Post on 22-Mar-2016
description
Athol Shmith Vivien Leigh 1948 gelatin silver photograph 50.0 x 39.3 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 26 May – 19 August 2007
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National Gallery of Australia, CanberraGeorge Lambert The white glove 1921 (detail) Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney purchased 1922 photograph: Jenni Carter for AGNSW
29 June – 9 September 2007
nga.gov.au
A brushstroke into our past ActewAGL is delighted to be major sponsor of the George Lambert Retrospective: Heroes and Icons exhibition. Lambert’s painting The squatter’s daughter, depicting Michelago in 1923, is symbolic to ActewAGL as it refl ects on a time when ActewAGL was building the foundations to provide essential services to Canberra and the region.
Recognising the importance of Australian art – always.
George Lambert The squatter’s daughter 1923–24
Michelago / New South Wales / Australia Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, CanberraPurchased with the generous assistance of
James Fairfax AO and Philip Bacon AM, 1991
CCA
407/
10
ActewAGL Retail ABN 46 221 314 841.
2 Director’s foreword
5 Development office
6 George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons
16 Conservation: restoring Lambert
18 VIP: very important photographs 1840s–1940s
28 The Southeast Asian Gallery
34 Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial
36 New acquisitions
50 Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950
54 Colin McCahon: writing and imagining a journey
57 Travelling exhibitions
58 Faces in view
contents
Publisher National Gallery of Australia nga.gov.au
Editor Jeanie Watson
Designer MA@D Communication
Photography Eleni Kypridis Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie Steve Nebauer John Tassie
Designed and produced in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia Printed in Australia by Pirion Printers, Canberra
artonview issn 1323-4552
Published quarterly: Issue no. 50, Winter 2007 © National Gallery of Australia
Print Post Approved pp255003/00078
All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.
Submissions and correspondence should be addressed to: The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 artonview.editor@nga.gov.au
Advertising (02) 6240 6587 facsimile (02) 6240 6427 artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au
RRP: $8.60 includes GST Free to members of the National Gallery of Australia
For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership contact: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6240 6504 membership@nga.gov.au
front cover: George W Lambert The convex mirror c. 1916 oil on wood panel 50.0 x 50.0 cm Private collection
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2 national gallery of australia
director’s foreword
Welcome to the fiftieth issue of the magazine!
This month is marked by much excitement as the National
Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery has just opened to the
public, with two of the greatest works in the collection
returned to their original home – Brancusi’s black and
white marble Birds in space have been reinstated on their
sandstone bases into their calm pool in the only gallery
within an Australian museum dedicated to sculpture.
When the National Gallery of Australia opened
twenty-five years ago, the Sculpture Gallery was a unique,
contemplative space. Closed as a sculpture gallery in 1990
in the quest for more room for exhibitions and other uses,
it now seems time to try to do justice to some of our three-
dimensional masterpieces in this grand space. Donald
Judd’s brass boxes, Jannis Kounellis’ Senza titolo, Louise
Bourgeois’ pink wooden C.O.Y.O.T.E. and Anselm Kiefer’s
magisterial Abendland and The secret life of plates are
joined by works from renowned Australian artists Rosalie
Gascoigne, Robert Klippel and Ken Unsworth.
Some exciting new acquisitions are also on show –
above all Max Ernst’s giant black bronze Habakuk, a
striking and menacing work purchased with the assistance
of the National Australia Bank. Others include Cy
Twombly’s elegant pale bronze purchased last year with
the assistance of Ros Packer and other donors, Anthony
Caro’s Duccio variations no. 7, and Stella’s Mersin XVI to be
donated in honour of the late Harry Seidler by Ken Tyler.
Other Australian artists represented in the display include
Indigenous artist Glen Farmer Illortaminni and Bronwyn
Oliver, who unfortunately died last year.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank
Margaret Olley AC for her very generous donation towards
the Mughal arcade in the Asian Gallery, a stunning work
proving to be very popular with visitors.
Another satisfying development in our permanent
displays will be the opening of a dedicated Pacific Arts
Gallery, overseen by the newly appointed curator for the
collection, Crispin Howarth. The small Pacific Arts Gallery
exhibits more than thirty of the finest works revealing the
diversity and depth of the art of our Pacific neighbours.
Since 1969 the Pacific Arts collection has been
growing, however, apart from the acquisition of prints,
we stopped adding to the collection from 1985 until the
acquisition of the Anthony Forge memorial gift and the
purchase of the very significant late nineteenth-century
Solomon Islands house post last year. Our Pacific Arts
collection comprises close to 2000 works and we will
be adding major works in the future. The collection
encompasses Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia with
myriad island cultures stretching from Papua New Guinea
Daniel Boyd, Arthur Pambegan Jnr, Jean
Baptiste Apuatimi and Philip Gudthaykudthay at the announcement of the
National Indigenous Art Triennial
artonview winter 2007 3
to New Zealand and the Bismarck archipelago to Easter
Island. During the past quarter of a century, the Gallery
has only displayed a handful of works from this intriguing
collection. Formed from the arts of preliterate cultures
from 1500 BC to around 1950, these works hold a visual
force intended to convey the will of ancestors and their
mastery over the world of man in a way that words alone
could never express. The names of the Pacific artists were
unfortunately very rarely recorded, although there are
many famous names associated with the collection: Max
Ernst, Andre Breton, Jacob Epstein, Sir William Dargie,
Douglas Newton, Lady Drysdale, King Kalakaua of Hawaii
to name a few.
I am also pleased to announce the Gallery’s new
major art initiative, the National Indigenous Art Triennial.
Generously sponsored by BHP Billiton, the Triennial
comprises works created by artists from every state and
territory within the past three years, resulting in a highly
considered snapshot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander contemporary art practice. The inaugural National
Indigenous Art Triennial exhibition, Culture Warriors,
is curated by Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of
Australia. Culture Warriors will be on display at the Gallery
from 13 October 2007 to 10 February 2008. The opening
will coincide with our twenty-fifth anniversary party.
George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons is
the first major retrospective of the work of George Lambert
since his death in 1930. He is Australia’s preeminent war
artist, an outstanding draughtsman, an occasional painter
of delightful landscapes and flowerpieces, and the finest
Australian painter of his time for figure compositions and
portraits. In the 1920s he also became an excellent sculptor,
second only to Rayner Hoff in Australia. During that last
decade of his life Lambert was by far our most famous artist.
It is very appropriate that this one-venue exhibition
has been staged in Canberra by the National Gallery of
Australia. We own a fine collection of Lambert’s paintings
and drawings, but more particularly there are the iconic
Great War paintings, commissioned for the Australian
War Memorial, that cannot travel from Canberra, and
need to be seen for the first time in the full context of his
oeuvre. Other works are borrowed from public and private
collections from all over Australia. The exhibition, curated
by Dr Anne Gray, Head of Australian Art at the Gallery
and the foremost authority on the subject, is generously
supported by ActewWAGL.
Another interesting temporary exhibition on show at
the moment is VIP: very important photographs 1840s–
1940s. The exhibition showcases more than 200 works
from the Gallery’s extensive photography collection – from
pioneers of mid 19th-century photography such as William
Henry Talbot Fox and Julia Margaret Cameron to the years
after the Second World War with works by Henri Cartier-
Bresson, Man Ray, Olive Cotton and Walker Evans. While
some photographs have become national icons such as
Max Dupain’s Sunbaker, there are many hidden gems not
as widely recognised in the public realm. The collection
demonstrates the power and history of photography and
portrays significant developments of the art medium
during its first century of existence. The exhibition, curated
by Gael Newton, Senior Curator, Photography, and Anne
O’Hehir, Curator, Photography, is on display across the
Orde Poynton and Project galleries. It is sponsored by EMC
Australia and Infront Systems.
We will be launching in August the special twenty-
fifth anniversary exhibition Ocean to outback: Australian
landscape painting 1850–1950 which I have curated and
selected to tour nine of the smaller galleries throughout
Australia.
As we focus on an exceptionally busy and exciting
exhibition program and other events for our twenty-
fifth anniversary, we are also in the stages of formal
planning approvals for the proposed building additions so
construction can start later in the year.
Ron Radford AM
4 national gallery of australia
The following donations have been
received as part of the National Gallery of
Australia’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary
Gift Program.
Donations
R & M Champion de Crespigny
Foundation
Jacob Grossbard
Warwick Hemsley and Family
Meredith Hinchliffe
Julie Kantor
Maurice Newman AC and Jeannette
Newman
Margaret Hannah Olley Art Trust
Roslyn Packer AO
Greg and Kerry Paramor
Grestchen Philip
Dick Smith AO and Philippa Smith
Gifts
Phillip Berry
Susan Bienkowski
The late Jenny Brennan
Peter Burns
Doreen Coburn
Ian Dudgeon
Joachim Froese
John McBride
John McPhee
Adrian Slinger
Petronella Windeyer
Masterpieces for the Nation
Fund 2007
Annan Boag
Susan Boden Parsons
Cynthia, Richard, Laura and Penelope
Coleman
Esther Constable
Ann Cork
David Franks
James Hanratty: In memory of Dr Phillip
Hanratty
Sue Hegarty
Janet D Hine
C and J Hurlstone
Claudia Hyles
Judith Carol Johnson
Sir Richard Kingsland AO, CBE, DFC
Dr Geoffrey Lancaster AM
Margaret J Mashford
Shirley Jean O’Reilly
Kim Paterson
Kevin Riley
Judith Roach in memory of Joan Coulter
Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose
Kenneth Saxby
Kim Snepvangers
Elizabeth Ward: In memory of her beloved
husband Ronald
Dr Stephen Wild
Lady Joyce Wilson
Graham and Evelyn Young
We would also like to thank the numerous
anonymous donors who have donated to
Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007.
Sponsorship
NAB
BHP Billiton
ActewAGL
Brassey Hotel of Canberra
Casella Wines
EMC Australia
Forrest Inn and Apartments
Gordon Darling Foundation
Hindmarsh
Infront Systems
Saville Park Suites
credit lines
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The first half of this year has proved to be a very busy
and exciting period for the Gallery. We are delighted to
announce several new partnerships, as well as welcoming
back two loyal corporate supporters. The Gallery greatly
values corporate support and is thrilled that our exciting
exhibition program has attracted some of Australia’s
leading corporations.
BHP and the National Indigenous Arts Triennial
On 18 April, the National Gallery of Australia announced
a major new arts initiative as well as a significant new
corporate partnership. The Gallery is delighted that BHP
Billiton has agreed to support the inaugural National
Indigenous Art Triennial which will open at the Gallery
on 13 October. Mr Chris Lynch, Excecutive Director and
Group President, Carbon Steel Materials, BHP Billiton,
attended and spoke at the media launch held at the Gallery
on 18 April 2006. The Triennial, Culture Warriors, will be
curated by Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Art at the Gallery and a member of
the Gurindji and Mudpurra communities. Artists selected
for Culture Warriors include Philip Gudthaykudthay, Jean
Baptiste Apuatimi, Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr and
Daniel Boyd who visited the Gallery on the day of the
announcement. BHP Billiton’s generous contribution will
enable the exhibition to be displayed at the National
Gallery of Australia and also to tour to Queensland,
Western Australia and South Australia.
National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery
For the first time since 1990, the space designed for and
devoted to sculpture at the National Gallery of Australia
has been returned to its original purpose. It has been
extensively restored, refurbished and relit and includes the
reinstatement of Brancusi’s iconic Birds in a reflecting pool.
The National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery will
display new acquisitions, purchased with the assistance
of the National Australia Bank’s annual contribution,
alongside sculptures already in the National Gallery of
Australia’s collection.
ActewAGL and George Lambert
As well as welcoming two new corporate partners to the
Gallery family, it is also fitting that one of the Gallery’s
most loyal local supporters, ActewAGL, is partnering the
Gallery to present George W Lambert retrospective: heroes
development office
and icons during this twenty-fifth anniversary year. This is
the most comprehensive exhibition of Lambert’s work in
more than thirty years and is only on display at the Gallery
in Canberra. Previously, ActewAGL has sponsored
Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles, Chihuly: masterworks in glass
and Bill Viola: the passions.
