Lyndal Irons (Australian) Backstage before Parade of Champions 2015 From the series Physie Courtesy of the artist
Picturing themselves
This is another strong exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, principally due to the integrity of the work and not the investigation of the theme for the exhibition, why take pictures?
I have always loved Alan Constable’s tactile cameras every since I first saw them. Constable is legally blind. He holds photographs of old cameras up to his eyes, a couple of inches away, and scans the images, committing them to memory. He then creates these most wonderful evocations of a seeing machine, almost as though he is transferring his in/sight into these in/operable, beautifully glazed structures. He twists two dimensional, photographic reality into these lumpy, misshapen sculptures, evocations of his memory and imagination. I have three of these cameras in my own collection. I treasure them.
Glen Sloggett’s works is, well… Glen Slogett’s work. What I mean by the statement is that you can always recognise his photographs through his signature as an artist. There is a delicious irony and dark humour present in his work… the cat / dead. The rose / a brothel. The scree of concrete / solidified. Slogett’s insightfulness into our existential condition is evidenced through his unique view of the world, pictured in thought provoking photographs. Nothing is quite as it seems. He has a fantastic eye and aesthetic. I remember the image Cheaper and Deeper (1996) from a book I saw many years ago and it so resonated with me. Just the sensibility of looking at these spaces and contexts. He pokes around in the strangeness of the world and reflects what he sees back to us: life hidden in plain sight, revealed in all its intricacies, in all its mundanity and glory. I really like his work.
Another artist I have a great affection for is David Wadelton. Again, the signature of his work is striking. You know it’s a Wadelton image. What I admire about his work is the persistence of his vision. His intellectual vision, his photographic vision. He sets out on a project and he puts his whole mind and soul into the work, documenting the shifting and changing spaces and places of Melbourne’s suburbs since 1975. What a great eye! The black and white objective newsagents, all Becher frontality, with this seeming emotional detachment when in fact each image is so emotionally charged – through the signage, and through the knowledge that these newsagents are disappearing from our city landscape. And then the colour, some might say kitsch, Suburban Baroque living rooms which picture “mid-century suburban interiors of the formerly working-class northern areas that were the destination of choice for many post-war immigrants from Europe.” Here a different technique, photographed at an angle, off to one side, from above, sometimes central, letting the spaces and colours speak for themselves. Now vanishing, these habitats redolent with pathos and longing for the motherland.
And then Lyndal Irons, an artist whose work I have never seen before. Again, beautifully composed images, the use of a limited colour palette and rouge highlights in Grooming Routine being particularly effective. There is something unnerving about the entire scenario – the fake tans, the too bright lipstick, the fervent admiration, the ecstatic posing… the winners having their photograph taken with their trophies while off to the side others watch (enviously?); the lines of young competitors and a photograph with the instructions: ‘Ideas For Photo Poses’ and ‘Make Sure The Photographer Can See your Number’. The whole charade reminds me of the hideous child beauty pageants in the good ol’ US of A. I would have liked to have seen more photographs from this body of work.
Where the exhibition fails is in its investigation into the theme, why take pictures? The exhibition does not interrogate with any rigour, in fact does not really scratch the surface of why we humans are so obsessed with taking photographs. Through the few lines of text that accompanies the exhibition (below), it offers a few titbits as way of remediation, a few possible ideas to cling to so as to answer the question: perhaps desire, perhaps obsession, curiosity, nostalgia and information. It then throws the photographic work of these artists at us as an answer, but what we are actually looking at is just representation, the outcome of the desire to picture, not an examination of the act itself. What the exhibition really needed was a thoroughly insightful text that examined our impulse to take pictures.
Here is a controversial statement. Every photograph is a self-portrait. What do I mean by this?
When we think back to the cave paintings of the Neolithic period, human beings picture the world around them by painting in colour on the rock that is earth. They picture themselves in that scene by painting what they know of the world around them. Through their imagination and creativity they place themselves in the scene – physically as hunters in the scene, and metaphorically through their relationship to the animals that they know and the objects that they carve, pictured on the cave walls. Theirs is a conscious decision to picture themselves as an infinite presence.
The same with photographs. Every time we press the shutter of a camera, it is a conscious decision to picture our relationship with the world. Through our will (to power), though our imagination and our desire, we place ourselves metaphorically (and physically when actually appear in the photograph) in every photograph. We stand behind the camera but imagine ourselves in that environment, have placed ourselves there to take the photograph. Every photograph is a self-portrait, one that establishes our relationship to the world, our identity, our values, who we are and how we react in each and every context.
These photographs are not memories at the time of their taking, although they make be taken under an impulse to memorialise. They will become memories, as when looking at old photo albums. They are not simply documents either, a recording of this time and place, because there is always the personal, the subjective relationship to the objective. Look at David Wadelton’s photographs of living rooms. Why was he present in all of these spaces? Just to observe, to document, to capture? No… he was their, to imagine, to create, to place himself at the scene, in the scene. Human beings make conscious choices to take photographs for all different kinds of reasons. But the one reason that is never mentioned is that, in reality, they are always picturing themselves.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Centre for Contemporary Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs to view a larger version of the image.
Installation views of the exhibition Why Make Pictures? at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Photographs: J. Forsyth
Why Take Pictures? returns to one of the fundamental questions in photography, to consider our desire-drive and obsession with taking photographs, the apparatus of the camera and diverse approaches of looking through, or at, the lens. Featuring work by Alan Constable (VIC), Michelle Tran (VIC), Lyndal Irons (NSW), Glenn Sloggett (VIC) and David Wadelton (VIC), Why Take Pictures? considers the divergent motivations and compulsions as to why we take images in the first place.
We all take pictures, leaving every one of us with an extensive collection of images, historically as physical artefacts, but now stored within our digital devices. These collections become vessels of information and nostalgia, desire and curiosity. Why Takes Pictures? interrogates how and why we build up these storehouses of images, as considered through the lens of five exceptional artists.
Traversing documentary, commercial, political and highly personal modes, Why Take Pictures? presents a broad cross-section of different approaches to making photographs. Whether documenting social environments in states of change, examining the discarded or overlooked, prying at the strange behaviour of humans; or through examining the obsession with the camera itself, the artists in Why Take Pictures? are driven to continue to take photographs, like an itch that can’t be scratched.
Press release from the Centre for Contemporary Photography 21/09/2019
Biographies
Alan Constable is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, painting and ceramics. His ceramic sculptures, which he began developing in 2007, reflects his life-long fascination with old cameras, which started at the age of eight when he would make replicas from cardboard cereal boxes. Constable’s finger impressions can be seen clearly on the clay surface, leaving the mark of the maker as a lasting imprint. Constable has been a regular studio artist at Arts Project Australia since 1991. Alongside selection in group exhibitions throughout Australia (including the Museum of Old and New Art in 2017), Constable has presented in a number of solo exhibitions including Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane; Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; South Willard (curated by Ricky Swallow), Los Angeles; Stills Gallery, Sydney; and Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne. Alan Constable is represented by Arts Projects Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; and DUTTON, New York.
Hand-built from slabs of clay, Alan Constable’s charing sculptural cameras and optical devices … evoke and absolute obsession with the photographic apparatus. Legally blind, Constable creates his work through appropriating photographs from old books and magazines, holding the images close to his face and committing them to memory. Through recall, Constable reinterprets these images, transforming them from high-precision consumer objects, to tactile sculptures imbued with vitality, personality and warmth. Elegantly clunky, anthropomorphic and on the edge of the surreal, Constable’s compelling works all have ‘fictional’ apertures or viewfinders that can be physically seen through. Asking us to consider the functionality of vision, Constable’s ceramics have a human touch and sensibility that connects us directly to the devices we often consider merely utilitarian.
Alan Constable (Australian, b. 1956) Not titled 2018 Earthenware and glaze 9 x 19 x 8cm Courtesy of the artist Alan Constable is represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight, Sydney; Dutton, New York Image copyright the artist, courtesy Arts Projects Australia Photo: Andrew Barcham
Alan Constable (Australian, b. 1956) Not titled 2019 Earthenware and glaze Courtesy of the artist Alan Constable is represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight, Sydney; Dutton, New York Image copyright the artist, courtesy Arts Projects Australia Photo: Andrew Barcham
Alan Constable (Australian, b. 1956) Not titled 2018 Earthenware and glaze Courtesy of the artist Alan Constable is represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight, Sydney; Dutton, New York Image copyright the artist, courtesy Arts Projects Australia Photo: Andrew Barcham
Lyndal Irons (Australian) Mermaid Beach 2015 From the series Physie Archival inkjet print 37 x 55cm Courtesy the artist
Lyndal Irons is a Sydney-based photographer and writer focused on local reportage, who is interested in seeking out parts of Australian society that are familiar and accessible, yet not often closely encountered. By recording social histories and building legacies using photographs and words, her work encourages curiosity and a deeper connection to daily life. Irons has presented solo exhibitions at the State Library of New South Wales (2015), the Australian Centre for Photography (2014), and Elizabeth Street Gallery (2014). Lyndal has been a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize (2017), the Bowness Prize (2015) and the Olive Cotton Award for Portraiture (2015). Lyndal Irons’ Physie series documents one of Australia’s oldest sporting institutions: physical culture (physie) and calisthenics.
Lyndal Irons (Australian) Fans 2015 From the series Physie Archival inkjet print 37 x 55cm Courtesy the artist
Lyndal Irons (Australian) Grooming Routine 2015 From the series Physie Archival inkjet print 37 x 55cm Courtesy the artist
Lyndal Irons (Australian) Junior National Repecharge 2015 From the series Physie Archival inkjet print 37 x 55cm Courtesy the artist
Lyndal Irons (Australian) Ideas for Photo Poses 2015 From the series Physie Archival inkjet print 37 x 55cm Courtesy the artist
Glenn Sloggett (Australian, b. 1964) Pawn shop 2018 C-type print 120 x 100cm Courtesy the artist
Glenn Sloggett has been exhibiting since the mid-90s. He won the prestigious Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award in 2008, and the inaugural John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for an Emerging Artist in 2001. He has held numerous solo exhibitions, including Cheaper and Deeper, a national touring show organised by the Australian Centre for Photography (2007). Sloggett’s work was featured on the ABC program The Art Life, and has been included in significant survey exhibitions of Australian art, including Australian Vernacular Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2014); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2013-2014); internationally touring Photographica Australis (2002–2004); and nationally touring New Australiana, Australian Centre for Photography (2001). His work is held in numerous private and public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria and Monash Gallery of Art.
Interested in failure as a mechanism, Glenn Sloggett’s series of medium format photograph made with his twin-lens Rolleiflex could almost have been taken on a single walk around the neighbourhood on a strange, sunlit day. Wryly infused with dark humour and intermittent text punctuations such as “ICE IS A BAD THING” and “DO NOT LEAVE CHILDREN IN CARS”, Sloggett ask us to look beneath the surface of his documentary-style images. Why are people leaving their children in their cars? What precarious situation has driven someone to graffiti “is a bad thing” on this sign?
Sloggett’s work is at times bleak, and at others sublime. Looking closely, a cat that appears to be peacefully sunbaking has sunken eyes, an innocuous rose bush was taken in a brothel carpark. dumped concrete on the sidewalk looks like it has been churned up from a Friday night on the town.
Glenn Sloggett (Australian, b. 1964) Industrial dumping 2019 C-type print 120 x 100cm Courtesy the artist
Glenn Sloggett (Australian, b. 1964) Dead cat 2019 C-type print 120 x 100cm Courtesy the artist
Glenn Sloggett (Australian, b. 1964) Brothel car park 2019 C-type print 120 x 100 cm Courtesy the artist
Michelle Tran (Australian, b. 1985) Sachi 2019 Archival inkjet print 79 x 54cm Courtesy the artist and Hart & Co., Melbourne
Michelle Tran (Australian, b. 1985) Madison Shauna 2019 Archival inkjet print 79 x 54cm Courtesy the artist and Hart & Co., Melbourne
Michelle Tran (Australian, b. 1985) Sachi In Shadow 2019 Archival inkjet print 79 x 54cm Courtesy the artist and Hart & Co., Melbourne
Installation views of the exhibition Why Make Pictures? at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne showing the work of David Wadelton and his series Living Rooms (top), Milk Bars (middle) and Small business (bottom)
David Wadelton is a Melbourne-based painter and photographer who has documented the changing face of Melbourne’s Northern suburbs since 1975. Wadelton has held over 20 solo exhibitions, including three career surveys: Pictorial Knowledge, Geelong Art Gallery (1998); Icons Of Suburbia, McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin (2011) and The Northcote Hysterical Society, Bundoora Homestead Gallery (2015). Wadelton’s work has been included in Vision In Disbelief, 4th Biennale of Sydney (1982); Australian Culture Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2004); Far-Famed City of Melbourne, Ian Potter Museum of Art (2013); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2014); Crossing paths with Vivian Maier, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2014); The Documentary Take, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2016); Romancing the Skull, Ballarat Art Gallery (2017) and Beyond boundaries – Discoveries in contemporary photography, Aperture Gallery, New York (2019).
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Coburg 2018 From the series Living Rooms Courtesy the artist
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Reservoir 2017-2019 From the series Living Rooms Courtesy the artist
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Pascoe Vale South 2018 From the series Living Rooms Courtesy the artist
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Reservoir 2017 From the series Living Rooms Courtesy the artist
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Reservoir 2017 From the series Living Rooms Courtesy the artist
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn 2018 From the series Newsagents Courtesy the artist
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Broadway, Reservoir 2019 From the series Newsagents Courtesy the artist
David Wadelton (Australian, b. 1955) Watsonia Road, Watsonia 2016 From the series Newsagents Courtesy the artist
Sophie Gabrielle (Australian) Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat #5 2017-2019
This is the first posting on three strong exhibitions at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne… and my pick of the bunch.
