamel-painted porcelain made by the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory in Paris. Commissioned by Catherine the Great for her former lover and military commander, Prince Grigory Potemkin, the dinner service features carved and painted imitation cameos, miniature works of art, based on motifs from the French Royal collection.

Director of the Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky said, “These outstanding works from the personal collection of Catherine the Great represent the crown jewels of the Museum. It was through the collection of these works and Catherine the Great’s exceptional vision that the Hermitage was founded. Today it is one of the most visited museums in the world. We are very pleased to be able to share these precious works with Australian audiences at the 250-year anniversary of this important institution.”

Catherine the Great’s love of education, art and culture inspired a period of enlightenment and architectural renaissance that saw the construction of the Hermitage complex. This construction includes six historic buildings along the Palace Embankment as well as the spectacular Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. On view in the exhibition will be remarkable drawings by the Hermitage’s first architects Georg Velten and Giacomo Quarenghi, complemented by excellent painted views of the new Hermitage by Benjamin Patersen. These, along with Alexander Roslin’s majestic life-size portrait of Catherine, set the scene for a truly spectacular exhibition.

Visitors to the exhibition will be able to immerse themselves in Catherine the Great’s world evoking a sensory experience of a visit to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The exhibition design will have rich treatments of architectural details, interior furnishings, wallpapers and a colour palette directly inspired by the Hermitage’s gallery spaces. Enveloping multimedia elements will give visitors a sense of being inside the Hermitage, evoking the lush and opulent interiors.

The Hermitage Museum was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. With 3 million items in its holdings, the Hermitage is often regarded as having the finest collection of paintings in the world today. In 2014, The Hermitage celebrated its 250-year anniversary and opened a new wing of the museum with 800 rooms dedicated to art from the 19th to 21st centuries. The exhibition is organised by The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg in association with the National Gallery of Victoria and Art Exhibitions Australia.

Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great will be at NGV International from 31 July – 8 November 2015 and will be presented alongside the David Bowie is exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image as part of the 2015 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Jean-Baptiste Santerre (French, 1651-1717) 'Two actresses' 1699

 

Jean-Baptiste Santerre (French, 1651-1717)
Two actresses
1699
Oil on canvas
146 х 114cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-1284)
Acquired 1768

 

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641) 'Portrait of Philadelphia and Elizabeth Wharton' 1640

 

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641)
Portrait of Philadelphia and Elizabeth Wharton
1640
Oil on canvas
162 х 130cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-533)
Acquired from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, 1779

 

Jean Louis Voille (French, 1744-1804) 'Portrait of Olga Zherebtsova' 1790s

 

Jean Louis Voille (French, 1744-1804)
Portrait of Olga Zherebtsova
1790s
Oil on canvas
73.5 х 58cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-5654)
Acquired from the collection of E. P. Oliv, Petrograd, 1923

 

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop (Flemish, 1577-1640) 'The Apostle Paul' c. 1615

 

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop (Flemish, 1577-1640)
The Apostle Paul
c. 1615
Oil on wood panel
105.6 х 74cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-489)
Acquired before 1774

 

Leonardo Da Vinci (school of) 'Female nude (Donna Nuda)' early 16th century

 

Leonardo Da Vinci (school of)
Female nude (Donna Nuda)
Early 16th century
Oil on canvas
86.5 х 66.5cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-110)
Acquired from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, 1779

 

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-69) 'Portrait of a scholar' 1631

 

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669)
Portrait of a scholar
1631
Oil on canvas
104.5 х 92cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-744)
Acquired from the collection of Count Heinrich von Brühl, Dresden, 1769

 

Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (French, 1715–83) 'Portrait of a boy with a book' 1740s

 

Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (French, 1715-1783)
Portrait of a boy with a book
1740s
Oil on canvas
63.0 х 52cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-1270)
Acquired from the collection of A. G. Teplov, St Petersburg, 1781

 

Domenico Capriolo (Italian, c. 1494-1528) 'Portrait of a young man' 1512

 

Domenico Capriolo (Italian, c. 1494-1528)
Portrait of a young man
1512
Oil on canvas
117 х 85cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-21)
Acquired from the collection of Baron Louis-Antoine Crozat de Thiers, Paris, 1772

 

Alexander Roslin (Swedish, 1718-93) 'Portrait of Catherine II' 1776-1777

 

Alexander Roslin (Swedish, 1718-1793)
Portrait of Catherine II
1776-1777
Oil on canvas
271 х 189.5cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-1316)
Acquired from the artist, 1777

 

Titian (Italian, 1485-90 - 1576) 'Portrait of a young woman' c. 1536

 

Titian (Italian, 1485-1490 – 1576)
Portrait of a young woman
c. 1536
Oil on canvas
96 х 75cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-71)
Acquired from the collection of Baron Louis-Antoine Crozat de Thiers, Paris, 1772

 

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-69) 'Young woman trying on earrings' 1657

 

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669)
Young woman trying on earrings
1657
Oil on wood panel
39.5 х 32.5cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-784)
Acquired from the collection of the Comte de Baudouin, Paris, 1781

 

Francois Clouet (French, c. 1516-1572) 'Portrait of Charles IX' 1566

 

Francois Clouet (French, c. 1516-1572)
Portrait of Charles IX
1566
Black and red chalk
33.1 x 22.5cm (sheet)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. OР-2893)
Acquired from the collection of Count Cobenzl, Brussels, 1768

 

David Teniers II (Flemish, 1610-1690) 'Kitchen' 1646

 

David Teniers II (Flemish, 1610-1690)
Kitchen
1646
Oil on canvas
171 х 237cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-586)
Acquired from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, 1779

 

Cornelis de Vos (Dutch/Flemish, c. 1584-1651) 'Self-portrait of the artist with his wife Suzanne Cock and their children' c. 1634

 

Cornelis de Vos (Dutch/Flemish, c. 1584-1651)
Self-portrait of the artist with his wife Suzanne Cock and their children
c. 1634
Oil on canvas
185.5 х 221cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-623)
Donated by Prince G. A. Potemkin, 1780s

 

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641) 'Family portrait' c. 1619

 

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641)
Family portrait
c. 1619
Oil on canvas
113.5 х 93.5cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-534)
Acquired from a private collection, Brussels, 1774

 

Charles Vanloo (French, 1705-1765) 'Sultan's wife drinking coffee' 1750s

 

Charles Vanloo (French, 1705-1765)
Sultan’s wife drinking coffee
1750s
Oil on canvas
120 х 127cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-7489)
Acquired from the collection of Madame Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin, Paris, 1772

 

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop (Flemish, 1577-1640) 'The Adoration of the Magi' c. 1620

 

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop (Flemish, 1577-1640)
The Adoration of the Magi
c. 1620
Oil on canvas
235 х 277.5cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. № ГЭ-494)
Acquired from the collection of Dufresne, Amsterdam, 1770

 

Diego Velazquez (Spanish, 1599-1660) 'Luncheon' c. 1617-1618

 

Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660)
Luncheon
c. 1617-1618
Oil on canvas
108.5 х 102cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-389)
Acquired 1763-1774

 

Melchior d'Hondecoeter (Dutch, 1636-1695) 'Birds in a park' 1686

 

Melchior d’Hondecoeter (Dutch, 1636-1695)
Birds in a park
1686
Oil on canvas
136 х 164cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-1042)
Acquired from the collection of Jacques Aved, Paris, 1766

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) 'Concert of birds' 1630-1640

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish, 1579-1657)
Concert of birds
1630-1640
Oil on canvas
136.5 х 240cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Inv. no. ГЭ-607)
Acquired from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, 1779

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘John Wolseley – Heartlands and Headwaters’ at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 11th April – 16th August, 2015

Curator: Cathy Leahy, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Victoria

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Regeneration after fire – the seeders and the sprouters, Mallee' (detail) 2009-2011 from the exhibition 'John Wolseley – Heartlands and Headwaters' at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, April - August, 2015

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Regeneration after fire – the seeders and the sprouters, Mallee (detail)
2009-2011
Watercolour, charcoal, pencil and pigment
152.2 x 256.7cm irreg.
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

I went for a long walk through recently burnt mallee scrub in the Big Desert Wilderness Park. Some of the mallee roots had vivid amber, scarlet and mauve new growth exploding from the surviving stumps. Nearby were scatterings of tiny, bright banksia seedlings that had germinated after the fire, causing seed pods to burst open and expel their seeds. Botanists call such trees ‘seeders’, while their companions, the mallee eucalypts, are known as ‘sprouters’. Sprouters have a large root, known as a lignotuber, which stores water and nutrients – this is part of a brilliant strategy for survival in arid landscapes.

 

 

This is a wondrous exhibition by John Wolseley at NGV Australia. The whole feeling of the exhibition, its scale and intimacy, the attention to detail and the sheer beauty of the work is quite outstanding. I was fascinated with the text descriptions the artist gives with each piece of work, included here in the posting.

While Wolseley plays with time (deep time, shallow time and now time) and space here it is more than that, for deep time (or “the zone” in the alternative parlance of athletes) is also used in artistic activity to refer to the experience of being lost in the act of creation or the consumption of a work. To the viewer, so it would seem here for we become lost in the art of creation. There is a sense of timelessness, the experience of unusual freedom within time, an unawareness of time, within Wolseley’s work, yet still grounded in the past and present, flowing into the future of this planet. This sense of place, context, space and time(lessness) are lucidly resolved in the artist’s work.

As the Introduction to the exhibition states, Wolseley conceives the exhibition as gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, presenting new possibilities for understanding landscape in the twenty-first century. This generally works well in revealing the unique, dynamic processes of natural ecosystems when the work is on the wall. However, the floor of the gallery (natural timber boards) lessened the experience of the “total work of art” for me. If you are designing an exhibition that would seem to me to be immersive (to some extent) then the work needed more grounding than it contains here.

This is a minor observation in an otherwise superlative exhibition. The colours, the sensitivity of the painting, the flow of the images, water, music, prose… are a narrative almost like a fable if the issues were not so real. The heightened imagery and emotional effects of the work make us truly aware that now is the time for action. The future development of the new coal power stations must be stopped. Renewable energy is the energy of the future as much as it is light emanating from the past.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

 

Artist Interview | John Wolseley 

 

Introduction

Over the past four years, John Wolseley has travelled and painted throughout the Australian continent. He has journeyed from the swamps of the Tasmanian high country to the coastal flood plains of the tropical north, exploring the nature and action of water and how it has shaped the land.