VIP and EMC Australia/Infront
Another previous supporter of the Gallery, EMC Australia,
in conjunction with Infront Systems, is supporting VIP:
very important photographs 1840s–1940s. This exhibition
provides an insight into the range of photographs by
Australian and international photographers in the national
collection. Previously, EMC sponsored The Edwardians
exhibition in 2004.
Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program
The National Gallery of Australia Foundation is planning
a series of activities for Foundation members during the
twenty-fifth anniversary year. The Foundation has initiated
a gift program targeting $25 million dollars, which will be
the result of corporate sponsorship and benefaction during
the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007
Thank you to all donors who have already donated to
the Masterpieces for the Nation fund for 2007. Please
find enclosed a brochure in this edition of artonview, or
if you would like further information please phone the
Development Office on (02) 6240 6454.
Chris Lynch (BHP) addresses Rupert Myer, Ron Radford, and artists Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, (accompanied by Angela Hill), Philip Gudthaykudthay and Peter Minygululu at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial
6 national gallery of australia
exhibition galleries
George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons
‘Don’t call me an artistic genius’, George W Lambert told
a reporter from the Sydney Mail in 1922; he would much
rather have been told that he had done his job well, ‘as one
might address a bricklayer’.1 He said this because when he
returned to Australia in 1921 after twenty years in Paris
and London he was treated like a returning hero, féted
by the press and wined and dined by members of the
government and wealthy patrons – the artists in Victoria
welcomed him at a dinner at the Café Français, Melbourne,
on 15 April 1921, and later that year the New South Wales
Society of Artists held an official dinner in his honour at
the Wentworth Hotel, Sydney, on 29 June. All the items on
the menu were inspired by his work: ‘The Mask Cocktail’,
‘Salade Lambertine’ and ‘Important Peaches’. In the
end, he had to escape the enjoyable but overwhelming
hospitality in Sydney. He told his wife Amy that he had
‘bolted’ from Sydney, because ‘everybody seemed to think
my mission was to sit back and talk old memories’, but
that was not his way – he could not spend too much time
socialising because he needed to get on with his work.2
Lambert was tall and slender with light reddish hair
and a van Dyke beard; an athletic man with ‘a forceful,
challenging, robust, aggressive quality’, who had been a
boxer in his youth and was good with horses.3 He was fond
of music, had a baritone voice, an enquiring mind ‘with
an interest in the universe and whatever laws controlled
both it and him’, and was sceptical of all religions.4 He is
said to have had great charm and to be able to move easily
in fashionable circles as well as among humble people,
tempering his manner to the mood of the company.5 He
could be the life and soul of a gathering, an entertaining
raconteur, radiating good fellowship with his wit, goodwill
and capacity for mimicry.6
He was more than that, for he was a kind of
chameleon with a variety of personalities: a gentle, kindly
and sympathetic one for his friends and a brilliant and
flamboyant presence for his acquaintances and the public.
While creating fun and provoking laughter, he was said to
camouflage his inner self. He confessed to his wife that he
was grateful to keep going without letting everyone know
about his periods of melancholy.7 She was well acquainted
with this side of him and suggested that his extrovert
behaviour was a shield against his impressionable nature.
Like many creative people he was highly sensitive and from
time to time was unable to manage his stress or his bouts
of depression – and in such moments he needed privacy.
His temperament is evident within his work which at times
shows considerable empathy and perception and at others
a remarkable brilliance – and wit.
Different people admired Lambert for varying reasons,
but they almost universally praised him for his discipline
and hard work. His art teacher Julian Ashton said that ‘no
detail was too small’ to escape Lambert’s attention, ‘no
labour too great’ to achieve his goal, ‘he was ever his own
severest critic’.8 The great Australian landscape painter
Hans Heysen claimed that of course there is ‘always the
Poser in Lambert but his downright sincerity when it comes
to the art of painting demands the greatest respect’.9 His
assistant Arthur Murch was inspired by Lambert’s gospel of
devotion to work.10
The Australian official historian CEW Bean suggested
that he ‘worked like an assiduous student’, and that ‘there
was no trace of affectation in the sincerity with which he
set to work’, ‘he was completely ruled by some high motive
within’.11 After Lambert’s death, a friend wrote to Amy:
If we went to his studio we would find him hard
at work from early morning until late at night; his
heart and soul were in his work there, and there is
no doubt his strength was undermined by constant
hard work.12
When Lambert’s sister Sadie wrote to congratulate him
when he was awarded the Archibald Prize in 1927 for the
portrait Mrs Annie Murdoch 1927, he replied ‘when one
weighs the failures with the successes one finds it easy to
keep a level head’ and that ‘fortunately I am too busy to
enjoy limelight’.13
29 June – 16 September 2007
George W Lambert Self-portrait (unfinished)
c. 1930 oil on canvas 91.5 x 75.0 cm
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney,
purchased 1930
artonview winter 2007 7
8 national gallery of australia
Lambert reflected his complex personality in his
many self-portraits, in which he presented himself as
an actor playing a role. Artists often paint their own
portrait because they are in need of a model and the
subject is readily available and because they can be freer
with themselves than they can with any other subject.
Rembrandt delighted in putting on different costumes and
guises, as did Lambert’s British associate and one of the
most successful of Edwardian portrait painters, William
Orpen. So when Lambert painted himself in a variety of
ways, in a pose derived from Velázquez or in a theatrical
stance wearing fancy dress, he was working within an
established tradition.
Lambert’s second oil self-portrait of 1906 is among his
most austere. He adopted a spare composition in which
he focused on the head, free from any distractions. His
tonalist approach derives from Velázquez, as does the
way he framed his head in darkness to draw attention to
it. While it is a youthful portrait the face has a startling
presence and alertness. He looked at himself intensely, not
just studying the structure and form of his physiognomy,
but also enquiring as to who he is and what his future
might be. There is a slight arrogance in the fixity of his
glance and the thrust of his chin, but a sense of enquiry in
his glance. It is a serious portrait of an earnest young man
on his way to success without any hint of the sense of fun
that he was later to give to his self-portraits.
In the audacious Life study of 1909, Lambert depicted
the familiar goatee beard and receding hairline; but
this man’s hair seems to be even more receding than
Lambert’s, his eyebrows higher, his cheeks chubbier and
his beard thicker. Indeed, it most probably is not a self-
portrait, but an image of a model with similar features
to Lambert. In tricking us into thinking it may be a self-
portrait we cannot but wonder whether Lambert was
playing a game, whether he chose such a model to create
a jest. While not yet making fun of himself he was on
his way to doing so. And in portraying this man with his
trousers around his feet, he made him appear outrageously
naked rather than nude.
By 1922 Lambert was a success, he was at the height
of his powers and he had been elected an Associate of
the Royal Academy. He had recently painted a dashing
portrait of Miss Gladys Collins, The white glove 1921, in
which he captured her vivacious personality, laughing with
her head tilted back, hamming it up for him. He followed
this with his Self-portrait with gladioli 1922, a bravura
image of himself posing artificially, as if giving a speech.
Although he was a dedicated artist who worked to the
point of exhaustion, he presented himself here as the
affected, self-admiring dandy, the precious, self-assured
aesthete some considered him to be. It was an elaborate
joke, a fiction which he acted out to its limit. He wittily
paid homage to the self-portrait by the first President of
George W Lambert Mrs Annie Murdoch 1927
oil on canvas 59.6 x 49.5 cm
The Murdoch collection
George W Lambert Self-portrait c. 1906
oil on canvas 46.3 x 38.2 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
The Joseph Brown Collection
(opposite) George W Lambert
Life study 1909 pencil 35.4 x 24.7 cm
State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia,
Perth Gift of John Brackenreg
in 1974
10 national gallery of australia
the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds (Royal Academy,
London), in which Reynolds depicted himself dressed in
his academic robes, standing aristocratically with his right
hand on his hip. He also made reference to the classical
marble sculpture, the Hermes Logios (National Museum
of Rome), an image of the god of eloquence who, like
Lambert in this portrait, stands with one arm raised up as if
speaking. He was laughingly positing himself as Australia’s
chief Academician and artistic orator. The following year
at the Society of Artists’ Ball Lambert took the joke further
with his friend Leon Gellert dressing up as Lambert had in
Self-portrait with gladioli while Lambert dressed as
a Persian prince. It is said that in the self-portraits of
Lambert’s British friend and contemporary William Orpen
‘the whole tendency is towards mockery both of himself
and of the world’.14 Likewise, in this self-portrait Lambert
created a tease, making fun of himself – and, as the
poet and author Arthur Adams put it, laughing ‘at all
conventions and the mode’.15
In his later portraits Lambert often showed himself
playing a part. We could conclude that he never revealed
himself, his inner being; but that would be too hasty. In
these images Lambert presented himself as an exuberant,
entertaining man with a delightful sense of humour. We
need only look at the eyes and the mouth in The official
artist 1927 and Self-portrait (unfinished) 1930 to see that
Lambert is having fun. He showed himself as a laughing
cavalier – fun-loving, but hard-working in a traditional
fashion, something most would agree was true of the man.
When Lambert painted or drew his best portraits he
created figures charged with life, even to the point of
suggesting the pulsating life under the skin. He sometimes
conveyed a woman’s sensuality through the dynamic
motive of gesture. In Miss Helen Beauclerk 1914 he
invested the subject with an intense self-awareness, her
facial muscles taut and alert, and he reminded the viewer
of her physicality by showing her putting on gloves and
rubbing one hand against another. Likewise, in some of his
portraits of men, such as The half-back (Maurice Lambert)
1920, he captured a masculine sense of physical alertness
by portraying his subjects with their muscles tensed. In this
portrait he used the man’s dark brushed-back hair and the
raised collar of his white sweater to emphasise the nape of
his neck and to give his subject a powerful and sensuous
presence like that of a matinee idol.
George W Lambert Self-portrait with gladioli
1922 oil on canvas
128.2 x 102.8 cm National Portrait Gallery,
Canberra, gift of John Schaeffer AO
in 2003
George W Lambert The official artist 1921
oil on canvas 91.7 x 71.5 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
purchased through the Felton Bequest in 1921
(opposite) George W Lambert
Self-portrait 1927 pencil 38.5 x 28.2 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
purchased in 1955
12 national gallery of australia
artonview winter 2007 13
Whereas in drawings such as Light Horse veteran 1925,
he brilliantly modelled the head to capture the texture of
the old man’s skin and his underlying muscle structure, to
create such a living presence that we almost feel we have
encountered the subject. In all his best portraits Lambert
captured a dynamic body, the kinaesthetic tension of
the muscles under the skin to evoke a powerful sense of
physicality. What Lambert did in these portraits is what the
best actors do in their performances – they create a sense
of presence, an intensity of being, so that every word,
every tone and stress is absorbed – and yet almost without
our noticing that it happens.
Lambert died on 29 May 1930 at the age of fifty-six.
His heart failed while he was repairing his horse’s feed box,
at ‘Windamere’, Cobbity, New South Wales. On his death
he received many verbal tributes, and to make a visual
statement the Art Gallery of New South Wales swathed his
painting Across the black soil plains 1899 in black drapes.
Despite his personal rejection of being a genius, he was
generally acknowledged as such by his contemporaries.