I admire an artist who can tell a moving personal story using historic images. An artist who has the imagination, does the research, and works on the process to fulfil the conceptualisation of an idea… to tell that personal story in strong, emotive images that really engage the viewer. Sophie Gabrielle is one such artist.
Gabrielle moves these historic images into the present, and into contemporary relevance, through clear insight into the condition of their becoming. What I mean by that is, she knows her subject matter and she knows where she wants to go with the work. So much contemporary photography is so full of concept that the images are crap. They have no feeling, they have no emotion. Will they engage me a week down the track, or a month, or a year? Will they speak to me, will they reveal themselves to me over and over again? Probably not.
In these photographs Gabrielle combines sci-fi, Village of the Dammed photographs and images of botanicals (which are either medicinal or poisonous, a reflection of the alternate medicinal methods attributed to fighting cancer) with “traces” of her DNA, then re-photographing the image many times, and then degrading the emulsion of the negative in polluted water. In doing so, she pictures worlds in which people think that they are doing the right thing, only to later find that their world has been corrupted and has lost its moral certainty. In this case, Soviet era children blasted with ultraviolet light to cure vitamin D deficiency, or to rid them of freckles, inevitably leading to cancer down the track. The process is called heliotherapy, an archaic treatment for tuberculosis that involved UV light so the kids would produce vitamin D that would fight the bacteria. But as we now know in Australia, solarium and tanning beds have been banned because they significantly increase your risk of cancer.
And why would you want to cure someone of having freckles? Or to extrapolate further, for being left handed, or being gay, or having autism. To make them wear a yellow star or a pink triangle? According to the dictionary, a cure is a method or course of remedial treatment, as for disease. A means of correcting or relieving anything that is troublesome or detrimental. Troublesome or detrimental… or different!
Gabrielle describes Worry for the Fruit the Birds Won’t Eat as “an exploration into the world of the unseen through optics, chemical interactions, and the investigative processes used to photograph something invisible to the naked eye.” Cancer. The Big C. Death. Chemotherapy. Radiation treatment. Leukemia. Melanoma. On and on. Invisible but ever. Present. Here. Now. And then she shows us photographs that seek to dissolve, to dis-solve what is present – freckles, DNA, emulsion, reality – into light. To find an answer to, explanation for, or means of effectively dealing with (a problem or mystery). I’ll let you guess what that mystery might be.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Centre for Contemporary Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs to view a larger version of the image.
Installation views of the exhibition Sophie Gabrielle: Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Photographs: J. Forsyth
Through channelling her interest in psychology, science and perception, Sophie Gabrielle creates poetically arresting images that reflect the fragility of the human body, psyche and experience. Combining archival imagery from MRI scans, brain synaptic structures and science experiments from the 1930s and 1940s, Gabrielle creates haunting narratives that interweave the personal and clinical.
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat is a dreamy and deeply personal exploration of the artists’ experiences with cancer, presenting medicinal botanicals and photographic portraits, alongside archival images from obscure medical research catalogues. Photographed through plates of glass to catch minute particles of her own skin – images are overlaid with the artists’ own DNA – creating interwoven, abstract self-portraits.
“Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat is an exploration drawn from my experiences with cancer through optics and chemical interactions, and an investigative process to photograph that which is generally invisible to the naked eye.
This project started as a coping mechanism to address the impact cancer has had on my life over the past few years, after all the men in my family were diagnosed with stage four cancer. These works give a sense of the unsettled, fragile, daunting and overwhelming aspects that have culminated during this time in my life.”
~ Sophie Gabrielle, 2019
Biography
Sophie Gabrielle is a Melbourne based artist and curator working between analogue and digital photographic practices. Graduating from Photography Studies College in 2015, her work has been exhibited in Australia, Malaysia, New York, UK and Amsterdam. In 2018, Gabrielle was the first Australian chosen as a finalist for Foam Talent, Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam. In 2016, Gabrielle was a finalist for the Lensculture Emerging Talent Award.
Press release from the Centre for Contemporary Photography 21/09/2019
Sophie Gabrielle (Australian) Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat 2017-2019
Sophie Gabrielle (Australian) Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat #7 2017-2019
After discovering a number of her close family members were ill with the disease, she searched through physical and digital scientific archives connected to the various strains associated with each loved one. “I was interested in archives that were connected to my family’s own story of diagnosis, treatment, recovery and death,” she explains. The resulting images make up her body of work Worry for the Fruit the Birds Won’t Eat, which Gabrielle describes as “an exploration into the world of the unseen through optics, chemical interactions, and the investigative processes used to photograph something invisible to the naked eye.”
As Gabrielle worked through the archives, she also worked through her own personal trauma and confusion. “It was an all-consuming process, both physically and emotionally. The images I was most drawn to ran parallel to the events happening in the lives of my family members during that painful time.” Each archival discovery pointed Gabrielle in another direction, so that she eventually found major points of comparison across multiple sets of images from a variety of different sources. “My father’s diagnosis of stage four prostate cancer made me reflect on the surgical procedures in the images, and my grandfather’s diagnosis of lung cancer drew me to x-rays, especially after seeing the dark clustered patterns of abnormal cells in the imagery. Also, the collection of botanicals are either medicinal or poisonous – a reflection of the alternate medicinal methods attributed to fighting cancer.”
Upon selecting each archival image, Gabrielle used historical processes to involve her own photographic practice in the work. After leaving each image under a glass plate to collect floating particles of dust and hair, she re-photographed each piece multiple times, creating negatives that incorporate flecks of the environment’s natural disruptions. “There was something healing about getting lost within the process of creating these images, transforming their scientific purpose into something personal and poetic. I left them to collect dust in places that were significant to me and my family.”
After re-photographing the images, Gabrielle submerged her negatives in polluted water, allowing the emulsion’s degradation to further highlight the lyrical features of illness. “I actually did it while sitting on a jetty in Penang, Malaysia,” she explains. “I was thinking about the clear water that runs from taps, and how this re-enters nature to become ill and polluted. It was this unseen danger that intrigued me, and I wanted to incorporate that into the work. The microbes in the polluted water ate away at the film, leaving their own marks upon the negatives before I made the prints.”
This incorporation of intervention and decay into her photographic process soon became an integral part of Gabrielle’s own healing process, affording her a clear state of mind to work through a number of complex emotions.
It’s taken me more than a moment of reflection to write this text. The events are almost too close to write about my surrogate mother in Australia, my friend and fellow artist, Joycie. I can only write about the person I knew, not the time before I knew her – and so this will be a very personal reflection on one of the most incredible human beings that I have ever met.
Do not go gentle into that good night Rage, rage, against the dying of the light
Vale Joyce Evans.
Human, female, lover, mother, grandmother, wife, poet, publisher, writer, romantic, creative, humanist, universalist, spiritualist, bohemian, pioneer, gallery director, teacher, lecturer, collector, philanthropist, activist, artist, feminist, supporter of artists, Indigenous rights, civil rights, and the disenfranchised, exhibitor… and working photographer.
I met the force of nature that was Joyce Olga Evans (1929-2019) through a mutual friend, Alison Inglis, who knew of our love of photography. It was the start of an intense friendship that lasted just seven or eight years until Joycie, as I used to call her, passed away at Easter this year. Before she passed she knew that she had been awarded an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) for service to photography. This was a long overdue tribute to a pioneer and supporter of photography in Australia, one of the first women to be the director of an independent, commercial photography gallery in this country.
Joyce had an incredible passion for and knowledge about photography, whether it was historical Australian or world photographers and their prints from any era, or contemporary artists here and overseas. Her collection of both local and international photographs was almost unparalleled in private hands in this country. She had such a keen eye. When attending a local auction with her she purchased an original William Mortensen for next to nothing. Nobody else had recognised the power and presence of the image by this master artist.
This incisive vision translated into her work as an artist who was a working photographer. At heart, that’s what Joyce was – a working photographer and a storyteller. She believed in photography like photographers get photography… not like an academic or a theoretician, but like an avid fan, an enthusiast, a passionate collector, a teacher. Photography was an integral part of her life, her soul.
She said to me of being an artist, “If we can find out what we are… that is the artist. The core element of your being, and the core element of your enquiry as an artist remains the same. The concerns that you had when you started being an artist are with you until the end. If the core part of your life is the search for truth then that becomes a core part of your identity. It becomes embedded in your soul.”
In this sense, photography becomes something of you, more than just intention – it becomes your essence, your shape…. your physical shape, a tangible thing.
Photography and its spirit inhabited Joyce as Joyce lived in the world. To Joyce, photography was just as much about the world and creativity as it was about the image. The image was just a manifestation of spirit, something that you worked at, recognised, and captured for what it was and could be. As Minor White said, “There is always a dragon in the negative,” and a dragon, that symbol of power, strength, and good luck, lived inside Joyce (see my favourite photograph of her below) and in her work. Her photographs possessed a spiritual and psychological sensation of the place.
As she said, “Making photographs that are memorable requires more than just camera, light and a story. It requires a type of harmony, unity, and an indefinable something, which I can best explain as becoming emotionally attached to the subject so that the images almost make themselves.”
Joyce’s commitment to photography was legendary. She was in it for the long haul.
I was always amazed when we were out in public, going to the exhibitions that we loved to visit, that she would always be taking photographs. Whenever she saw something that interested her out would come her beloved iPhone or digital camera, and she would talk to strangers and their children and take their photos. She was a totally open spirit and had no fear about the path she took. People embraced her, talked to her, responded to her energy and spirit. I remember travelling up to Sydney with her to see an exhibition of her favourite photographer, “Our Julia”, Julia Margaret Cameron at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and just observing that sparkle in her eyes, that unparalleled love that transcends all our pasts and futures in the simple moment of being and looking at these photographs.
Joyce was uncompromising. If she thought you were being a fuckwit she told you so in no uncertain terms. But she was a rock on which I came to depend. As someone said of her, “Joyce wasn’t into niceties and didn’t take any shit from anyone! I hope I grow up to be as tough as her. She was a visionary.” She really did not stand fools gladly (thank god), and had little truck for fine art photographers who didn’t understand the medium, its history or their small place within the grand scheme of things. As the playwright Edward Albee commented at the American painter Lee Krasner’s memorial at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in both her life and her work, ‘… she looked you straight in the eye, and you dared not flinch’. It was the same with Joycie. She could see deep inside you to the core of your being.
Joyce loved helping people. She was so generous of her time and energy, of her wisdom and knowledge. Some of the best times of my life were spent in her kitchen talking about art, love and life. People were drawn to her. As Julie Moss has observed, she was “such a strong, creative and vibrant role model for so many female photographers” in a sea of male prejudice and ambivalence. What Joyce did not do is live on her memories… she was ever active, ever inquiring. She stood up for what she believed. A couple of weeks before she passed she said to me, “I don’t want to go yet, I still have so much that I want to do.” She was still raging against the dying of the light, not going gently into that good night.
But what she achieved in her truly remarkable life is a testament to her unquenchable spirit. In a journey full of determination, intelligence, exploration and love she achieved so much and touched so many. I miss her terribly.
I am the (sublime) space where I am, that surrounds me with countless presences.
This photograph, showing students smoking and drinking outside the pub at Largs Bay, was published in an Adelaide newspaper. At the time this was considered to be immoral behaviour. Note the man in the background with his fingers up in a derogatory manner.
The names of the three women who have been identified are from left to right: Joyce Evans (nee Zerfas) photographer, Jill Warwick, deceased, (producer of TV programme “It Could Be You”) Val Groves, psychologist. I have been unable to identify the men. ~ Joyce Evans
“Making photographs that are memorable requires more than just camera, light and a story. It requires a type of harmony, unity, and an indefinable something, which I can best explain as becoming emotionally attached to the subject so that the images almost make themselves.”
Joyce Evans
“Photography for me is a type of communion with my subject. Like everybody else I take photographs which have little meaning. But sometimes I sense an underlying value in the land, a group of people, a location, and then I make photograph, which is satisfying to myself. I think I would like to call that the way in which the quintessential spirit of what I am seeing has stirred me to need to make a photograph of it.
To me, I am alive, and my life and the life of everything in the world is connected. For me it is that universality that is the basis of my idea of the spiritual. I feel uncomfortable about formal organised religion and am perhaps more than a humanist, a universalist.”
Joyce Evans
“Aesthetically, I enjoy the camera’s capacity to record relationships and detail, which my subconscious may perceive, but I may not fully see.
My appreciation of aesthetics goes back to when I studied painting with John Olsen at the Bakery Art School, Sydney in 1967-1968. Olsen made me aware of the power of the edge of the image to relate to what was not shown in the image. My formal education was further enhanced when I did a degree in fine arts at Sydney University 1969-1971. There, Dr Anton Wilhelm taught me how to read an image. My understanding of the limits and potentials of two-dimensional imagery was expounded by Professor Bernard Smith.
Informally, my knowledge of photography and my practice was refined through formative conversations with a wide range of great photographers such as Andre Kertesz, Max Dupain, Ansel Adams and Bill Henson, Julie Millowick and Linda Connor.
Each of these relationships helped me to clarify my photographic position, which is based on a search for the essence of a subject.”