Wolseley has worked on site beside strange and diverse wetlands – sphagnum bogs, ephemeral waterholes, bilabongs and mangrove swamps – and combined his own distinctive mark-making processes with more traditional watercolour techniques. He has ‘collaborated’ with plants, birds and insects and used a range of drawing systems that includes frottaging (rubbing against) burnt trees, burying papers in sand and swamps and nature printing from leaves, wood and rocks.

The artist’s layered and collaged papers have been assembled as an installation in the shape of a giant branching tree, surrounded by large-scale works which enclose the viewer in an immersive environment. Wolseley has rejected European landscape conventions that often reduce a complex, living system to a static and generalised representation. Instead, he endeavours to reveal the unique, dynamic processes of natural ecosystems. Conceived as gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), Heartlands and headwaters presents new possibilities for understanding landscape in the twenty-first century.

Introduction text to the exhibition

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'History of the Whipstick Forest with ephemeral swamps and gold bearing reefs' 2011 from the exhibition 'John Wolseley – Heartlands and Headwaters' at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, April - August, 2015

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
History of the Whipstick Forest with ephemeral swamps and gold bearing reefs (detail)
2011
Watercolour, charcoal and pencil on 2 sheets (a-b)
233.5 x 286.6cm (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

One summer’s day I walked from my studio into the forest and followed a dry creek to some swamps and pools bursting with life. This arid landscape, so torn up and churned over, was still miraculously reinventing itself. Such resilience!

In this drawing I bring together the histories of three kinds of time: the ‘deep time’ of geology, ‘shallow time’ since European arrival, and ‘now time’ in October 2011. The history of the hidden workings of the earth I stole from a geologist’s map. Resting on this ancient framework in the painting’s centre is the green swamp. Above this is another map, which tells the story of William Johnson, a visitor to this forest 160 years ago, whose discovery of gold was the birth of the Bendigo goldfields.

When I was working on this painting, this bush was burnt in line with the government’s draconian legislation to burn all public bushland in Victoria every ten years. This often gives no time for vegetation to mature and seed, and biodiversity in certain fire-sensitive ecologies is being ravaged. My reverence for nature’s resilience was moved to a sense of deep chagrin that yet again we are destroying the matrix which is our home.

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'From Siberia to Roebuck Bay – the godwits reach the mangrove swamps, WA' 2012 (detail)

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
From Siberia to Roebuck Bay – the godwits reach the mangrove swamps, WA (detail)
2012
Watercolour over pencil, charcoal and coloured chalk
151.9 x 199cm irreg.
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

Each year in June the bar-tailed godwits fly 12,000 kilometres from their breeding grounds in Siberia to the north coast of Australia. I was standing by the sea on the north Kimberley coast when out of a clear sky the godwits arrived in vast, pulsing flocks that swooped down to rest on the mudflats. The land, with its mudflats and sandbanks, had been formed by the great king tides, dragged for eons by the cycles of the moon. And now I could see these great tides of godwit, pulled by another powerful force, flow down and merge with the waters.

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Natural history of swamps III, heron in swamp - Loy Yang Power Station' 2009-2010 (detail)

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Natural history of swamps III, heron in swamp – Loy Yang Power Station (detail)
2009-2010
Watercolour, pencil, ink, black chalk, scratching out and leaf
114 x 176cm
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

I was looking at a dam in the grounds of the Loy Yang Power Station, when in flew a black-backed heron. It looked for fish in the water and then peered at a billboard declaring ‘Hazelwood Power Station – WETLAND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT’. I walked down to the vast open-cut coalmine, and looked for fish fossils and Cryptogamic flora among the seams of coal. Then I returned to the heron, which now seemed to be looking at the steam and CO2 belching out of the cooling towers – those clouds of CO2 that came from the coal which was once a carboniferous swamp.

 

 

For four years, artist John Wolseley has roamed the coastal floodplains of the Northern Territory through to the glacial lakes of Tasmania, exploring and recording in exquisite detail the diverse wetlands of Australia. The works he has created will be revealed at NGV Australia.

This series of eighteen evocative works on paper, many of them monumental in scale (up to 10 metres in size), detail the geographical features and unique plants and animals of these wetlands in works characterised by minutely-observed drawing and rich watercolour washes.

Many works combine collage and unusual markings made through burying works or hoisting large sheets of paper across the charred remains of burnt tree trunks and branches. Through this ‘collaboration’ with the natural environment, Wolseley subverts traditional approaches to the depiction of landscape and seeking to give the natural world a more active presence in the work of art.

‘Heartlands and Headwaters celebrates Australia’s unique and diverse natural environment,’ said Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV. ‘Wolseley’s work is not only of great beauty, but also demonstrates how depicting the landscape has become an important form of activism’.

The mangrove swamps of Roebuck Bay in Western Australia, the flood plains of the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory, the Finke River in the Simpson Desert and the sphagnum swamps of Skullbone Plains in central Tasmania are just some of the sites detailed in these impressive works.

Commissioned by Sir Roderick Carnegie AC, these works celebrate the beauty of the Australian wilderness and encourage an understanding of the significance and environmental fragility of these remote and little-known sites.

About John Wolseley

Born in England in 1938, John Wolseley immigrated to Australia in 1976 and has gained recognition in the past four decades as one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists whose work engages passionately with the environment.

Over the years Wolseley has travelled extensively throughout the country, into the arid interior and remote wilderness areas in all states, camping out for extended periods and immersing himself in the landscape.

This approach is reflected in the distinctly non-traditional character of the landscape works Wolseley produces. Instead of presenting a single overarching view of a particular site they are composite images that combine precisely observed details of flora and fauna. Informed by readings in geology, biology, cartography and other disciplines, these provide multiple perspectives on the location’s topography, journal notations and observations of natural cycles or patterns of the area.

Press release from the NGV website

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Murray-Sunset refugia with 14 ventifacts' 2008-2010

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Murray-Sunset refugia with 14 ventifacts
2008-2010
From The Great Tree of Drawings 1959-2015, installed 2015
Pencil, watercolour and charcoal on 15 sheets (a-o)
Dimensions variable (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Murray-Sunset refugia with 14 ventifacts' 2008-2010 (detail)

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Murray-Sunset refugia with 14 ventifacts' 2008-2010 (detail)

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Murray-Sunset refugia with 14 ventifacts (details)
2008-2010
From The Great Tree of Drawings 1959-2015, installed 2015
Pencil, watercolour and charcoal on 15 sheets (a-o)
Dimensions variable (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

This work was made in the Murray-Sunset National Park, where I found an island of unburnt scrub remaining after a bushfire. This refugium, or sanctuary, provided shelter for plants and small creatures from which they could later gradually recolonise the surrounding sand dunes. The small, flying sheets are papers I released to blow on the desert winds for weeks and sometimes months. Each sheet records carbon traces made by the burnt fingers of trees and shrubs. Having been made soft from dews and showers, and dried and tossed by the desert winds, they have become fixed in a variety of sculptural forms.

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Natural history of a sphagnum bog, Lake Ina, Tasmania' 2013

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Natural history of a sphagnum bog, Lake Ina, Tasmania
2013
Watercolour, pencil, pen and ink, and sphagnum on 8 sheets (a-h)
155.6 x 407.6cm (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Natural history of a sphagnum bog, Lake Ina, Tasmania' 2013 (detail)

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Natural history of a sphagnum bog, Lake Ina, Tasmania' 2013 (detail)

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Natural history of a sphagnum bog, Lake Ina, Tasmania' 2013 (detail)

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Natural history of a sphagnum bog, Lake Ina, Tasmania (details)
2013
Watercolour, pencil, pen and ink, and sphagnum on 8 sheets (a-h)
155.6 x 407.6cm (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

As a creek moves down to the shores of Lake Ina in the central highlands of Tasmania, it swells out into an ancient sphagnum moss swamp. I leant over and peered into a gap between the mats of sphagnum, and a small fish emerged in the crystal water. This brief phantom – a Clarence galaxias – was only miraculously there because its ancestors had been isolated by a glacial moraine (ridge) upstream, which six million years later had saved it from the European trout, which had supplanted most of the other galaxias in the rest of Tasmania. And then, marvellously, it had been saved again by the Tasmanian Land Conservancy, which had purchased these plains to protect them from further loss and degradation.

As the grey shadows moved down the hill and melted into the lake, I soaked and painted the spongy sphagnum mats with tinctures of watercolour – viridian and crimson and Indian yellow – and laid them on several sheets of paper. I did the same with water milfoils, spike reed, tassel sedges and bladderwort, and weighted them down overnight with slabs of bark. Their images were imprinted on the paper, emerging slowly like a photograph being developed.

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'From the edge of the great flood plains of Garrangari and Garrangalli, NT' 2012-2014

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
From the edge of the great flood plains of Garrangari and Garrangalli, NT
2012-2014
Pencil, charcoal, black and brown chalk, watercolour, coloured pencil, coloured pastel, frottage and collages of linocut, wood relief printed in black and brown ink, watercolour, charcoal and coloured pencil over pencil and pen and ink on Japanese and wove paper
155.5 x 961.7cm irreg.
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

In June 2011 I was standing on the edge of the monsoon rainforest bordering a vast flood plain in East Arnhem Land with Djambawa Marawili, the great Yolngu leader and artist. Djambawa recounted how in the dawn of creation ancestral figures had moved up from the coast, digging for edible roots as they went, creating springs of fresh water that still bubble out along the plains. He described how when the first sun came up these ancestor women turned into brolga cranes. As he sang the song several brolgas emerged from the mists and flew slowly towards the coast.

This was the originary moment of this painting. For the next three years, guided by the Dhudi-Djapu clan leader and artist Mulkun Wirrpanda, I collected and drew specimens of plants and trees of the flood plain, and their edible roots and tubers. In the painting I have drawn many of them, along with the various trees festooned with vines.

For me the great miracle of that morning rested in that moment of time – being there, seeing the living land and sensing the ‘deep time’ so intimately linked with the life and art of the people who have lived in it for so long.