Newspaper reporters said that his death ‘will be a tragic
loss to Australian art’, described him as ‘one of the finest
artists that Australia has produced’, and claimed that ‘never
was there a keener draughtsman than he’.16 The Sydney
Morning Herald suggested that ‘no one can estimate to-
day the immense value of the stimulus which the ideals
of the young Australian school received from his inspiring
influence, and the progress which art has made though
his example’.17
In a special memorial edition of Art in Australia, other
Australian artists stressed Lambert’s pre-eminence among
them, and said he was the only one who could boast of
an international reputation. George Bell suggested he
was ‘the great figure of Australian art’, Hans Heysen that
he was ‘a great draughtsman and designer and a very
beautiful colourist with an astounding sense of form’,
George W Lambert The half-back (Maurice Lambert) 1920 oil on canvas 76.2 x 61.0 cm Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide purchased through a South Australian Government Grant in 1958
George W Lambert Miss Helen Beauclerk 1914 oil on canvas 76.5 x 61.0 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased in 1921
George W Lambert Light Horse veteran 1925
pencil 38.5 x 27.8 cm Art Gallery of New South
Wales, Sydney, purchased in 1925
artonview winter 2007 15
and Daryl Lindsay that he ‘stood for the finest ideals in
the contemporary English movement’.18 In Britain, Kineton
Parkes described Lambert in the Apollo as ‘a magnificent
technician’ and the Connoisseur suggested that he was
gifted with a daring expression and virile technique, and
painted portraits with a dashing approach.19 In 1933 when
a selection of more than seventy of Lambert’s works
were included in an exhibition at the Royal Academy
commemorating the work of members who had recently
died, British art critic Frank Rinder described Lambert as
‘the virile Australian who had just reached his best when
death came’.20
In 1930 Lambert was considered to be Australia’s
greatest painter ever, and much lauded. And then newer,
younger artists appeared. For a while Australian art was
held in the thrall of William Dobell and Russell Drysdale,
Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, and after that by other
artists. The Edwardian, wartime and postwar world of
Lambert seemed to belong to another people and another
time. More recently, however, we have become fascinated
with Edwardian lives brought to our screens in films
based on the novels of EM Forster, Henry James and Edith
Wharton, nowadays young Australians flock to Gallipoli to
discover their heritage, and we want to know more about
the years in which Sydney built its Harbour Bridge.
The circle has turned and it is time to look again at the art
of George Lambert, and to discover afresh the work of one
of Australia’s most brilliant, witty and fascinating artists.
George Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons is a
tribute to one of Australia’s most significant artists who
created a number of much loved iconic images as well
as portraits of Australian heroes such as Breaker Morant,
Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson and artists
Charles Conder, Thea Proctor, Hugh Ramsay and
Arthur Streeton. Seventy-seven years after his death, this
major survey – from 1894 to 1930 – shows the diverse
range of his work, from his Australian bush subjects to his
Edwardian portraits and figure groups, from his sparkling
oil sketches painted in Palestine and Gallipoli to his major
battle paintings and large sculpture. It includes some 120
paintings, drawings and sculpture from a wide range of
public and private collections in Australia and Britain.
Anne Gray Head of Australian Art
The exhibition catalogue is available from the National Gallery of Australia Shop on 62406420. Further information at nga.gov.au/Lambert
1 ‘The Eternal Quest for Beauty: Society of Artists show’, Sydney Mail, 13 September 1922, p. 10.2 George Lambert correspondence with Amy Lambert, 23 October 1921, Lambert Family Papers, ML MSS 97/10, p. 369.3 ‘The Eternal Quest for Beauty: Society of Artists show’, Sydney Mail, 13 September 1922, p. 10.4 CEW Bean, Gallipoli Mission, (1948), Sydney: ABC, 1990, pp. 26 and 29.5 David Fulton, ‘George Lambert at the Front III’, in Arthur Jose, et.al. The Art of George W. Lambert A. R. A., Sydney: Art in Australia, 1924 (Lambert 1924), p. 30.6 M.F. Bruxner, ‘George Lambert at the Front II’, in Lambert 1924, p. 26; David Fulton, ‘George Lambert at the Front III’, in Lambert 1924, p. 30; and CEW Bean, Gallipoli Mission, (1948), Sydney: ABC, 1990, p. 29.7 George Lambert correspondence with Amy Lambert, 25 November 1921, Lambert Family Papers, ML MSS 97/10, p. 383.8 Julian Ashton, ‘George Lambert: Painter and sculptor’, Lambert Memorial Number, Art In Australia, series 3, August –September 1930 (Lambert 1930), n.p.9 Hans Heysen correspondence with Lionel Lindsay, 18 December 1921, quoted in Colin Thiele, Heysen of Hahndorf, (1968), Adelaide: Rigby, 1976, p. 295.10 Arthur Murch, ‘Difficulties’, Undergrowth, Sydney, September–October 1926.11 CEW Bean, Gallipoli Mission, (1948), Sydney: ABC, 1990, p. 112; CEW Bean, ‘George Lambert at the Front I’, in Lambert 1924, p. 26.
12 AW Allen, Merioola, correspondence with Amy Lambert, 1 June 1930, Lambert Family Papers, ML MSS 97/11.13 George Lambert correspondence with Sadie Cox, 17 June 1928, Lambert Family Archive.14 Bruce Arnold, Orpen: Mirror to an Age, London: Jonathan Cape, 1981, p. 263.15 Arthur Adams, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ in Lambert 1930, n.p.16 George Lambert: Death of famous artist – a distinguished career’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 1930, p. 12; Sydney Ure Smith, ‘Obituary: Late G. W. Lambert, A. R .A.’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 1930, p. 180; Thea Proctor, ‘The Late G. W. Lambert A. R. A.: An appreciation’, The Home, 1 July 1930, p. 21.17 ‘A great artist’, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 1930.18 George Bell, ‘Lambert’s Work’, Lambert 1930, n.p.; Hans Heysen, ‘George Lambert Passes’, Lambert 1930, n.p.; Daryl Lindsay, ‘The Significance of Lambert’s Work’, Lambert 1930, n.p.19 Kineton Parkes, ‘George Lambert’, Apollo, London, vol.12, July 1930, pp. 74–75; ‘The Late George W. Lambert, A. R. A, 1873–1930’, Connoisseur, London, vol. 86, July 1930, p. 58.20 Frank Rinder, ‘The Royal Academy – A Commemorative Show: Orpen in his brilliance’, Manchester Guardian, 7 January 1933, p. 14. The exhibition also included work by Bertram Mackennal and William Orpen.
notes
a
16 national gallery of australia
conservation
After treatment George Lambert
The sonnet c. 1907 oil on canvas 113.3 x 177.4
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
John B Pye Bequest 1963
artonview winter 2007 17
The Gallery’s paintings conservation department has
been examining and preparing works in readiness for the
launch of the George W Lambert retrospective in June. For
conservators, the chance to work on an exhibition devoted
to a single artist presents an ideal opportunity to develop
an overview of the condition of the artist’s work, the
materials used and the range of techniques employed to
create the works.
Lambert has proved to be a fascinating subject. He
obviously enjoyed the process of painting and throughout
his career immersed himself in the study of the Masters.
We can see the influence of many of them, including
Velasquez, Hals, Manet and Whistler, in the varied way in
which he applied his paint from fluid, medium-rich washes
in backgrounds to bravura flicks and dashes of impasto in
draperies and fabrics. He has been portrayed as technically
conservative, given the period in which he worked.
Nevertheless, there is a deep pleasure to be gained from
the sheer craftsmanship and variety in his works.
It is clear that Lambert’s formal approach, founded
on solid study at Julian Ashton’s school and in Paris, has
served him well. Generally, his paintings have withstood
the test of time. The conservation issues we face stem
mostly from the accumulation of dirt on the surface of the
works and the natural alteration of organic materials rather
than the inherent self-destruction that can affect
artists’ work.
The sonnet was painted by Lambert in 1907, using
Arthur Streeton, Thea Proctor and Kitty Powell as models
in his homage to Manet’s Le dejeuner sur l’herbe and
Giorgione’s Fête Champêtre. The sonnet won a silver medal
at the Exposition Internationale de Arte, Barcelona, in 1911,
but met with a lukewarm response in England. When the
painting came into the Gallery’s conservation studio, it had
an extremely heavy layer of surface grime and a deeply
discoloured varnish. The canvas was also poorly attached
to a defective stretcher. We began treatment by repairing
the stretcher and reinforcing the tacking margins of the
canvas support. The canvas was then re-attached securely
and tensioned, ensuring that surface cleaning and varnish
removal could be carried out on a well-supported paint
layer. The cleaning of years of accumulated surface grime,
using a conservation standard detergent, produced a
marked brightening of the surface, but we were amazed
to see the dramatic results once varnish removal began.
Beautiful pinks and blues appeared in the sky; Thea
Proctor’s sleeves turned white before our eyes and Kitty
Powell’s robust suntan paled to an elegant Edwardian
alabaster. As Lambert’s paint was revealed it became
apparent that problems with The sonnet mainly concerned
structural support and neglect. To complete the treatment,
a saturating varnish was applied to the surface and small
areas of abrasion were subtly retouched.
As well as major loans from public and private
collections in Australia and overseas, the exhibition includes
all of the paintings by George Lambert in the Gallery’s
collection. The sonnet has been treated and The old dress
was conserved in 2001. We are now looking forward
to examining more closely Portrait group, Weighing the
fleece, The empty glass and A garden bunch. a
David Wise, Sheridan Roberts and Greg HowardPaintings Conservation
Restoring Lambert
Before treatment George Lambert The sonnet c. 1907 oil on canvas 113.3 x 177.4 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra John B Pye Bequest 1963
18 national gallery of australia
Orde Poynton and Project galleries
VIP: very important photographs 1840s–1940s
People are regarded as VIPs for many reasons – for
being brilliant and talented, for being rich and powerful.
Some by virtue of hard work and merit, others by notorious
misadventure. In this exhibition, rare and treasured
photographs from the national collection take to the red
carpet to show themselves off in all their glory: it celebrates
the twenty-fifth anniversary in 2007 of the first displays
of photography included in the inaugural exhibitions for
the opening of the National Gallery of Australia building
in 1982. Like their human equivalents, there is a variety of
explanations for why some photographs are celebrated,
why some garner such widespread admiration that they
achieve iconic status. Needless to say, big and brash or
small and dignified, they all have an essential quality that
raises them above the ordinary. If they were people, you
would say they had charisma.
The ‘A-listers’ are well represented in the exhibition:
Edward Weston, Man Ray, Julia Margaret Cameron,
Bill Brandt, Berenice Abbott, František Drtikol and
Walker Evans are on show with the images that made them
famous as well as other images which do not have as high
a level of recognition. Also lauded are our own ‘home-
grown’ celebrities – Charles Bayliss, Harold Cazneaux,
Olive Cotton and Max Dupain, for example. Fame is at
best a strange beast: also included are the photographic
equivalents of people well known and respected in their
field but who have had universal acclaim elude them.
And there is outstanding work from the early years of the
medium by the ever-elusive ‘Anonymous’. The exhibition
covers all genres of photography – portraiture, landscape,
urban photography, social documentary, photojournalism,
celebrity work, still life, advertising; photographs as single
images but also as found in albums and books; cut up,
collaged and hand-coloured, images made with the most
advanced cameras of the day to images made without
a camera at all; and from the intimate to Bayliss and
Holtermann’s nine-and-a-half metre long panorama of
Sydney Harbour. Photography, in other words, in all its
wondrous diversity.
A collection of photography in an art gallery has to
tell the history of the medium. The exhibition presents
premium examples of the almost bewildering range of
processes and techniques employed during photography’s
first century: from the daguerreotypes, salt prints and
cyanotypes of the earliest years, to the wet-plate then
dry-plate collodion albumen silver prints with their fine
detail that replaced the early processes, through to
the graphic quality of the processes employed by the
Pictorialists at the turn of the twentieth century –
the bromoils and gum bichromates, the carbons and
platinums and the supremely high quality photomechanical
reproduction – and finally the gelatin silver process that
became the mainstay of photography through to the
invention of digital. Early colour processes of the thirties
and forties such as Gasparcolor and dye transfer also make
an appearance. Prohibitively expensive and technically
sophisticated, they were principally found in the domain
of advertising and can be seen in the exhibition in work by
Anton Bruehl and Paul Outerbridge.
Collecting photography at the National Gallery of
Australia began in the early 1970s in tandem with the start
of concerted institutional acquisition of the medium by
art museums around the world. The Victoria and Albert
Museum had started doing so in 1852 and the Museum
of Modern Art in New York set up its photographic
department in 1940 – but they were very much the
exceptions. In Australia, photography had been acquired
by the state and university libraries, though primarily for
its documentary value, and by the Art Gallery of South
Australia, for example, since the 1920s. However, it was
only in 1975 that the big auction houses, Sotheby’s and
Christie’s, established photographic departments and the
medium took its first steps towards becoming the lucrative
part of the art market that it is today with its long list of
celebrity collectors that includes Elton John, Diane Keaton,
Tom Cruise and Madonna.