Joyce Evans
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Rain Dreaming, Yuendumu, NT 2005
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Rain Dreaming, Yuendumu, NT 2005
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Rain Dreaming, Yuendumu, NT 2005
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Rain Dreaming, Yuendumu, NT 2005
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Rain Dreaming, Yuendumu, NT 2005
Joyce Evans short biography
Joyce Olga Evans is well known in Australian photography. In 1976 Joyce opened Church Street Photographic Centre, a pioneer Australian commercial gallery devoted to Photography. It showcased the best of Australian and International photographers. Joyce exhibited works by Frank Hurley, Imogen Cunningham, Bill Henson, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julia Margret Cameron, Max Dupain and many other renowned photographers – she says that they were her teachers.
Passionately dedicated to photography, she has had many solo exhibitions of both her landscapes (she photographed in the Dandenongs and Mt Martha regions in the outer Melbourne; along the Hume Highway; in the Central Desert and outback Australia, most notably Oodnadatta, Oodlawirra, Menindee, and Lake Mungo; vineyards and rural villages in the South of France; the old Jewish cemetery in the centre of Prague; and numerous others) and her portraits (she photographed Australian intelligentsia and personalities, including Marianne Baillieu; Barbara Blackman; Baron Avid von Blumenthal; Tim Burstall; Dur-e Dara; Robert Dessaix; Germaine Greer; Elena Kats-Chernin; Joan Kerr; Ellen Koshland; David Malouf; Dame Elisabeth Murdoch; Lin Onus; Jill Reichstein; Chris Wallace-Crabbe; and innumerable others) throughout Australia and Europe.
Joyce has spent two decades documenting Australia for the National Library of Australia, who are acquiring her life’s work for their permanent collection. When this acquisition is complete the Library will hold over 30,000 analogue images and 80,000 digital files. Also included are diaries and other relevant documents and files. Much of this work is destined for display on Trove, the library’s online viewing resource. She has exhibited extensively in Australia and in France and her photographs are held in many major collections. Joyce has been published widely. Her monograph Only One Kilometre was published in 2003 by Lothian Press. It detailed her many years of studying the unique qualities of the Balcombe Estuary Reserve, at Mount Martha as well as poems and articles by distinguished writers. Her work is held in many collections both locally and internationally.
Joyce Evans also plays an important educational role in Australian photography. She taught history of photography at Melbourne’s RMIT University; appointed inaugural assistant director of Waverley City Gallery (now Monash Gallery of Art), 1990-1991, the first municipal public collection in Melbourne to specialise in photography; established and inaugurated a course on the History of Photography and appointed Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, 1997-2010.
Evans worked as an honorary photographer for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Central Australia and for over ten years documented Australian country towns and events for the National Library of Australia. Important publications on Joyce Evans include a monograph Only One Kilometre (Melbourne: Lothian Press, 2003), and exhibition catalogues with essays by Alison Inglis, Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, Tim Page, Victoria Hammond, and many others.
Anonymous text from the Joyce Evans Photographer website Nd [Online] Cited 16th June 2019. No longer available online
William Yang (Australian, b. 1943) Marcus and Joyce 2018
Being two photographers, the only photograph of Joyce and Marcus together, taken by another photographer William Yang.
Michael Silver (Australian) Joyce Evans 2013
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Joyce Evans standing in front of Max Dupain’s ‘Sunbaker’ 1937 2018
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Joyce and the dragon 2016
Joyce standing in front of the fireplace at Jacques Reymond’s restaurant for the birthday of her friend Marcus Bunyan. In Chinese mythology the dragon traditionally symbolises potent and auspicious powers and also is a symbol of power, strength, and good luck for people who are worthy of it.
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Beatrice 1866 Albumen silver print
Where: Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill When: Monday 20th May 2019, 6-9pm
Joyce Evans photographer celebration… I hope many of you can attend.
A celebration of Joyce and her contribution to art, photography, women’s status, mentorship and philanthropy. At least 30 of her prints will be displayed. Celebrants will talk and recall in their own words experiences with Joyce and her passions. The event will be recorded and made available for non-attendees. Snacks and drinks will be available.
A truly remarkable human being.
Marcus
If we can find out what we are… that is the artist. This goes to the core element of your being, and the core element of your enquiry remains the same.
If the core part of your life is the search for the truth then that becomes a core part of your identity for the rest of your life. It becomes embedded in your soul.
Joyce Evans
Michael Silver (Australian) Joyce Evans Nd
Monash Gallery of Art 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 Australia Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500
part of the CLIMARTE Festival: ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2019
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Morning mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, Tasmania 1980 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
A little too perfect
A few ideas that struck me at this exhibition.
1/ The large format 4 x 5″ colour transparencies must be near absolute perfect exposures…. everything is there in the exposure. It’s as though the transparency is the finished print. Everything that Dombrovskis wanted to capture, he did. He was a perfectionist.
His previsualisation of the scene was exceptional. He knew what he wanted to capture, he was so focused on it. The beauty is there, but how do you make it sing? Only in a few images was I swept off my feet.
2/ His use of ‘near far’ is noticeable, taken from Ansel Adams most likely. In photographs like Morning light on Little Horn (1995), Cushion plants, Mount Anne (1984) and Mount Geryon from the Labyrinth (1986) your eye is led from the detailed foreground to the magnificent vista beyond.
3/ In photographs such as Lichen on dead eucalypt, Lake Dixon (1979) and Rock platform, Tarkine Wilderness (1995) the subject seems to dissolve into Abstract Expressionist compositions.
4/ The wall colours of the exhibition utterly failed the work, especially with the line colour change running through the image.
5/ I never really felt the “sublime” nature of the Tasmanian wilderness in these photographs. I wanted to be transported to the place that was pictured but it never happened.
6/ I suspect this has to do with a/ the perfection of the transparency b/ the size at which these contemporary photographs were printed, and c/ the almost scientific, analytical nature of the contemporary printing.
 I had no sense or feeling for place or “atmosphere” that emanates from a truly great photograph. These large prints were wholly disappointing in that regard. They were nearly all printed at the same size, too big, with the same monotonous clarity of composition and balancing of print, one to the other. Almost a clinical printing with too much colour saturation with no room for chaos or vibration of energy.
When printing, I was taught to rack the enlarger up and down to find when the print becomes like a jewel. This is a felt response to the negative, and an image can have several positions or print sizes when this may occur. To print the bulk of these digital images at the same size goes against this very intuitive response to the work.
There are so many moves that can be justified by an objective argument when making a fine art print – but which still don’t add up when you view the whole. Oh! to see five vintage prints in this exhibition, to see how Dombrovsksi would have printed them himself.
I really wanted to like these photographs but when you try and force something, it ain’t ever going to happen.
‘When you go out there, you don’t get away from it all. You get back to it all. You come home to what’s important. You come home to yourself.’
Peter Dombrovskis
‘… we moved in a glittering, sun-splashed world where living assumed a clarity and intensity unknown in ordinary city-bound existence. Our bodies became attuned to rock and rapid, our senses easily absorbed the roar of white-water, the silent greens of the rainforest. My steadily growing skill at negotiating obstacles bolstered my self-confidence and eased the shyness of adolescence.’
Peter Dombrovskis in Jane Cadzow, ‘A lasting image’, Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend magazine, 22 March 1997
‘An ethic of the land is needed because the remaining wilderness, that which makes this island truly unique, is threatened by commercial exploitation that will destroy its value to future generations. Machines are already shattering the silence of ages, invading the last forests and damming and drowning the wild rivers and gorges.’
‘We must try to retain as much as possible of what still remains of the unique, rare and beautiful. Is there any reason why … the ideal of beauty could not become an accepted goal of national policy? Is there any reason why Tasmania should not be more beautiful on the day we leave it than on the day we came? … if we can accept the role of steward and depart from the role of conqueror; if we can accept the view that man and nature are inseparable parts of the unified whole, then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a dull, uniform and largely artificial world.’
Olegas Truchanas in Max Angus, ‘The world of Olegas Truchanas’ (Olegas Truchanas Publication Committee, Hobart 1975)
The photograph [at the top of the posting], Morning mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania (1979), is one of the most celebrated landscape photographs in Australian history. Commissioned by Bob Brown (later to become leader of the Greens Party), this image became synonymous with the successful campaign of the 1980s to prevent the damming of the Franklin River for hydro-electric development. It appeared on posters with the memorable yellow, triangular slogan ‘NO DAMS’ and showed Australians what would be lost under the waters of a dam should the hydroelectric scheme go ahead. Using his camera as a tool, Dombrovskis shared with society the riches that they would forgo if the environment was not protected.
The photograph below, Mount Geryon from the Labyrinth Cradle, Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania (1986) is an image that Bob Brown had in his office at a similarly large scale to provide an immediate and memorable talking point with visitors.
Many Australians encountered these images for the first time in prosaic settings: in a newspaper campaign advertisement, a diary used at work, a calendar on the side of the fridge, or a poster in a waiting room. Most of us will never visit the places he photographed, but into our ordinary everyday lives his images bring something of the beauty and the power of the wild places of Tasmania. Seldom in the history of photography has there been such a clear example of visual culture having such a political sway.
Exhibition label
Installation views of the opening of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Mount Geryon from the Labyrinth, Du Cane Range, Tasmania 1986 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Coastline north of the Pieman River, Tarkine wilderness, Tasmania (1992); at centre Kelp detail, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984); and at right Drying kelp at Sandy Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Kelp detail, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984); and at right Drying kelp at Sandy Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Drying kelp at Sandy Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania 1984 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, ‘Macrocystis’ and ‘Hormosira’ seaweed, Tasmania (1987); and at right Giant kelp, Hasselborough Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Douglas Gorge, Douglas-Apsley National Park, Tasmania (1989); and at right, Waterfall Valley, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania (1990) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation detail of Peter Dombrovskis’ photograph Waterfall Valley, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania (1990) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Lichen on dead eucalypt, Lake Dixon, Tasmania (1979); and at right, Rock platform, Tarkine Wilderness, Tasmania (1995) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation detail of Peter Dombrovskis’ photograph Lichen on dead eucalypt, Lake Dixon, Tasmania (1979) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation detail of Peter Dombrovskis’ photograph Rock platform, Tarkine Wilderness, Tasmania (1995) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (1945-1996) was one of the world’s foremost wilderness photographers. His powerful, reflective and deeply personal images of the unique Tasmanian wilderness had a lasting impact, changing the way Australians think about their environment by making remote nature accessible through images.
Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild draws together a vast sweep of nearly 80 images, shown for the first time in Victoria. The exhibition was initially developed by the National Library of Australia from their comprehensive collection of Dombrovskis’s work.
Through their use in environmental campaigns, Dombrovskis’s images have become shorthand for environmental concerns in Australia. Particularly memorable was the image Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend that Bob Brown (later to become Leader of the Greens Party) used in the ‘No Dams’ campaign to save the Franklin River.
Seldom in the history of photography has there been as clear an example of visual culture bearing such political sway and prompting such passion in communities.
‘Dombrovskis’s ability to capture the sublime beauty of the Tasmanian wilderness led to his work becoming synonymous with the Tasmanian Wilderness conservation movement. Dombrovskis once commented “photography is, quite simply, a means of communicating my concern for the beauty of the Earth.” His work was his voice and it powerfully evoked his passion for the environment which inspired the nation to work for its protection. MGA is thrilled to have an opportunity to showcase Dombrovskis’s practice to Victorian audiences, and to inspire a new generation to embrace his unique vision and celebrate his legacy.’ ~ Anouska Phizacklea, MGA Director
This exhibition was initially developed by the National Library of Australia, Canberra. In 2007, the Library acquired over 3000 colour transparencies that make up the Dombrovskis archive. The photographs on display here, which are also part of the Library’s Pictures Collection, were printed by Les Walkling on Canson Platine Fibre Rag paper by an Epson SureColor P20070.
Monash Gallery of Art and the National Library of Australia would like to acknowledge Peter’s widow, Liz Dombrovskis, and thank her for her guidance and support for this project.
