Posts Tagged ‘TarraWarra Museum of Art

Mar

Exhibition: ‘Peter Booth’ at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville

Exhibition dates: 26th November 2022 – 13th March 2023

Curator: Anthony Fitzpatrick

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting
1978
Oil on canvas
© Peter Booth

Anima

tongue, long flickering tongue
drenched in blood
scours inside the cup
rapacious for more
blood thirsty luck
sucks souls of men
thorn and star
spirit of insect
bizarre–unique
cannibal

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Many thankx to the TarraWarra Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the media images in the posting. All other installation photographs as noted © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and TarraWarra Museum of Art. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“A lot of humans forget we are organic entities, the same as every other creature on the planet, and we’ve only been here for a short time. I am very pessimistic about the plight of beings. We don’t learn much, I mean, we’ve been wreaking havoc as they did in the Middle Ages. We also have bigger weapons. One thing I am not pessimistic about is the ability of nature to heal itself.”

.
Peter Booth quoted in Ashley Crawford View from the Booth blog 29 November 2003

PETER BOOTH at TarraWarra Museum of Art

Introductory wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at left Painting 1974, and at centre Painting 1975 1975
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

While the TarraWarra survey features a collection of Booth’s works from the 1970s to the 2000s, it opens with a work in the ‘Doorway’ series: Painting, 1974. It’s a canvas covered with shades of black. As the curator says, “Just near the top, there’s this very thin horizon line of red, and it feels like there’s this massive magma just behind the surface that’s starting to seep through.” I’m told that written on the back of some ‘Doorway’ paintings is an instruction: “Never hang more than six inches from the floor.” As Fitzpatrick explains, “If you hang the work a little lower for the viewer … it becomes more immersive, and this painting is the opening work in the exhibition with the idea of the doorway as a threshold.”

This minimalism is compelling. “The ‘Doorway’ series could be about nothingness, or it could be a void,” says Fitzpatrick, “but voids are also where things are generated from – so they could be about an idea of fullness … you could almost see them as a kind of dark mirror.” In a rare interview with Australian artist, writer and curator Peter Hill, Booth humbly discusses how the ‘Doorway’ series was “influenced by what was going on in the art world at the time, in reduction, minimalism and colour field painting”.

Autumn Royal. “Once seen, Peter Booth is never forgotten,” on the Art Guide website 15 January 2023 [Online] Cited 02/02/2023

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting
1974
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
213 x 167.5cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Purchased 2006 with funds from the Estate of Lawrence F. King in memory of the late Mr and Mrs S.W. King through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation. Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA
© Peter Booth

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting 1975
1975
Synthetic polymer paint and glass on canvas
274.2 x 167.2cm
TarraWarra Museum of Art collection
Gift of Eva Besen and Marc Besen AO, 2001
© Peter Booth

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting (installation view)
1977
Oil on canvas
Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), Hobart
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

With its shrouded figure standing before a highly volatile and fiery landscape, Painting 1977 conveys a forceful and undeniably apocalyptic vision. The painting finds a literary counterpart in the work of one of Booth’s favourite writers at the time, the novelist Doris Lessing with whom he found an affinity in their shared dystopian outlook. With its powerful blend of fantasy and reality, her 1971 novel Briefing for a Descent into Hell recounts the tale, vividly narrated in the first person, of a psychiatric patient’s hallucinatory journey through a dangerous and disturbing world of environmental despoliation, societal collapse, violent conflict and cosmic cataclysm.

Wall text from the exhibition

Doris Lessing (British-Zimbabwean born Iran, 1919-2013)
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
1971
Vintage book cover published 1981

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Untitled (Daughters)
c. 1976
Ink on paper
11 x 12.5cm
Private collection

Untitled (Daughters), c. 1976, is a composition which originated in Booth’s visits to an inner-city park in Melbourne where he would take his young daughters to play. Here, through the intense rhythms of his lifework and cross hatching in black ink, and the introduction of symbolic forms such as a whirlpool and arrowhead, this everyday scene is imaginatively transformed into a mysterious, nocturnal realm. While his daughters play in the foreground, the artist has turned to face a rising moon on the horizon and there is a sense that he is being magnetically compelled to embark on the path which leads in its direction.

Text from the TarraWarra Museum of Art Facebook page

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at centre, Painting 1978
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Peter Booth Painting 1978 from the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth became known for his black, minimal ‘doorway’ paintings of 1970-74. Yet by 1977 he had given up this style and begun to record the world of his dreams and nightmares in a series of apocalyptic, visionary landscapes. Booth’s paintings suggest that we are on the edge of another dark age. His paintings are brutal representations of his bleak dreams and fantasies. In an age of nuclear threat Booth’s work has a monumentality which is evocative of the final conflagration mentioned in The Book of Revelations. Painting 1978, challenges and disturbs the viewer by the artist’s choice of colour and method of painting. The dramatic black and red, yellow and white composition suggests both an industrial and a natural wasteland. The heavy impasto paint texture describes, with vigour and intensity, flames, explosions, and unidentified nightmarish images. Contradictory forces pull us into the central inferno below the glacial mountain peaks, and showers of rock explode towards us. Is it the artist himself who stands with his back to us, mesmerised by the scene, while grotesque metamorphosing figures stare out at us?

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Booth’s subject matter largely concerns the Australian landscape, both urban and rural, and the relationship between environment and individual, as well as the individual’s capacity to create and destroy. And also what the world will be like in the future, humans as mutants.

Booth’s landscapes are charged with emotion and symbolic meaning. Memories of his childhood in the blackened industrial landscape of Sheffield seem to infuse the work, especially his well-known apocalyptic figurative paintings, which look like images of the end of the world; illustrations for The Book of Revelation. These images contain an intense image of anxiety, evoking the aftermath of some terrible destruction, vividly pictured with menacing forms and agitated, heavily applied brushstrokes.

An example is Painting 1978 which has been described as challenging and disturbing the viewer by the artist’s choice of colour and method of painting. “The dramatic black and red, yellow and white composition suggests both an industrial and a natural wasteland”. The heavy impasto paint texture describes, with vigour and intensity, flames, explosions, and unidentified nightmarish images. Contradictory forces pull us into the central inferno below the glacial mountain peaks, and showers of rock explode towards us.

Is it the artist himself who stands with his back to us, mesmerised by the scene, while grotesque metamorphosing figures stare out at us?” Peter Booth has centred many of his paintings around his childhood in Sheffield England where he grew up during the war years and their aftermath.

Anonymous. “Peter Booth,” on the Art History Essay website Nd [Online] Cited 07/02/2023

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Drawing (Figure with Insect Tail)
1982
Pastel and casein on paper
17.3 x 12.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchase, Victorian Foundation of Living Australian Artists, 2010

More than just figures of fantasy, Booth’s curious amalgams and mutated figures often express his personal insights into the interrelatedness of all living beings. With his closed eyes and restful expression, the metamorphic figure in Drawing (Figure with Insect Tail) appears contented with his hybrid condition, affirming the artist’s belief that humans “share something with these creatures … we are part of the same thing.”

Text from the TarraWarra Museum of Art Facebook page

William Blake (British, 1757-1827)
The Ghost of a Flea
c. 1819
Tempera heightened with gold on mahogany
214 x 162 mm
Tate
Bequeathed by W. Graham Robertson 1949

Another physiognomic “vision” – “the stuff of delirium and nightmare, [which] taps into the unconscious, internalised sublime” – was the painting The Ghost of a Flea (c. 1819) used to illustrate John Varley’s Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy (1828). In studying the work of Blake for this posting, I found it instructive to look at Blake’s preparatory sketches for his works which can be found online. They give you a good idea of the spontaneity of the drawing and the ideas that arise, transformed into the finished work. Here in the graphite on paper drawing of The Ghost of a Flea we can see Blake’s initial vision, a more static, pensive figure with serrated wings which morphs into a muscular, blood sucking monster set on a cosmic stage, of life framed by curtains and a shooting star. As the vision appeared to Blake he is said to have cried out: ‘There he comes! his eager tongue whisking out of his mouth, a cup in his hand to hold blood, and covered with a scaly skin of gold and green.’