26 May – 19 August 2007
Bill Brandt East End girl, dancing the
Lambeth Walk 1938 gelatin silver photograph
21.2 x 17.4 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra
20 national gallery of australia
The first formulation of policy in the Gallery’s annual
report of 1976–77 stated the aim was to ‘develop a
department of photography which will include both
Australian and overseas works. The Australian collection
will be historically comprehensive, while the collection of
overseas photographers will aim to represent the work
of the major artists in the history of photography’. Since
that statement of intent thirty years ago, the collection
has grown to include over 16,000 works. There are
approximately sixty per cent Australian to forty per cent
international photographs, a ratio that has remained
constant over the years. It is one of the largest and finest
collections in the region. This exhibition focuses on the
first 100 years of photography, a period which saw
photography move from its beginnings in the 1840s,
expensive and confined to a large degree to the upper
classes, to cementing itself by the 1940s as one of the
leading art forms of the twentieth century; a ubiquitous
one that, with its chameleon nature, technological
underpinnings and mechanical reproducibility, seemed best
equipped to serve and reflect the modern world.
Viscountess Frances Jocelyn
Circular design c. 1860 albumen silver photograph,
watercolour, pencil 28.0 x 23.2 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
William Henry Fox Talbot The ladder before April 1845
plate XIV from The pencil of nature 1844–46
salted paper print from a calotype paper negative
17.0 x 18.2 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra
Given the strengths and depth of both its Australian
and international holdings, the Gallery has the capacity to
successfully display Australian photographers alongside
their international contemporaries. The interaction
between Australia and the rest of the world was, if not as
immediate during the first 100 years of the medium as in
the contemporary global world of internet communication,
then certainly as lively. The Australian scene was enriched
by the arrival of photographers from across the world
coming to settle or visit, and photographs and publications
travelled between the two worlds on both private and
professional missions.
Having Australian photographers and those from
Europe and America together in this exhibition allows for
rewarding dialogues between works: it is fascinating to
compare what happened on the colonial ‘periphery’ with
what happened at the ‘centre’ of cultural production,
regional interpretations sometimes displaying a greater
level of freedom and innovation. Photographs from the
1930s by Max Dupain are seen, for example, next to the
Surrealist-inspired works of Man Ray that so influenced
them; the Pictorialist works of Harold Cazneaux next
to Heinrich Kühn. It is the first time at the Gallery that
Australian and international works have been hung
together in this way.
In any discussion of what makes a photograph
special, it is well to keep in mind the American landscape
photographer Ansel Adams’s observation that ‘there
are no rules for good photographs, there are only good
photographs’. When people think of a classic, ‘good’
photograph they most likely reference the sort of
photography practised by Adams – usually black-and-white
and a beautiful print, pristine and rarified. But great works
can also take on somewhat more anarchic characteristics.
Viscountess Frances Jocelyn was a lady-in-waiting to
artonview winter 2007 21
Queen Victoria, a great enthusiast who encouraged Jocelyn
to take up photography. Like others from her set, she
cut up her own photographs and those taken by others,
arranged them into new narratives and decorative patterns,
painted on and around them and made a hybrid album
incorporating elements of a lady’s sketchbook. Her album
is witty and irreverent. It is also a telling and perceptive
critique of the aristocratic Victorian society in which she
lived – one in which England created a vast empire through
its naval power, one in which everyone had their place
and responsibilities that could not be shirked.
Any attempt at compiling a checklist of stylistic must-
haves is always going to run aground coming up with a
definition of magic and appeal that speaks to everyone.
Walking through an exhibition it is easy enough to observe
that an image that ‘speaks’ profoundly to one person will
leave another yawning and unmoved. Having said that …
Photography is so much about subject matter and
it is overtly true that to some extent making a good
photograph is simply about being in the right place at
the right time and knowing – either intuitively or through
years of experience and probably both – the best place to
stand and the right moment to click the shutter. The ability
to do this is an essential skill for all great photographers
but particularly obvious perhaps in those practising street
photography and photo reportage who go out into the
world to find their picture: represented in the show with
images by Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose term
‘the decisive moment’ has become a famous attempt to
define this mastery, as well as works by German-born
British photographer Bill Brandt and Americans Walker
Evans and Helen Levitt among others.
Harold Cazneaux The orphan sisters c. 1906 gelatin silver photograph 39.5 x 31.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of the Cazneaux family 1981
František Drtikol Draped figure behind seated nude c. 1928 gelatin silver photograph 26.5 x 22.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Events caught by the photographic eye in this way can
be ones that change the course of world history or – as
often as not – something that passes totally unnoticed by
those not possessing the heightened observational intent
of the photographer. The camera’s ability to transform
the mundane into something poetic is one of its most
extraordinary characteristics and one that is present
strongly and majestically from its very earliest beginnings.
Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot was one of its
inventors and a great master in regard to this power to
remake the world around him into one of enigma and
heightened, almost mystical, significance. Talbot took
the simple things that surrounded him in his rural country
life – a piece of lace, a leaf, bonnets, glasses from a
cabinet, the china off the sideboard – arranged them
in front of the camera and through this reordering and
visionary flair transformed them into photographs that
continue to fascinate and give rise to debate as to their
meaning.
artonview winter 2007 23
The Gallery is fortunate to have one of the few
remaining complete copies of The pencil of nature, the first
commercially available book with photographic illustration.
It was published in six parts between 1844 and 1846 to
publicise Talbot’s discoveries – and in a spirit of defiance
and counterclaim to Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s 1839
claim in Paris of being the first to capture successfully and
permanently the imprint of the world onto a surface (in
Daguerre’s case onto a piece of sensitised copper). There is
a wonder that comes with reflecting on the sheer survival
of works by the pioneers of the medium – and more so
in that they are sometimes in extraordinarily good and
sparkling condition. Talbot’s salt prints are a treasured part
of the collection as are the cyanotypes of plants made
in the 1840s by Anna Atkins and the small but always
affecting group of daguerreotypes and ambrotypes –
one-off images that in their protective cases often have a
jewel-like character.
One of the qualities unique to the medium
– unmistakably present wherever it was made and
discernible from the very first time a sliver of time was
fixed through the alchemy of chemistry and light – is its
potent and unbreakable relationship to the real. Startlingly
strong and unmediated, for example, is the presence of a
group of Aboriginal people in a daguerreotype made by
the English-born photographer Douglas T Kilburn, who
opened Melbourne’s first commercial photographic studio
in 1847. Along with five other surviving dageurreotypes
made by Kilburn, it is the first photographic record made
of Australia’s Indigenous people and the earliest Australian
image in the collection. The subjects of this photograph
have such appeal because of the way they live again in the
image as intensely as when their images were captured on
this polished silver iodide-coated copperplate 160 years
ago. And they in turn seem to be aware of us. Present
and past collide.
That it feels as if physical traces of their subject
are embedded in photographs gives them huge
talismanic power. Recording what something looks like,
through historic, ethnographic, proprietorial impulse,
will always be a strong raison d’être of the medium.
Such considerations are important for the curator of
photography but as important are the qualities of the
particular print, considerations that address the technical
and aesthetic qualities of the object itself, including such
concerns as how it fits into the photographer’s oeuvre,
into the collection, and more broadly into the history of
photography as well as its cultural significance. These
aspects of the work are indivisible and of equal importance
in acquiring work for an art museum collection.
Rarity is always a factor in making something special
and the same applies to the world of photography – more
Anton Bruehl Porgy and Bess 1942 Gasparcolor colour photograph 32.3 x 26.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra NGA Photography Fund: Farrell Family Foundation donation 2000
Doris Ulmann Woman and two children in doorway 1929–31 platinum print 20.6 x 15.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
(opposite) Max Dupain Brave new world 1935 gelatin silver photograph 46.3 x 35.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
24 national gallery of australia
Albert Renger-Patzsch Railroad bridge c. 1927
gelatin silver photograph 16.8 x 22.8 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
so in fact given the reproducibility of photographs.
Editioning of prints has only come into vogue in recent
years to meet the demands of a market. With older
material it is difficult to ascertain how many copies of
a particular print exist but as there was little market
for photographic prints as art works, huge print runs
were uncommon. There are photographers such as Tina
Modotti, who worked with Edward Weston in Mexico
in the mid to late 1920s. She was not a prolific printer
and her life was cut short – to have works by Modotti
and others like her is always special and they attract high
prices at auction (the Gallery has four fine Modotti prints).
Images by Henri Cartier-Bresson have been common
enough in later prints but vintage prints are extremely
rare. The Gallery is fortunate to have a vintage print of his
made in Mexico in 1934 that looks startlingly different to
the graphic high-contrast prints for which he is known.
Circumstances can also change, affecting the desiribility
of an artist’s work. Following Cartier-Bresson’s death in
2004, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation prohibited any
further printing from his negatives. As a result, the value of
Cartier-Bresson prints has risen sharply and will
continue to do so.
Having a sizeable body of work that can tell the story
of a photographer’s career is indispensable in a collection,
allowing for serious research and proper understanding of
where a particular print fits into the big picture. As part
of the desired outcome of the acquisition policy,
this is especially important in the area of Australian
photography – comprehensive collections of work by
John Kauffmann, Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton,
Max Dupain and Australian-born expatriates such as
Anton Bruehl who worked in America, for example, are
held with representative works included in the exhibition.
Adding to the prestige of a collection are groups of
work relating to a particular project engaged in by a
photographer and this area is a distinct and spectacular
strength of the holdings: Lewis Hine’s documentation of
child labour made for the National Child Labor Committee
from 1908 to 1924, work which was instrumental in
reforms being implemented; more than sixty platinum
photographs by Doris Ulmann from 1929–31 of the Gullah
people of South Carolina and Georgia as well as the limited
edition book Roll, Jordan, Roll with fine photogravure
illustrations; more than 120 images by the early modernist
photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch, many of which
artonview winter 2007 25
were included in his highly influential book, Die Welt ist
schön [The world is beautiful] of 1928; EO Hoppé’s rare
photographs of German industry taken for the 1930 book
Deutsche Arbeit [German work] on the wonders of modern
German engineering and manufacturing plants. These
groups of works contribute to make the Gallery’s collection
truly one of world standing.
It is preferable to acquire vintage prints made by
the artist in the years close to the exposure date of
the negative. Photographic papers change enormously
over time, negatives degenerate and are damaged and
photographers also print differently – each period has its
own printing ‘style’ (even a great image may not find a
place in an art gallery if only a soulless print is available for
acquisition). As always there are exceptions to this or
that is to say cases where later prints have their own
special quality. The Gallery, for instance, has portfolios
made in the late 1970s of images that were created
by Berenice Abbott in the 1930s for her project
Changing New York, one of the greatest ‘portraits’ of
a city ever compiled. They look very different to the
prints made at the time the images were shot, which
are characteristically warmer in tone, but are exquisitely
printed by Parasol Press nonetheless. Ansel Adams’s late
portfolios, including the Museum set, are also highly prized
and of the highest quality, as is Edward Weston’s Fiftieth
Anniversary Portfolio 1902–1952 printed by his son Brett
under Weston’s supervision. These portfolios of Adams and
Weston were made at the end of their careers and exist as
moving testimonials: two master photographers looking
back at a life devoted to photography and making an
eloquent final statement on what was important.
Photographs carrying a particular history or showing
strongly the hand of the photographer also lift them above
the ordinary. For example, the backs of photographs
by Felix Man in the collection are covered with stickers
and annotations, providing an insight into the world
of the photographer; The steerage of 1907 by Alfred
Stieglitz is made (if possible) even more wonderful by
the long handwritten inscription to his friend and fellow
photographer Paul B Haviland which accompanies it; the
inscription by the American high fashion photographer
Baron George Hoyningen-Huene to Max Dupain – while
on a short visit to Sydney in 1937 – on a portrait of Dupain,
Max after surfing, made by Olive Cotton, makes it unique
and special.