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'A Daly River creek, NT' 2012

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
A Daly River creek, NT
2012
Watercolour, pastel, pencil, charcoal, ink, yellow pencil and collage of woodcut and linocut on Japanese paper (a-c)
152 x 602cm (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'A Daly River creek, NT' 2012 (detail)

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
A Daly River creek, NT (detail)
2012
Watercolour, pastel, pencil, charcoal, ink, yellow pencil and collage of woodcut and linocut on Japanese paper (a-c)
152 x 602cm (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

Here is a flowing tropical creek near Nauiyu, about two hours’ drive south of Darwin. It shows the fecund, flowing mass of life and aquatic plants and fish, and how they are all an integral part of one particular ecosystem. The plants were all drawn on the spot or collected and drawn later in Darwin. It was May 2012 and I went on several trips with the ethnobiologist Glenn Wightman, the Ngan’gi elder Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart AM and other artists from the arts centre at Nauiyu. They showed me the plants in their living habitat so that I could draw them in action, rather than as dried museum specimens – the Nymphaea waterlily, with its long, convulsive stems, several species of bladderwort, water chestnuts and duckweed.

In this tropical aquatic painting I have tried to show how landscape for me is made up of energy fields that I draw as passages of particular plant forms, in which the individual plants move or dance with different rhythms. My intention is to show how these rafts of different species weave in and out of one another, and across the surface of my painting, rather as a passage of a symphony changes key and mood.

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Cycles of fire and water - Lake Tyrrell, Victoria' 2011-2012

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Cycles of fire and water – Lake Tyrrell, Victoria
2011-2012
Watercolour, charcoal, pencil, sponging and scratching out on 2 sheets (a-b)
154 x 610cm (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'Cycles of fire and water – Lake Tyrrell, Victoria' 2011-212 (detail)

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
Cycles of fire and water – Lake Tyrrell, Victoria (detail)
2011-2012
Watercolour, charcoal, pencil, sponging and scratching out on 2 sheets (a-b)
154 x 610cm (overall)
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

I was sitting on a low sandbank and drawing the pools of water that lay on this ancient salt lake. A rust-coloured cloud erupted into the air and darkened the sky over the water. The wind grew stronger, as if emanating from the core of the fire, and it carried embers and burning branches like dismembered limbs. I felt a kind of disquiet, almost dread. I knew such fires had always been part of the natural cycles of the bush, but this was one of several I had experienced that season where it felt as if fire itself was behaving in a different, more erratic way; as if the subtle equilibrium of the climate was changing.

From out of the billowing clouds of smoke some spoonbills, ibis and cormorants emerged, and flew far out over the lake. Several of them alighted on a patch of sunlit water and remained there, as if illustrating some cycle of eternal return – from action to stillness, from noise to quiet. But as I watched, the great black cloud drifted over their resting place, moving them on as if they were being chased away from the world they had known.

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938) 'After fire - spiny-cheeked honeyeaters at Lake Monibeong' 2009-2011 (detail)

 

John Wolseley (Australian, b. 1938)
After fire – spiny-cheeked honeyeaters at Lake Monibeong (detail)
2009-2011
Watercolour, charcoal, pencil, gouache and brown chalk
151.7 x 128.9cm
Collection of Sir Roderick Carnegie AC and Family
© John Wolseley

 

Walking through the recently burnt Cobboboonee Forest in Victoria one morning, I reached a lake where fresh water rested in sand dunes bordering the sea. I stood beside a burnt banksia tree with powdery black, corrugated bark. It had been a stormy night, but now the sea and lake were calm. Several spiny-cheeked honeyeaters swooped down, perched in the tree and sung out jubilantly. It was as if they were filled with elation at all these elements coming to rest in equilibrium – the lake resting within the sand dune, the quietening of the wind and the passing of the fire.

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great’ at NGV International, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 31st July – 8th November, 2015

Curators: Dr Mikhail Dedinkin, Deputy Head of the Western European Art Department at the Hermitage, working Dr Ted Gott, Senior Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' featuring Alexander Roslin (Swedish 1718-1793) 'Portrait of Catherine II' 1776-1777

 

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne featuring Alexander Roslin (Swedish 1718-93) Portrait of Catherine II 1776-77
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

A scintillating exhibition at NGV International which showcases one of the world’s greatest art collections. Exhibition design is outstanding (particularly the floor tiling), as are the Da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt, van Dyck, Rubens and Flemish still life. Among my favourites is a small Watteau Savoyard with a Marmot (1716) which is absolutely still, delicate and exquisite: I thought of the photographs of Atget, his street sellers, when I saw this painting; and Frans Snyders’ tour-de-force Concert of birds (1630-40) which has such presence.

Well done to the curators, the Hermitage Museum and the NGV for staging such a magnificent exhibition.

Marcus


Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria.

 

 

Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great showcases one of the world’s greatest art collections. Featuring works by artists including Rembrandt, Rubens, Velázquez and Van Dyck, the exhibition offers a dazzling array of works including the finest group of Dutch and Flemish art to come to Australia.

This exclusive Melbourne exhibition will also highlight the innovation and vision of Catherine the Great, whose inexhaustible passion for education, the arts and culture heralded a period of enlightenment in the region. The extraordinary works sourced and commissioned by Catherine during her thirty-four year reign, created the foundations for the Hermitage today – considered to be one of the world’s greatest treasure houses of art and decorative arts. The exhibition will offer audiences an immersive experience, recreating the rich atmosphere of the Hermitage to showcase these exquisite works.

German-born Catherine the Great (Catherine II) came to power in 1762, aged thirty-three, and ruled Russia for the next thirty-four years, until her death in 1796. She saw herself as a Philosopher Queen, a new kind of ruler in the Age of Enlightenment. Guided by Europe’s leading intellectuals, she modernised Russia’s economy, industry and government, drawing inspiration both from Antiquity and contemporary cultural and political developments in Western Europe. A fluent speaker of Russian, French and German, Catherine was largely self-educated, independent, idealistic and visionary.

While her reign was not always peaceful, Catherine sought to bring order, stability and prosperity to the vast Russian Empire. Her ideals of abolishing serfdom and ensuring the equality of all citizens under the law were ahead of her time, and strongly resisted by the nobility of the day; however, she achieved numerous other reforms, including the introduction of paper money and modernisation of Russia’s education system. French philosopher Denis Diderot, who visited St Petersburg in 1773, described an audience with Catherine as being ‘more like study than anything else: she is a stranger to no subject; there is no man in the Empire who knows her nation as well as she’.

Room 1 Catherine the collector

Between 1762 and 1796, the years of her reign, Catherine the Great oversaw a period of cultural renaissance in Russia. The world of ideas in which she was deeply involved from an early age found tangible expression in the material world the Empress later created around herself. The great complexes of imperial buildings Catherine constructed reflected her informed interest in both Classical and Chinese culture.

Catherine not only assembled a collection of Old Master paintings equal in scale and quality to leading European collections, but also paid considerable attention to the acquisition of contemporary art. While the richness and technical perfection of her diverse collections of decorative arts aimed to dazzle and please, they also had the more practical purpose of raising standards of artistic production in Russia. The fact that more than 400 exemplary works of art from her personal collection, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, porcelain, silver and precious gems, are seen here for the first time in Australia is cause for celebration.

 

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' featuring Alexander Roslin (Swedish 1718-1793) 'Portrait of Catherine II' 1776-1777

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' featuring Alexander Roslin (Swedish 1718-1793) 'Portrait of Catherine II' 1776-1777

 

Installation views of room 1 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne featuring Alexander Roslin (Swedish 1718-1793) Portrait of Catherine II 1776-1777
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne featuring the Sèvres Cameo Service. Cameo Service 1778-1779. Sevres Porcelain Factory (manufacturer) France, est. 1756. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

 

Installation views of room 1 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne featuring in the last three photographs, the Sèvres Cameo Service. Cameo Service 1778-1779. Sevres Porcelain Factory (manufacturer) France, est. 1756. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Sèvres Cameo Service

The Sèvres Cameo Service (1778-1779) relates to Catherine’s great passion for collecting engraved gemstones. Comprising 797 individual pieces designed to serve dinner, dessert and coffee to sixty people, the Cameo Service was commissioned from the celebrated Sèvres porcelain manufactory outside Paris as a present for Catherine’s court ‘favourite’, Prince Grigory Potemkin. The Empress’s monogram, ‘E II’ (the Russian version of her name being Ekaterina), woven from garlands of flowers and surmounted by a crown, adorned almost every object in the service.

Production of the service was both time consuming and labour-intensive. The exquisite blue element alone – made from separate layers of copper enamel that gradually seeped into the porcelain and set the pure colour – required five firings. In addition to the hundreds of porcelain objects decorated with painted and sculpted cameos and related silverware, the service also included grand central table decorations fashioned from biscuit, or unglazed cream-coloured porcelain, by the sculptor Louis-Simon Boizot. These decorations illustrated tales from Greek mythology, and were presided over by a grand biscuit statue of Catherine the Great as Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and the arts.

 

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 1 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

 

Installation views of room 1 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Exhibition passageway

 

Installation view of passageway video of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

 

Installation view of passageway video of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Room 2 Italian art

When Catherine the Great began collecting European art, opportunities to acquire fine Italian Old Master paintings were already severely limited. Demand from wealthy collectors was high and the marketplace was saturated with misattributed works, some of which inevitably made their way to the Hermitage and other great collections.

Despite this, Catherine achieved great success collecting sixteenth and seventeenth century paintings, particularly from Venice, including great paintings by Titian, Paris Bordone and the enigmatic Lorenzo Lotto. These are complemented by fine examples of Roman and Florentine paintings, such as the famous Female nude (Donna nuda), by an artist very close to Leonardo da Vinci. This select group of paintings beautifully illustrate developments in figurative art, portraiture and religious art in Italy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

In the early years of her reign, Catherine the Great acquired en masse several large collections of drawings representing all the main European schools. This set the foundations for the current Hermitage Museum’s outstanding Cabinet of Drawings. In terms of quality, Catherine’s acquisitions of Italian drawings were of the highest standard. The majority of these date from the mid sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries and include many rare and precious works.