Press release from the Monash Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 13/03/2019
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Cushion plant mosaic, Tasmania (1980); at middle, Macquarie Island cabbage at Finch Creek, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984); and at right, Web and dew, Waterfall Valley, Tasmania (1985) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Myrtle tree in rainforest at Mount Anne, Southwest National Park, Tasmania (1984) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Myrtle tree in rainforest at Mount Anne, Southwest National Park, Tasmania 1984 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Icicles near Big Bend, Mount Wellington, Tasmania (1992); at middle, Ice patterns on the Labyrinth, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1986); and at right, Ice patterns, Lake Elysia, Du Cane Range, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1987) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Morning light on Little Horn, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania (1995) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Morning light on Little Horn, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania 1995 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Snow gum on the Labyrinth, Du Cane Range, Tasmania (1988); and at right Shore lichen on granite, east Freycinet, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania (1989) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation detail of Peter Dombrovskis’ photograph Shore lichen on granite, east Freycinet, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania (1989) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Ancient ‘Nothofagus gunnil’, Cradle Mountain, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1986) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill with, at right, Polished quartzite above Irenabyss, Franklin River, Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, Tasmania (1979) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation detail of Peter Dombrovskis’ photograph Polished quartzite above Irenabyss, Franklin River, Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, Tasmania (1979) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Pencil pine at Pool of Siloam, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania 1982 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing, at middle left, The rocking stone, south Mount Wellington, Tasmania (1995); and at right, Dolerite tors on Mount Wellington plateau, Hobart, Tasmania (1990) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing, at left, The rocking stone, south Mount Wellington, Tasmania (1995); and at right, Dolerite tors on Mount Wellington plateau, Hobart, Tasmania (1990) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Dolerite tors on Mount Wellington plateau, Hobart, Tasmania (1990) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) The rocking stone, south Mount Wellington, Tasmania 1995 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Dolerite tors on Mount Wellington plateau, Hobart, Tasmania 1990 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing, at left, Painted cliffs, Maria Island National Park, Tasmania (1991); and at right, Painted cliffs, Maria Island, Tasmania (1991) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill with, at left, Beach detail with shells, Louisa Bay, Southwest National Park, Tasmania (1993); at middle, Abalone shell at New Habour, southwest Tasmania (1988); and at right, Native pigface, Tarkine Wilderness, Tasmania (1995) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Rock and rapid below Pine Camp, Franklin River, Tasmania (1979) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Rock and rapid below Pine Camp, Franklin River, Tasmania 1979 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation views of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Snow on pencil pine, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1990); and at right, Fruiting lichen and ice, the Labyrinth, Du Cane Range, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1987) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Cradle Mountain from Hounslow Heath, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1982); at middle, Snow-encrusted shrubbery, Central Highlands, Tasmania (1990); and at right, Icicles on fire-killed snow gums, south of Mount Wellington, Tasmania (1990) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Dunes and granite near Interview River, Tarkine Wilderness, Tasmania (1990) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis
Peter Herbert Dombrovskis was born in a World War II refugee camp in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1945 to Latvian parents. His father, Karl, went missing at the end of the war and in 1950 his mother, Adele, moved the pair of them to Hobart, Tasmania; as far from the war-torn Europe and the war as imaginable. Adele was a keen naturalist and encouraged Peter’s photography, buying him a 35mm Zeiss camera to experiment with when he was just six.
In the early 1970s, Dombrovskis established a working pattern of making five or six two-week journeys into the wilds of Tasmania each year. His first calendar was produced in 1972, his first diary in 1976 and his first book The quiet land in 1977. He set up his own publication company, West Wind Press, in 1977. His second wife Liz, continued to run West Wind Press, producing calendars, books and diaries, until 2009. In 1996, while hiking and photographing near Mount Hayes in south-west Tasmania’s Western Arthur Range, Dombrovskis suffered a heart attack and died. He was 51 years old.
The sublime
The photographs of Dombrovskis carry on a rich tradition of depicting the wild places of Tasmania as Romantic landscapes. Romanticism was a cultural movement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries that emphasised the senses, emotion and spontaneity at the expense of order, rationality and intellect. Particularly influential was the Romantic idea of the sublime. Unlike the picturesque landscape, which was attractive and charming but tame and unthreatening, the sublime landscape dramatises nature’s overwhelming power and grandeur. It shows the natural world untouched and uncompromised by human intervention, provoking feelings of awe, even fear, and reminding the viewer that wilderness is a valuable resource to respect, not exploit. Dombrovskis’s images demonstrate nature’s powerful splendour but they also have a quiet, reflective quality that draws the viewer into an intimate conversation with the natural world. This is, perhaps, achieved through his habit of including the unexpected and sensitive details within a landscape, as well as the marvellous and dramatic vistas. Dombrovskis was passionate about the vast and rugged beauty of his adopted home, but also curious about nature, seeing it as both mysterious and welcoming.
Influences
The photographer most often connected with Dombrovskis is Olegas Truchanas. The two men shared backgrounds as refugees from war-torn Central Europe. Together the two would explore Tasmania, marvelling at and photographing the beauty of their natural surroundings. They were adventurers and photographers in equal measures and both died in pursuit of these passions. It was Truchanas who introduced Peter to the political nature of landscape photography. In the 1960s, he would stage slide-shows in the Hobart City Hall, pairing his images with classical music and speaking about society’s responsibility for the natural planet. Many of Truchanas’s slides were lost in a bushfire that took his home in 1967, and it was in 1972, when he was out rebuilding his archive of images of the south-west that he drowned in the Gordon River. It was Peter who found Truchanas’s body in the water after days of searching.
“I like to think I’m carrying on where Olegas left off, in my own way, finishing the work that he started.”
Dombrovskis’s photographic style was also influenced by the great American landscape photographers:
“I enjoy Ansel Adams for his finely controlled and logical composition; Edward Weston for his intense identification with subject matter; Brett Weston for his strikingly graphic structural forms; Paul Caponigro for images that intimate the mysterious and the unknowable; and Eliot Porter for compositional subtlety and delicate colour harmony.”
Legacy
Dombrovskis’s contribution to the environmental movement is profound but his technical ability and artistry as a photographer are equally celebrated. In February 2003, he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, an honour afforded to only 76 other innovators in the art form’s history. He is the only Australian to be honoured in this way and sits alongside those who influenced him, such as Ansel Adams and Edward and Brett Weston and Eliot Porter. Dombrovskis’s work has been acquired by several of Australia’s major cultural institutions and is part of the collections of the National Library of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Monash Gallery of Art.
Equipment
Dombrovskis’s preferred camera was the Linhof Master Technika. Requiring 4 x 5 inch film, almost 16 times larger than that used in a standard 35mm camera, the Linhof was heavy and cumbersome, forcing Dombrovskis to take more care and time in setting up his shots and making each of these images the result of physical and mental endurance, as well as involved decision-making.
“… because sheet film is expensive and loading it is slow and tedious, I seldom take more than one exposure of each subject. This occasionally leads to bitter regret when I misjudge exposure after spending, perhaps, an hour on a single image.”
Smaller 35mm or contemporary digital cameras would have allowed Dombrovskis ease of use and immediacy, but this would have come at the expense of the extraordinary detail he could achieve with his Linhof. When walking for a week in the wilderness, Dombrovskis carried the required supplies, as well as the camera and around 50 sheets of film; a heavy pack in rugged terrain.
Tasmania
“I took photographs for the simple pleasure of recording objects and places that were important to me, and because the discipline of photography increased my awareness of Tasmania’s beauty and made me appreciate more clearly the value of its wilderness.”
The work of Dombrovskis helped to change perceptions of the Tasmanian wilderness. In 1982 the area that he photographed was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. His photograph Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania (1979), which is located at the beginning of this exhibition, was integral to the successful campaign to prevent the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission damming the Gordon and Franklin rivers.
Dombrovskis’s photographs showed Australians what would be lost under the waters of a dam should the hydroelectric scheme go ahead, and many credit this image as helping to sway the Federal election in favour of Bob Hawke’s Australian Labor Party, which promised to save the Franklin River. It is rare and noteworthy that a photograph might carry such social and political sway.
Exhibition label text
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing, at right, Rock lichen (Crustose lichen), Lake Rodway, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania (1981) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Rock lichen (Crustose lichen), Lake Rodway, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania 1981 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Bark of snow gum, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1987); and right, Red phase of deciduous beech, ‘Nothofagus gunnii’, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania (1988) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Red phase of deciduous beech, ‘Nothofagus gunnii’, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania 1988 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation views of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Frost on snow berry (Gaultheria hispida) leaves, Milles Track, Mount Wellington, Tasmania, June 1990 1990 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation views of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Limestone pinnacles on Mount Api, Sarawak, Borneo (1985); and at right, Reflections in mist, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania (1994) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Limestone pinnacles on Mount Api, Sarawak, Borneo (1985) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Limestone pinnacles on Mount Api, Sarawak, Borneo 1985 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Reflection pool, Walls of Jerusalem National Park,Tasmania (1990); and at right, Morning mist in myrtle forest, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania (1981) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Lake Oberon, Western Arthur Range, Southwest National Park, Tasmania 1988 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Lake Oberon, Western Arthur Range, southwest Tasmania (1988); and at right, Richea scoparia in bloom below Halls Buttress, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania (1992) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Richea scoparia in bloom below Halls Buttress, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania 1992 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Peter Dombrovskis (Australian born Germany, 1945-1996) Cushion plants, Mount Anne, Southwest National Park, Tasmania 1984 Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Monash Gallery of Art 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 Australia Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500
Exhibition dates: 8th November, 2018 – 22nd April, 2019
Curator: Jo Gilmour
The Photographic Society of Victoria, Melbourne Thomas Pearce (age 18 in 1878) c. 1878 Albumen paper carte de visite Support: 10.2 x 6.5cm Image: 9.1 x 5.6cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2010
A friend of mine is really ill at the moment in hospital. At 87 years old, she is a fiercely independent woman, possessing amazing intelligence and insight, a wicked sense of humour, stubborn, opinionated, passionate… and one of the most incredible human beings I have met during my life. If I had not met her, my life would have been so much poorer. It is a privilege to know her.
These Australian cartes des visite and cabinet cards give small insight into now largely forgotten lives, of both photographer and sitter. If only for a brief instant, we can pull back the curtain of time and enquire into their lives and existence. In a small way, we can reanimate their earthly spirit.
“Each photograph is like a miniature world of its own with an incredible story embedded in it. The poses, the props and the fashions throw an intriguing light onto the world of the nineteenth-century studio, while the stories of the photographers and their subjects combine to create a rich and vivid archive of Australian society at a precise moment in time. Rich or poor, male or female, famous or infamous, powerful or anonymous: everyone was captured in these tiny photographs.”
It is such a pity that we have to loose the knowledge that age brings, the powerful sages full of wisdom that could stop the human race repeating the mistakes of the past over and over again.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. What is unsaid in these stories and images, is that most riches are built on the back of oppression, built on the bones of the Indigenous people of Australia. Rich whites, buying up land, pastoralists, sending their children to school in the Old Country… just because they can.
Many thankx to the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All text unless otherwise noted from the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The Photographic Society of Victoria, Melbourne Thomas Pearce (age 18 in 1878) (detail) c. 1878 Albumen paper carte de visite Support: 10.2 x 6.5cm Image: 9.1 x 5.6cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2010
Thomas Pearce (c. 1860-1909) was a young apprentice on board the English merchant vessel the Loch Ard, which departed chilly Gravesend, England, for warmer climes in Australia in March 1878. There were 37 crew and sixteen passengers aboard. In stormy weather on 1 June 1878, just days from completing the three-month voyage, the captain of the magnificent iron-hulled clipper mistakenly thought the ship was 50 miles from the coastline when she was dashed by heavy surf onto the rocks of Muttonbird Island. Only two survived the wreckage: eighteen-year-old Pearce and eighteen-year-old Irish emigrant, Eva Carmichael. Supported by the upturned hull of a lifeboat, Pearce was washed ashore in a small cove, now known as Loch Ard Gorge. When he heard Eva Carmichael’s cries and saw her clinging to wreckage, ‘he at once divested himself of his unnecessary clothing, plunged in the sea, swan out to her, and brought her safely to the beach’. Lauded for his brave and gallant act, Pearce was presented with a valuable gold watch and chain by governor George Ferguson Bowen as a ‘slight token of the respect and admiration in which your noble conduct is held by all classes in this colony’. He was also presented with the first gold medal issued by the Royal Humane Society of Victoria. Popular sentiment was for a permanent union; but Eva returned to Ireland having lost her parents and siblings in the wreck. Pearce became a ship’s captain. According to an ‘interview’ published in the Argus in 1934, Carmichael returned Pearce’s favour some years later when, ‘living on the Irish coast’, she and her husband Captain Townsend were called on to help survivors from wrecks and that ‘on one occasion who should fall into her care but Tom Pearce!’.
As sole survivors of the wreck, Tom Pearce and Eva Carmichael experienced a period of celebrity during which the sensational story of the Loch Ard created much fodder for newspapers. The 6 July issue of the Australasian Sketcher featured wood engravings of the scene of the sinking, an engraved portrait of Eva, ‘drawn from life’, and one of Tom based on this carte de visite, which was captioned as being ‘from a photograph by Mr Burman’. There were four photographers named Burman in Melbourne in 1878: brothers Frederick, William and Arthur Burman, and their father, William Insull Burman, all of whom took photographs of Pearce and Carmichael. The Burmans were among the photographers later contracted to produce photographs relating to Ned Kelly’s activities, and many souvenir photos of him, his gang, his captors and the Glenrowan incident bear the Burman stamp. The Photographic Society of Victoria was formed in 1876 to ‘bring photographers together in a friendly spirit, in order to advance the art and science of photography in the colony’. At the time of the first annual meeting on 9 March 1877 there were 61 members, five whom were ladies. Members included well-known Melbourne photographers Charles Hewitt and Charles Nettleton as well as Joseph Turner of Geelong.
The Photographic Society of Victoria was formed in 1876 to ‘bring photographers together in a friendly spirit, in order to advance the art and science of photography in the colony, without any attempt at binding or dictating to members any special trading rules, such as charges for photographs or hours or days for closing or opening their respective establishments.’ At the time of the first annual meeting on 9 March 1877 there were 61 members, five whom were ladies. Members included well-known Melbourne photographers George William Perry, William Hall, Charles Hewitt, Charles Nettleton, and David Wood as well as Joseph Turner of Geelong.