Carleton E Watkins Willamette Falls, Oregon City 1867 albumen silver photograph 39.2 x 52.1 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra NGA Photography Fund: Farrell Family Foundation donation 2000
artonview winter 2007 27
It has been noted that sometimes photographs are
like windows, seemingly straightforward depictions of
the world, the camera almost a scientific instrument
of objectivity. Other times photographs are more like
mirrors reflecting back the photographer. And, of course,
photography must also work at revealing ourselves to
ourselves. Ansel Adams noted that ‘a photograph is usually
looked at – seldom looked into’. This exhibition asks the
viewer to engage with photographs in all their complexity
and diversity: to be charmed by the ‘stars’ certainly but
also to enjoy spending time with lesser known but equally
talented participants.
Great photography is always about exploring different
ways of looking at the world – and shifting, even if only
slightly, our perception of that world in some way. As we
enter the digital age the rules are changing. The value of
photography, whatever technology it employs, remains in
teaching us how to see and interpret our own world with
clarity, to stimulate our minds and evoke our emotions. a
Anne O’HehirCurator, Photography
Further information at nga.gov.au/VIP
Ansel Adams Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico 1941 gelatin silver photograph printed 1980 38.6 x 49.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
(opposite) Alfred Stieglitz The steerage 1907 photogravure on Japanese vellum printed 1915 33.4 x 26.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
28 national gallery of australia
asian ar t galleries
The new Southeast Asian Gallery opened in late October
2006 with a special launch of the newest and most exciting
acquisition from the region – the sixth-century Bronze
Weaver from Indonesia (see artonview, no. 49, page 36).
Placed at the entrance to the new permanent displays of
Southeast Asian art, the sculpture highlights the Gallery’s
commitment to showing the most ancient and enduring
art forms from the region, including those associated with
animist and ancestral beliefs which long predate the arrival
of world religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam
and Christianity.
Like all South and Southeast Asian art in the national
collection, the ancestral art is comprised largely of
sculpture and textiles. Their integrated display, made
possible by the Gallery’s new lighting system which
allows works of stone and wood to be located beside
light-sensitive fabrics, visually reinforces a fundamental
feature of ancient Southeast Asian cultures – the essential
complementary of male and female elements. This is most
clearly evident in the textiles created by women, and the
wooden sculptures and smelted bronzes which are men’s
arts. A number of the works on display actually combine
these dual elements: a pair of male and female bulol rice
guardians from the northern Philippines stands beside
a set of male and female cloths from Sumba in eastern
Indonesia. The ceremonial textiles, which form the female
gift in the elaborate exchanges that accompany marriage
and funerals, feature male skull tree motifs associated with
the prestigious masculine ritual of headhunting.
Among the recurring images in this section of the
Southeast Asian installations are those associated with
the dark underworld realm, often viewed as female. In
particular, reptiles such as crocodiles, snakes and mythical
naga serpents are found on works in all media. A large
receptacle made from buffalo horn was created in the
form of a serpent to hold the magical potions of the village
shaman in northern Sumatra. The ship symbol found on
the striking woven hangings used in rites of passage in
south Sumatra often takes the form of a dragon boat.
Motifs of birds associated with the upper realm of the
gods and the deified ancestors are also evident in this part
of the permanent display, with striking wooden sculptures
of birds exhibited from the mountainous regions of north
Vietnam, the Lampung region of southern Sumatra and
as far afield as Madagascar where, in the distant past,
the ancestors of modern Indonesians arrived after long
sea voyages which also took them into remote parts of
the Pacific Ocean. The similarities in style between quite
remote parts of Southeast Asia speak of that shared
linguistic and cultural heritage. Also recurring in Southeast
Asian arts are tree motifs, a popular symbol of the axis
mundi that the ancestors travel down to join the middle
world of the living. One of the most prominent works
with this motif is found in the last section of the Southeast
Asian Gallery – the textile from Central Sulawesi was
intended for display at rites associated with fertility when
the founding ancestors of clan and village are dutifully
honoured by their descendants.
Entering the Southeast Asian Gallery with the Bronze
Weaver in the foreground, and a Sumba textile and pairs of guardian figures from the
Philippines and West Iran behind
The Southeast Asian Gallery
artonview winter 2007 29
30 national gallery of australia
artonview winter 2007 31
Better known are the Southeast Asian arts, especially
sculpture, influenced by India. The great architectural
wonders of Angkor and Borobodur, and the enduring
vitality of Buddhism for Thailand and Burma, and Hinduism
for Bali, reveal the impact of religious and court rituals
adopted from South Asia in the first millennium of the
current era. The interaction of Indian ideas and imagery
with pre-existing local traditions has resulted in regional art
forms distinct from India yet revealing common affinities
across the Southeast Asian region.
Following on from the Indian Gallery, located directly
adjacent to the new Southeast Asian permanent exhibition,
the visitor catches a first glimpse of Southeast Asian art
through the white marble arcade that has been erected
in the Islamic section of the South Asian displays. The
reassembling of Mughal-period architectural feature,
from the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb, was a major
undertaking for the Gallery’s exhibition staff, assisted by
local stonemasons. The purchase of the arcade has been
generously supported by artist Margaret Olley, who also
assisted with the acquisition of the huge Indian brackets
and lintels which mark the entrance from the foyer to the
Asian Galleries.
Through the arches are some of the Gallery’s most
important Buddhist sculptures from Thailand, Burma and
Cambodia. Several Thai bronze sculptures are covered in
lacquer and gold leaf and reveal aspects of the narrative
of the life of the earthly Buddha Shakyamuni popular
throughout mainland Southeast Asia. While many images
allude to the moment of enlightenment when he reaches
down to touch the Earth, calling it to witness his lifetime
of good deeds, one striking sculpture shows the Buddha
seated in the forest where he had retreated from a quarrel
among his followers. Before him are the tiny figures of the
elephant and the monkey offering him a water pot and
honeycomb respectively.
A Burmese wooden Buddha with Hindu Balinese textiles and pages from a Thai manuscript on the adjacent wall
(opposite) Looking through the Mughal Indian marble arch at Thai and Burmese Buddhist sculpture
32 national gallery of australia
artonview winter 2007 33
On the wall behind, the designs on the textiles are drawn
from another enduring aspect of Indian culture, the
importance of the great epics, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata in mainland and insular Southeast Asia.
The Indonesian renditions of the tales, however, are
sometimes quite obscure, alluding to stories and dramatic
scenes unknown or not prominent in India. However, the
flat two-dimensional wayang form, a key feature of the
figures in the epics, is shared by Hindu Bali and Islamic
Java, appearing on batik, weavings, embroidery, painted
panels and even decorating a container for storing spurs
for fighting cocks.
While many of the sculptures are large and imposing,
and able to be displayed without the barrier of glass
panels, other works shown in showcases are small
and exquisite. In particular a number of small gold and
silver objects display the gamut of the region’s cultural
orientations. A gold mask from Tanimbar provides
protection in an animist rite. While the hilt of splendid
jewel-studded Balinese dagger takes the form of a demon,
another from a nearby Islamic kingdom reveals a stylised
human form. One intricate box in the form of a crab blends
Malay and Chinese elements in a decorative form popular
on both sides of the Straits of Malacca.
The existing collections of Southeast Asian art have been
supplemented by a number of recent acquisitions, allowing
the Gallery to present a more complex and comprehensive
history of the arts of the region. For example, juxtaposed
with the Mughal arch, sumptuous gold brocades from the
Gallery’s famous textile collection are displayed beside a
stone panel inscribed with Arabic calligraphy. The recently
acquired sculpture was a key work in the 2006 exhibition,
Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast
Asia. Hanging beside the textiles, the group speaks of
the pervasive and decorative nature of art of Islamic
communities in the region, often overshadowed by the
exuberant and better known art of the Balinese village and
Javanese court.
The Southeast Asian Gallery reveals the richness
and diversity of the arts of the regions of Asia closest to
Australia. The displays allow the visitor to enjoy the great
diversity of form, cultural origins, media, and technique,
while appreciating the commonalties displayed in the arts
of Southeast Asian cultures whose shared histories stretch
back thousands of years. a
Robyn MaxwellSenior Curator, Asian Art
Sumatran textiles featuring the popular ship motif flanked by an image of a Khmer goddess and a wooden bird sculpture from Vietnam
(opposite) An image of the Hindu god Shiva from Cambodia, with a Javanese and Balinese textile featuring Hindu designs, and a showcase containing a group of small Southeast Asian Hindu-Buddhist sculptures
Gilded Thai figures of the Buddha Shakyamuni in the foreground, and an Indonesian stone panel displaying Islamic calligraphy beside royal Malay gold and silk textiles on the rear wall. A section of the Indian Gallery is visible through the arches
34 national gallery of australia
Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial
forthcoming exhibition
The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial
will be held at the Gallery in Canberra later this year.
Presenting the work of thirty artists from each state and
territory, the Triennial demonstrates the incredible range
of contemporary Indigenous art practice. It is the largest
survey show of Indigenous art at the Gallery in more
than fifteen years, featuring up to four works by each
artist created during the past three years in a variety of
media, including painting on bark and canvas, sculpture,
textiles, weaving, new media, photomedia, printmaking
and installation. The works selected not only create an
exhibition of outstanding quality but are also ultimately
important acquisitions for the national collection.
Internationally, there has been incredible interest in
contemporary Indigenous art from Australia, most notably
with the prestigious Australian Indigenous Art Commission
at the new Musée du quai Branly, Paris, in June 2006.
And there can be no doubt that locally the launch of the
Triennial is well-timed. Not only does it open the day after
the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary, it also coincides
with the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum
(Aboriginals), whereby non-Indigenous Australians
(90.77%) voted overwhelmingly to include Indigenous
Australians on the census as citizens, and the fiftieth
anniversary of NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander
Day Observance Committee). These anniversaries are a
major inspiration for the exhibition’s thematic context.
To ensure that successive National Indigenous Art
Triennials are as dynamic and as stimulating as possible
the Gallery will invite an Indigenous guest curator to direct
the exhibition’s theme and content. The theme of the
inaugural Triennial is Culture Warriors and this year’s guest
curator is Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator, Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Art, National Gallery of Australia. The
guest curator position provides an outstanding opportunity
for Indigenous curators to develop skills and direct a major
Australian art event. The Gallery plans to extend the scope
of this project to include international Indigenous curators
from the Pacific and other regions. A substantial, fully-
illustrated publication will also accompany each triennial
exhibition and provide an ongoing authoritative critical
reference for contemporary Indigenous art in Australia.
The Gallery’s development of an Indigenous
art triennial is also in light of there being fewer
high-profile opportunities to showcase Australia’s
leading contemporary artists, especially considering
that some major forces in contemporary art such as the
Moët et Chandon Fellowship and the Art Gallery of
New South Wales’s biennial, Australian Perspecta, have
ceased. To date, the most widely acknowledged survey
of contemporary Indigenous Australian art has been the
highly popular annual Telstra National Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Art Award, held each August at the
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin.
Although it is not a theme-based or curated show, the
Telstra Award features the work of more than 100 artists.
What defines the National Indigenous Art Triennial is that it
is curated, themed, and by invitation; therefore it stands as
an important counterpoint to existing annual, biennial and
triennial visual arts events.
Brenda L CroftSenior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
Major sponsor BHP Billiton
13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008
Anniebell Marrngamarrnga
Kuninjku people Yalk Yalk mother and babies 2006 natural pigments dyed
on woven pandanus 285.0 x 172.0 cm
a
36 national gallery of australia
new acquisition Australian Paintings
Kathleen O’Connor In the studio
Kathleen O’Connor is a Western Australian artist of
national status. Like many other Australian artists of the
Edwardian era, she was an artist in exile, travelling abroad
in 1906 and remaining overseas to study and work for
almost fifty years. Many Australian artists gravitated to
London but O’Connor, like fellow Australians Rupert Bunny
and Phillips Fox, mostly lived and worked in Paris.
For a period O’Connor was an objective recorder of
Parisian life, painting images of girls in cafés or intimate
views of women in the Luxembourg Gardens – nannies
with prams and women reading. Following a brief period in
Australia in 1926, when she painted decorative objects for
Grace Bros and David Jones in Sydney, she turned to still
life, to the world of her studio, painting images such as In
the studio c. 1928.