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne showing at centre, Domenico Fetti (Italian 1589-1623) 'Portrait of an actor' 1620s

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne showing at centre, Domenico Fetti (Italian 1589-1623) Portrait of an actor 1620s
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Domenico Fetti (Italian, 1589-1623) 'Portrait of an actor' 1620s (installation view)

 

Domenico Fetti (Italian, 1589-1623)
Portrait of an actor (installation view)
1620s
Oil on canvas
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Domenico Fetti was court painter to Gerdinand II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, when he made this striking portrait of an actor. It is though to be Tristano Martinelli who made his fame working in the commedia dell’arte tradition. It is believe that Marinelli created and popularised the standard roll of the Harlequin in theatre. Fetti himself was involved with the theatre in both Mantua and Venice.

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne featuring at centre, Paris Bordone (Italian 1500-71) 'Portrait of a lady with a boy' Mid 1530s

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne featuring at centre, Paris Bordone (Italian 1500-1571) Portrait of a lady with a boy Mid 1530s
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Paris Bordone (Italian, 1500-1571) 'Portrait of a lady with a boy' Mid 1530s (installation view)

 

Paris Bordone (Italian, 1500-1571)
Portrait of a lady with a boy (installation view)
Mid 1530s
Oil on canvas
97cm (38.1 in) x 77cm (30.3 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

This work by Venetian artist Paris Bordone is a typical example of formal Renaissance portraiture. Bordone’s main aim was to show the high social standing of the sitters, so he painted their luxurious costumes in great detail. He draws our attention to the sumptuous sleeves of this woman’s dress, the headgear resembling a turban, as well as her opulent jewellery. Bordone was one of Titian’s most talented pupils whose work is characterised by a level of precision not often present in his master’s work. This painting entered the Hermitage as a work by Giorgione.

 

Paris Bordone (Italian, 1500-1571) 'Portrait of a lady with a boy' Mid 1530s from the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne, July - November, 2015

 

Paris Bordone (Italian 1500-1571)
Portrait of a lady with a boy
Mid 1530s
Oil on canvas
97cm (38.1 in) x 77cm (30.3 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Public domain

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne showing at left, Domenico Capriolo (Italian c. 1494-1528) 'Portrait of a young man' 1512 and to the right, Lorenzo Lotto (Italian c. 1480-1556) 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine' 1529-1530

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne showing at left in the bottom image, Domenico Capriolo (Italian c. 1494-1528) Portrait of a young man 1512 and to the right, Lorenzo Lotto (Italian c. 1480-1556) The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine 1529-1530
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Portrait of a young man by the Venetian master Domenico Capriolo captures the intellectual values of Renaissance art. Everything that surrounds this youth speaks of his interests, such as the church that indicates his piety; the statue of Venus that reveals his passion for Antiquity; and the folder (containing verses or drawings) that illustrates the richness of his inner world. The painting is dated 1512 and the artist’s name symbolised by a medallion containing a Capreolus, or deer, which is a play on his name. Such allusions were common in Renaissance art and would have been readily understood by his contemporaries.

 

Lorenzo Lotto (Italian c. 1480-1556) 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine' 1529-1530 (installation view)

Lorenzo Lotto (Italian c. 1480-1556) 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine' 1529-1530 (installation view)

 

Lorenzo Lotto (Italian c. 1480-1556)
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine (installation views)
1529-1530
Oil on canvas
82cm (32.2 in) x 133cm (52.3 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Lorenzo Lotto is a much admired sixteenth-century Venetian artist. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine has the typical dynamism of Lotto’s work, achieved not only through the poses, gestures and movement of the foliage, but also through his intense colour palette and the juxtaposition of resonant blues with red and yellow tones. Here, the Holy Family has been joined by Saint Justine of Padua, martyred in 304 AD, identifiable through her attribute of a sword piercing her breast. Justine was a very popular subject for artists of Northern Italy.

 

Lorenzo Lotto (Italian c. 1480-1556) 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine' 1529-1530

 

Lorenzo Lotto (Italian c. 1480-1556)
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint Justine
1529-1530
Oil on canvas
82cm (32.2 in) x 133cm (52.3 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Public domain

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne showing Leonardo da Vinci (school of) 'Female nude (Donna Nuda)' Early 16th century

 

Installation view of room 2 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne showing Leonardo da Vinci (school of) Female nude (Donna Nuda) Early 16th century
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Leonardo da Vinci (school of) 'Female nude (Donna Nuda)' Early 16th century (installation view)

 

Leonardo da Vinci (school of)
Female nude (Donna Nuda) (installation view)
Early 16th century
Oil on canvas
86.5cm (34 in) x 66.5cm (26.1 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

This painting entered the Hermitage collection as a work by Leonardo da Vinci, but is now widely accepted to be by one of his close followers, possibly his pupil Salai. Perhaps more important is that it may be a close copy of a lost painting by Leonardo. Female nude (Donna Nuda) also shares some of the qualities of the famous Mona Lisa c. 1503-1519, in the Louvre Museum, Paris; namely the repetition of the pose, the position of the hands and the landscape setting seen behind a stone ledge in front of which the figure is set. This is the most refined of numerous variants of this composition in existence.

 

Leonardo da Vinci (school of) 'Female nude (Donna Nuda)' Early 16th century

 

Leonardo da Vinci (school of)
Female nude (Donna Nuda)
Early 16th century
Oil on canvas
86.5cm (34 in) x 66.5cm (26.1 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Public domain

 

Room 3 Flemish art

In the seventeenth century, Flanders comprised the Catholic-dominated Southern Netherlands or ‘Spanish’ Austrian Netherlands, an area larger than modern Belgium. Thanks in large part to the talents of artist Peter Paul Rubens, the Flanders or ‘Flemish’ school in this era became very prestigious. While chiefly a painter, Rubens had far-reaching stylistic influence on many visual art forms, from prints to silverware and architecture. Every leading artist of seventeenth-century Flanders studied in, passed through or was connected with Rubens’s studio.

A diplomat and court insider, Rubens operated on an international stage. His art was correspondingly monumental; characterised by large forms modelled with loose brushstrokes in glowing, brilliant colours. Rubens’s pupil Anthony van Dyck and collaborator Cornelis de Vos led the way in bringing new naturalism to portraiture. While they catered to different markets (van Dyck to the nobility and de Vos to a rich merchant class) their mutual influence is apparent.

Flanders was a nation built on trade, and Flemish artists travelled widely, especially to Italy. From Italy they brought back new pictorial trends, such as the theatrical naturalism of Caravaggio. Flemish artists excelled in naturalistic effects, which they applied even to traditionally humble subjects, such as still lifes and animal pictures, seen to brilliant effect in the art of Frans Snyders and David Teniers II.

 

Installation view of room 3 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 3 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 3 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 3 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 3 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne showing at centre, Peter Paul Rubens and workshop (Flemish 1577-1640) 'The Adoration of the Magi' c. 1620

 

Installation views of room 3 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne showing in the centre in the bottom photograph, Peter Paul Rubens and workshop (Flemish 1577-1640) The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1620 at centre
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Rubens painted the subject of the Adoration of the Magi (Matthew 2:1) more often than any other episode from Christ’s life. Rendered at life-sized scale, this painting combines the humility of Christ’s birth with splendid, worldly pageantry. Three Kings from the East are shown crowding into Christ’s stable (portrayed as a cave, in an allusion to Christ’s later interment) wearing gold- embroidered silks and satins, and offering gifts. The eldest king, Caspar, kneels before Christ with gold; behind him is Melchior, with frankincense; and Balthazar with myrrh, used for embalming. With the help of his studio, Rubens produced more than sixty altarpieces during his career.

 

Installation view of room 3 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 3 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

 

Installation views of room 3 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish 1577–1640) 'Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero)' c. 1612 (installation view)

 

Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish 1577-1640)
Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero) (installation view)
c. 1612
Oil on canvas
141cm (55.5 in) x 180cm (70.8 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Acquired from the collection of Count Cobenzl, Brussels, 1768
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero) depicts a story told by the Roman historian Valerius Maximus in his Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX (Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings), written around 30 AD. The story involves Cimon, an old man awaiting execution in prison who was not given food. Cimon’s daughter Pero visited him, and suckled him at her breast like a child. Pero’s nourishing of Cimon was considered an outstanding example of paying honour to one’s parents.

 

Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish 1577-1640) 'Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero)' c. 1612 from the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne, July - November, 2015

 

Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish 1577-1640)
Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero)
c. 1612
Oil on canvas
141cm (55.5 in) x 180cm (70.8 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Acquired from the collection of Count Cobenzl, Brussels, 1768
Public domain

 

Room 4 Dutch art

The Hermitage holds the finest collection of Dutch art outside the Netherlands. While Peter the Great (1672-1725) had a passion for Dutch art and acquired some notable masterpieces, Catherine the Great established the depth and breadth of this extraordinary collection, beginning in 1764 with her first acquisitions. In that year Catherine purchased 317 paintings that had been assembled for Frederick II of Prussia by the German merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Among this substantial group were more than 100 Dutch paintings by the most notable masters.

In 1769 Catherine purchased the collection of Count Heinrich von Brühl, which included spectacular landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael, Isaack Jansz. van Ostade and Aert van der Neer, as well as four Rembrandt portraits, including the wonderful Portrait of a scholar, 1631. For the rest of her life Catherine continued to add outstanding Dutch works to her rich collection.Although the paintings and drawings from the Dutch school included here are only a fragment of the extensive and diverse collection assembled by Catherine the Great, they reveal her artistic preferences and taste.

 

Installation view of room 4 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 4 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

 

Installation views of room 4 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne with Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch 1606-1669) Portrait of a scholar 1631 at centre
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Rembrandt painted Portrait of a scholar shortly after moving from his native Leiden to Amsterdam in 1630. He had already established a growing reputation in Leiden and was enticed to the capital by the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh, father of his future wife Saskia. Once completing the move, Rembrandt rapidly became the city’s leading artist, mainly on account of dazzling portraits such as this early masterpiece. He then secured the most prestigious commissions from wealthy and powerful citizens of Amsterdam.

 

Room 5 French taste

The Russian aristocracy spoke French and modelled their manners and style on those of the French Court. Catherine followed the vast intellectual strides of the French philosophes with passionate interest. She also embraced the arts, luring French artists, architects and craftsmen to St Petersburg.