Marcus Bunyan. “Visions of divine damnation” on the exhibition William Blake at Tate Britain, London Part 2, February 2020 on the Art Blart website [Online] Cited 09/02/2023

William Blake (British, 1757-1827)
The Ghost of a Flea
c. 1819
Graphite on paper
Private collection
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and Tate

Artist and astrologer John Varley encouraged Blake to sketch the figures, called ‘visionary heads’, who populated his visions. This image is the best known. While sketching the flea, Blake claimed it told him that fleas were inhabited by the souls of bloodthirsty men, confined to the bodies of insects because, if they were the size of horses, they would literally drain the population. Their bloodthirsty nature is shown by the eager tongue flicking at the ‘blood’ cup it carries. This intense disorientating image, the stuff of delirium and nightmare, taps into the unconscious, internalised sublime.

William Blake, “The Ghost of a Flea c. 1819-20,” in Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (eds.), The Art of the Sublime, Tate Research Publication, January 2013

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing from left to right, Painting Two 1984, Painting 1984 and Leadman 1986
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting Two
1984
Oil on canvas
198 x 305cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased 1985
© Peter Booth

In the blasted landscape of Painting Two we are presented with a vision of a volatile world in the process of unnatural mutation. As an artist who has always been keenly attuned to what’s happening environmentally and politically, this painting forcefully conveys the fallout of a colossal act of destruction, reflecting widespread concerns in the 1980s over the dramatic escalation of the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union and the threat of atomic warfare.

Wall text from the exhibition

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting (installation view)
1984
Oil on canvas
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Leadman (installation view)
1986
Oil on canvas
TarraWarra Museum of Art collection
Gift of Eva Besen and Marc Besen AO 2001
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

In this work a hulking grey figure, with his fierce determination and body braced for battle, appears to be biologically adapted for survival in a desolated terrain. As the title suggests, this unrelentingly bleak and polluted atmosphere has eventuated from the unbridled destructive ambitions of the toxic Leadman who has transformed the world in his own image.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing from left to right, Leadman 1986, Painting 1984 and Painting 2012
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting
1984
Oil on canvas
101 x 183cm
Heide Museum of Modern Art
The Baillieu Myer Collection of the ’80s
© Peter Booth

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting
2012
Oil on canvas
213.5 x 91cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
© Peter Booth

William Blake (English, 1757-1827)
Thenot Remonstrates with Colinet
Thenot Under a Fruit Tree
Thenot Remonstrates with Colinet, Lightfoot in the Distance
Colinet Departs in Sorrow, a Thunder-Scarred Tree on the Right
Blasted Tree and Blighted Crops
The Good Shepherd Chases Away the Wolf
Sabrina’s Silvery Flood
Colinet’s Fond Desire Strange Lands to Know
1821
From The Pastorals of Virgil adapted by R.J. Thornton, 3rd edition. F.C. & J. Rivington et al., London 1921
Wood engravings on thin, white handmade wove paper
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased 1960
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

William Blake (English, 1757-1827)
Blasted tree and blighted crops
1821
From The Pastorals of Virgil adapted by R.J. Thornton, 3rd edition. F.C. & J. Rivington et al., London 1921
Wood engraving on thin, white handmade wove paper
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased 1960

William Blake (English, 1757-1827)
The Good Shepherd Chases Away the Wolf
1821
From The Pastorals of Virgil adapted by R.J. Thornton, 3rd edition. F.C. & J. Rivington et al., London 1921
Wood engraving on thin, white handmade wove paper
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased 1960

William Blake (English, 1757-1827)
Colinet’s Fond Desire Strange Lands to Know
1821
From The Pastorals of Virgil adapted by R.J. Thornton, 3rd edition. F.C. & J. Rivington et al., London 1921
Wood engraving on thin, white handmade wove paper
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased 1960

Cabinet text from the exhibition
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

A survey exhibition of the work of the renowned Australian artist Peter Booth

With a remarkable career spanning several decades, Melbourne-based Booth is a unique voice in Australian art. This new survey of paintings and works on paper is the first major public gallery exhibition of Peter Booth’s work since the NGV retrospective in 2003 and features a number of the artist’s most significant works from the 1970s to 1990s, alongside important recent works from the past two decades.

The exhibition is presented thematically, honing in on and highlighting particular motifs, subjects and moods which have become hallmarks of Booth’s expansive oeuvre: stillness and turbulence, alterity and alienation, mutation and hybridity, the absurd and the grotesque, the road and the ruin, and the despoliation and the resilience of nature.

A small group of abstract paintings from the mid-1970s at the start of the exhibition provide a prelude to an important series of gestural paintings which mark the beginning of the artist’s journey into the highly expressive landscape and figure subjects which have characterised his practice since that time.

The exhibition progresses through Booth’s vivid imaginings of an apocalyptic world characterised by grotesque, unsettling, and at times absurd scenes of human and hybrid figures in varying states of apprehension, aggression and conflict. These works will be accompanied by a small selection of prints by William Blake, James Ensor, Francisco Goya, and Samuel Palmer, visionary artists who have been important touchstones for Booth and with whom he shares a number of affinities.

This survey also brings together important works from the past three decades to convey humanity’s often fraught and ambiguous relationship to the natural world, revealing Booth’s extraordinary capacity to transmute his intensely personal perceptions of the mysteries and forces of nature and the folly and hubris of human endeavours, into exceptional and deeply compelling paintings and drawings.

PETER BOOTH, curated by Anthony Fitzpatrick, is generously supported by The Balnaves Foundation.

Text from the TarraWarra Museum of Art website

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing from left to right, Untitled 1997, Painting 1982 and Painting 1981
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Untitled
1997
Oil on canvas
The University of Melbourne Art Collection, Michael Buxton Collection
Donated through the Australia Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Michael and Janet Buxton 2018
© Peter Booth

In Doris Lessing’s 1974 novel, The Memoirs of a Survivor, in the aftermath of an unspecified disaster, civilisation gradually disintegrates into anarchy as hordes of people form ad hoc tribes in the city streets to increase their chances of survival. In this dystopian narrative, Lessing describes the irrational and aggressive behaviour that can be unleashed within the safety and obscurity of a large group. This same sense of apprehension is one that Booth shares in many of his depictions of crowds. In Untitled, 1997, a large throng of men forms a single, impenetrable wall, gathered together to cheer on the spectacle of a violent struggle. Disturbing and absurd in equal measure, this work graphically portrays the violent actions that can be incited by a mob.

Wall text from the exhibition

Doris Lessing (British-Zimbabwean born Iran, 1919-2013)
The Memoirs of a Survivor
1974
Penguin Random House book cover published 1988

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Untitled (installation view detail)
1997
Oil on canvas
The University of Melbourne Art Collection, Michael Buxton Collection
Donated through the Australia Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Michael and Janet Buxton 2018
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting 1982 (installation view)
1982
Oil on canvas
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
A.M. Ragless Bequest Fund
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Another scene of demonic possession enacted under the spell of a fiendish presence, Painting 1982, confronts the viewer with a deeply disturbing vision of human cannibalism. With its visceral imagery of mutilation and dismemberment, parallels have been drawn to the atrocities depicted in Goya’s series of etchings The Disasters of War, 1810-1815, while the highly theatrical quality of the painting suggests a more recent connection to George A. Romero’s cult zombie film Night of the Living Dead, 1968. When the work was first exhibited critics responded to what the painting conveyed about the current state of western mass culture, finding in its brutal imagery a powerful metaphor for greed and material consumption. Whichever way one choses to interpret this work, one thing remains clear, whenever a large group of men get together in Booth’s painting, there is always the potential for danger.