Thomas Pearce (1860-1909)
Thomas Pearce (1860?-1909) was an apprentice on the English merchant vessel the Loch Ard, which embarked for Victoria in March 1878 carrying 37 crew and 16 passengers, many from the Carmichael family. In stormy weather on 1 June 1878, just days from completing the three-month voyage, the Loch Ard wrecked against Muttonbird Island. Supported by an upturned lifeboat, the teenaged Pearce was washed ashore in a small bay, now known as Loch Ard Gorge; but when he spotted eighteen-year-old Eva Carmichael clinging to wreckage in the ocean, he swam out and struggled back to shore with her. As sole survivors of the wreck, Tom Pearce and Eva Carmichael became celebrities and posed for a number of Melbourne photographers after their recuperation. Pearce was presented with the first gold medal of the Royal Humane Society of Victoria. Popular sentiment was for a permanent union; but Eva returned to Ireland, and Pearce became a ship’s captain. Several drowned members of Eva’s family are buried in a clifftop cemetery above Loch Ard Gorge. A porcelain figure of a peacock, made by English pottery Minton, was washed up from the wreck intact. Now on display at Warrnambool’s Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum, the ‘Loch Ard Peacock’ is Australia’s most valuable shipwreck artefact, valued at $4 million.
Thomas Foster Chuck (Australian born London, 1826-1898) The Burke and Wills Monument 1869 Albumen paper photograph on carte de visite Support: 10.1 x 6.4cm Image: 9.3 x 6.2cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2001
From its outset, the Victorian Exploring Expedition (later renamed the Burke and Wills Expedition) provided much material for artists. William Strutt, for example, made portraits of expedition members and depictions of its preparations at Royal Park, while Burke and Wills both sat for the Melbourne photographer Thomas Adams Hill shortly before their departure in August 1860. Their deaths less than a year later, however, generated a plethora of portraits in a variety of formats. Sculptor Charles Summers (1825-1878) created waxworks of Burke and Wills soon after news of their lamentable deaths became known and was subsequently awarded the commission to create their official memorial. The monument was installed at the intersection of Collins and Russell Streets in 1865 and was the largest bronze casting carried out in Australia to that date. Thomas Foster Chuck, photographer and entrepreneur, also sought to cash in on the epic failure of the expedition. In early 1862, he and several others – including artist William Pitt, a scene painter for George Selth Coppin’s Theatre Royal – devised a ‘Grand Moving Diorama’ which toured south-eastern Australia in 1862 and 1863. Based on first-hand accounts and sketches by Strutt and others, the diorama consisted of sixteen painted scenes – one of which featured ‘Novel and Dioramic Automaton Effects’ in the form of mechanical camels ‘ and was billed as ‘the most interesting and superior Entertainment ever exhibited in Australia’.
Thomas Foster Chuck had studios in Melbourne and Daylesford from the mid-1860s and exhibited examples of his work at the Intercolonial Exhibition in 1866. In Melbourne, he traded as the ‘London Portrait Gallery’ from this address on Collins Street and later from the Royal Arcade on Bourke Street. In 1870, he commenced work on his mammoth Historical Picture of The Explorers and Early Colonists of Victoria, a photographic mosaic of over 700 individual portraits. It was completed in 1872 and was something of a money-spinner for Chuck, who sold individual cartes de visite of the sitters as well as prints of the composite image. A selection of Chuck’s portraits received an honourable mention in the photographic section of the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition of 1873, and were awarded a gold medal at the London International Exhibition in 1874. In 1876 he moved to Ballarat where he opened his ‘Gallery of Art’ and continued to produce various types of photographic works, including hand-coloured ‘chromatypes’ (he was one of several photographers who claimed to have invented this process) and his much-admired composite portraits.
Thomas Foster Chuck (Australian, 1826-1898)
Thomas Foster Chuck (1826-1898), photographer and entrepreneur, was born in London and arrived in Victoria in 1861. The following year he produced and toured a ‘Grand Moving Diorama’ of dramatic painted scenes from the Burke and Wills expedition. By 1866 he had established a studio in Daylesford and examples of his work were shown at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition that year. Returning to Melbourne, he occupied a series of studios before opening the ‘London Portrait Gallery’ in rooms in the Royal Arcade on Bourke Street. There, in 1870, he commenced work on his mammoth Historical Picture of The Explorers and Early Colonists of Victoria, a photographic mosaic composed of over 700 individual photographs of prominent citizens. The work was finally completed in 1872 and is said to have been quite a boon for its creator, with Chuck selling individual cartes de visite and enlarged prints of many of the portraits as well as reduced prints of the composite image. Chuck submitted hand-coloured enlargements of his portraits of Justices Redmond Barry and Edward Eyre Williams to the Intercolonial Exhibition; in January 1873, the Argus reported that ‘Photographic portraits, finished in oil, watercolours, and mezzotints’, and an ‘untouched solar enlargement’ by Chuck received an honourable mention in the photographic section of the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition. Chuck forwarded the same works and a selection of smaller plain and coloured photographs to the London International Exhibition in 1874, winning a gold medal there. In 1872, he was awarded a contract to photograph the National Gallery’s collections; this resulted in eighteen photographs which were issued between 1873 and 1874 and published as Photographs of the Pictures in the National Gallery of Melbourne. In 1876 Chuck sold his Melbourne studio and moved to Ballarat where he opened his ‘Gallery of Art’ and continued to produce various types of photographic works, including hand-coloured ‘chromatypes’ (a process he claimed to have invented) and his much-admired composite portraits.
W & D Downey (William Downey (1829-1915) and Daniel Downey, British photographers) Lillie Langtry (age 32 in 1885) c. 1885 Albumen silver carte de visite Support: 10.3 x 6.2cm Image: 9.8 x 5.1cm National Portrait Gallery, Ca Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Malcolm Robertson inberran memory of William Thomas Robertson 2018
Lillie Langtry (American, 1853-1929)
Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) was born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton in Jersey in 1853. Aged nineteen she married the son of a Belfast shipowner with whom she moved to London. There, she rose to prominence as a professional beauty and style-setter whose acquaintances included various members of the social and cultural elite. She thus came within the orbit of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (known as Bertie to his family), Queen Victoria’s eldest son and heir to the throne, whose dalliance with the Irish actress Nellie Clifden in 1861 had already created scandal. His liaison with Langtry commenced in 1877 and lasted three years. It was an open secret, generating notoriety and cachet for Langtry in equal measure. Around 1880 she began a relationship with Prince Louis of Battenberg (Louis Mountbatten), with whom she had a daughter. This precipitated the deterioration of her marriage which ended in 1881. Being without a conventional means of support she decided to earn a living as an actress and made her professional stage debut in London in December 1881. Capitalising on her beauty and reputation, she then formed her own theatre company with which she toured to the United States several times between 1882 and 1889. That year, having established independent wealth through investments in racehorses and real estate, she returned permanently to England. In 1899 she married the heir to an English baronetcy who was eighteen years her junior. She retired to Monaco after World War One and published her memoir The days I knew in 1925.
William Downey (1829-1915) and Daniel Downey, British photographers
Brothers William Downey (1829-1915) and Daniel Downey opened their first photographic studio in 1863 in Newcastle-on-Tyne. In 1872 the business expanded to London, William running the new studio in Belgravia while Daniel maintained the business in Newcastle. The firm became known for carte de visite and cabinet card portraits of celebrities and the aristocracy and is said to have been particularly favoured by Queen Victoria, whom they photographed on many occasions from the late 1860s until the 1890s. The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, was also a significant patron. W & D Downey’s 1868 carte-de-visite of his wife the Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra) piggy-backing her baby daughter Princess Louise was extraordinarily popular, selling some 300,000 copies. William’s son William Edward Downey (1855-1908) also became a photographer.
William H. Bardwell (Australian) Self portrait (age 34 in 1870) 1870 albumen silver carte de visite photograph Support: 10.6 x 6.3cm Image: 9.4 x 6.0cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2015
William H. Bardwell
Photographer William H. Bardwell (life dates unknown), worked at various studios in Ballarat from 1858 until 1895. In 1859, he was in partnership with Saul Solomon; they specialised in portraiture and providing photographs of the town from unusual vantage points, some of which were lithographed for The Ballarat Album (1859). Together, he and Solomon exhibited portraits at the 1862 Geelong Industrial Exhibition, where they received special commendation for their ‘sennotype’ process, a process consisting of two albumen prints, one waxed and one hand-coloured, mounted with glass plate. The two also exhibited their portraits in the 1863 Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute Exhibition. The same year, the Argus reported that Bardwell had captured the laying of the foundation stone of the Sturt Street Burke and Wills memorial from the roof of the Post Office. In the late 1860s he photographed a visiting troupe of Japanese gymnasts, and in 1871 he took photographs of Chang the Chinese Giant and his entourage. Bardwell exhibited photographs of Ballarat at the Intercolonial Exhibition in Sydney in 1870, offering prints at the substantial price of £6 each, and had a photographic panorama of Ballarat among his views of its buildings and streets in the Victorian section of the London International Exhibition of 1873. From his studio at 11 Royal Arcade, Melbourne, William Bardwell exhibited photographs at the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition 1888-1889. In this self-portrait we see Bardwell in standing pose, dressed in stately attire, his frock coat with lowered waistline and three-piece suit characteristic of the period. Supported by a chair and his walking cane, Bardwell projects a stately figure with his hat tidily atop his head.
In 1866, William Bardwell established the Royal Photographic Studio independently of Solomon, an advertisement in the Clunes Gazette announcing, ‘The studio is every way replete with suitable accommodation for the preparation of toilet and rooms are provided for both ladies and gentlemen. Mr Bardwell’s long and practical example will entitle him to the claim to the first position in Ballarat as a photographer’. Bardwell took advantage of his studio’s close proximity to the Theatre Royal, producing photographs for visiting theatre groups and operatic companies. Along with actresses and actors coming and going, Bardwell catered for the upper echelons of Ballarat society. Boasting the ‘best appointed Studio in the colonies’, one could imagine Bardwell’s studio was flooded with natural light, his darkroom in complete darkness for the meticulous preparation of plates, paper and photographic chemicals used to render surfaces sensitive to light. Bardwell went into partnership with John Beauchamp at Ballarat for some part of 1878, before relocating to open his studio in Melbourne later that year. Bardwell’s Royal Studios at Ballarat remained active throughout the 1880s under the operation of Mr Williams while William Bardwell remained in Melbourne.
Timothy Noble (Australian, active 1871-1888) Charles Blondin (age 50 in 1874) 1874 Albumen photograph on carte de visite Support: 10.2 x 6.2cm Image: 9.3 x 5.6cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2018
Charles Blondin (French, 1824-1897)
The famed nineteenth century French tightrope walker and aerial acrobat, Charles Blondin, born Jean Francoix Gravelet (1824-1897), was known for thrilling audiences world-wide with his acrobatic feats. The ‘crazy, bearded little Frenchman’ is said to have crossed Niagara Gorge on over 300 occasions, at first performing simple crossings then amazing onlookers with increasingly bizarre and challenging stunts. Encouraged by Australian entrepreneur and agent Harry (HP) Lyons, ‘The Great Blondin’ followed his North American tour with a visit to Australia in 1874, performing for enthralled onlookers in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. On 25 July he made his first appearance in Australia, thrilling over 3,500 onlookers when he crossed the Brisbane Botanic Gardens on a tightrope measuring 76 metres in length and suspended 24 metres above the ground. He first danced across the tightrope in knight’s armour before performing several acrobatic stunts including balancing on his head for ten seconds, cooking an omelette on a stove while drinking a glass of champagne, balancing on two legs of a wooden chair, and carrying his assistant, Mr Niaud, pick-a’-back from one end to the other. Blondin’s performance captivated the audience for one hour and 45 minutes, during which time he would consistently toy with the crowd, pretending to stumble and fall to heighten the drama. The Maryborough Chronicle reported that Blondin’s appearance ‘produced the curious effect known as bringing the heart into the mouth’. Blondin’s popularity in Australia was such that to ‘blond’ on the back of the fence was the ambition of every kiddie. He inspired at least five Australians to emulate his feats, the most famed being the funambulist and aeronautical balloonist, Henri L’Estrange, commonly known as ‘the Australian Blondin’.
Timothy Noble (Australian, active 1871-1888)
Photographer Timothy Noble worked from a number of addresses in Melbourne between 1871 and 1884 before relocating to Sydney. At the time of Charles Blondin’s visit to Melbourne in 1874, Noble’s studio was at 135 Bourke Street, not far from George Selth Coppin’s Theatre Royal. It was there that Blondin made his inaugural Victorian appearance, the Age advising readers on 20 October 1874 that ‘Chevalier Blondin, The Hero of Niagara’ would be visiting the Theatre the following evening, and advising that ‘Early application should be made for seats and tickets’. In early November the paper reported that ‘We have received from Mr. Noble, photographer, of Bourke-street, a very good likeness of M. Blondin, with all his honours. The medals shown in the photograph have quite a history attached to them. Among them is the order of her Catholic Majesty the Queen of Spain’. Blondin’s pose likewise suggests his courageous spirit, while the pair of binoculars at his side is perhaps an allusion to the means by which some witnessed his thrilling and spectacular performances. The State Library of Victoria has 30 of Noble’s photographs, including portraits of actresses Hattie Shepparde and Maggie Moore, and impresario J.C. Williamson.
About the exhibition
Drawn from the NPG’s burgeoning collection of cartes de visite, Carte-o-mania! celebrates the wit, style and substance of the pocket-sized portraits that were taken and collected like crazy in post-goldrush Australia.
In May 1860 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and their children sat for the London photographer John Jabez Edwin Mayall. With Her Majesty’s approval, the resultant photographs were made available to the public as a series of cartes de visite titled ‘The Royal Album’. Sales went crazy, netting Mayall £35,000 and propelling the carte de visite from relative obscurity to fervent, widespread popularity.