In doing so she was taking up a modernist subject,
which allowed her to focus on formal arrangement, on
design and colour. In the still life In the studio she explored
the possibilities of flat patterning and intense colours to
construct her image. She drew the image in outline and
then applied the paint thinly, using large flat blocks of
colour, leaving areas of the card exposed so as to give
added warmth to the overall effect. The work is energised
by the patterned tablecloth, the folds in the blue fabric
backdrop and the vigorous flecks of green, red and white
paint that create the flowers in the pot. There is a sense of
distortion in the way the space has been flattened, and the
tabletop tilted in a modernist fashion.
It is a deeply personal image, a lived-in still life, with
objects from her personal life scattered on the table,
creating the impression that she has just walked out of the
room where she had been drinking a cup of coffee and
scanning through the well-thumbed magazine.
At around the time O’Connor painted this work she
received a favourable review in Les Artistes d’Aujourd-hui:
‘She is an incomparable colourist, as witness her still lifes,
which are magnificent mosaics, in which all the colours
vibrate and sing’.
Anne GrayHead of Australian Art
Kathleen O’Connor In the studio c. 1928
tempera on card 71.8 x 86.4 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
artonview winter 2007 37
Ray Crooke ‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island
new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture
I find a strange island sometimes where ghosts
of ancient glories linger, where the winds and
the flowers are sweet and the people are still
gentle and smiling, where man is conscious of his
grandeur and is content to live simply in harmony
with the forces around and within him. Yet if we
found this island we would destroy it in a month.
(Ray Crooke, 1949 journal entry)
‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island 1950 is a work that marks the
beginning of Ray Crooke’s longstanding interest in painting
the people and landscapes of Far North Queensland
and the Pacific. The work was made in Melbourne after
Crooke’s 1949 visit to the Torres Strait where he lived for
several months on Thursday Island (Waiben) working as
a cook, labourer and trochus diver. Lugger sailing vessels
such as the one depicted in this painting were used by
the fishermen to explore the waters of the Darnley Deeps.
During his time in the region, Crooke travelled around the
Great Barrier Reef visiting a number of islands, making
many drawings, and keeping a journal.
Crooke first visited the Torres Strait and Thursday Island
in 1943 as a soldier with the Australian Army. The artist
had enlisted in 1940 and throughout the war travelled
extensively throughout Far North Queensland and the
Pacific. During his first stay on Thursday Island soldiers
were billeted in the abandoned Federal Hotel, which
was built around 1903. The building is identifiable in
‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island by its arched verandah
and red roof.
Australia’s northern-most settlement, Thursday Island,
has a long history of exchange and contact with Asian and
Melanesian peoples, and the first European contact dates
from early in the seventeenth century. Crooke’s writings
and works of art display his keen interest in the history of
the region and his awareness of the fine balance for the
Indigenous people between their traditional ways of life
and introduced elements of western medicine, religion
and industry.
Beatrice GraltonAssociate Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture
‘Kingfisher’ Thursday Island is included in the forthcoming National Gallery of Australia travelling exhibition Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 which opens at Tamworth Regional Gallery on 3 August 2007.
Ray Crooke ‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island 1950 egg tempera and oil on composition board 25.0 x 35.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2006
38 national gallery of australia
new acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings
Kenneth Macqueen Darling Downs landscape
There is a group of photographs in the National Gallery
of Australia’s Research Library taken around the property
where Kenneth Macqueen lived from 1922 until his death
in 1960. The images are immediately familiar for they are
the landscape of Macqueen’s watercolours, with the same
patterns of rhythmic rolling hills and endless flat-bottomed
clouds. It is the landscape he painted over and over again,
from the time when he and his brother Jack purchased
their farm atop a ridge at Mount Emlyn, Millmerran, on
Queensland’s Darling Downs.
Only a few years before, Macqueen had returned from
England where he had served in the AIF during the First
World War. After the war he studied art in London under
Bernard Meninsky at the Westminster School of Art and
with Henry Tonks at the Slade School. His spare time was
spent at the National Gallery or the Victoria and Albert
Museum, taking in the nuances of the watercolours of
Turner, Constable and especially the tonal landscapes of
John Sell Cotman.
Back in Australia Macqueen balanced his days
between farming and painting, often preferring to sketch
en plein air during the day (rather than use photographs
for they provided too much detail) and paint in the cool
of the evening when the conditions were more suitable
for the intricacies of watercolour painting. In his 1948
book Adventure in watercolour, Macqueen explained: ‘A
watercolour can be left, however much one hates to do so,
to be continued in the next lull. Then again watercolour is
such a delightful medium, full of the unexpected, with its
transparency giving one an extra stop on which to play’.
Watercolour became his preferred medium and
Macqueen was a master of the technique. An early
member of the Australian Watercolour Institute, he
maintained an association with them throughout his entire
life. He was also a member of the Society of Artists and
his first exhibition was with them in 1922. Macqueen
exhibited almost every year from 1922, and by 1926 was
receiving somewhat backhanded praise for his work. In a
review of the Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition in the
Bulletin of 16 September 1926, came the somewhat wry
comment that ‘Kenneth Macqueen takes a queer view of
the earth’s surface; he succeeds in being extraordinary
anyway’. By 1935 an article in Art in Australia (May 15)
offered more refined praise: ‘Mr Macqueen’s work is
completely individual … every picture is alive with tender
serenity and charm’.
The watercolour Darling Downs was painted around
this time, when Macqueen’s landscapes had reached
a stylistic maturity. It is typically painted in flat areas
of colour, with sweeping rhythms. Fascinated with the
element of design in landscape, Macqueen wrote in 1948:
‘Design in landscape interests me tremendously though
involuntarily. When a subject strikes me, and quickens my
interest, I find it is nearly always a shape of a tree, hill or
cloud that has been the cause’. Here the eye is drawn to
the dark swathe of hillside in the middle ground and the
recently tilled rich dark soil, typical of the Darling Downs.
It is a bold and unexpected feature, which Macqueen
balances with the sweep of a winding road and its border
of repeating fence posts. The Twin Hills in the background
are moulded in shape and form by cloud shadows. The
azure blue of the sky, the touches of blue in the dams and
the tiny patch of blue on the box culvert in the foreground
all work seamlessly to create this wonderful composition.
Anne McDonaldCurator, Australian Prints and Drawings
Kenneth Macqueen Darling Downs landscape
c. 1935 watercolour on paper
35.0 x 45.0 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra
artonview winter 2007 39
40 national gallery of australia
new acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings
Kate Lohse Tools of the trade
In Tools of the trade, New South Wales-based artist
and midwife Kate Lohse explores ‘the historical
struggle between midwives and medical men for
the control of childbirth’. In her series of twenty-one
printed handkerchiefs, images of traditional midwifery
paraphernalia including ointments, salves and the birth
stool are juxtaposed with seventeenth-century engravings
of coldly glittering surgical instruments and anatomical
diagrams of the pregnant female. These images were
sourced from scientific journals in the Wellcome Library in
London, digitally manipulated and thermally transferred
onto the starched white cloth squares. Fine linen was
chosen to refer to the ‘churching of women’ after
childbirth (a purification ritual in which the new mother
makes an offering of linen to the priest) and what Lohse
pointedly refers to as the impositions made upon the
‘blank canvas’ of a woman’s pregnant body.
During the age of scientific enquiry, the concept of the
body as machine was invented, and childbirth began to be
viewed as a medical problem. The role of the female birth
attendant was usurped by the male midwife, who emerged
from the trade guild of the barber-surgeons and pushed
his way confidently into the bedchambers of middle-
class women. Childbirth became a potentially lucrative
occasion with the male midwife charging heavily for his
knowledge of anatomy, gained through study in male-
only academic circles, and flourishing the newly invented
maternity forceps. The female midwife became the target
of fear mongering, with her intuition and experience
overshadowed by the portrayal of her methods as ignorant
and unhygienic.
In this timely series, Lohse has illustrated the shift of
childbirth from the female community into the medical
domain. The artist draws on her experience as a midwife
to imbue this thought-provoking work with a personal
awareness of the troubled history of midwifery.
Sarina Noordhuis-FairfaxGordon Darling Intern, Australian Prints and Drawings
Kate Lohse A man midwife 2003
from Tools of the trade thermal transfer on linen
handkerchief 25.0 x 24.5 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2007
artonview winter 2007 41
The Omie barkcloths
I paint on the barkcloth the designs that were on
my grandparents’ bodies. Then we all remember
and our customs will not be forgotten.
(Nerry Keme)
Nerry Keme is one of four Omie artists who have
produced this group of barkcloths, or nyog’e, from the
Omie region of eastern Papua New Guinea. (Drusilla
Modjeska and David Baker brought attention to the
work of this group in their research for an exhibition at
Annandale Galleries in 2006.) Aspesa Gadai, Nerry Keme,
Stella Upia and Dapeni Jonevari are important artists
of the Omie: the women referred to as the duvahe, or
main producers, of the nyog’e. Each nyog’e, once worn
or hung during ceremony, is a single sheet of inner-bark,
dried in the sun and beaten flat to nearly twice its original
size. The black outlines are applied with charcoal and
then painted with dyes from the roots of plants.
The Omie visual language embraces a range of motifs.
Designs include those based on traditional tattooing
practices now no longer practised; curling plant-like
formations evocative of the flora of the surrounding
forest and traditional Omie weaving techniques. While
much of this appears abstract, the names of specific
cloths associate them with particular plants and animals.
In Vinohu’e – a body design by Aspesa Gadai, the
hooked tendrils of vinohu’e vine can be seen. The designs
featured in the more formally structured barkcloth by
Stella Upia entitled Sihau’e – a Sahote clan design reflect
the grid weave of the narrow fibrous belts that comprise
the customary attire of Omie huntsmen.
While these designs are rooted in the ancestral
past of the Omie, barkcloth production represents a
living tradition that has evolved to reflect the changing
circumstances of the region. What was once used locally
for ceremonial purposes now helps sustain the Omie
economically and provides a means for promoting their
culture to a wider audience.
Mary-Lou NugentCuratorial AssistantAustralian Prints and Drawings
Stella Upia Sihau’e – a Sahote clan design inner bark, charcoal and plants dyes 123.0 x 104.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
new acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings
42 national gallery of australia
new acquisition Asian Art
Christ crucified Indian Christian sculpture
Much of the historical art of South Asia was created for
religious purposes. While the Gallery has an important
collection of Hindu, Jain and early Buddhist objects from
India, the art of well-established, albeit smaller, Christian
communities has not, until now, been represented.
Generally overlooked by international museums and
standard art histories of the region, Christianity has
been an important inspiration for arts in India for many
centuries, as this fine sculpture attests.
Catholic missionaries began making some inroads into
India during the sixteenth century, following the opening
of the sea route from Europe heralded by Vasco da Gama’s
path-breaking voyage. The Franciscans and the Dominicans
were the first orders to begin the venture. The Portuguese
colony of Goa on the west coast felt the fullest impact of
this missionary drive. The art of Goa from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth centuries reflects the strong impact of
Christianity in this region. Located on the active trade route
between India and Africa, ivory was commonly used in Goa
for religious sculpture, especially during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Many of these objects were
exported to Spain and Portugal.
This is an exceptionally large and spectacular image
of Christ crucified, created in Portuguese Goa during
the eighteenth century. While the inspiration is clearly
European, features such as the pierced roundels, which
form the edging of the loincloth wrapped around Christ’s
hips, appear to be peculiar to Indian crucifix images. The
articulation of the textured hair, ribs and the veins on Jesus’
head, body and limbs is finely detailed. The stigmata are
marked with holes that pierce completely through the
ivory, indicating that this icon would have originally been
affixed to a large cross. The sculpture has been formed
from four pieces, with the arms and gathered end of
loincloth to the left of Christ’s body each carved separately.
Robyn MaxwellSenior Curator, Asian Art
Christ crucified Goa, India 18th century
ivory 71 cm (h) National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra
artonview winter 2007 43
new acquisition Asian Art
Gandharan region Head of a bodhisattva
This is a fine example of the Buddhist art of Gandhara,
a region that encompassed parts of modern-day
Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India during the
Kushan period from the first century BCE until 320. Located
on the Silk Road trade route, Gandhara was an important
centre for the development of a new tradition of Buddhist
iconography which employed anthropomorphic depictions
instead of symbolic representations of the Buddha.