Wall text from the exhibition

Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828)
Saturn Devouring His Son
c. 1819-1823
Mixed media mural transferred to canvas
143.5 cm × 81.4cm (56.5 in × 32.0 in)
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Saturn Devouring His Son is a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It is traditionally interpreted as a depiction of the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (known as Saturn in Roman mythology) eating one of his offspring. Fearing a prophecy foretold by Gaea that predicted he would be overthrown by one of his children, Saturn ate each one upon their birth. The work is one of the 14 so-called Black Paintings that Goya painted directly on the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya’s death and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. …

Various interpretations of the meaning of the picture have been offered: the conflict between youth and old age, time as the devourer of all things, the wrath of God and an allegory of the situation in Spain, where the fatherland consumed its own children in wars and revolution. There have been explanations rooted in Goya’s relationships with his own son, Xavier, the only of his six children to survive to adulthood, or with his live-in housekeeper and possible mistress, Leocadia Weiss; the sex of the body being consumed cannot be determined with certainty. If Goya made any notes on the picture, they have not survived, as he never intended the picture for public exhibition.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting 1982 (installation view detail)
1982
Oil on canvas
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
A.M. Ragless Bequest Fund
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting (installation view)
1981
Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

In Painting 1981 a blindfolded boor is accompanied by a red-eyed, pointy-eared imp who appears to have just whispered a cosmic joke or secret in his ear. Situated in a bleak and desolate terrain, this disquieting scenario recalls the German legend of Faust in which, following the protagonist’s pact to sell his soul to the Devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge, Mephistopheles appears as his demonic guide. In this light, Booth’s painting can be seen as a powerful reimagining of this cautionary tale of how blind ambition and human hubris can lead to inner corruption and the unleashing of dangerous, irrational impulses.

Wall text from the exhibition

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting (detail)
1981
Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Peter Booth

A survey exhibition of the work of major Australian artist Peter Booth will be held at TarraWarra Museum of Art, 26 November 2022 – 13 March 2023.

With a remarkable career spanning several decades, Melbourne-based Booth is a unique voice in Australian painting and is considered by many to be one of the most significant contemporary artists working in Australia today.

This new survey of paintings and works on paper will be the first major public gallery exhibition of Peter Booth’s work since the NGV retrospective in 2003 and will feature a number of the artist’s most significant works from the 1970s to 1990s, alongside important recent works from the past two decades.

Curated by TarraWarra’s Anthony Fitzpatrick, the exhibition will be presented thematically, honing in on and highlighting particular motifs, subjects and moods which have become hallmarks of Booth’s expansive oeuvre: stillness and turbulence; alterity and alienation; mutation and hybridity; the absurd and the grotesque; the road and the ruin; and the despoilation and the resilience of nature.

“This exhibition will reveal Booth’s extraordinary capacity to transmute his intensely personal perceptions of the mysteries and forces of nature, and the folly and hubris of human endeavours, into exceptional and deeply-compelling paintings and drawings,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.

These works will be accompanied by a small selection of prints by William Blake, James Ensor, Francisco Goya, and Samuel Palmer, visionary artists who have been important touchstones for Booth and with whom he shares a number of affinities.

This survey will also bring together important works from the past three decades to convey humanity’s often fraught and ambiguous relationship to the natural world.

“Initially Booth’s highly visceral paintings of fiery, turbulent environments were the stage for confronting and, at times, violent human encounters. Since the 1990s, many of the scenes he has painted have become increasingly depopulated, implicating the viewer who is called to contemplate and navigate their own subjective relationship to these vivid landscapes.

“Most recently, the artist has returned to the apocalyptic imagery that characterised his first forays into figuration, with large-scale paintings of desolate and devastated scenes of a world in a cataclysmic state of collapse. This is art for a time of ecological and existential crisis in which anthropogenic impacts have driven the planet, and its intricate web of ecosystems, to the brink of utter catastrophe,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.

Press release from the TarraWarra Museum of Art

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at second right, Painting 2022 (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting (installation view)
2022
Oil on canvas
214.0 x 137.5cm
Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting
2022
Oil on canvas
214.0 x 137.5cm
Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery
© Peter Booth

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Acheron Way (installation view)
1993
Oil on canvas
208 x 304.8cm
Private collection
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Acheron Way (installation view detail)
1993
Oil on canvas
208 x 304.8cm
Private collection
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Acheron Way is named after a long snaking road which rises steeply through the rainforest of the Yarra Ranges between Narbethong and Warburton. Pictured beneath a clear blue sky, this scene of animated trees backlit by a soft, yellow light evokes a sense of energy, growth and even hope. The swaying trunks and tentacular forms of the sprawling limbs of the trees painted in thick swathes of impasto, imbue them with a powerful emotional charge. However, there is a more ambiguous aspect to this work alluded to in its title which not only refers to a real location, but also to an infernal realm of the imagination: Acheron (‘river of pain’) one of the rivers of the Underworld in Greek mythology over which the souls of the dead were ferried. From this perspective, the tangled and twisted forms of these sentinel-like trees seem to be denying us access to the light suffused landscape in the distance, forcing us to linger in their shadow, begging the question: are we in the realm of the living or the dead?

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at left Untitled 1998 (below), and at right Painting 2017 (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Untitled
1998
Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting
2017
Oil on canvas
193.4 x 81.3cm
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

In Painting 2017, as the sun begins to rise over the horizon, new epicormic growth spouts from the pruned limbs of a tree; a potent symbol of resilience and renewal. Peter Booth’s ‘Garden of Eden’ paintings vividly convey his feeling for the elemental and generative qualities found in nature and his fervent empathy for other nonhuman lifeforms. ‘Everything is connected. All life comes from the same source.’

Text from the TarraWarra Museum of Art Facebook page

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at left Acheron Way 1993, at third right Painting 2022, and at right Painting 2014 (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting
2014
Oil on canvas
188 x 219cm
Private collection
© Peter Booth

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at second left Winter 1993 (below), and at right Mount Donna Buang 1991 (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at left Winter 1993 (below), and at right Mount Donna Buang 1991 (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Winter
1993
oil on canvas
203.4 × 396.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by the National Gallery Women’s Association, 2002
© Peter Booth

In discussing Winter when it was first exhibited in 1994, Booth revealed: it’s about my childhood, about taking walks with my brothers in the woods in Yorkshire. Triggered by a recent return to Sheffield, this memory is transformed into a richly textured landscape of open forest which has been stilled and silenced by a thick blanket of snow. As the artist later revealed, his younger twin brothers died in tragic circumstances adding particular poignancy to this painting and suggesting that the two very similar trees which occupy the centre of the work, could be seen as symbolic representations of his siblings. In this light, Winter becomes a powerful and deeply personal expression of remembrance and cathartic release.

Wall text from the exhibition

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Mount Donna Buang (installation view)
1991
Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at left Painting 2018 (below), and at right Untitled 1995 (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting
2018
Oil on canvas
152.5 x 243.8cm
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
© Peter Booth

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Untitled
1995
Oil on canvas
167.5 x 305cm
The University of Melbourne Art Collection, Michael Buxton Collection
© Peter Booth

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting (installation view)
2020
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Peter Booth at TarraWarra Museum of Art showing at left Painting (Figure with bandaged head) 2004 (below), and at right Painting 1998 (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian born England, b. 1940, Australia from 1958)
Painting (Figure with bandaged head)
2004
Oil on canvas
© Peter Booth

The strength and power of Painting (Man with Bandaged Head), 2004 … is palpable. But like so many of Booth’s images, formulated over years of development, the strength lies not so much in the initial ‘shock’, but with the ensuing waves of other possible readings it evokes…

The tension between our first confrontation with the bandaged figure and the subsequent sensations of pathos for, even some recognition of sensitivity within, the character makes this such a successful work. And as we look upon the painting, venturing into the space behind the bandages, the focus of the work internalises: in reading the mind of the figure we are offered a portal to see within ourselves.

This notion of the mirror to one’s soul, with themes of the nature of power and frailty, desire and control, so deftly captured within Painting (Man with Bandaged Head), 2004 adds a further dimension to the history of this particular painting.