The diminutive-format albumen photographs, mounted on cards measuring ten by six centimetres, had been conceived of in Paris in 1854. Yet in the English-speaking world it wasn’t until the Queen saw fit to have herself documented in this way – and in relatable semblances and settings – that the populace began to embrace cartes as a novel, affordable way of collecting images, whether of royals and other luminaries or, increasingly, of themselves.
Cartes enabled people from various strata of society to acquire multiple portraits for a matter of shillings, providing ‘the opportunity of distributing yourself among your friends, and letting them see you in your favourite attitude, and with your favourite expression’.
Occupying a mid-point between the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 and the advent of the Kodak camera in the 1880s, the carte de visite was the first truly democratic form of portraiture. Collections of cartes, and the outputs of their exponents, thus often constitute the most inclusive of portrait galleries and the most comprehensive archives of a nation’s faces.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website [Online] Cited 20/03/2019
Unknown artist Thomas Wentworth Wills (age 21 in 1857) c.1857 or c.1864 (printed c. 1905-1910) Gelatin silver photograph on grey paper support on card Support: 11 x 9cm Image: 9.6 x 7.4cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of T S Wills Cooke 2014 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
Thomas Wentworth (Tom) Wills (Australian, 1836-1880)
Thomas Wentworth (Tom) Wills (1836-1880), is popularly thought of as the ‘inventor’ of Australian Rules football. Born in Sydney and named for his father’s good friend (and lawyer), William Charles Wentworth, Tom was not yet four when he took part in the journey by which his father, Horatio Spencer Wills, relocated from New South Wales to the Port Phillip district in 1839. Tom received some of his schooling in Melbourne before, at fourteen, being sent ‘home’ to be educated at Rugby, where he proved an adept sportsman but not much of a scholar. He then attended Cambridge but did not matriculate, once again earning greater distinction for his on-field prowess, particularly in cricket. He later played for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club, continuing his cricket career on returning to Victoria in late 1856. In all, between 1857 and 1876, in addition to playing for Richmond, the Melbourne Cricket Club, and several other teams, he represented Victoria in twelve matches against New South Wales, scoring a total of 319 runs and taking 72 wickets at the impressive average of ten for 23. His significance to Australian sporting history, however, arguably resides primarily in his instigating a local code of football as a means of keeping cricketers fit during winter. In 1858, Wills helped establish the Melbourne Football Club; in 1859, he led the group that set down the code of laws for what became known as Victorian or Australian Rules football – elements of which, some historians have argued, may have their origins in marngrook, a traditional game involving a possum-skin ball played by the Aboriginal people of the Western District, and which Wills may have witnessed and played as a boy.
In 1861, Tom along with at least 25 of his father’s employees (and 10,500 sheep), overlanded from Brisbane to Cullin-la-ringo, a property Horatio Wills had leased near Emerald in Queensland. Sent on an errand to another station soon after the party had arrived, Tom was absent from Cullin-la-ringo when a group of Aboriginal people camped nearby mounted a violent raid on the property, killing nineteen people, his father included. Tom remained at Cullin-la-ringo nevertheless, initially making an attempt to run it while resorting increasingly to alcohol as a method of quelling the demons occasioned by the circumstances of his father’s death. Back in Victoria permanently by 1864, he returned to sport, playing football for both Melbourne and Geelong, representing his state again in inter-colonial cricket, and serving in administrative capacities in both sports. In 1866, he was engaged as the captain-coach of a team of Aboriginal players that subsequently played a number of fixtures in Victoria and New South Wales but which disbanded prior to a planned tour to England in 1867. By the mid-1870s, however, the career of the so-called ‘Grace of Australia’ was unravelling, his performances routinely blighted by drunkenness. In his final years, he lived at Heidelberg with his partner, Sarah Barber (whom his family never recognised). Fearful that he would harm himself, in April 1880 Sarah had Tom admitted to the Melbourne Hospital for restraint. He absconded and died soon afterwards, having stabbed himself with a pair of scissors while in a state of delirium tremens.
William Edward Kilburn (British, 1818-1891) William Robertson 1863 Albumen paper carte de visite Support: 10.2 x 6.5cm Image: 8.6 x 5.5cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Malcolm Robertson in memory of William Thomas Robertson 2018
William Robertson (Australian, 1839-1892)
William Robertson (1839-1892), lawyer, politician and pastoralist, was the second eldest son and third child of merchant and landowner William Robertson and his wife Margaret. William senior had emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land in the 1820s, building a successful business in Hobart before relocating to Victoria. William junior was educated in Hobart and then at Wadham College, Oxford. While there ‘he entered with zest into the athletics of the place, and he rowed in the Oxford and Cambridge annual boat race on the Thames in 1861’. He graduated in 1862 and the following year, in Tunbridge Wells, he married Martha Mary Murphy (1844-1909). On returning home William and Martha settled initially in Hobart before William was admitted to the bar in Victoria. He his brothers John, George and James each inherited property on their father’s death in 1874, William acquiring The Hill, ‘a stretch of very rich agricultural and grazing land’ near Colac. As Robertson Brothers the four managed the family’s various pastoral concerns, developing a reputation for their shorthorn cattle. William was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly in the 1870s and 1880s, ‘but his interest in politics was not very keen’. ‘He was much better fitted to shine in social life’, his obituary said, ‘being a man of amiable disposition and high private character’. He died while undergoing surgery for cancer in 1892.
William Edward Kilburn (British, 1818-1891)
William Edward Kilburn (1818-1891) was one of London’s earliest exponents of the daguerreotype. He opened his first studio on Regent Street, London, in 1847 and in 1848 Prince Albert acquired Kilburn’s daguerreotypes showing a large Chartist gathering at Kennington. This led to Kilburn being appointed ‘Her Majesty’s Daguerreotypist’ and began an association with the Royal Family that resulted in a number of portraits over the next several years. Leading members of society admired Kilburn’s work, which was often finely hand-coloured or engraved for publication in illustrated newspapers. Kilburn adapted easily to the waning popularity of the daguerreotype and the advent of paper photographs, his studio becoming a leading London supplier of cartes de visite in the late 1850s, and sitters such as Florence Nightingale and Benjamin Disraeli had cartes de visite taken by him. He is perhaps of especial interest to historians of Australian photography as the brother of Douglas Kilburn, who is considered Melbourne’s first professional photographer. Douglas’s early advertisements state that ‘Mr Kilburn, having just received materials and the latest information from his brother, in London (Photographic Artist to the Queen), will be ready next week to TAKE LIKENESSES by the Daguerreotype Process’.
S. Milbourn Jnr (Australian, 1863-1897) Adam Lindsay Gordon 1890-1894 Albumen silver photograph on cabinet card Support: 16.5 x 10.7cm Image: 13.1 x 10.6cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2008
Adam Lindsay Gordon (Australian, 1833-1870)
Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870), poet and horseman, arrived in Adelaide in 1853 and joined the South Australian Mounted Police. After two years he resigned and found work as a horse-breaker and also began establishing himself as a steeplechase rider at country race meetings. On his mother’s death in 1859 he came into a £7,000 inheritance, much of which was later squandered in various imprudent investments. Meanwhile, he’d married, served a term in the South Australian parliament, and started writing. Gordon’s poems began appearing in newspapers in 1864 and in 1867 he published his first two volumes of verse. He then moved to Ballarat and joined the Light Horse but suffered a serious horse-riding accident in early 1868 which compounded other misfortunes: the failure of yet another business venture and the death of his infant daughter. He nevertheless built on his reputation for hunting and horsemanship; and continued to publish and garner praise for his poetry, a third volume of which, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, appeared in 1870. Very shortly after its publication, however, and having failed to secure another inheritance that would have assuaged some of his financial worries, Gordon committed suicide, shooting himself on the beach at Brighton. ‘The bold resolute man, the accomplished scholar in whose heart burned true poetic fire, and the warm-hearted friend’ was buried in the Brighton cemetery, his grave becoming a site of pilgrimage for his admirers for many years to come.
S. Milbourn Jnr (Australian, 1863-1897)
S. Milbourn Junior is listed as operating as a photographer in Glenelg, South Australia, from 1890 to 1894, though there are scant details of his practice in existing texts on Australian photography. Over the course of the 1890s S. Milbourn Junior wrote various pieces of music, including ‘The Broken Hill Schottische’, ‘Eden-love’, ‘Friends no Longer’, ‘Love’s Guardian’, ‘Love’s Memories’ and the ‘Yacht Club Mazurka’. Milbourn’s music is advertised for sale on the reverse of these photographs, but the music advertised was written many years after the death of the writers depicted. Milbourn is unlikely to have taken the original photographs of Kendall and Gordon, but it is possible that he composed and fabricated the images on offer, using photographs taken many years before.
About the exhibition
The National Portrait Gallery is bringing the Victorian era back to life in a special exhibition exploring the colour and character of post-goldrush Australia.
Opening on Thursday 8 November, Carte-o-mania! celebrates the cute, quirky, intimate medium of the carte de visite – a diminutive style of studio photograph that took portraiture by storm in the 1860s.
Exhibition Curator Jo Gilmour says the National Portrait Gallery has never had an exhibition like this before. ‘When the Portrait Gallery first began, we had very few carte de visite photographs in the collection – but in recent years our collection of them has grown to over 100.
Each photograph is like a miniature world of its own with an incredible story embedded in it. The poses, the props and the fashions throw an intriguing light onto the world of the nineteenth-century studio, while the stories of the photographers and their subjects combine to create a rich and vivid archive of Australian society at a precise moment in time. Rich or poor, male or female, famous or infamous, powerful or anonymous: everyone was captured in these tiny photographs.
What I love about Carte-o-mania! is its wit and its fun factor. All of the portraits in the show will be displayed in showcases and albums, giving viewers the opportunity to get up close and immerse themselves in the photographs, which became part of a widespread collecting fad’.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website [Online] Cited 20/03/2019
Batchelder and O’Neill (Australian firm active 1857-1863) Lady Anne Maria Barkly (age 25 in 1863) 1863 Albumen silver carte de visite Support: 10.7 x 6.2cm Image: 9.0 x 5.7cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2014
Batchelder & O’Neill (Australian firm active 1857-1863)
The preeminent Melbourne photographic firm Batchelder & O’Neill had its origins in the studio founded on Collins Street in 1854 by the Massachusetts-born photographer Perez Mann Batchelder (1818-1873), who had come to Victoria after several years in California. Batchelder’s brothers Benjamin (1826-1891), Nathaniel (1827-1860) and Freeman (life dates unknown) joined him in Melbourne in February 1856. The firm promised ‘Portraits taken on Glass and Silver Plates by the Collodion and Daguerreotype Process, in the highest perfection of the art’ and ‘in a style surpassed by none in the colonies’. The studio also offered tuition in photography and ‘supplied [the trade] with apparatus and materials of every description’. Perez Batchelder left Victoria in 1857 and another American, Daniel O’Neill, joined the business. By late 1864, Batchelder & O’Neill – with O’Neill as sole partner – had relocated to Swanston Street. O’Neill later moved to Sydney, where in April 1868 he advertised the availability of his carte de visite of the Duke of Edinburgh’s would-be assassin Henry O’Farrell a week before his execution. Meanwhile, Perez Batchelder had returned to Boston, where he died in 1873. By 1866 the old firm no longer existed, but other photographers traded under the names ‘Batchelder’s Portrait Rooms’ and ‘Batchelder & Co.’ from 1866 to 1895.
Johnstone O’Shannessy & Co (Henry James Johnstone and Emily Florence Kate O’Shaughnessy) (Melbourne, active c. 1865 to 1905) Martha M. Robertson (age 22 in 1866) 1866 Albumen photograph on carte de visite Support: 10.5 x 6.2cm Image: 9.7 x 6.0cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Malcolm Robertson in memory of William Thomas Robertson 2018
Johnstone O’Shannessy & Co (Melbourne, active c. 1865 to 1905)
Henry James Johnstone was born in Birmingham in 1835 and studied at the Birmingham School of Design before joining his father’s photographic firm. He arrived in Victoria in 1853 and spent three years on the goldfields before returning to Melbourne and opening a studio in Bourke Street with Emily Florence Kate O’Shaughnessy in 1862. Initially trading as Johnstone & Co, it became Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co in 1864. They operated in premises next door to the GPO until 1886 and were awarded a medal at the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition. Johnstone meanwhile continued his art studies, taking lessons from Charles Summers and Louis Buvelot, and later under Thomas Clark at the National Gallery School. According to one historian, Johnstone toured Victoria with HRH Prince Alfred The Duke of Edinburgh during his visit in 1867-1868, by which stage Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. was one of Melbourne’s most fashionable photographic studios. O’Shaughnessy – whose name appears always to have been misspelt – is believed to have left the business around 1870, although the studio continued to trade under the Johnstone O’Shannessy name. From 1872 Johnstone exhibited paintings with the Victorian Academy of Arts. He left Melbourne in the late 1870s and was reported to be living in California when four of his paintings were shown at the Victorian Academy of Arts exhibition in 1879. By 1881 he was in England, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy until 1900. He died in 1907.