Carved from local grey schist, this head was once
part of a monumental statue depicting a bodhisattva,
a compassionate being who has chosen to defer
enlightenment in order to help other earthly beings
break the cycle of rebirth. Bodhisattvas are often depicted
as royalty to emphasise their high status. This bodhisattva
wears a bejewelled turban which symbolises material
and spiritual wealth and reminds worshippers that their
saviour is still of this world. Another feature of the
developing Buddhist iconography is the small indentation
for a precious jewel between the brows that marks the
urna, a small mole that is one of the thirty-two marks of a
great being.
Gandharan art is distinguished by its fusion of Greek,
Bactrian and Indian styles, a result of trade as well as
the foreign occupation of the region before Kushan rule.
The strong naturalistic facial features and wavy hair are a
reflection of Hellenistic naturalism. The depiction of griffin-
like beasts shows a debt to traditional Near Eastern and
Indian imagery.
An important addition to the Gallery’s collection of
early Buddhist art, the Head of a bodhisattva complements
other examples of Gandharan art in the Indian Gallery,
including a large figure of a standing bodhisattva, and a
panel from a stupa depicting a jataka story from a previous
life of the Buddha.
Niki van den HeuvelIntern, Asian Art
Head of a bodhisattva Gandharan region, Afghanistan or Pakistan Kushan period 3rd–4th century schist stone 53.4 x 44.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
44 national gallery of australia
new acquisition Asian Art
Phulkari shawls
A recent gift of fifteen fine examples of large phulkari
shawls expands the Gallery’s collection of Indian textiles
produced for domestic consumption. The embroidered
phulkari textiles (phul: flowers; kari: work) represent an
important aspect of South Asian textile art from the Punjab
and neighbouring areas in the north-west of the Indian
subcontinent. The phulkari appears to have developed
in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the
twentieth centuries. The textiles are worn by Muslim, Hindu
and especially Sikh women as head coverings and shawls
and are also used as ceremonial hangings and covers at
festivals and religious and life-cycle rituals.
Shawls embroidered with dense designs in floss silks
are the most prestigious type and play a prominent role
at weddings. They are considered auspicious and an
appropriate gift from the groom’s family to his new bride.
As dowry, phulkari also symbolise the wealth of the bride
and her family.
Although the primary techniques used to create the
phulkari are the surface-darning stitch and the herringbone
stitch, embroidery styles vary between the different regions
within the Punjab, resulting in the textiles acting as a
marker of regional identity. While the luminous shimmering
silks in brilliant colours against bold plain cotton grounds
are common to all fine phulkari, the designs of the
eastern Punjab textiles are mainly floral and figural on a
fairly coarse cotton cloth base; those of the western
Punjab are dominated by technically sophisticated
geometric patterning.
The donor, Claudia Hyles, has had a long association
with India and the National Gallery of Australia. She has
travelled to the Subcontinent regularly for four decades
and was an early and long-serving member of the Gallery’s
voluntary guides. More recently, she worked for the Gallery
as a member of the Office of the Executive.
Robyn Maxwell, Senior Curator, Asian ArtHwei-Fe’n Cheah, Assistant Curator, Asian Art
Ceremonial cover or woman’s headcovering Punjab region
Indian or Pakistan early 20th century
cotton, floss silk 134.5 x 223.0 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Claudia Hyles, 2006
artonview winter 2007 45
In the old days people used a powder, made by crushing
the roots of a certain tree. This powder was placed in
lagoons and waterways to stun the fish, which would then
float to the surface and be scooped up. This technique
made fishing very easy.
This one time, too much powder was placed in
the water which left hardly any fish left. All this
time the spirit man from the moon had been
watching. He wanted a wife so he descended
down to the lagoon where he turned himself into
a barramundi. Everyone was trying to catch this
fish but he was very tricky and would sink down
to the bottom where no one could see him. All
the men and women tried and no one could catch
him. The man from the moon which was disguised
as a barramundi had his eye on the two prettiest
women, two sisters. One day the two sisters
went for a swim in the lagoon, one by one they
swam out into the lagoon, where the barramundi
waited and hid. When the last sister swam out, the
barramundi caught the two sisters and took them
into the sky, back to the moon.
(Artist statement, 2006)
Jack Bell was born in 1950 at Aurukun, a small remote
Aboriginal community located in the Western Cape York
region of Far North Queensland. His language group is Wik
Mungkan and his clan group is Apalech. His totems are the
Dingo, Brolga and Ghost man.
Bell has been a practising artist for many years with
a major role in teaching the younger people Wik culture
through his art. Although primarily a sculptor, he also
paints, and is credited with many of the murals that adorn
Aurukun public spaces.
Simona BarkusActing Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
new acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
Jack Bell Moon sisters
Jack Bell Wik Mungkan people Moon sisters 2005 synthetic polymer paint and ochre on milk wood National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
46 national gallery of australia
new acquisition Australian Photography
Douglas T Kilburn South-east Australian Aboriginal man and two younger companions
The Gallery recently acquired one of the rarest and most
sought after pioneer works of Australian photography –
a daguerreotype portrait of an Australian Aboriginal man
and two younger companions – that had lain for over
two decades in a private collection in London. The gem-
like image belongs to a group of at least ten portraits of
Victorian Aboriginal people taken in 1847 by Douglas
Thomas Kilburn (1811–1871), the first resident professional
photographer in Melbourne. Kilburn’s portraits are the
earliest surviving photographs of Aboriginal people in
Australia and among the earliest anywhere of
Indigenous people.
Born in London, Kilburn came from a large merchant
family. His Irish grandfather William was successful artist
and fabric designer but nothing is known of Douglas’s
education or employment before he arrived in Australia
possibly with his first wife and child. This was around 1842
probably at the same time as younger brother Charles
became a selector and formed a customs business trading
as Kilburn Brothers. In 1847, Douglas Kilburn set up a studio
in his residence in Little Collins Street.
Kilburn had a great advantage over any other aspiring
photographers in Australia as his younger brother William
E Kilburn (1818–1891) had opened one of the first
photographic portrait studios in London in 1846 and
soon secured royal favour. His brother’s success no doubt
encouraged Douglas to teach himself photography using
equipment and instructions sent out by William. Douglas
later exhibited watercolours, introduced colouring to
his daguerreotype portraits and did pioneer work with
photography on paper. After first advertising for paying
customers in August 1847, by October Kilburn had
undertaken a speculative venture making portraits of Port
Phillip Aboriginal people coming into the town. Kilburn later
described how ‘upon seeing their likenesses so suddenly
fixed, they took him for nothing less than a sorcerer’.
In these early years, portrait exposures were still at
least a minute and sitters had to be braced or supported.
In Kilburn’s Aboriginal portraits the various combinations
of male and female figures have a close-up and bunched
composition unusual for early daguerreotypes. The three
people in the Gallery’s portrait appear to be using each
other for support rather than the usual neck and head
braces and chairs employed by early photographers. They
wear a considerable array of adornments and artefacts,
including cloaks, some of which might have been supplied
by the photographer as Aboriginal people living close to
town no longer lived or dressed in completely traditional
ways. Their mixed dress, appearance and presence was
not welcome and in the 1850s they were banned from
lingering in the newly incorporated City of Melbourne.
Kilburn hoped to find a market for his Aboriginal portraits
in London but it seems there was not a great demand
either overseas or locally.
Eight Aboriginal portraits are known through
reproductions but only three of these have been located.
They are held by the National Gallery of Victoria, and have
been extensively researched by curator Dr Isobel Crombie.
Two other portraits are held in private collections and the
sixth example is in the National Gallery of Australia. These
were all acquired at different times and from different
sources in England.
On his return to Australia, Kilburn continued as a
photographer in Hobart where he prospered though
diversified activities and became a politician. He died in
Hobart in 1871 survived by his second wife and four sons
and a daughter by his first wife.
Despite Kilburn’s difficulties in persuading his sitters to
pose and their supposed fear of the camera, the Aboriginal
people in his daguerreotypes seem curious and composed.
That their descendents and the public can now return their
gaze is the miraculous gift of the art of the camera.
Gael NewtonSenior Curator, Photography
Douglas T Kilburn South-east Australian
Aboriginal man and two younger companions 1847
daguerreotype 7.8 x 6.5 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
48 national gallery of australia
new acquisition Australian Photography
Bill Henson Untitled #33
The object of my photographs is not always the
subject. (Bill Henson)
Untitled #33 – an image of a boat at twilight caught just
as the last rays of sun fade from the water – is from the
artist’s most recent series, completed during 2005 and
2006. A distinguishing characteristic of Henson’s work is
the evolution over time of individual pieces within
larger series, suggesting that no single truth exists;
rather that multiple open-ended readings of the world are
the only possibility.
In this series, landscape images made wandering alone
at night in his hometown of Melbourne or wherever his
travels have taken him – often to places on the edge of
the urban environment – counterpoint images of languid
youths shot in the studio. The image of the bulk carrier,
the German owned Helga Selmer, is a departure from his
expected subject matter and yet it is quintessential
Henson – an intense yet subdued palette, painterly and
cinematic. The mysterious darkness and shimmering
artificial light reverberate with a dark, ominous presence
of threatening intent. There is a reference to the present,
the particular. It is difficult to look at a vessel likely to be
carrying chemicals or crude oil without thinking of
recent environmental incidents, and yet just as powerfully
the image is redolent of an energy that seems
otherworldly – mythical and timeless.
In Henson’s work the viewer moves into a world half-
glimpsed, into the dreamy gloaming hours, a place that
exists between wake and sleep. The mood echoes the
work of a writer such as Thomas Mann or the composer
Richard Strauss in their elegiac musings on the nature of
death and beauty. There is a reductive, distilled quality to
this image that reveals the photographer’s vision at its most
psychologically discerning.
Anne O’HehirAssistant Curator, Photography
Bill Henson Untitled #33 2005–06
Type C colour photograph 127.0 x 180.0 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
artonview winter 2007 49
new acquisition International Photography
Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano
Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano is one of the
earliest known photographs of Javanese people and
comes from a series on court dancers and musicians
made circa 1858 by the Woodbury & Page studio of
Batavia. Englishmen Walter Woodbury (1834–1885) and
James Page (1833–1865), having previously worked as
photographers in Victoria, arrived in Java from Australia in
1857, setting up a studio that year. The image of serimpi
dancers is one of a number of stereographs on glass sold
to London publishers Negretti and Zambra apparently in
1859 when Woodbury made a visit to London. The image
of the dancers was reproduced as an engraving in the
Illustrated London News, 31 July 1861.
A Negretti and Zambra catalogue of circa 1864 lists
the image under the title Serimpies, or dancing girls
of the Sultano among a number of scenes from Batoe
Toelis near Buitenzorg (Bogor) in the hills of west Java.
Woodbury alone appears to be the author of the serimpi
dancers picture as a small print of the subject appears
in his personal album held in the National Museum of
Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, England.
Court dancers, usually drawn from the ranks of royal
families, were trained from childhood in the graceful and
demanding movements of Javanese dance drama. One pair
of girls in the Woodbury picture is wearing the traditional
matching serimpi costumes. However, the Gallery’s Senior
Curator of Asian Art, Robyn Maxwell, has observed that
the dancers are of different ethnic appearance and the
check pattern costumes are south Sumatran in style.
The models may be local girls wearing dance costumes.
By 1864 Walter Woodbury had returned to England
but the Woodbury and Pagestudio remained in business
with family members and others as operators until 1912.
Walter continued to work in photography until his death in
1885, most notably inventing the Woodburytype printing
process. James Page died in Java in 1865.
Gael NewtonSenior Curator, Australian and International Photography
Walter Woodbury (attributed to) Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano c. 1858 albumen silver photograph on card 14.3 x 17.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
50 national gallery of australia
Chasing nature: landscape paintings by Eugene von Guérard and Sidney Nolan
forthcoming travelling exhibition
To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the National
Gallery of Australia, the Gallery’s Director, Ron Radford,
has curated an exhibition of treasured paintings from
the national collection. Ocean to outback: Australian
landscape painting 1850–1950 celebrates the dynamic
century of Australian landscape painting from the colonial
period to the years immediately following the Second
World War. The exhibition reflects the great strengths of
the national collection and includes iconic paintings from
the permanent display by artists including Eugene von
Guérard, Arthur Streeton, Arthur Boyd, Margaret Preston
and Grace Cossington Smith. The exhibition also provides
an opportunity to showcase lesser-known works from the
Gallery’s rich holdings by artists including Sidney Nolan and
Frederick McCubbin as well as new acquisitions and works
which have been restored and reframed in period style.