Damian Hackett. “Important Australian + International Fine Art catalogue text,” on the Deutsche and Hackett website 25 November 2009 [Online] Cited 02/02/2023

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting (installation view)
1998
Oil on canvas
Private collection
Courtesy of Smith & Singer Fine Art
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting (installation view detail)
1998
Oil on canvas
Private collection
Courtesy of Smith & Singer Fine Art
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting
2022
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
© Peter Booth

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Painting
1989
Oil on canvas
167.4 x 95.9cm
Collection of Jeff Hall and Sharon Grey
© Peter Booth

Wall text from the exhibition

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Untitled
2007
Oil on canvas
56.5 x 111cm
Private collection
Image courtesy of Bonhams Australia
© Peter Booth

The figure in Untitled, 2007 has averted eyes and stoically sealed lips, suggesting that he has endured great hardship. This feeling is amplified by the rich tonal contrasts and paint texture built with swathes of impasto which transform his wizened face into a blustery landscape. Having taken the troubles and turmoil of the world into himself, this austere figure is imbued with a powerful sense of inner fortitude and resilience.

Text from the TarraWarra Museum of Art Facebook page

Peter Booth (Australian, b. 1940)
Drawing (Pole Sitter Before a Crowd) (installation view)
1981
Brush and ink and ink wash on paper
Private Collection
© Peter Booth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

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Feb

Review: ‘Rosemary Laing’ at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: Australian artist, Australian photography, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, curator, digital photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, installation art, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, psychological, reality, sculpture, space, time, Uncategorized and works on paper
Tags: after Heysen, Arcadian image of the Australian bush, Aristide, art photography, Australian art, Australian artist, Australian bush, Australian contemporary photography, Australian detention centres, Australian installation art, Australian installation art photography, Australian landscape photography, Australian photography, Brumby mound #5, brumby mound #6, Buddens, burning Ayer #12, Disjunction and displacement in the Australian landscape, Drapery and wattle, effort and rush, effort and rush #9 (swanfires), fine art photography, Healesville, How we lost poor Flossie (fires), human engagement with the land, human intervention in the landscape, installation art photography, John and Kathy's auto services, one dozen unnatural disasters, Rosemary Laing, Rosemary Laing After Heysen, Rosemary Laing Aristide, Rosemary Laing Brumby mound #5, Rosemary Laing brumby mound #6, Rosemary Laing Buddens, Rosemary Laing burning Ayer #12, Rosemary Laing Drapery and wattle, Rosemary Laing effort and rush, Rosemary Laing effort and rush #9 (swanfires), Rosemary Laing How we lost poor Flossie (fires), Rosemary Laing leak, Rosemary Laing one dozen unnatural disasters, Rosemary Laing still life with teapot and daisies, Rosemary Laing swanfires, Rosemary Laing Swanfires Chris's shed, Rosemary Laing swanfires John and Kathy's auto services, Rosemary Laing The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, Rosemary Laing The Paper, Rosemary Laing The Paper Tuesday, Rosemary Laing to walk on a sea of salt, Rosemary Laing Walter Hood, Rosemary Laing weather, Rosemary Laing weather (Eden) #1, Rosemary Laing weather (Eden) #2, Rosemary Laing welcome to Australia, still life with teapot and daisies, structures and installations, Swanfires Chris's shed, swanfires John and Kathy's auto services, TarraWarra Museum of Art, The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, The Paper, The Paper Thursday, The Paper Tuesday, to walk on a sea of salt, Walter Hood, weather (Eden) #1, weather (Eden) #2, welcome to Australia

Exhibition dates: 2nd December 2017 – 11th February 2018

Curator: Victoria Lynn

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
weather (Eden) #1
2006
From the series weather
C Type photograph
110 x 221.5cm
Private Collection
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Disjunction and displacement in the Australian landscape

On a suitably apocalyptic day – in terms of our relationship to landscape, environment, elements and shelter – I drove up the Yarra Valley to the beautiful TarraWarra Museum of Art to see an exhibition of the works of Rosemary Laing. Through teeming rain, headlights gleaming, windshield wipers at full bore listening to Beethoven symphonies, I undertook an epic drive up to that most beautiful part of Victoria. The slightly surreal, disembodied experience of the drive continued once I stepped inside the gallery to view Laing’s work.

Laing’s work has always been a favourite, whether it be the floating brides, the carpet laid through the forest, or the melting newsprint after rain. I have always thought of her sensitive conceptual, performative work as evidenced through large, panoramic photographs as strong and focused, effective in challenging contemporary cultural cliché relating to the land, specifically the possession and inhabitation of it. As such, perhaps I was expecting too much of this exhibition but to put it bluntly, the presentation was a great disappointment.

There are various contributing factors that do not make this exhibition a good one.

Firstly, as the curator Victoria Lynn observes, “Laing’s photographs are conceived in series, so that each photograph is part of a larger cluster of images that are often arrange in specific sequences.” This exhibition, “includes 28 large-scale works selected from ten series over a thirty-year period” that focus on the themes of land and landscape in Laing’s oeuvre. The problem with this approach to Laing’s work is that the photographs from the different series sit uncomfortably together. The transitions between the photographs and different bodies of work as evidenced in this exhibition, simply do not work. Minor White’s ice/fire – that frisson of intensity between two disparate images that makes both images relevant to each other – is non-existent here. What might have more successful in displaying Laing’s work would have been a larger selection from a more limited number of series. It would have given the viewer a more holistic sense of belonging and investment in the work. This is the problem working in series and specific sequences… once the work leaves that cluster of energy, that magical place of nurture, nature and conceptualisation, how does it reintegrate itself into other states of being and display?

Secondly, the light levels in the gallery were so low the photographs seemed drained of all their energy. I understand that the “lux levels are quite particular according to museum requirements considering many works are lent from various institutions around Australia,” having done a conservation subject during my Master of Art Curatorship, but this is where the surreal experience from the drive continued: upon entering the gallery it was like navigating a stygian gloom, as can be seen in the installation photographs of the exhibition below. This is a museum of art situated in the most beautiful landscape and these are photographs, captured with light! that need light to bring them alive. I remember seeing Laing’s work leak at Tolarno galleries in Melbourne, and being amazed by their presence, their energy. Not here. Here the blues of the sky and the reds of the carpet seemed drained of energy, the vibrations of being of the forest and land victim to overzealous preservation.

Thirdly, and this relates to the first point, there was one work How we lost poor Flossie (fires) (1988, below) from Laing’s early series Natural Disasters. The work appeared out of nowhere at the end of the exhibition, had nothing that it related to around it, and had no explanation as to why it was there. I really would have liked to have known more about how Laing got from this work to the later series in the exhibition. What was her process of discovery, of change and experimentation. How did Laing go from Flossie – slicing together the spectacle and graphic imagery from media coverage of the Ash Wednesday fires – to the embeddedness [definition: the dependence of a phenomenon on its environment, which may be defined alternatively in institutional, social, cognitive, or cultural terms] of performances within the landscape of the later work? This would have been a more cogent, pungent and relevant investigation into the rigours of Laing’s art practice.

I emerged into the world and it was still pouring with rain. I rejoiced. It was as though I was alive again. Laing’s work is always strong and interesting. It was just such a pity that this iteration of it, specifically its closeted choreography, was not as restless as the landscape the works imagine.

Marcus

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

Installation view of the exhibition Rosemary Laing at the TarraWarra Museum of Art featuring the works welcome to Australia (2004, C Type photograph, Collection of the University of Queensland) from the series to walk on a sea of salt
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

“… the detention centre images, so that you’ve got the Heysen, you know, trees that you want to belong to, and then you’ve got this endless vista – though it be a difficult journey across a horizon that never ends – and then you have the raised wire fence, completely closing off access to that land, and that place, and those images of belonging and heritage.”

Art Talk with Rosemary Laing

Installation view of the exhibition Rosemary Laing at the TarraWarra Museum of Art featuring the works after Heysen (2004) at left, and to walk on a sea of salt (2004) at right, from the series to walk on a sea of salt
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view Rosemary Laing’s after Heysen (2004, C Type photograph, Collection of Carey Lyon and Jo Crosby) from the series to walk on a sea of salt
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

The question of how to belong in Australia permeates Laing’s work. Australia has one of the highest immigrant populations in the world so that the question of arrival, and of making oneself at home, continues to be part of the everyday reality. We also have one of the world’s harshest policies for asylum seekers so that – in the political imaginary of contemporary Australia – land is conceived as a border that has to be protected.