Catherine relied on agents and advisors in France and Germany to identify and acquire works of art on her behalf. In this way she acquired the collection of Paris banker Louis Antoine Crozat, Baron de Thiers and other important bodies of work in France. Her holdings of French art came to encompass works by Renaissance masters as well as seventeenth-century landscapes and history paintings.

Catherine also acquired examples of work of her own century by Rococo artists such as Antoine Watteau. The playful, erotic and at times wistful art of Watteau’s generation gave rise to the intimate and worldly art of François Boucher, whose pictures Catherine also purchased. The Empress collected modern masterpieces created in reaction to French courtly and decadent styles. Her paintings by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin are premier examples of a new, moralising directness in ambitious French art.

Catherine’s buying in France was not limited to French art. Also in this room are paintings by great German, Spanish and Italian masters that were acquired in Paris from prestigious collections under the direction of Catherine’s French advisors.

 

Installation view of room 5 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 5 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

 

Installation views of room 5 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Room 6 Catherine and the world

For Catherine the Great, collecting art was part of a wider economic and diplomatic program designed to stimulate economic and cultural activity at home and abroad. At a meeting in December 1762 with the Moscow Senate, Catherine suggested that consuls be stationed in Spain, Holland and England not only to promote maritime trade but also to source luxury goods and works of art as examples for Russian artists and manufacturers to aspire to.

Through Catherine’s consuls and agents, such items began to flow into St Petersburg, steadily elevating that city into a vibrant centre of European culture. While her cultural sympathies were French, Catherine was also very curious about Britain – the economic success story of the age. She informed herself about Britain’s trade, commerce, manufacturing, philosophy and political system, and purchased works by modern British neoclassical masters, such as Joseph Wright of Derby and Joshua Reynolds. Examples of Spanish, Italian and German art were often not sourced in their own countries of origin but acquired as a part of larger collections.

 

Installation view of room 6 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 6 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 6 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 6 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 6 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 6 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne with the 1773 sculpture 'Catherine II' by Jean-Antoine Houdon (French 1741-1826) at left

 

Installation views of room 6 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne with the 1773 sculpture Catherine II by Jean-Antoine Houdon (French 1741-1826) at centre
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Room 7 The Walpole collection

In 1779 Catherine the Great acquired 198 paintings from a celebrated collection formed by Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, Britain’s first prime minister. They were bought from the family estate, Houghton Hall, and sold by Walpole’s grandson, George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford, who approached the Russian ambassador to Britain directly about the sale. At more than £40,000, the price was high, but the transaction was concluded in only two months. Attempts were made to keep this famous collection in Britain, to no avail.

The Walpole collection was outstanding in quality, and significantly enhanced the Hermitage’s range of Flemish and Italian works. The Russian ambassador to Great Britain, Alexey Musin-Pushkin, who organised the valuable purchase, wrote to Catherine the Great: ‘The greater part of the nobility here are displaying general dissatisfaction and regret that these paintings are being allowed out of this country, and are setting in train various projects to keep them here … No little assistance comes from Lord Orford’s zealous desire to unite [the collection for] the gallery of Your Imperial Majesty, rather than to sell it to parliament itself or, least of all, to divide it through sale to different individuals’.

 

Installation view of room 7 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 7 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne showing Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) Concert of birds, 1630-1640 at right and Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) Cook at a kitchen table with dead game, c. 1636-1637 at second left

 

Installation views of room 7 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne showing in the bottom image, Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) Concert of birds, 1630-1640 at right and Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) Cook at a kitchen table with dead game, c. 1636-1637 at second left
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) 'Concert of birds' 1630-1640 (installation view)

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657)
Concert of birds (installation view)
1630-1640
Oil on canvas
137cm (53.9 in) x 240cm (94.4 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Acquired from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, 1779
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

An important place in Flemish seventeenth-century painting is occupied by two specific genres: animal painting and the still life. One of the most important animal and still-life painters was Frans Snyders, a very close collaborator of Peter Paul Rubens who often painted still-life details and animals on the master’s canvases. Snyders’s superb skill as a painter of animals is revealed by Concert of birds, based on a subject from Aesop’s Fables. It shows a gathering of feathered creatures screeching and singing under the direction of an owl seated on a dried branch in front of an open music score.

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) 'Concert of birds' 1630-1640

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657)
Concert of birds
1630-1640
Oil on canvas
137cm (53.9 in) x 240cm (94.4 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Acquired from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, 1779
Public domain

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) 'Concert of birds' 1630-1640 (installation view detail)

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657)
Concert of birds (installation view detail)
1630-1640
Oil on canvas
137cm (53.9 in) x 240cm (94.4 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Acquired from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, 1779
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) 'Cook at a kitchen table with dead game' c. 1636-1637 (installation view detail)

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657)
Cook at a kitchen table with dead game (installation view detail)
c. 1636-1637
Oil on canvas
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Frans Snyders was the son of the owner of one of Antwerp’s largest wine and eating houses. His dramatically realistic still lifes celebrate the exotic variety of rare fowls available at Antwerp’s markets. Images of dead animals being prepared for a banquet were understood in Snyder’s time as lessons in Christian morality. Many Dutch and Flemish still lifes featuring the sacrifice of an animal for the table functioned as allusions to Christ’s Passion and the transience of the flesh.

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657) 'Cook at a kitchen table with dead game' c. 1636-1637

 

Frans Snyders (Flemish 1579-1657)
Cook at a kitchen table with dead game
c. 1636-1637
Oil on canvas
171cm (67.3 in) x 173cm (68.1 in)
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Public domain

 

Installation view of room 7 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 7 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne showing at left, Anthony van Dyck (Flemish 1599-1641) 'Portrait of Philadelphia and Elizabeth Wharton' 1640

 

Installation views of room 7 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne showing at left in the bottom image, Anthony van Dyck (Flemish 1599-1641) Portrait of Philadelphia and Elizabeth Wharton, 1640
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

This is one of the most charming portraits of children paint by van Dyck, who had particular talent for such works. It is one of a group of family portraits commissioned from can Dyck by Philip, Lord Wharton in the late 1630s. Van Dyck worked in England for approximately ten ears and brought a new standard of elegance and style to English portraiture. He largely conveyed this through his flair for painting lavish costumes and sumptuous fabrics, a sensibility he carried through to his portraits of children.

 

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish 1599-1641) 'Portrait of Philadelphia and Elizabeth Wharton' 1640

 

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish 1599-1641)
Portrait of Philadelphia and Elizabeth Wharton
1640
Oil on canvas
162cm (63.7 in) x 130cm (51.1 in)
Hermitage Museum
Public domain

 

Room 8 China

Eighteenth-century Enlightenment fascination with the East, particularly China, is reflected by Catherine the Great’s architectural and landscaping works completed in St Petersburg and at her summer and winter palaces, as well as by her collecting of Oriental curiosities and philosophical texts. Russian interest in China can be traced to the reign of the Romanov tsars in the seventeenth century, when several missions brought back Chinese treasures and goods to the Russian Court. Importantly, in 1689 the first treaty between Russia and China was signed at Nerchinsk, outlining the border between the countries and rules about caravan trade.

Like many educated people of her time, Catherine was fascinated by the concept of the enlightened ruler thought to be found in China, such as the Kangxi Emperor (reigned 1662-1722), Yongzhèng Emperor (reigned 1723-35), and Qianlong Emperor (reigned 1736-95). One of her regular and most influential correspondents was French philosopher Voltaire, who praised the Celestial Kingdom, its monarchs and men of wisdom; only in China, he thought, was a man’s life, honour and property truly protected by law. Such a clear link between Catherine’s desire for justice and order in Russia and general perceptions of good Chinese government, combined with the Enlightenment fashion for curiosities of all kinds, led to great Russian interest in China in the second half of the eighteenth century.

 

Installation view of room 8 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 8 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 8 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 8 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 8 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 8 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

Installation view of room 8 of the exhibition 'Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great' at NGV International, Melbourne

 

Installation views of room 8 of the exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at NGV International, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

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Review: ‘Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection’ at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 31st March – 5th July, 2015

Curator: Helen Carroll

 

Gretchen Albrecht (New Zealand, b. 1943) 'Pink and orange sherbet sky' 1975 from the exhibition Review: 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, March - July, 2015

 

Gretchen Albrecht (New Zealand, b. 1943)
Pink and orange sherbet sky
1975
Acrylic on canvas
166 x 177cm
© Gretchen Albrecht, reproduced courtesy of the artist and Wesfarmers Collection of Australia

 

 

Gorgeous catalogue with luscious plates, insightful text by Bill Henson (below) and evocative poetry by John Kinsella. Stars on the front cover and silver edged pages. No expense spared in production, with money literally thrown at the project, or so it would seem.

The curator, Helen Carroll, talking about ‘wonder’: “It is a capacity for wonder that makes us human”. Henson talking about ‘wonder’ and ‘love’ – about moments that change your life when looking at and breathing in great art.

Then why does this exhibition feel so… well, needless?

Despite some fascinating individual works of art, collectively there is little wonder on show here.

Perhaps it is because this exhibition looks to be a cut down version of the one first shown at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2012, with many works missing from what are listed in the catalogue. Or perhaps it is the hang which at the Ian Potter Museum of Art consists of two rooms on the ground floor of the museum, one housing lighter works, the other dark works. Too dichotomous for my tastes. Nothing is ever so cut and dried.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the concept of the exhibition – light in its many guises – seems to have been tagged onto a groups of art works which are anything but about light. Or are about light in a roundabout, merry-go-round kind of way. The wall text states, “Rather than a chronological or stylistically ordered presentation, the exhibition follows a loosely intuitive flow of ideas and imagery, moving through night to day. The artists in this exhibition explore light from the perspective of the optical experience, the connection between the starts and the cycles of life on earth; and from diverse cultural, mythic and spiritual points of departure.” Apparently the works are more about the phenomena of light than about light itself.

While the art works are interesting in their own right they don’t really work together cohesively as a group to investigate the theme of the exhibition. Trying to burden a collection of art bought for investment purposes with a concept not “natural” to the work, or just a curator’s idea of what seems implicit in the work but is just a cerebral construction, simply does not work in this case. As I looked around the exhibition, I felt the works were more about the physicality of time and space (of history and place), about links in the existential chain, than they were about light. For me, this evinced Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the ‘chronotype’ – meaning ‘the connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed’ (in literature). Perhaps the intuitive flow of ideas and imagery and the multiple points of departure work against the very idea the exhibition seeks to investigate. This is so broadly thematic (the effects of light on the world) that it needed to be more focused in its conceptualisation.