Davies & Co (William Davies, English active Melbourne, 1855-1882) Julia Matthews (age 20 in 1862) c. 1862 Albumen paper carte de visite Support: 10.5 x 6.4 cm Image: 9.0 x 5.7 cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2010
Julia Matthews (English, 1842-1876)
Legend has it that Julia Matthews (1842-1876) was one of the main reasons why Robert O’Hara Burke signed up for the ill-fated expedition he led to the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1860-1861. An actress and singer twenty-one years his junior, Matthews first encountered Burke in 1858 when she toured to Beechworth, where Burke was police inspector. He reportedly saw all of her performances there and was so enamoured that he asked her to marry him. She refused. Undeterred – and purportedly thinking that the glory he expected to achieve by the expedition would make him an irresistible prospect – he proposed again on evening of the expedition’s departure from Melbourne in August 1860. She declined to give him a definitive answer, but Burke had sufficient inducement to give her a miniature portrait of himself regardless, having two days earlier made her his sole beneficiary in the event of his death. Matthews is said to have urged a search party once rumours of the expedition’s failure began to circulate in Melbourne, and soon after news of her would-be suitor’s demise was confirmed she placed a notice in the newspapers offering a reward to anyone who recovered the portrait of Burke she claimed to have lost while walking in the Botanic Gardens. Whether this was a publicity stunt or arose out of genuine sadness at losing the memento is unclear. Following the end of a six-year marriage to a faithless drunkard husband, Matthews toured the UK and the United States to support her three children. She died in Missouri in May 1876.
Davies & Co (William Davies, English active Melbourne, 1855-1882)
English photographer William Davies had arrived in Melbourne by 1855. He is said to have worked with his friend Walter Woodbury and for the local outpost of the New York firm Meade Brothers before establishing his own business in 1858. By the middle of 1862, ‘Davies & Co’ had rooms at 91 and 94 Bourke Street, from where patrons could procure ‘CARTE de VISITE and ALBUM PORTRAITS, in superior style’. Like several of his contemporaries and competitors, Davies appears to have made the most of his location ‘opposite the Theatre Royal’, subjects of Davies & Co cartes de visite including leading actors such as Barry Sullivan and Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, and comedian Harry Rickards. Examples of the firm’s work – portraits and views – were included in the 1861 Victorian Exhibition and the London International Exhibition of 1862; and at the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition the firm exhibited ‘Portraits, Plain and Coloured, in Oils and Water Colours’ alongside a selection of views for which they received an honourable mention.
Arthur William Burman (Australian, 1851-1915) Clara Crosbie c. 1885 Albumen photograph on carte de visite Support: 10.1 x 6.1 cm Image: 8.9 x 5.6 cm Courtesy of John McPhee
Clara Harriet Crosbie (Australian, b. 1873)
Clara Harriet Crosbie was twelve years old when she went missing in the bush near Yellingbo in the Yarra Valley in May 1885. ‘The child had been sent on a visit to a neighbour about a mile from her mother’s house’, reported the Argus, but ‘as a town-bred girl, of warm affections and quick impulses … she resolved to find her way home, although she did not know the way’. Faced with the perilous wilds, Clara took shelter in the hollow of a tree for three weeks, crawling to a nearby creek to drink and trying to cooee her way to safety. Her cries for help were eventually heard – by chance – by two men named Cowan and Smith while they were in the vicinity searching for horses. A low sound, ‘like a young blackbird’s whistle’, had caught the acute ear of the two experienced bushmen and they followed the ‘wailing note borne softly on the breeze’ to its source. With the return of each low and piercing cooee, the men at last caught sight of the little girl, frail and woebegone. ‘The little creature was tottering towards us, in her ulster, without shoes or stockings on, but quite sensible’, they recounted. Following her convalescence in the Melbourne Hospital, Clara’s father leased her to Maximilian Kreitmayer, the proprietor of the waxworks on Bourke Street. From August to November 1885, ‘The Latest Attraction, CLARA CROSBIE’, performed to hordes of intrigued onlookers, explaining ‘How To Live For Three Weeks in the Bush Without Food’. In December 1885 she proceeded to Sydney to repeat the spectacle.
Throughout the nineteenth century there were several accounts of young children from settlements around Melbourne wandering off into the bewildering bush, never to be found again. Several painters of the period, including Frederick McCubbin, William Strutt and S.T. Gill, were inspired by these dramatic, melancholic tales of lost children. The theme also resonated deeply with the populace and became something of a mainstay of nineteenth-century Australian culture. McCubbin’s depiction of a young girl enveloped by bush in Lost (1886) is said to have been inspired by Clara’s story of survival, which McCubbin may well have heard first-hand at Kreitmayer’s Waxworks. In Arthur William Burman’s portrait of Clara, the studio is set up to simulate forbidding bushland, with the lost little girl’s bewildered eyes peering towards the lens. Burman was one of four siblings who followed their father into the photography profession. The various Burmans, and the several studios they operated either individually or in partnership, often sought to cash in on persons of ephemeral celebrity. Among the numerous other subjects of Burman cartes are Eva Carmichael and Tom Pearce, the survivors of the 1878 sinking of the Loch Ard, for example, and Dominick Sonsee, ‘the Smallest Man in the World’, who was exhibiting himself at the Eastern Arcade on Bourke Street in 1880.
Arthur William Burman (Australian, 1851-1915)
Arthur William Burman was one of the nine children of photographer William Insull Burman (1814-1890), who came to Victoria in 1853. Burman senior worked as a painter and decorator before establishing his own photography business in Carlton around 1863. Arthur and his older brother, Frederick, worked in the family business which, by 1869, operated a number of studios around Melbourne. Arthur is listed as operating businesses under his own name from addresses in East Melbourne, Carlton, Windsor, Fitzroy and Richmond between 1878 and his death in 1890.
Archibald McDonald (Australian born Nova Scotia, 1831-1873) Chang the Chinese Giant with his wife Kin Foo and manager Edward Parlett c. 1871 Albumen photograph on carte de visite Support: 10.2 x 6.2cm Image: 9.3 x 5.9cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2010
Portraits had a role to play not just in the marketing but in the performances of those in the live exhibit profession, with accounts of Chang’s receptions indicating that the issuing of cartes de visite was part of the whole experience. In Chang’s case, and in keeping with the civility characterising his ‘levees’, the photographs may have been intended to function equally as a memento of having been in his ‘Celestial presence’ and as a miniature conversation piece or quirky, curious souvenir. Among the St George’s Hall tenants when Chang was appearing there in early 1871 was Archibald McDonald (1831-1873), a Canadian-born photographer who had first come to Australia in the late 1840s, working in Melbourne, Geelong, Tasmania and then Melbourne again, and establishing his gallery and studio in St. George’s Hall around 1864. McDonald was consequently among the various photographers to produce cartes of Chang and his entourage. It seems to have been standard to photograph him in either Chinese or English mode; and alongside those of average or dramatically different proportions so as to throw his own into greater relief. Both methods are in evidence in two photographs of Chang bearing McDonald’s studio stamp: one shows Chang and Kin Foo in traditional robes alongside his manager, Edward Partlett – seated atop a pedestal; and the second sees Chang in European clothes, seated, and flanked by four others including a Chinese boy. In April 1871 the Ballarat photographer William Bardwell created a number of cartes of Chang, one of which depicted him with Partlett tucked comfortably underneath his arm.
Batchelder and O’Neill (Australian firm active 1857-1863) John Pascoe Fawkner (age 75 in 1867) c. 1867 Albumen silver carte de visite Support: 10.5 x 6.3cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2008
John Pascoe Fawkner (Australian, 1792-1869)
John Pascoe Fawkner (1792-1869), sometimes called the ‘Founder of Melbourne’ was a pioneer and adventurer. The self-educated son of a convict, he spent his early years in Van Diemen’s Land, pursuing a variety of occupations from baker to builder to bush lawyer, often finding himself in trouble with the law largely because of debts but in 1814 for abetting an attempted escape by convicts. He launched the Launceston Advertiser in 1828 and edited it for the next two years, championing the emancipist class and attacking officialdom. In 1835 he organised an expedition to what is now Melbourne. Landing in Hobson’s Bay, Fawkner soon became a man of property and influence, acquired substantial lots of land, running a hotel and establishing the Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser. A member of the Legislative Council from its introduction in 1851 until his death, Fawkner railed in his Port Phillip Patriot against the privileged squattocracy and was known as ‘the tribune of the people’.
Batchelder & O’Neill (Australian firm active 1857-1863)
The American brothers Perez Mann, Benjamin and Nathaniel Batchelder worked in Victoria and New South Wales in the 1850s and 1860s. Perez Batchelder had come to the colony from the Californian goldfields, which he had traversed making daguerreotypes. He and Benjamin Batchelder set up the Melbourne studio of PM Batchelder in 1852; the family also opened short-lived enterprises in Sydney in 1858 and Bendigo in 1866. Perez’s business, Batchelder and O’Neill, not only took photographs, but sold ‘photographic materials of every description’ which were illustrated in their free catalogues. The inaugural meeting of the Photographic Society of Victoria took place in Batchelder and O’Neill’s rooms in 1860.
Batchelder & Co. Photo (active 1854 – 1890s) Richard Henry Horne (age 58 in 1860) mid 1860s Albumen paper carte de visite Support: 10.5 x 6.3cm Image: 9.4 x 6.2cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased with funds provided by Graham Smith 2009
Richard Henry Horne (English, 1802-1884)
Poet Richard Henry Horne (1802-1884) arrived in Melbourne in 1852 hoping to make money on the goldfields but ended up instead in a variety of less remunerative prospects. Initially he was appointed to the command of a private gold escort; in 1853 he became assistant gold commissioner for Heathcote and Waranga but by the end of 1854 had been dismissed. In December that year, in the wake of the Eureka rebellion, he published an article defending miners’ grievances with the licensing system and alleging corruption on the part of some goldfields police, ‘especially in relation with sly-grog tents’. Though not exactly a model of propriety in his own life, Horne saw fit to decry colonial society and ‘social evils’ on a number of other occasions. In Australian Facts and Prospects (1859), for instance, he wrote that ‘with regard to drunkenness and prostitution [Melbourne] is far worse than Sydney, or any other city in the world’, citing the bar at the Theatre Royal as a case in point. ‘Between every act it is the custom of the audience to rush out to the bars for a nobbler of brandy, or other drinks. They all think they need it, whatever the weather may be’. Between 1855 and his return to England, disillusioned, in 1869, Horne stood for election to parliament (unsuccessfully); wrote plays, essays, articles and verse; was a member of the Garrick Club; and helped establish the Tahbilk Winery.
Batchelder & Co. (Australian firm active 1854-1890s)
Batchelder & Co. was the last in a series of names applied to a photography business on Collins Street, Melbourne, that had been established in 1854. Its founder, Perez Mann Batchelder, came to Victoria having run a number of studios – including travelling ones – in California with his brother Benjamin. He and another two Batchelder brothers, Nathaniel and Freeman, came to Melbourne in 1856 to work in the business. Nathaniel Batchelder subsequently opened a branch in Sydney. The Melbourne business became Batchelder & O’Neill when Daniel O’Neill became a partner in 1857. By early 1865 John Botterill, Frederick Dunn and John Wilson had acquired the studio along with ‘all the negatives and other portraits, the accumulation of over 11 years of Batchelder and O’Neill’s business’. They traded as ‘Batchelder’s Portrait Rooms’ until 1867, after which it became known as Batchelder & Co. and continued until the mid-1890s.
National Portrait Gallery King Edward Terrace Parkes, Canberra
*PLEASE NOTE THIS POSTING CONTAINS ART PHOTOGRAPHS OF MALE NUDITY – IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK, FAIR WARNING HAS BEEN GIVEN*
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Dildo I) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
This series of photographs is of my partner, my lover, my best friend and my muse for twelve and a half years. We had such fun with life, pushing the boundaries at every opportunity. It was a privilege to be able to photograph him in every situation that we thought about, to capture the creativity of spirit and being, of existence.
There are many photographs of this handsome, intelligent man that I took – a deep collaboration that I will never have again in my lifetime. The photographs that emerged from our relationship remind me of those that Alfred Stieglitz took of Georgia O’Keeffe – strong images based on trust and intimacy.
To Paul, I am proud of the photographs we took together and I am eternally grateful for our love, relationship and exploration of body, mind and spirit. Thank you.
Marcus
I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991-1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.
Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Mask I 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Mask II 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Horse bit) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Boots) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Balance I 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Mask III 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Dildo II) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Blind) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Balance II 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Balance III 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Balance IV 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Dildo III) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Hands on hips) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Blind) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Hands on hips) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Saliva I 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Saliva II 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Hands behind back) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Mask IV 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian born England, b. 1958) Paul (Boots and mask) 1995-1996 From the series Mask Gelatin silver print
I have always loved the ordered forms, the elegiac simplicity of Clement Meadmore’s designs. Therefore, I very much looked forward to seeing this exhibition. Unfortunately, the installation left me feeling a little alienated both towards the objects themselves but more importantly, the artist and designer.
Other things rankle. The importance of his contribution to the changing nature of the Melbourne art scene, and the Australian art scene in general, cannot be underestimated. Joyce Evans said to me that, as director of Gallery A, Meadmore’s influence on the direction of contemporary art in Melbourne was incredible, his influence in this sphere much more important than any of the designs he ever made. Other than a brief paragraph of wall text (below), there is little investigation into this aspect of Meadmore’s career in Australia. This is not the thrust of this exhibition as shown by its title, but to ignore his curatorial influence on contemporary art in Melbourne is, I believe, a mistake.
Further, while his groundbreaking designs are now presented as “art” – the hypothesis for the exhibition – at the time Meadmore’s sculpture was his art, his passion; his furniture and lighting was his business. What he did to pay the bills. Two facts are pertinent here: the fact that Meadmore did move to New York in 1963 to achieve international prominence as a sculptor, and the fact that after he moved to America he never made another chair. It says a lot about where his passion really lay.