The artist’s most potent response to the contested issue of being at home in Australia is the 2004 series to walk on a sea of salt, where images of Woomera detention centre, combined with photographs inspired by quintessential Australian imagery and stories, remind us that home does not travel with the asylum seeker. In after Heysen, Laing photographs the trees that Hans Heysen transformed into an Arcadian image of the Australian bush, but bleaches the image to invoke a sense of nationalistic nostalgia. By contrast, the spatial potential and magnitude of the Australian landscape is invoked by the image to walk on a sea of salt.

Wall text

Installation view of the exhibition Rosemary Laing at the TarraWarra Museum of Art featuring works from the series The Paper (2013)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work The Paper, Tuesday (2013, C Type photograph, Monash University Collection) from the series The Paper (2013)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work The Paper, Thursday (2013, C Type photograph, Monash University Collection) from the series The Paper (2013)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Laing choreographs situations in the landscape, invoking a unique set of circumstances that reflect upon historic, social, environmental, economic and material conditions. Incongruous items are carefully positioned to flow with the compositional logic of a place.

On a hillside in Bundanon, New South Wales is a Casuarina forest sprinkled with Burrawang (cycads), an ancient plant that dates back to the Palaeozoic. The series The Paper was created on this hillside. The forest floor is covered in newspaper and photographed after the rains. The paper has literally been pressed into the forest floor by the torrent. It has been weathered. The sensationalism, headlines, imagery and opinion of the newspaper merge into a feathery ground cover of soft white, cream and beige hues. It is as if the area has flooded, not with water, but with paper. Words, colour and dates are dissolved into a tonal carpet. There is no light and shadow. This misalignment suggests the death of the daily paper, and here it inevitably returns to its natural habitat, its original ‘home’.

Wall text

Installation views of the exhibition Rosemary Laing at the TarraWarra Museum of Art
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work weather (Eden) #1 (2006, C Type photograph, Collection of Peter and Anna Thomas) from the series weather
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

The idea of a natural disaster in the Australian landscape occupies the same intensity for Laing as the human or ‘unnatural’ disasters. The each speak of the endless transformation of the landscape, its unfolding stories and its capacity to conjure anxiety and fear.

the series weather, located on the south coast of New South Wales, was inspired by the impact of natural phenomena – coastal storms – on the area. The flash of red fish netting snagged unawares by the battered grey melaleucas in weather (Eden) #1 also signals the historic Indigenous and colonial whaling in the area and the more recent slow demise of the fishing industry. These images seem haunted.

Wall text

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s works The Flowering of the Strange Orchid (2017) left, from the series Buddens, and at right weather (Eden) #2 from the series weather
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Detail of Rosemary Laing’s work The Flowering of the Strange Orchid (2017)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work still life with teapot and daisies (2017, archival pigment print, Courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne) from the series Buddens
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

In the most recent series Buddens, Laing turns again to the ‘unnatural disasters’ that impact ‘country’. The stream is covered in rolls of discarded clothing. It leads down to Wreck Bay, on the south coast of New South Wales, and is the site of multiple ship disasters. Historically these waters were used to transport convicts, goods, troops and settlers up and down the coast and they are littered with relics from shipwrecks including those of the vessels ‘Rose of Australia’ and ‘Walter Hood’.

The roof truss is like a piece of wreckage in amongst the trees, as if torn by the winds from an urban development on the outskirts of a city. Recalling the upside down house in the series leak (2010), it meets a natural A-frame in the foliage, yet the two don’t make a safe house.

The clothes seem to push through the landscape, like the rush of a river, perhaps in search of a safe haven. There is a mixture of metaphors in Buddens, highlighting the delicate balance between nature and culture required for survival.

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work brumby mound #5 (2003, C Type photograph, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) from the series one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work brumby mound #6 (2003, C Type photograph, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) from the series one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Landscape has a past, present an future; it is never the same as it used to be. In the face of wars, wrecks, and both natural and ‘unnatural’ destruction, we build shelters. We fence and furnish these landscape as we try to impose order on the precariousness and relative insignificance of life. As can be seen in a number of Laing’s series, the introduction of elements from our ‘settled’ environment including carpet, clothing, architectural structures, newspapers and the like – creates a disjunction. Some thing is literally awry.

In the one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape series, red interior furniture occupies and unsuccessfully domesticates this landscape. Painted in red earth and glue, these items almost disappear in the desert landscape. they are both like relics of a lost civilisation, but also seem to have become attuned to the terrain.

In the series leak, Laing continues her poetic and political engagement with the Australian landscape whereby powerful and dynamic tensions are elicited through the construction and insertion of foreign objects in the natural environment. Although the land depicted has already been altered through years of cleating and grazing practices, these works metaphorically signal that the continued ‘leak’ of residential development into both remnant bushland and farmland owned by generations of families is an unwelcome accident or breach that threatens to overturn the ecological balance between nature and culture.

Wall text

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work Aristide (2010, C Type photograph, Collection of the University of Queensland) from the series leak
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Landscape changes; its restless. It moves with the wind and rhymes with the seasons. It burns and floods. It is spatial, offering the visitor several perspectives that can be contradictory, paradoxical and durational. Landscape is also a ‘situation’, a complex interplay of historical and environmental conditions. Landscape has a past, present and future; it is never the same as it used to be. When we gaze out over a bay, or ponder and Indigenous site, we can’t help but wonder what it used to look like, how it used to be occupied, what tragedies and serendipities happened there. Landscape can be both a place of belonging and a destination, and depending on one’s perspective, it can embody the familiarity of home and the promise of adventure; the discomfort of displacement or the tragedy of invasion. Landscape is formed as much by natural forces as it is by human knowledge. …

Rosemary Laing introduces us to these histories by creating projects in the Australian landscape. These projects are sustained by her continuing search for understanding the multiple attitudes to belonging in the landscape. Miwon Kwon has argued that today ‘feeling out of place is the cultural symptom of late capitalism’s political and social reality’, so much so, that to be ‘situated’ is to be ‘displaced’. In Australia, the notion of displacement has a history that goes back to colonisation. Questions of who owns the land, how we inhabit it, and who feels displaced, are an intrinsic part of the Australian consciousness. Laing’s work also asks how we encounter the landscape; who or what is out of place; who or what does not belong; are ‘we’ the alien? …

Laing choreographs situations in the landscape, invoking a unique set of circumstances that reflect upon historic, social, environmental and material conditions…

Doherty argues that rather than being site specific, art has shifted from a fixed location, to one that, in the words of Kwon, is ‘constituted through social, economic, cultural and economic processes’. Such artworks are not located in a single place, but rather take the form of interactive activities, collective actions, and spatial experiences. They are constitutive rather than absolute; propositional rather than conclusive. Rosemary Laing’s mise-en-scènes are not public, events or performances, but they forge a compositional dialogue with the natural environment that provokes a social, economic and environmental conscience.

Laing’s photographs are conceived in series, so that each photograph is part of a larger cluster of images that are often arrange in specific sequences. Moreover, the spatial tableaux and the photographic outcome have an intrinsic connection. The installations cannot be seen without the photographic apparatus and yet each mise-en-scène is presented from a variety of perspectives and angles, so that we cannot necessarily rely on the photographic outcome to be ‘truthful’. The photograph is not simply documentation. It is an activator. In many respects Laing places us in the landscape, so that we fell part of the image. She does this through both the size and relative height of the image, along with the point of view and our relation with the horizon line. Laing tests the limits of the photograph, and also provokes the viewer to rearticulate their connection to landscape, and re-energise it. She comes to be the interlocutor between the histories and meanings embedded in landscape, the installation, the photograph and the viewer.

Victoria Lynn. “Rosemary Laing – Co-belonging with the Landscape,” in Rosemary Laing exhibition catalogue, TarraWarra Art Museum, 2017, pp. 7-9.