It’s also a real worry when text panels in the exhibition quote Richard Goyder, Managing Director, Wesfarmers Limited, as saying that this is the first time that Wesfarmers has showcased the contemporary art of the collection, “and the works selected for Luminous World illustrate some of the ways in which the collection has grown in recent years. For instance, the inclusion of art from New Zealand, where Wesfarmers has a significant business presence, and the heightened emphasis on representing the great diversity of contemporary Indigenous art.”

The inclusion of New Zealand art because Wesfarmers has a significant business presence – not the quality or wonder of the art work – but a business presence. And only now are they collecting contemporary Indigenous art, after the collection has been in existence for more than three decades, 1977 being the first acquisition date. At least he is being refreshingly honest about why the art work has been added to the collection, but it does not give you confidence in the choice of the art work being displayed here.

Goyder, Carroll and Kinsella also proselytise about the benefits of employee’s living with this art in their daily working lives and that may be the case. But for the casual visitor to the gallery this collection of art left me feeling cold and clammy – like a fish out of water.

As the add for Reflex copy paper says with more humour than any of this work can muster, I didn’t find “enwhitenment”, or wonder, within the gallery walls. Oh, the luminosity of it all.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to The Ian Potter Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan and The Ian Potter Museum of Art. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

What is the Night?

‘What is the night?’ Macbeth enquires in the banquet scene, once the ghost of Banquo has departed and his wide has dismissed their mystified guests. Deprived of sleep, and half-psychotic, he urgently needs to know the time. But this is also, implicitly, a philosophical question that hints at the ontological meaning of the night…

Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most elaborate meditation on the night, is a sustained, if not obsessive, exploration of the nocturnal as a realm of alternative values – ones that contradict and threaten to undermine those of the diurnal regime that is ostensibly the domain of politics in the early modern period. In this violent, vengeful tragedy, the language and culture of the medieval night, incarnated above all in the witches, irrupts into the more enlightened languages and culture of a purportedly post-medieval epoch. An apocalyptic night, in Macbeth’s barbaric court, is one of the forces that shape realpolitik. In the Renaissance, a period in which daily life encroaches more and more on the night, especially in public settings, in the form of elaborately lit masques at court, Macbeth thus stages the limits of enlightenment.

At a time when more systematic, socially centralized modes of illumination are increasingly disrupting older patterns of rest, including biphasic sleep – so that, for the early modern ruling class at least, night starts to feel like an extension of the day, its observe rather than its inverse – Shakespeare dramatises the tyrannical attraction, the absolutism, of darkness. Macbeth describes a process of nocturnalisation whereby the night irresistibly colonises the day, fatally infiltrating both the state and the protagonist’s consciousness. To use a word that has some currency in the seventeenth century, but has long since fallen out of use, Shakespeare’s drama is a study of ‘benightment’.”

Matthew Beaumont. “What is the Night?” in Matthew Beaumont. Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London, Chaucer to Dickens. London and New York: Verso, 2015, pp. 86-87.

 

Luminous World brings together a selection of contemporary paintings, objects and photographs from the Wesfarmers Collection in a conversation about light. Through works of scale and conceptual invention that chart the range and depth of the collection, this exhibition presents significant contemporary paintings, photographs and objects by leading Australian and New Zealand artists acquired by Wesfarmers over three decades and shared together for the first time with the Australian public.

The Potter is the fifth venue for this touring exhibition which to date has travelled to Charles Darwin University Art Gallery, Darwin; National Library of Australia, Canberra; Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide; and The Academy Gallery, University of Tasmania.

 

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970) 'Replicant series: Owl' 2005 from the exhibition Review: 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, March - July, 2015

 

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Replicant series: Owl
2005
Ilfochrome print
130 x 195cm
© Brook Andrew, reproduced courtesy of the artist and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

Brook Andrew (1970- ) is a Sydney born / Melbourne based interdisciplinary artist of Wiradjuri and Scottish heritage. Andrew’s conceptual based practice incorporates, sculpture, photography, installation, video and performance. The Replicant 2006 series reflects (literally) upon the act of looking, and consequent interchanges between nature and culture, subject and object, real and represented. These dualities fit broadly within the artist’s addressing of Australian identity, polemics and the politics of difference.

For the Replicant 2006 series Andrew borrowed taxidermied specimens from the education department at the Australian Museum, Sydney. These included native species of indigenous significance such as an owl, possum, flying fox and parrot. He shot each animal – artificially propped in their natural poses – and digitally manipulated each image so as to appear duplicated, a process that evolved out of the Kalar midday 2004 series.

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled' 2009-10 

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled
2009-10
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 x 180cm
© Bill Henson, reproduced courtesy of the artist and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

” … And yet certain things – particular experiences that we have are exceptional. They stand apart from the rest of the general activity.

What causes this apprehension of significance – of something in face powerfully apprehended yet not always fully understood?

And why is it that all of us, at some time or other, with have this ‘epiphany’ – Christian or otherwise – in the presence of some work of art, in the experiencing of a performance piece or some unexpected encounter with the true magic of a particular piece of sculpture?

When it happens, I always think of it as being as if one’s life – and everything that it contains – had just been ever so slightly changed, forever. Nothing, if you will, is ever quite the same again.

What happens, I think, is simply that we fall in love – and it’s the apprehension of unexpected beauty that causes us to fall in love.

The sheer force of such beauty can affect us as if it were an act of nature – and of course it is, for despite the arrogance of some theoreticians, culture is never outside nature.

I think that it is this intense, if often quite subtle, love for the subject, and the resultant emotional and intellectual interdependence within that relationship – be it in musical form, something in the visual arts, theatre of dance – that is responsible for – and in fact makes possible at all – these great and fortunate encounters in the arts. …

Stare back into time and all kinds of very ‘personal’ things return your gaze. This has always, to me, seemed to a large extent to be what art is about. Sure, it’s personal, but it’s also millennial. …

The best art always heightens our sense of mortality. This is not morbidity that I am talking about – rather, we feel more alive in the presence of great art and this is because of a profound sense of continuity – our sense of being inside nature – is expanded.

If you like, art suggests the immortal in all of us.

When we listen to Michelangeli – or, say, Jörg Demus playing Kinderszenen – and we sense that simultaneously proximate and intimate yet utterly abstract presence (was that someone? Schumann perhaps?) and at the same time sense the unbridgeable gulf that exists between ourselves and that distant past – we know that we are in the presence of something magical.

In the end I think that it is love that fuels this activity – that animates the speculative capacity in all of us – and heightens this sense of wonder.

Excerpts from Bill Henson’s speech “Reflections,” in Luminous World catalogue. Perth: Wesfarmers Limited, 2012, pp. 23-24.

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

 

Installation views of the exhibition Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

David Stephenson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Star Drawing 1996/402' 1996

 

David Stephenson (Australian, b. 1955)
Star Drawing 1996/402
1996
40 x 40″
Cibachrome print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1997
© Courtesy of the artist

 

While the subject of my photographs has shifted from the landscape of the American Southwest and Tasmania, and the minimal horizons of the Southern ocean, and the icy wastes of Antarctica, to sacred architecture and the sky at both day and night, my art has remained essentially spiritual – for more than two decades I have been exploring a contemporary expression of the sublime – a transcendental experience of awe with the vast space and time of existence.

David Stephenson, 1998

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled 39/139' 1990-91

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled 39/139
1990-91
Paris Opera Project
Type C photograph
127 × 127cm
Series of 50
Edition of 10 + 2 A/Ps

 

Stieg Persson (Australian, b. 1959) 'Offret' 1998 

 

Stieg Persson (Australian, b. 1959)
Offret
1998
Oil on canvas
183 x 167cm
© Stieg Persson, reproduced courtesy of the artist and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

 

Works focusing on light and darkness, and how light creates and reveals our world, from one of Australia’s pre-eminent corporate art collections compiled by Wesfarmers over the past 30 years, will be exhibited at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at The University of Melbourne.

The exhibition, Luminous World: Contemporary art from the Wesfarmers Collection, presents a diverse selection of contemporary paintings, photography and works of sculpture. The works traverse a diversity of cultural, aesthetic and philosophical perspectives, with the curatorial premise of how contemporary artists explore the phenomenon of light in their work.

Some 50 artists from Australia and New Zealand are featured in the exhibition including: Susan Norrie, Rosemary Laing, Howard Taylor, Dale Frank, Paddy Bedford, Bill Henson, Fiona Pardington (NZ), Brian Blanchflower, Brook Andrew, Timothy Cook and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. Included alongside the art is a major new body of poetry by John Kinsella, written in response to works in the exhibition. These are published for the first time under the imprint of Fremantle Press in the book Luminous World, with new writing by artist Bill Henson and composer Richard Mills.

Ian Potter Museum of Art Director, Ms Kelly Gellatly said, “Luminous World highlights the strengths of the Wesfarmers Collection, which has generously been shared, through the tour of the exhibition, with the wider community.

“In bringing together works across a range of media by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, Luminous World successfully showcases both the depth and continuing resonance of contemporary Australian practice in a rich, open-ended and exploratory conversation about light.

“To know and experience light and its effects however, one must equally understand its other – darkness. Together, these concerns create an exhibition experience that is at once intellectual, emotional and experiential,” Ms Gellatly said.

The Wesfarmers Collection was started in 1977, and is housed in the Wesfarmers offices around Australia and shared with the community through a loan and exhibition program. A Wesfarmers and Art Gallery of Western Australia touring exhibition.

Press release from The Ian Potter Museum of Art website

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

 

Installation views of the exhibition Luminous World: Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

“For more than three decades Wesfarmers has been collecting Australian art. From General Manager John Bennison’s first acquisition in 1977 of a pastoral scene by the Australian impressionist Elioth Gruner, Wesfarmers’ purpose was to accentuate the value of art in the workplace and encourage and understanding of the importance to society of supporting creative thinking and artistic vision. The company has always been committed to sharing its collection with the community through exhibitions and loans and by opening our workplaces for groups to view the art in our offices.