Looking beyond all of these comments, it was absolutely fantastic to see the ordered forms, the simple functionality and elegant design of Meadmore’s objects, with his use of basic, everyday materials such as steel rod and cord to make his now iconic designs. Two things stood out for me. The ingenious sculptural steel base that enables the Calyx lamps to rest in two positions; and the most beautiful and sophisticated design and construction of the structure under a coffee table. The exhibition is worth visiting just to see these two design elements alone. But the work that most captures the spirit of the man better than anything else in this exhibition, and not the “art” on a pedestal, is that of a small welded steel and brass sculpture called The Trumpeter from 1957 (below). This is the man, the artist, in all his effervescence and gregariousness. It’s a pity the exhibition didn’t capture this spirit.
“Space should reveal itself to the wandering eye. Furniture should enhance a feeling of space by its non-obstructing presence.”
Clement Meadmore
Gallery 1
Installation views of Gallery 1 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design is the first major survey to focus on the industrial design practice of one of Australia’s most internationally successful artists. Curated by Dean Keep and Jeromie Maver, the exhibition charts the evolution of Clement Meadmore’s design aesthetic in the 1950s and early 60s, before he shifted his focus to sculpture, and highlights the role Meadmore played alongside Australia’s most innovative and progressive designers of the mid-century period.
The exhibition sheds light on a time when mid-century tastemakers sought to shape post-war Melbourne into a thriving and cosmopolitan city that, through the intersection of art, design and architecture, embodied the ideals and principles of the modernist aesthetic. Meadmore’s first furniture design, a steel rod and corded dining chair created in 1951, became an instant hit, catching the attention of the highly influential modernist architect Robin Boyd and receiving the Good Design Award from the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA). The chair would later form part of the iconic thirteen-piece series known as the Meadmore Originals.
For just over a decade, Meadmore produced a small range of innovative furniture and lighting designs, popular with architects, artists and designers of the period. The ground-breaking modern homes designed by architects such as Robin Boyd, Neil Clerehan and Peter McIntyre were not complete without Meadmore furniture or lighting, often placed alongside pieces by Frances Burke, Grant Featherston, Fred Lowen and Douglas Snelling. Meadmore’s furniture and designs were regularly featured in journals such as Australian Home Beautiful and Architecture and Arts, and sold at Marion Hall Best’s showrooms in Sydney and Frances Burke’s New Design store in Melbourne.
In 1955, prior to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Meadmore was commissioned by Ion Nicolades to design the interiors of the Legend Espresso and Milk Bar and the Teahouse, both in Melbourne. Drawing upon international modernism and a new-found passion for Italian culture, the Legend Espresso and Milk Bar is arguably one of Meadmore’s greatest achievements and became a touchstone for many young creatives in 1950s Melbourne.
In the latter part of the 1950s, Meadmore’s attention increasingly shifted to his sculptural practice and the gallery scene, whilst maintaining his industrial design practice. He would also play a pivotal role in establishing and managing Max Hutchinson’s Gallery A. Known as the Little Bauhaus, the gallery championed non-figurative art and industrial design, with Meadmore responsible for designing the gallery’s line of contract furniture.
The result of 10 years research, Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design presents many pieces for the first time, alongside newly discovered Meadmore designs. The exhibition also presents a rare opportunity to see original furniture and lighting designed by Meadmore for the modernist interiors of the Legend Espresso and Milk Bar and the Teahouse. The iconic designs in this exhibition – including chairs, tables, light fixtures, and graphics – are enlivened by archival images and documents, alongside interviews with the artist’s family and colleagues connected to the Melbourne art, jazz and design scenes of the 1950s. Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design showcases Meadmore’s rich design practice and shines a light on the important cultural shifts that shaped mid-century Melbourne.
Anonymous text from the Ian Potter Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 10/02/2019. No longer available online
Installation view of Gallery 1 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Gallery 1 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
GALLERY 2
Installation views of Gallery 2 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
On the wall at rear is Erica McGilchrist (1926-2014) Frigidity from the series Moods 1954 and Clement Meadmore’s custom made frame. Pen and ink on paper; steel rod and hardwood (frame) Heide Museum of Modern Art, gift of Erica McGilchrist
Installation views of Gallery 2 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Calyx Lighting
The Calyx lighting range takes design cues from Meadmore’s interest in international modernism, and represents an important shift in his practice. A distinctive feature of the Calyx range is the ingenious sculptural steel base, that enables the lamp to rest in two positions.
Using low-cost materials, readily available from local suppliers, the lamps required no welding and were designed to be easily manufactured and assembled in the workshop. Aluminium shades were hand-painted in a range of matt enamel colours, then baked in a beehive kiln in the backyard of Meadmore’s Burwood Road shop. All components were cut to size by Meadmore for quick assembly: the shade was easily fixed to the metal bracket using two metal pins and tap washers, then with the addition of a length of electrical flex, the finished product was ready or sale. The Calyx range was featured at the Anderson’s Furniture stand (also designed by Meadmore) at the Homes Exhibition in 1954.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of Gallery 2 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Calyx lighting design detail Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Clement Meadmore (Australian, 1929-2005) Calyx pendant lamp 1954 Steel, enamel paint on aluminium, steel Harris/Atkins Collection
Installation views of Gallery 2 the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
The work of Clement Meadmore (1929-2005), one of Australia’s most innovative and progressive designers from the mid-century period, will be on display at the Ian Potter Museum of Art from 20 November. This will be the first major survey of the influential industrial design work Meadmore undertook in Australia, before he moved to New York in 1963 and achieved international prominence as a sculptor.
The exhibition focuses on the crossover of art, design and architecture, featuring Meadmore’s iconic designs including chairs, tables and light fixtures. Rare archival images and documents, and interviews with the artist’s family and colleagues connected to the Melbourne art, jazz and design scenes of the 1950s will be on display alongside sculptures and structures.
Curated by Dean Keep and Jeromie Maver, the exhibition shines a light on Meadmore’s rich design practice and the important cultural shifts that shaped mid-century Melbourne. The display charts the evolution of the artist’s design aesthetic in the 1950s and early 1960s, cementing the role he played with the Australian design scene of this time.
Curator Dean Keep said, “The exhibition is an important retrospective showing a snapshot of time when mid-century tastemakers sought to turn Melbourne into a thriving and cosmopolitan city.”
It was in 1951 that Meadmore designed his first piece of furniture; a steel rod and corded dining chair which would form part of the iconic thirteen-piece series known as Meadmore Originals. This chair design became an instant hit, catching the attention of the highly influential modernist architect Robin Boyd.
For the next ten years, Meadmore produced a range of innovative furniture and lighting designs, popular with architects, artists and designers of the period. The ground-breaking modern homes designed by architects such as Robin Boyd, Neil Clerehan and Peter McIntyre were not complete without Meadmore furniture.
In the mid-1950s, Meadmore was commissioned to design the interiors of the Legend Espresso and Milk Bar in Melbourne, opening for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Before shifting towards sculpture in the late 1950s, Meadmore’s designs were regularly featured in popular lifestyle magazines and sold in designer department stores in Sydney and Melbourne.
Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design is on at Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne from 20 November 2018 to 3 March 2019.
This project has been assisted by a State Library Victoria Creative Fellowship.
Press release from the Ian Potter Museum of Art
GALLERY 3
Installation views of Gallery 3 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Clement Meadmore (Australian, 1929-2005) Model for a six-hundered foot skyscraper 1978 Wood, gesso and paint Collection of Rosalind Meadmore Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Gallery 3 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Michael Hirst
The three tables presented here pose interesting questions about the business and design arrangements between Clement Meadmore and Michael Hirst, and ambiguous boundaries between authorship and attribution in some of the Hirst manufactured furniture.
The two tiled occasional tables, traditionally attributed to Hirst, were both made by Clement Meadmore and were presented by he designer as gifts to the Dallwitz family in Adelaide. Meadmore considered the tables as prototypes for a new design, sharing with the Dallwitz family his process of making them: first, the glass tiles were laid out to form a pattern, then affixed to adhesive paper and turned upside down. A square structure could then be built around them to hold the wet plaster or cement until it had set hard.
The Dining Table (c. 1959) manufactured by Hirst, was originally owned by the Rippin family, friends of both Hirst and Meadmore. Ailsa Rippin maintained throughout her life that the table was designed by Meadmore, an assertion supported by the aesthetic and structural similarities it shares with a coffee table Meadmore designed for Violet Dulieu and with one of his earliest welded sculptures (c. 1954).
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation views of Gallery 3 the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
GALLERY 4
At left: Clement Meadmore. Door handle (from Thomas’ music store) c. 1959 welded steel Collection of Ken Neale At right: Clement Meadmore. Untitled c. 1962 welded steel Private collection, Melbourne
Installation views of Gallery 3 the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Clement Meadmore (Australian, 1929-2005) The Trumpeter (installation view) 1957 Welded steel, brass Private collection, Canberra Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Gallery 4 the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
GALLERY 5
Photograph at rear is of the Teahouse interior c. 1958
Artefacts relating to the Legend Expresso and Milk Bar including building application (1955), menu book and cups and saucers
Photograph at rear is of the Legend Expresso and Milk Bar interior c. 1956, 239 Bourke Street, Melbourne Victoria, with Leonard French’s painting The Legend of Sinbad the Sailor (1956, below) on the wall behind the counter. Courtesy of I. A. Nicolades and L. French. Credit: Leonard Janiszewski and Effy Alexakis. In Their Own Image: Greek-Australians; and chair for Legend Expresso and Milk Bar c. 1956, steel, brass, Collection of Mr John and Ms Dora Dallwitz
Installation views of Gallery 5 of the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Noted on the plans as the ‘superintending architect’, Meadmore designed every aspect of the Legend, from structural elements through to interior design. From the stools, tables and steel rod chairs, through to the black metal pendant lights. Meadmore crafted an interior that embodied a playful mix of European modernism and contemporary styling. The refurbished Legend quickly became a hub for the young art and design crowd.
Nicolades soon commissioned Meadmore for a second project, the Tea House (also known as the T House). In contrast to the Italophile interiors of the Legend, this project blended British culture and Asian aesthetics with motifs from the botanical world. Meadmore’s subtle inclusion of visual metaphors can be seen in the shape of the chair backs, which reference tea leaves, and in the shape of his lighting: an allusion to the hats worn by plantation workers who picked the tea [see last installation photograph below]. Meadmore’s passion for geometry informed both the design and spatial arrangement of the interior and furnishings, creating a striking display of ordered forms. The rows of simple steel rod tables and chairs, enveloped by curtained walls that draw the eye deep into the room, demonstrate his ability to minimise visual weight and create a sense of light and space.
Wall text from the exhibition
Leonard French (Australian, 1928-2017) The Legend of Sinbad the Sailor (installation view) 1956 Duco and enamel on board La Trobe University Art Collection Donated under the Australian Government Cultural Gifts Program by Mr Ion Nicolades 1999 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Gallery A
Gallery A was an art gallery in Melbourne’s Flinders Lane, established in 1959 by Max Hutchinson and Clement Meadmore, who took the role of gallery director. The inaugural exhibition included work b the Italian abstract expressionist Franco Meneguzzo (Italian, b. 1924), who Meadmore had met in Milan six years earlier, alongside a group of Australia abstract painters, such as Meadmore’s housemate Peter Upward (Australian, 1932-1983). In a climate of conservatism within the Australian art scene, Gallery A was unapologetically progressive, showcasing non-figurative and abstract art alongside design. An exhibition featuring the work of Ludwig Hirschfield-Mack (1893-1965, German 1893-1939, arrived Australia 1940) in 1961 helped earn Gallery A the title of ‘Little Bauhaus’. In keeping with the Bauhaus principle of bridging the gap between art and industry, Gallery A’s activities extended beyond the exhibition of art and design to the production of a range of furniture, designed by Meadmore and manufactured by Hutchison’s company Adroit Manufacturing. Described as ‘contract furniture’, these designs were intended for commercial projects and were advertised in the gallery’s brochures.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation views of Gallery 5 the exhibition Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The Ian Potter Museum of Art
The University of Melbourne,
Corner Swanston Street and Masson Road
Parkville, Victoria 3010
Art Blart has a readership of 1,500 a day. It has become a research tool for artists and photographers around the world. It is also an important form of cultural memory, with over 1,300 posts in its archive. The site is itself being archived by Pandora from the National Library of Australia.
What I find most important about the archive is that it gives me the opportunity to promote artists, to promote ideas and thoughts about art and life and, most importantly, to shine a light on different aspects of art, from the under recognised concepts to the disenfranchised and forgotten artists.
Reproduced below is the first ever post on Art Blart with the key tags, life and death. Not a lot has changed in 10 years. My concerns in that first post are still present – what we are doing to the planet and to our culture, how we construct our histories and memories, and how we can embrace diversity and equality the world over. Text and images and powerful tools for promoting such egalitarian ideals.
I must thank all the amazing galleries around the world for suppling text and media images. Your efforts are truly appreciated, for without you the archive would be nothing. Your enthusiasm and willingness to help has been incredible.
And to you, the readers, I must thank you for your for your attention and continued patronage. While the website is a personal form of expression there is also a good dose of altruism amongst its postings. I hope my musings have enlightened your ideas on art and life for the better. I hope you have all enjoyed the ride as much as I have enjoyed making and writing the website.
I will continue to write into history and memory as much as I can in the following years.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
First ever post
13th November 2008
“We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster.”
![Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Untitled [Joyce with camera]' 1951](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/joyce-evans-joyce-with-camera-web.jpg "Joyce Evans. 'Untitled [Joyce with camera]' 1951")
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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