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work effort and rush #9 (swanfires) (2013-2015, C Type photograph, Collection of Alex Cleary) from the series effort and rush
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Detail of Rosemary Laing’s work effort and rush #9 (swanfires) (2013-2015)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work burning Ayer #12 (2003, C Type photograph, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney) from the series one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

The fire in burning Ayer #12 gives us some clues to the relationship between fire and the artist’s quest to reimagine belonging in the Australian landscape. The earth-encrusted items of mass-produced domestic wooden furniture – a reference, once more, to the idea of ‘housing’, home and belonging. Their ashes fold back into the earth. The strength of the red desert plain holds its ground, as it were, as the stage for this enactment of both sacrifice and return. Fire comes to be a metaphor for the ways in which the Indigenous landscape refuses our presence and escapes from our control.

In effort and rush #9 (swanfires), the blur of movement across tall thin tree trunks, captured in a smoky black hue, considers both the rush of the fire, and the rush of escape. It is as if the camera has become a paintbrush.

Wall text

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work swanfires, Chris’s shed (2002-2004, C Type photograph, Monash Gallery of Art) from the series swanfires
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Detail of Rosemary Laing’s work swanfires, Chris’s shed (2002-2004)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work How we lost poor Flossie (fires) (1988, Gelatin silver photograph, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide) from the series Natural Disasters
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

When Laing first tackled disasters in her 1988 Natural Disasters series, it was from the point of view of the media phenomenon. Slicing together imagery from media coverage of the Ash Wednesday fires, the series, including works such as How we lost poor Flossie (fires) was more to do with the slipstream of spectacle in the wake of the bicentennial of Australia. At the time, competing propositions about our cultural identity jostled for attention: 200 years of settlement, Aboriginal calls for recognition, the tourist panorama, and the sensationalism of fire in the landscape.

After every significant fire near her house in Swanhaven, on the south cost of New South Wales, Laing takes photographs in the aftermath of the blaze, like a marker of the irreconcilable yet continuing presence of natural and unnatural disasters.

In the series swanfires there is an overwhelming sense of loss. These two images speak of the abject disaster of fire, before the clean up. They depict situations that exceed our comprehension. In swanfires, John and Kathy’s auto services, the intersecting forms of corrugated iron – the quintessential material of rural Australia – are unexpectedly bathed in the softest of pink, their forms reflecting the tree line behind.

Wall text

Installation view of Rosemary Laing’s work swanfires, John and Kathy’s auto services (2002-2004, C Type photograph,Courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne) from the series swanfires
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

TarraWarra Museum of Art will stage an exhibition of the works of Rosemary Laing, one of Australia’s most significant and internationally-renowned photo-based artists, 2 December 2017 – 11 February 2018.

Focusing on the theme of land and landscape in Laing’s oeuvre, the Rosemary Laing exhibition includes 28 large scale works selected from 10 series over a thirty-year period. The exhibition, which is the first large-scale showing of Laing’s work in Victoria, will be accompanied by an exhibition of works by Fred Williams focusing on a single year of the artist’s oeuvre, Fred Williams – 1974. Curated by Anthony Fitzpatrick, the Williams exhibition reveals the ways in which colour and human intervention in the landscape became a focus for the artist.

Born in Brisbane and based in Sydney, Laing has worked with the photographic medium since the mid-1980s. Her projects have engaged with culturally and historically resonant sites in the Australian landscape, as well as choreographed performances. TarraWarra director, Victoria Lynn, curator of the exhibition, says Laing’s work is highly representative of the Museum’s central interest in the exchange between art, place and ideas.

“This exhibition reveals Laing’s compositional and technical ingenuity. It shows that Laing can create images of dazzling luminosity as well as solemnly subdued light. Flickers of bright red catch our eye, while passages of verdant greens create an all-over intensity. Her images take us to open and infinite plains as well as the depths of entangled forest trails.

“The artist builds structures and installations in coastal, farming, forest and desert landscapes from which she then creates photographic images. Whether it is papering the floor of a forest in the 2013 series The Paper, or creating a river of clothes displacing the water of a flowing creek in the new series Buddens 2017, Laing’s images reflect upon the historical and contemporary stories of human engagement with our continent. More specifically, the artist draws on colonisation and the impact of waves of asylum seekers, suggesting that the landscape is forever transformed both physically and metaphorically. The exhibition also includes works depicting the aftermath of fire, and the ways it too transforms what we thought we knew of the landscape,” Ms Lynn said.

Rosemary Laing comments: “The arrival of people, throughout history, shifts what happens in land, challenging those who have left their elsewhere, and disrupting the continuum of their destination-place. A disruption causes a reconfiguration. It elaborates both the beforehand and the afterward. The works are somewhere between – a narrative for the movement of people, the condition of landforms with a changing peopled condition, expectations of home and haven, flow and flooding, and the effect and affect of these passages.” The exhibition is supported by major exhibition partner the Balnaves Foundation, and will be accompanied by a catalogue authored by Judy Annear, funded by the Gordon Darling Foundation.

Annear, writes: “How to make sense of what humanity does in and to their environment regardless of whether that environment appears to be natural or made? What is the spectrum, the temperature of that activity? Laing is an artist who grapples with these questions and how to reflect and interpret the times in which she lives.”

Neil Balnaves AO, Founder The Balnaves Foundation said, “The exhibitions Rosemary Laing and Fred Williams – 1974 will be the third year that The Balnaves Foundation have supported the TarraWarra Museum of Art to deliver exhibitions of note by Australian artists. The Foundation is proud to partner in these major endeavours, providing vital opportunities for important Australian artists to be showcased, whilst providing art lovers – including inner-regional audiences – access to outstanding arts experiences.”

Laing has exhibited in Australia and abroad since the late 1980s. She has participated in various international biennials, including the Biennale of Sydney (2008), Venice Biennale (2007), Busan Biennale (2004), and Istanbul Biennial (1995). Her work is present in museums Australia-wide and international museums including: the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, USA; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, USA.

Laing has presented solo exhibitions at several museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik, Odense; Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville; and National Museum of Art, Osaka. A monograph, written by Abigail Solomon-Godeau has been published by Prestel, New York (2012).

Press release from the TarraWarra Museum of Art

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
brumby mound #6
2003
From the series one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape
C Type photograph
109.9 x 225cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds from the Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2004
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
swanfires, John and Kathy’s auto services
2002-2004
From the series swanfires
C Type photograph
85 x 151cm
Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
The Paper, Tuesday
2013
From the series The Paper
C Type photograph
90 x 189cm
Monash University Collection
Purchased by the Faculty of Science, 2015
Courtesy of Monash University Museum of Art
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
Aristide
2010
From the series leak
C Type photograph
110 x 223cm
The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2011
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
Walter Hood
2017
From the series Buddens
Archival pigment print
100 x 200.6cm
Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
2017
From the series Buddens
Archival pigment print
100 x 200cm
Ten Cubed Collection, Melbourne
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959)
Drapery and wattle
2017
From the series Buddens
Archival pigment print
100 x 152.6cm
Collection of Sally Dan-Cuthbert Art Consultant
© Rosemary Laing, Courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

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Jan

Review: ‘The sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver’ at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: Australian artist, beauty, colour photography, curator, drawing, exhibition, existence, gallery website, illustration, intimacy, memory, psychological, quotation, sculpture, space, time and works on paper
Tags: act of fabrication, Ammonite, Anthozoa, Australian art, Australian artist, Australian contemporary art, Australian contemporary sculpture, Australian sculptor, Australian sculpture, beauty, Bronwyn Oliver, Bronwyn Oliver Ammonite, Bronwyn Oliver Anthozoa, Bronwyn Oliver Apostrophe, Bronwyn Oliver Clef, Bronwyn Oliver Curlicue, Bronwyn Oliver Eddy, Bronwyn Oliver Flare, Bronwyn Oliver Hatchery, Bronwyn Oliver Heart, Bronwyn Oliver Home of a Curling Bird, Bronwyn Oliver Husk, Bronwyn Oliver Iris, Bronwyn Oliver Lily, Bronwyn Oliver Lock, Bronwyn Oliver Mantle, Bronwyn Oliver Ring II, Bronwyn Oliver Rose, Bronwyn Oliver Sakura, Bronwyn Oliver Shield, Bronwyn Oliver Siren, Bronwyn Oliver Slip, Bronwyn Oliver Spiral IV, Bronwyn Oliver Swathe, Bronwyn Oliver Umbra, Bronwyn Oliver Women's Suffrage maquette, Bronwyn Oliver Wrap, Celtic metalworking, Curlicue, Eddy, fabrication, Flare, formal sculptural logic, Hatchery, Healesville, Home of a Curling Bird, Husk, Lock, Mantle, New British Sculpture, poetic logic, Ring II, Sakura, sculptural logic, Siren, Slip, Sonia Payes, Sonia Payes Bronwyn Oliver, soul or spirit, Spiral IV, structure and order, Swathe, TarraWarra Museum of Art, The sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver, The sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver TarraWarra Museum of Art, Umbra, Women's Suffrage, Women's Suffrage maquette, Wrap

Exhibition dates: 19th November 2016 – 5th February 2017

Curator: Julie Ewington

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Mantle
1985
Paper, fibreglass, dye
45.7 × 101.6 × 45.7cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Reading either side of the sign

Bronwyn Oliver and the invitation to imagine

John Berger once said, “The Renaissance artist imitated nature. The Mannerist and Classic artist reconstructed examples from nature in order to transcend nature. The Cubist realised that his awareness of nature was part of nature.”