This is the first time Wesfarmers has showcased the contemporary art in the collection, and the works selected for Luminous World illustrate some of the ways in which the collection has grown in recent years. For instance, the inclusion of art from New Zealand, where Wesfarmers now has a significant business presence, and the heightened emphasis on representing the great diversity of contemporary indigenous art.

We thank the artists whose resonant and timeless works form part of Australia’s rich cultural heritage and hope that the Australian public will enjoy these works and marvel at the ingenuity and artistic vision they represent, as Wesfarmers does, surround by inspirational art in our daily lives.”

Richard Goyder
Managing Director, Wesfarmers Limited

 

The visual world is defined by light; everything we see is processed by the eye as patterns of brightness and colour. Monumental formations in the landscape as well as the most subtle nuances of atmosphere are made real to us by the action of light, transmitted in wavelengths as an infinitely varied register of colour that combine within the eye to shape our sense of space and form.

It is the action of light reflecting off, refracting through and being absorbed by the substance of the world that enables the eye to perceive contours, hues, and textures and mark the passing of time from day to night and season to season.

Luminous World presents a diverse selection of contemporary paintings, photography and works of sculpture, acquired by the Wesfarmers Collection over thirty years and considered through the lens of how contemporary artists variously utilise the phenomenon of light in their work.

Rather than a chronological or stylistically ordered presentation, it follows a loosely intuitive flow of ideas and imagery moving through night to day. The artists in this exhibition explore light from the perspective of the optical experience, the connection between the stars and the cycles of life on earth; and from diverse cultural, mythic and spiritual point of departure.

Published for the first time in the Luminous World catalogue are recent poems by John Kinsella, written in response to selected works in the exhibition, together with new writing by artist Bill Henson and composer Richard Mills that extend an artistic dialogue in which all can share.

 

Rosalie Gascoigne (Australian, 1917-1999) 'Hung fire' 1995

 

Rosalie Gascoigne (Australian, 1917-1999)
Hung fire
1995
Retro-reflective road-sign on wood
209 x 176cm
© Rosalie Gascoigne, licensed by Viscopy 2012 and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

Elizabeth Nyumi (Australian, born c. 1947) 'Parwalla' 2010 

 

Elizabeth Nyumi (Australian, born c. 1947)
Parwalla
2010
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 180cm
© Elizabeth Nyumi, licensed by Viscopy 2012 and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

About Parwalla

This painting depicts the country known as Parwalla, which is Nyumi’s father’s country. This country is far to the south of Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert, west of Kiwirrkurra, and is dominated by tali (sand hills). Parwalla is a large swampy area, which fills with water after the wet season rain and consequently produces an abundance of bush foods. The majority of Nyumi’s painting shows the different bush foods, including kantjilyi (bush raisin), pura (bush tomato) and minyili (seed). The whiteish colours, which dominate the painting, represent the spinifex that grows strong and seeds after the wet season rains. These seeds are white in colour, and grow so thickly they obscure the ground and other plants below.

Biography

When Nyumi was only a very young child her mother died at Kanari soakwater close to Jupiter Well. As a young girl, Nyumi lived with her family group in their country. As a teenager she walked along the Canning Stock Route into the old mission with her father and family group. There she was given clothes and taken to Billiluna Station to be trained as a domestic worker and to work for the wives of the station managers around the region.

Nyumi commenced painting in 1987 and emerged as a leading artist in the late 1990s. She is married to the artist Palmer Gordon and has four daughters, three of whom are still living and beginning to paint with strong encouragement from Nyumi. Her elder brothers Brandy Tjungurrayi and Patrick Olodoodi are both senior lawmen and recognised artists. Nyumi is a very strong culture woman and dancer and an enthusiastic teacher of culture to children, ensuring the traditional dances and songs are kept alive.

Nyumi’s paintings are mainly concerned with the abundant bush food in the country belonging to her family. Initially, she worked with a thick brush, covering the canvas with fluent lines in tones of yellow, green and red. She has now developed a strong personal style of thick impasto dotting, to build up fields of texture heavily laden with white, in which motifs of camp sites, coolamons, digging sticks and bush tucker stand out.

 

Rosemary Laing (Australian, 1959-2024) 'Brumby mound #5' from the series 'One dozen unnatural disasters in the landscape' 2003

 

Rosemary Laing (Australian, 1959-2024)
Brumby mound #5 from the series One dozen unnatural disasters in the landscape
2003
C Type photograph
110 x 222cm
© Rosemary Laing, reproduced courtesy of the artist and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

Brumby mound #5 2003 is one of a series of photographs by Rosemary Laing that explores the way European culture has often been uncomfortably imposed on an ancient land. Laing chooses a desert-scape that many identify as quintessentially Australian as the setting for her interventions. The location is the Wirrimanu community lands around Balgo in north-east Western Australia. Onto these traditional lands Laing has incongruously placed items of mass-produced furniture painted to mimic the surroundings.

The words ‘brumby mound’ in her title are a reference to the introduced horses (or brumbies) that are feral and roam uncontrolled, much like the spread of furniture. The seductive beauty of these panoramic images shows the vast spectacle of the Australian bush and makes the disjunction of the natural and the unnatural all the more apparent.

Text from the NGV website

 

Howard Taylor (Australian, 1918-2001) 'Bushfire sun' 1996 

 

Howard Taylor (Australian, 1918-2001)
Bushfire sun
1996
Oil on canvas
122 x 152cm
© Howard Taylor, courtesy of the artist’s estate and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

Michael Riley (Australian, 1960-2004) 'Untitled' from the series 'Cloud [Feather]' 2000

 

Michael Riley (Australian, 1960-2004)
Untitled from the series Cloud [Feather]
2000
Inkjet print on banner paper
86 x 120 cm
© Michael Riley Foundation, licensed by Viscopy 2012 and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

“Feathers float – so do clouds – and dreams.

Feather – a Wiradjuri word for feather and wing are the same, Gawuurra. Probably Cowra, the name of a town to the south, comes from this. In contemporary Aboriginal practices of other groups, feather-appendage is extended in meaning to string tassel, sacred string marking a journey, connecting landscapes, people, family lineages, and, importantly, the embryo cord linking child and mother.

A wing of the eagle hawk, Malyan, a skin name, a scary dream-being overhead. Is it guardian angel or assassin? In the south-east, a feather left behind is often evidence of such a spiritual visit.

At the funeral of actor and activist Bob Maza in 2000, his son held his father’s Bible and recollected his words, ‘to dare to dream your dreams’. It’s interesting that Michael Riley chose to avoid the word ‘dream’ in naming his final photographic work cloud (2000), avoiding glib connections to ‘Dreamtime’. What rolls past our eyes and through our senses is the culmination of self-examination. In a series of poetic photographic texts made increasingly poignant through events in his personal life, these are dreams of childhood memories in Dubbo, New South Wales: dreams of floating, of release…

cloud appears as more personal and free. A floating feather; a sweeping wing; a vigilant angel; the cows from ‘the mission’ farm; a single Australian Plague Locust in flight, referring to the cyclical swarms of locusts; a comforting Bible; and a graceful emblematic returning boomerang. The boomerang is really the only overtly Aboriginal image in the series and the locust is one of the few native species left that is visible and cannot be swept aside. It persists…

Through the large, simply superimposed images of cloud, Michael was trying to minimalise things, to distil his ideas about physical reality and spirit. All are dichotomously connected to Dubbo and Riley and are also universal. They are not about a place but a state, the surrealistic cow with mud and manure on its hoofs floating by. In contrast to Empire’s scenes of a decayed, overworked and desolated landscape, there is no physical land in the cloud imagery.

Aboriginal creation stories begin with a sunrise and follow the journeys of an original being across a physical, seasonal and emotional landscape – seeing, experiencing, and naming this and that plant, animal, climatic occurrence and emotional feelings. Religious song cycles follow this progression. Michael’s set of large, single-subject memories can almost be thought of as a Wiradjuri song cycle of his land and his life.”

Extract from Djon Mundine. “Wungguli – Shadow: Photographing the spirit and Michael Riley” on the “Michael Riley: sights unseen” National Gallery of Australia website Nd [Online] Cited 10/08/2021. No longer available online

 

Paddy Bedford (Australian, 1922-2007) 'Merrmerrji–Queensland creek' 2005 

 

Paddy Bedford (Australian, 1922-2007)
Merrmerrji-Queensland creek
2005
Ochre and synthetic binder on composition board
80 x 100cm
© Paddy Bedford, reproduced courtesy of the artist’s estate and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art

 

“Paddy Bedford was a senior Gija lawman born at Bedford Downs Station in the East Kimberly region. Like many indigenous artists, he lived a long life as a stockman before he looked upon the Turkey Creek elders – Rover Thomas and Paddy Jiminji – to begin painting. Bedford’s first works were made with the inception of the Jirrawun Aboriginal Art Cooperative in 1997.

The distinctive minimalist style of his work is but a mask to the multifarious layers of meaning. Bedford’s paintings are inspired by the distinctive landscape and stories of his country in the East Kimberly region of Western Australia, as he depicts from an aerial perspective the traditional dreamings of the Cockatoo, Emu and Turkey; the massacres of local Aboriginal people during the colonial period; as well as episodes from his own life as a stockman and as a senior elder of his community.

Merrmerrji-Queensland Creek, 2005 is characteristically sparse in composition with bold forms, a rhythmic application of dotted fluid lines and a powerfully imposing colour palate, which is gained from a wet-on-wet mixture of white and ochre pigments suspended in a fast drying acrylic medium. The effect is a pearly radiant luminosity, an ambience of the sacred.”

Text from the Annette Larkin Fine Art website. No longer available online.

 

 

The Ian Potter Museum of Art
The University of Melbourne,
Corner Swanston Street and Masson Road
Parkville, Victoria 3010

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

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Exhibition: ‘Nature/Revelation’ at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 31st March – 5th July, 2015

Curator: Joanna Bosse

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Clearing winter storm, Yosemite National Park, California' 1935 from the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, March - July, 2015

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Clearing winter storm, Yosemite National Park, California 
1935
Gelatin silver photograph
56 x 71cm framed
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1980
© 2015 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

 

 

This is a fascinating exhibition at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, one of the best exhibitions I have seen this year in Melbourne. Unlike the disappointing exhibition Earth Matters: contemporary photographers in the landscape at the Monash Gallery of Art this exhibition, which addresses roughly the same subject matter (climate change and its devastating impact on the earth’s many ecosystems; contemporary notions of nature and the sublime) this exhibition is nuanced and fresh, celebrating “the unique capacity art has to cut through prevailing rhetoric to stimulate individuals both intellectually and emotionally in the face of current environmental issues.”