And the postmodernist?

The postmodern artist regarded nature as a series of multiplicities that were impossibly complex to define, so were at once irrelevant but also beyond any new mythologizing. Nature was the green screen background used to mask (and transform) lives into any new series of narratives.

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Thinking about the sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver in this magnificent retrospective of her work, I was struck by the classical beauty of form, attention to detail and delicacy of their construction. I noted their monochromatic palette and the self contained nature of all the works (with one word titles such as Wrap, Husk, Flare and Siren), as though they could not exist outside of themselves. And yet they do.

I thought long and hard about how Oliver’s biomorphic sculptures transcend time and space, how intractable metal becomes mutable object, metal into cosmos, nature. How they become a “form” (in energy terms) of transmitted, transmuted reality. And how you access that energy through their punctum, the shadows that they cast on the wall. And I had this feeling, of a lump in the throat, of a most visceral experience which made me have a tear in my eye for most of the time I was walking around the gallery.

For Oliver has created a new mythology through her imagination and in her nature through a series of multiplicities which is anything but irrelevant.

These objects from another time have an ancient feeling, slipping and slithering through the mud of evolution, nursing their young in enclosed spirals, or waiting for prey – open mouthed like pitcher plants – waiting for prey to drop into their interior. There is a darker side to these sculptures that is usually unacknowledged. Order and chaos, a formal, sculptural logic and poetic logic, always go hand in hand. In both dark light (ying yang), the complexity and simplicity of everything presented here vibrates and hums with energy. I imagine much like the artist herself.

When work is inspired like this, the sculptures seem to attain another temporal dimension. They take the viewer out of themselves and into another world. How does the artist make this happen?

Oliver makes this happen through reading either side of the sign. While there are obvious references to shell, heart, calligraphy, text, wrap, cloak, cell, flower, comet, spiral, sphere, ring and more in her work, she never didactically forces these signs on the viewer. She invites them to reimagine, to see the world and its land / marks in unfamiliar ways by shaping, twisting, and reinterpreting the sign. Individually and collectively, the nexus of the work (the series of connections linking two or more things) creates, “A presence, energy in my objects that a human being can respond to on the level of soul or spirit.”

This is the strength and beauty and energy of her work.

While the works look absolutely stunning in TarraWarra Museum of Art galleries, not everything is sunshine and light. Some of the shadows cast on the wall were unfocussed and lacked definition, inhibiting access to the appearance and disappearance of form and the multiplying physicality of the works. Stronger and more focused lighting was needed in these instances. Perhaps another curatorial opportunity was lost in not bringing together the numerous forms of sculpture such as Eddy 1993 and Swathe 1997 in one grouping within the gallery. On their own the forms became slightly repetitious; together, as Oliver notes of her circular works being in a series, “They each have the same format, but very different energies. Different lives.” I would have liked to have had the opportunity to compare and feel those different energies in a group, side by side. These are minor quibbles, however, as this is one of the most memorable exhibitions I have seen in years.

I cannot recommend this exhibition highly enough: not to be missed!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Many thankx to the TarraWarra Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image. All images unless stated underneath © Dr Marcus Bunyan and TarraWarra Museum of Art.

“I am trying to create life. Not in the sense of beings, or animals, or plants, or machines, but ‘life’ in the sense of a kind of force. A presence, energy in my objects that a human being can respond to on the level of soul or spirit.”

.
Bronwyn Oliver, 1991

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Siren
1986
Paper, fibreglass, dye
71 × 91.5 × 76.2cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Home of a Curling Bird
1988
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: Andrew Curtis

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Apostrophe
1987
Copper and lead
100 × 100 × 60cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: Andrew Curtis

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Curlicue (detail)
1991
Copper wire
250 × 45 × 15cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Curlicue definition: A decorative curl or twist in calligraphy or in the design of an object.

Sonia Payes (Australian, b. 1956)
Bronwyn Oliver
2006
C-type photograph, edition of 10
127 x 127cm
Courtesy of the artist

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Ring II
1994
Copper
Private collection
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

“I am quite please about the circular works being in a series. I have not worked through an idea like this before. I think they will look quite strong together. They each have the same format, but very different energies. Different lives.” ~ Bronwyn Oliver, 1994

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Wrap
1997
Copper
45 × 35 × 12cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Husk
1994
Copper
Collection of Vivienne Sharpe
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Flare
1997
Copper
50 × 50 × 14cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (1959-2006)
Iris
1989
Copper
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Iris (detail)
1989
Copper
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Hatchery
1991
Copper, lead and wood
50 × 70 × 60cm
Artbank collection, purchased 1991
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Hatchery (1991) with Heart (1988) beyond
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Installation view (main gallery space), The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2016
L to R: Slip 1998, Anthozoa 2006, Unity 2001, Blossom 2004-05, Tress 1992
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: Andrew Curtis

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Slip
1998
Copper
Private collection
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Clef
1993
Copper
110 × 45 × 40 cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

“The ideas relate to the effect of the shadow as a drawing, and the appearance and disappearance of form.” ~ Bronwyn Oliver, 2006

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Clef (detail)
1993
Copper
110 × 45 × 40cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Anthozoa (detail)
2006
Private collection
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (1959-2006) was one of the most significant Australian sculptors of recent decades. This first comprehensive survey of 50 key works, from the mid-1980s to the final solo exhibition in 2006, includes early works made in paper, major sculptures from public collections, and maquettes for many of her much-loved public sculptures.

Emerging in the early 1980s when many artists were turning to installation, video and other ephemeral art forms, Oliver resolutely pursued making complex and substantial works in a variety of materials, eventually exclusively in metal. Studying in the UK and working in Europe, Oliver came to artistic maturity at the time of an international resurgence of sculpture; having attained a Masters degree at Chelsea School of Art in 1982-83, she witnessed the nascent years of the ‘New British Sculpture’.

This exhibition reveals Bronwyn Oliver’s lyrical sensibility and inventiveness. She developed an original, distinctive and enduring vocabulary that expressed her fascination with the inner life and language of form, and she tenaciously followed the beguiling demands of her chosen materials.

‘My work is about structure and order. It is a pursuit of a kind of logic: a formal, sculptural logic and poetic logic. It is a conceptual and physical process of building and taking away at the same time. I set out to strip the ideas and associations down to (physically and metaphorically) just the bones, exposing the life still held inside.’1

.
Oliver brought poetic brevity and decision to her sculpture. Many works suggest aspects of the natural world and its metaphorical potential, and a number of the public works are located in gardens. Yet works such as Home of a Curling Bird and Eddy evoke associations with shelter or natural movement or, as with Curlicue,conjure human mark-making with studied panache. Oliver’s work encompasses what appear to be archetypal forms, like shells, spirals, circles, and spheres; their delicate shapes trace shadows that become spectral drawings on the gallery wall, multiplying the physicality of the works.

Between 1986 and her death in 2006, Oliver presented 18 solo exhibitions and from 1983 participated in numerous group exhibitions in Australia and in Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Korea and China. At the same time, she undertook many commissions where she worked closely with clients and stakeholders, and for 19 years taught art to primary school students at Sydney’s Cranbrook School. Prodigiously hardworking, Oliver devised exquisite sculptures for the public domain, in locations as various as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Hilton Hotel and Quay Restaurant in inner-city Sydney, and at the University of New South Wales, as well as in Brisbane, Adelaide and Orange in regional NSW. Her work is held in most major Australian public collections, and in numerous collections in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Europe and the USA.

As writer Hannah Fink memorably observed in 2006, ‘Bronwyn Oliver had that rarest of all skills: she knew how to create beauty.’ This exhibition is a tribute to that power.

Text from the TarraWarra Museum of Art website

.
1. Bronwyn Oliver quoted in Hannah Fink, ‘Strange things: on Bronwyn Oliver’, in Burnt Ground, (ed. Ivor Indyk), Heat 4. New series, Newcastle: Giramondo Publishing Co, 2002, pp. 177-187.

Installation view (main gallery space), The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2016
L to R: Eddy 1993, Shield 1995, Wand 1991, Blossom 2004-05, Lily 1995
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: Andrew Curtis

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Eddy (detail)
1993
Copper
Art Gallery of South Australia
Gift of the Moët and Chandon Australian Art Foundation Fellow Collection 2000
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

“‘… the act of fabrication’ [is essential] … A couple of pairs of pliers, a wire-cutter, hand-drill, rivet gun and a Stanley knife is my usual kit. That’s what I’ll be taking to France. I’m compulsive. I’ll start work within 24 hours.” ~ Bronwyn Oliver, 1994

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Swathe
1997
Copper
180 × 300 × 300cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Swathe (detail)
1997
Copper
180 × 300 × 300cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Sonia Payes (Australian, b. 1956)
Bronwyn Oliver
2006
Courtesy of the artist

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Shield
1995
Copper
McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park collection
Purchased with funds from the Elisabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation, 1995
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

“All in this series have a ‘ruched’ copper surface in common, and the idea of a swelling / breathing form beneath the surface. (Idea began with a (dreadful) sculpture seen in the Musée d’Orsay in 1990-91. Sculpture of a gladiator, in bronze, wearing ‘ruched’ leggings, with musculature taut beneath the surface of the cloth). Final work completed in Hautvillers studio.” ~ Bronwyn Oliver, 2006

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Lily (detail)
1995
Copper
Newcastle Art Gallery collection
Gift of Ann Lewis AO 2011
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Installation view (farther gallery space), The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2016
L to R: Striation 2004, Grandiflora (Bud) 2005, Rose 2006, Grandiflora (Bloom) 2005
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: Andrew Curtis

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Rose
2006
Copper
Collection © Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Rose (detail)
2006
Copper
Collection © Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Umbra
2003
Copper
Private collection
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Umbra (detail)
2003
Copper
Private collection
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Lock
2002
Copper
125 x 125 x 14cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Lock (detail)
2002
Copper
125 x 125 x 14cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Sakura
2006
Copper
48 × 48 × 20cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Ammonite
2005
Copper
95 × 90 × 90cm
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Oliver developed an original, distinctive and enduring vocabulary that expressed her fascination with the inner life and language of form and the strict but beguiling demands of her chosen materials.

Above all, she brought an almost poetic brevity and decision to her sculpture. Many works suggest aspects of the natural world and its metaphorical potential, and some of the most successful public works are located in gardens. Yet Oliver always tenaciously followed the logic of her material, making works such as Eyrie or Eddy that evoke associations with shelter or natural movement or, as with Curlicue, conjure human mark-making with deliberate panache.

TarraWarra Director, Victoria Lynn, described the exhibition as a testament to the short but poignant contribution made by Oliver to Australian sculpture – a vision that remains exceptional in the history of Australian contemporary art.

“Oliver’s unique and labour-intensive approach involved joining threads of copper wire to create what appear to be woven forms that allow light to pass through their surface and cast shadows on the walls and floors. Her works resonate with the force of archetypes, and their green and brown patinas suggest an enduring presence that remains as relevant now as when they were first created. Some appear to be rescued from an archaeological past, while others resemble the quintessential forms found in nature: spirals, spheres, rings and loops,” Ms Lynn said.

Oliver was renowned for sensitive and inventive sculptures placed in the public domain, and she worked closely with clients, stakeholders and architects in their installation. This exhibition will include maquettes of some of Oliver’s much-loved public works, accompanied by working documents and images. Exhibition curator Julie Ewington said the exhibition, located within the museum building in TarraWarra’s magnificent grounds, will be the perfect setting for appreciating Oliver’s work.

Bronwyn Oliver (1959-2006)

Bronwyn Oliver was one of the outstanding Australian artists of her generation, and perhaps its leading sculptor. Originally working in cane and paper, by 1988 Oliver began working in metal, especially copper, and in the next two decades achieved a distinctive and enduring body of work. As writer Hannah Fink memorably observed in 2006, ‘Bronwyn Oliver had that rarest of all skills: she knew how to create beauty’.

Raised near Inverell in country New South Wales, in 1959, Bronwyn Oliver first studied sculpture in Sydney at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education from 1977-80. She said of her arrival at the College sculpture department, ‘I knew straight away I was in the right place’. After gaining the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship, Oliver completed a Masters’ degree in London at the Chelsea School of Arts in 1982-3. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, in 1988 Oliver was artist-in-residence in the French coastal city of Brest, where she studied Celtic metalworking; in 1994 she won the prestigious Moët & Chandon Award, which allowed her to spend a year living and working in France.

Oliver emerged in the 1980s at the same time as an international resurgence of contemporary sculpture. In response to the Conceptual and Minimal art of the prior decade, artists returned to the fabrication of sculptural form. Having attained a Masters of Sculpture at Chelsea School of Art in 1982-83, Oliver was witness to the nascent years of this celebration of form in British art, where it was known as ‘New British Sculpture’.

Between 1986, with her first solo show at Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, and her death in 2006, Oliver presented 19 solo exhibitions, including a number at Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne; in 2005-6, McClelland Gallery, at Langwarrin in Victoria, presented a selected survey of her work; and from 1983 onwards Oliver participated in numerous group exhibitions in Australia and internationally, including in Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Korea and China (her final solo exhibition was posthumous). At the same time, she undertook many commissions where she worked closely with clients and stakeholders, and for 19 years taught art to primary school students at Sydney’s Cranbrook School.

Prodigiously hardworking, Oliver was renowned for devising exquisite sculptures for the public domain, installed in locations as various as the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Hilton Hotel and Quay Restaurant in inner-city Sydney, and on the Kensington campus of the University of New South Wales. Other noted public works are in the Queen Street Mall, Brisbane, Hyatt Hotel, Adelaide and Orange Regional Gallery in regional NSW. Her work is also held in most major Australian public collections, and in numerous important public and private collections in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Europe and the USA.

The Estate of Bronwyn Oliver is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

Press release from the TarraWarra Museum of Art

Installation view (side gallery space), The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2016
L Spiral IV 1993 and in case Women’s suffrage maquette 2002
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Spiral IV (detail)
2003
Copper
Private collection
© Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

Bronwyn Oliver (Australian, 1959-2006)
Women’s Suffrage maquette (detail)
2002
Copper, nickel
Collection © Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photo: © TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Marcus Bunyan

TarraWarra Museum of Art
311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road,
Healesville, Victoria, Australia
Melway reference: 277 B2
Phone: +61 (0)3 5957 3100

Opening hours:
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Open all public holidays except Christmas day

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His art work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes Art Blart, an art and cultural memory archive, which posts mainly photography exhibitions from around the world. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne, a Master of Arts (Fine Art Photography) from RMIT University, and a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.

Contact

bunyanth@netspace.net.au

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Exhibition: ‘Peter Booth’ at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville

Exhibition dates: 26th November 2022 – 13th March 2023

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Exhibition dates: 19th November 2016 – 5th February 2017

Reading either side of the sign

Bronwyn Oliver and the invitation to imagine

Bronwyn Oliver (1959-2006)

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