Every piece of art in this exhibition is emotionally, intellectually and aesthetically challenging. There is no “dead wood” here. As the press release states, “Nature / Revelation features international and Australian artists who are engaged with poetic and philosophical concerns, and whose work offers potentially enlightening experiences that energise our relationship to the natural world.” And it is true!

I spent over two hours on a couple of visits to this exhibition and came away feeling en/lightened in mind and body. From the formal beauty of Ansel Adams classical black and white photographs to the mesmerising, eternal video Boulder Hand (2012) by Gabriel Orozco; from the delightful misdirection of Mel O’Callaghan’s Moons to the liminal habitats of Jamie North; and from the constructed clouds of Berndnaut Smilde to the best piece in the exhibition, Jonathan Delafield Cook’s Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) (2013, below) – every piece deserved its place in this exhibition. I would go as far as to say that Delafield Cook’s Sperm whale is the best piece of art that I have seen since Mark Hilton’s dontworry (2013) which featured in the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. The sheer scale and beauty of the work (with its graphite on canvas attention to detail) and that doleful eye staring out at the viewer, is both empowering and unnerving. It deserves to be in an important collection.

While nature and the world we live in offers moments of revelation, so did the art in this exhibition. The art possesses moments of wonder for the viewer. Kudos to curator Joanna Bosse and The Ian Potter Museum of Art for putting on a top notch show.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the The Ian Potter Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan and The Ian Potter Museum of Art. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing photographs by Ansel Adams

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing photographs by Ansel Adams
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at right, photographs by Ansel Adams; and at left, a detail of Jonathan Delafield Cook's 'Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)' 2013

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at right, photographs by Ansel Adams; and at left, a detail of Jonathan Delafield Cook’s Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) 2013
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Jonathan Delafield Cook's 'Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)' 2013

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Jonathan Delafield Cook's 'Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)' 2013

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Jonathan Delafield Cook’s Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), 2013
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Jonathan Delafield Cook (British, b. 1965) 'Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)' 2013 (detail)

 

Jonathan Delafield Cook (British, b. 1965)
Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) (detail)
2013
Graphite on canvas
6 panels: 245 x 1200 cm overall
Courtesy the artist and Olsen/Irwin Gallery, Sydney
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Jonathan Delafield Cook’s life size drawing of a Sperm Whale specimen possesses a haunting melancholy… [He] creates an encounter that recalls those between Ahab and Moby Dick immortalised in Hermann Melville’s famous novel. Being face-to-face, eye-to-eye with this majestic sentient being – distinguished for having the largest brain of any creature known to have lived on the Earth – is an awe-inspiring experience. The overwhelming enormity of scale and the panorama-like expanse of the whale’s skin rouse an acute awareness of our own small presence in the room (in the world).

Delafield Cook’s work belongs to the naturalist tradition, and his detailed charcoal drawing intensifies the physical qualities of the subject in a way that renders it both a forensic study and an otherworldly fantasy. The personal history of this sleek leviathan is writ large, like graffiti, on its skin: the abrasions, the exfoliations, scars and its ragged tail tell of unknown adventures in an environment that lies beyond our own experience, but one not exempt from degradation or environmental change.

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing showing at centre right, photographs by Ansel Adams

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing showing at centre right, photographs by Ansel Adams
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Gabriel Orozco (Mexican, b. 1962)
Boulder Hand
2012
Video 54 seconds
Courtesy of the artist

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left, Mel O'Callaghan's 'Moons' 2014; and at right, Gabriel Orozco's video 'Boulder Hand' 2012

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left, Mel O’Callaghan’s Moons 2014; and at right, Gabriel Orozco’s video Boulder Hand 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Mel O'Callaghan's 'Moons' 2014

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Mel O'Callaghan's 'Moons' 2014

 

Installation photographs of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Mel O’Callaghan’s Moons 2014
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Mel O'Callaghan (Australian, b. 1975) 'Moons (II)' 2014 from the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, March - July, 2015

 

Mel O’Callaghan (Australian, b. 1975)
Moons (II)
2014
pigmented inkjet print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Allen, Paris, and Galeria Belo Galsterer, Lisbon

 

 

Climate change and its devastating impact on the earth’s many ecosystems is arguably today’s most critical global issue. Nature/Revelation celebrates the unique capacity art has to cut through prevailing rhetoric to stimulate individuals both intellectually and emotionally in the face of current environmental issues. Focusing on contemporary notions of nature and the sublime, the exhibition affirms that the world we live in offers moments of revelation, and that nature can provoke a range of associations – both fantastical and grounded – that profoundly affect us.

Nature/Revelation features international and Australian artists who are engaged with poetic and philosophical concerns, and whose work offers potentially enlightening experiences that energise our relationship to the natural world. Artists include Ansel Adams, Jonathan Delafield Cook, David Haines, Andrew Hazewinkel and Susan Jacobs, Jamie North, Mel O’Callaghan, Gabriel Orozco and Berndnaut Smilde. The exhibition also raises questions about concepts of nature and culture following the arguments of philosopher Timothy Morton.

This exhibition forms a key component of the ‘Art+climate=change’ festival presented by Climarte: arts for a safer climate. This festival of climate change related arts and ideas includes curated exhibitions at a number of museums and galleries alongside a series of keynote lectures and forums featuring local and international speakers.

The University of Melbourne, with the Potter as project leader, is the Principal Knowledge Partner of the Climarte program.

Text from The Ian Potter Museum of Art website

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left on the floor, Jamie North's 'Portal II' and 'Slag bowl I & II' 2014; and at right, David Haines' 'Day & Night' 2005-2015

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left on the floor, Jamie North's 'Portal II' and 'Slag bowl I & II' 2014; and at right, David Haines' 'Day & Night' 2005-2015

 

Installation photographs of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left on the floor, Jamie North’s Portal II and Slag bowl I & II 2014; and at right, David Haines’ Day & Night 2005-2015
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Jamie North's 'Portal II' and 'Slag bowl I & II' 2014

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Jamie North's 'Portal II' and 'Slag bowl I & II' 2014

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Jamie North's 'Portal II' and 'Slag bowl I & II' 2014

 

Jamie North (Australian, b. 1971)
Portal II
2014
Cement, marble waste, limestone, steel slag, coal ash, plastic fibre, tree fern slab, various Australian native plants and Spanish moss
2 components: 107.0 x 26.0 x 26.0cm each
Courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney

Jamie North (Australian, b. 1971)
Slag bowl I & II
2013
Concrete, coal ash, steel slag, Australian native plants and moss
15 x 37 x 37cm each
Courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Viewers often mistake Jamie North’s sculptures for actual relics. The sculptures are in fact carefully crafted to emulate liminal habitats where hardy plant species grow in inhospitable conditions. More than mere simulation, each work is itself a miniature ecosystem and has to be tended accordingly.

The sculptures are cast from materials that are commonly found in industrial settings (steel slag, coal ash, marble dust, and concrete) and include local native flora. The specifics of locality are important to North, and his work is a subtle investigation of local environmental systems and the character of place as well as the adaptability of nature in urban settings…

North has an interest in terraforming – the theoretical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet to be similar to the biosphere of Earth. Here, he creates his own terraforms as a reflection on the environmental manipulations that taking place in the everyday.

 

 

David Haines (Australian born England, 1966)
Day & Night
2005-2015
Two channel video projection
Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cotter Gallery, Sydney

 

Throughout his practice – which comprises investigations into the elemental in carious media – David Haines explores sensation in both seen and unseen forms. He has a particular interest in latent energies, such as aromas, sound waves and electromagnetic currents.

Haines revisits the classic language of the sublime in his 2004 two-channel video installation Day & night. He presents dual images of the sublime: one an immense cliff face with a sea surging against its rocky base; the other a brooding cloudscape, its form gradually unfolding with a mesmeric momentum. The work is simultaneously serene and disturbing, and awakens that range of complex emotions that Kant named the ‘supersensible’ – beyond the range of what is normally perceptible by the senses. The over-riding emotional rush – the presentiment of danger – associated with this experience is a trademark of the sublime.

The abstract sense of danger shifts however when we notice the tiny figure clinging to the cliff face. The scene is abruptly divested of its fantastical quality (its symbolic power is suddenly made real), as we can’t help but identify with the solitary figure. No longer merely observers, we become participants in the scene before us. The perilous figure in Haines’ work provides a touchstone in terms of the overwhelming grandeur of nature. In the context of the exhibition, s/he could represent each of us as we confront the seemingly insurmountable environmental and humanitarian challenges resulting from the increasingly catastrophic effects of global warming.

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Nature/Revelation' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left, Berndnaut Smilde's 'Nimbus – Probe'  2012 and 'Nimbus D'Aspremont' 2010; and at right, Jamie North's 'Portal II' and 'Slag bowl I & II' 2014

 

Installation photographs of the exhibition Nature/Revelation at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left, Berndnaut Smilde’s Nimbus – Probe  2012 and Nimbus D’Aspremont 2010; and at right, Jamie North’s Portal II and Slag bowl I & II 2014
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Berndnaut Smilde (Dutch, b. 1978) 'Nimbus D'Aspremont' 2012

 

Berndnaut Smilde (Dutch, b. 1978)
Nimbus D’Aspremont
2012
Digital C-type print mounted on diabond
75 x 110cm
Courtesy the artist and Ronchini Gallery, London

 

Berndnaut Smilde (Dutch, b. 1978) 'Nimbus – Probe' 2010

 

Berndnaut Smilde (Dutch, b. 1978)
Nimbus – Probe
2010
Digital C-type print mounted on diabond
75 x 112cm
Courtesy the artist and Ronchini Gallery, London

 

 

The Ian Potter Museum of Art
The University of Melbourne,
Corner Swanston Street and Masson Road
Parkville, Victoria 3010

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

The Ian Potter Museum of Art website

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