Two of Australia’s eminent artists, Eugene von Guérard
(1811–1901) and Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) are represented
by a number of works in the exhibition. Both pursued
the artistic exploration of lands little-known to Australia’s
settler population in different ways – von Guérard as a
member of organised treks throughout much of south-
eastern Australia between 1856 and 1875, and Nolan
spending months at a time in Far North Queensland and
Central Australia between 1947 and 1950, on his own,
or accompanied by his wife and step-daughter. Both
artists also looked to their more immediate environs for
inspiration – in the case of the two works considered
here, areas on the fringe of the major metropolitan cities
where they lived.
Eugene von Guérard arrived in Australia from Europe
in 1852 seeking to make his fortune in the Victorian gold
fields. After an unsuccessful period mining in Ballarat, he
established himself in Melbourne where he became the
most celebrated artist of the period. Von Guérard avidly
pursued the representation of nature – as an observer,
an explorer and a resident. His remarkable imagery of
the Dandenong Ranges, some forty kilometres east of
Melbourne, conveys a sense of the landscape as a spiritual
sanctuary and haven, a rejuvenating life-force untainted by
human interference.
When von Guérard first visited the Dandenong Ranges,
the area was a dense bushland of temperate rainforests
and cool fern gullies. Sketchbooks held in the collection
of the Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales,
contain a number of drawings which document the lush
and largely unexplored forests, a natural resource of
high-quality timber which was rapidly logged for the
growing industries and settlement within Victoria.
‘Prolific in God’s Gifts’ were the words selected in
September 1889 for the Shire of Ferntree Gully coat of
arms. The ranges were home to some fourteen different
species of eucalypt and more than sixty varieties of wild
flowers. Painted on return to the artist’s Melbourne
studio, Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges 1857
is a work which combines von Guérard’s meticulous
observation of local plant species with his artistic interests
in compositional arrangement and the creation of a ‘mood’
particular to this environment. In this case we are privy to
the magical world of a bower – an enclosed gully of natural
foliage created by the towering tree ferns. A pool of light
on the forest floor leads us to two male lyrebirds cast in
shadow, one with its characteristic tail feathers raised – a
natural mimic of the arch of the fern fronds. The theatrical
activities of the lyrebird were one of the early drawcards
for tourists to the area, who hoped to witness the singing
and dancing of the male bird.
artonview winter 2007 51
Eugene von Guérard Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges 1857 oil on canvas 92.0 x 138.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, 1975
Sidney Nolan Ku-ring-gai Chase 1948
synthetic polymer paint on composition board
91.0 x 102.0 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra Purchased 1976
artonview winter 2007 53
Eugene von Guérard’s painting received much acclaim
in the Melbourne papers and within a few years after
this work was completed, ‘ferntree gully’ located close
to the Ferntree Gully Hotel had become a popular tourist
destination – especially during the summer months. The
residents of Melbourne sought the sanctuary of the cool
green gullies and active birdlife for their leisure. Chartered
horse coaches were available for hire, and by 1889 rail
had extended from Ringwood to Upper Ferntree Gully.
In the 1890s thousands of people visited the region
on Melbourne Cup Day, a perfect spot for recreational
activities in the bush.
For Sidney Nolan, the Australian landscape was a life-
long source of inspiration. Fuelled by a keen interest in
travel, Nolan’s personal experiences of the land are closely
linked to the development of Australian mythology within
his works, as seen in his images of Ned Kelly, Burke and
Wills, Mrs Fraser, and Daisy Bates. Between 1951 and 1952
Nolan also created a series of works depicting a number of
stories of Christian saints located in the deserts of Central
Australia. As with von Guérard, the landscape for Nolan
was both a real, lived experience and a vehicle for evoking
more personal and contemplative ideas.
In 1948, following a year spent travelling throughout
Queensland, Nolan settled in Sydney, where he married
Cynthia Hansen née Reed, the writer and sister of his
patron John Reed. The marriage between Nolan and
Cynthia had caused a painful rift with John and his wife
Sunday, and after an unsuccessful visit from the newlyweds
in March of 1948, Nolan would never see his first and most
important patrons again. The Nolans settled in Wahroonga,
a leafy suburb in the municipality of Ku-ring-gai about
twenty kilometres north of the city, on the edge of the
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.
Ku-ring-gai Chase 1948 is a startling image of a hazy,
smouldering bushfire. There had been an early start to
the summer season of bushfires during 1947, the Sydney
Morning Herald reporting on 27 October: ‘Last summer’s
late rains bought out a bountiful growth of tussock and
grass as well as a record season of wildflowers. An almost
continuous run of westerly winds to date has dried out the
forest to a condition like tinder. It requires only a spark to
start a fire, and with the prevailing winds behind it a small
blaze would soon become an inferno.’ Nolan may have
witnessed the fires in Wahroonga which were reported
by the Herald on 10 November 1947. It is also possible
the Herald’s front-page photo of leaping flames, burning
trees and hazy sky from a Manly/Brookvale bushfire on
25 October 1947 was used as a visual aid for this work.
Nolan’s skilful handling of paint, swift brushwork and
freshness of colour convey the ferocity of this scene – the
heat and dust of the wind, crackling of leaves and grasses
and the smell of the burning bush. There is a heightened
tension in the picture – an unease as to whether the fire is
receding or approaching, a knowledge that with a change
in conditions the situation could rapidly alter. In Ku-ring-
gai Chase the advantages of living in rural suburbia seem
reversed as the threat of danger encroaches.
Inscriptions on the back of the work suggest Nolan
gave the painting to Cynthia on 22 May 1948. A
message in pencil (only visible under infra-red) reads
‘Cynthia XXX Sidney’. In this powerful painting, it is
possible that Nolan is also exploring his personal reaction
to events taking place in his own life, the metaphor of
fire transferring to notions of passion, destruction and
regeneration.
As cultural commentators and visual communicators,
artists have gone beyond topographical analysis and
used the environment to explore a range of ideas and
concepts, including history and personal spirituality. The
works included in Ocean to outback: Australian landscape
painting 1850–1950 display the great breadth of imagery
produced in response to the land, which in turn, extends
and informs our understanding of the nation we live in. a
Beatrice GraltonAssociate Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture
Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950
opens at Tamworth Regional Gallery on 3 August 2007 and
travels to every state and territory until May 2009.
54 national gallery of australia
travelling exhibition
Colin McCahon Writing and imagining a journey
I look back with joy on taking a brush of white paint
and curving through the darkness with a line of
white. (Colin McCahon) 1
In 2008 it will be thirty years since Colin McCahon’s
great, monumental Victory over death 2 1970 entered
the National Gallery of Australia’s collection. For some it
is this region’s equivalent of Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles
1952. Both paintings are regarded as iconic works. Both have
increased dramatically in value since entering the collection
in the 1970s. Both caused something of a furore in the
press when they were acquired. When the New Zealand
Government gifted Victory over death 2 to the Australian
people in 1978 some saw it as a joke; a way of making front-
page news. Others on both sides of the Tasman, including
the Gallery’s first director, James Mollison, recognised the
significance of this daring painting that would become one
of the treasures of the national collection.
In 2007, as part of its twenty-fifth anniversary
celebrations, the Gallery is pleased to present a trans-
Tasman travelling exhibition featuring Victory over death 2.
The exhibition includes the Gallery’s remarkable collection
of McCahon’s works on paper along with his paintings,
providing an in-depth look at some of the artist’s key
concerns: faith, nature and the transformative and aesthetic
power of the written word. The show includes works from
1950 through to one of McCahon’s last paintings I applied
my mind … 1982, generously loaned by the artist’s long-time
New Zealand gallery representative, supporter and friend,
Peter McLeavey (who played a key role in recommending
Victory over death 2 as a gift to Australia).
In purely visual terms Victory over death 2 is
extraordinarily daring for its time with its palette of stark
black and white and tonalities of grey and in the way that
McCahon gave himself the freedom to embrace the text
itself – from the cursive handwriting to the architectural
capital letters, stretching over two metres high from the top
to the bottom of the composition. On the left in the velvety
black ground the very indistinct letters ‘AM’ pose a question
against the ‘I’. This faces the luminous ‘I AM’ that refers
to the voice of God. Guided by the palette and structure
of the work, we move from the dark chasm of doubt and
struggle to the affirmation of the presence of the Divine in
the luminous pillar ‘I’. Yet even in the towering presence of
these letters we are reminded that revelation is temporary, as
a fragment of the inscription reads: ‘The light is among you
still, but not for long’.
Victory over death 2 emerged after a long journey. The
use of written text may look very current but for McCahon
it was part of an ongoing search for faith and meaning in
his art and life. In the face of the issues of his time, including
the Cold War and threats to the environment, he often felt
he needed words. Early on, when he started his schooling
Colin McCahon Victory over death 2 1970 synthetic polymer paint on
unstretched canvas 207.5 x 597.7 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of the New Zealand Government 1978
artonview winter 2007 55
at the Maori Hill Primary School in Dunedin, the act of
writing was a frustrating challenge. As a left-hander he
was harshly punished for not writing as a particular teacher
wanted him to write. He recalled how other teachers were
more encouraging, introducing him to the world of poetry;
a lifelong passion he later shared with the poets James K
Baxter and John Caselberg who became his close friends and
collaborators. Early on too, writing presented the magic of
practical revelation. One day in Dunedin the young McCahon
came across a signwriter slowly plying his trade on a shop
window – HAIRDRESSER AND TOBACCONIST – and was
entranced.
I watched the work being done and fell in love with
signwriting. The grace of the lettering as it arched
across the window in gleaming gold, suspended on
its dull red field but leaping free from its own black
shadow, pointed to a new and magnificent world of
painting. I watched from outside as the artist working
from the inside slowly separated himself from me
(and light from dark) to make his new creation.
(Colin McCahon) 2
In the early 1930s text allied with religion manifested
itself tellingly through eccentric Uncle Frank, the uncle of
McCahon’s close artist-friend Toss Woollaston. On his visits
to his nephew’s house Uncle Frank brought along blackboard
signs lettered with religious texts and Christian symbols as
well as a large version of a diagrammatic aid to meditation
that he had painted himself. These teaching aids provided
a basis for lively debates. Although the younger men
eventually tired of Uncle Frank, images and ideas persisted.
In 1969 McCahon worked on a series called Practical religion.
He wanted to communicate ‘practical religion’ – not simply
as it was professed in a weekly Sunday ritual but faith tested
through a real, raw, direct engagement with ideas in his art.
Between 1946 and the early 1950s, following a
concerted period painting the landscape, McCahon did a
series of paintings based on religious subjects. He brought
the two aspects together in Crucifixion: the apple branch
1950, one of his most important and overtly personal
paintings. Exhibited only once during McCahon’s lifetime
in The Group exhibition of 1950, this work remained with
the artist in his studio until his death in 1987. It suggests his
struggle to reconcile faith, creative life and survival in the
‘real’ world at a time when he was finding it hard to make
ends meet and to care for his family. On the left McCahon
painted a self-portrait looking in towards the crucifixion set
against a Canterbury landscape.
On the right, his wife Anne Hamblett stands under the
apple tree alongside their son William, set against the hills
in Nelson. There are also two biblical timeframes, the Old
and New testaments: the laden apple tree of the Garden of
Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950 oil on canvas 89.0 x 117.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest 2004
56 national gallery of australia
cut into lengths of around 170 centimetres in height. He
accentuates certain letters and phrases, allowing the watery
washes to create irregular haloes around them.
By 1982 when McCahon finished I applied my mind …
he was at a low ebb. Alcohol had taken a heavy toll, as
had the years of struggle to be understood. In the
wider world, history kept repeating itself: wars kept
happening; people seemed mainly concerned with self and
money, ignoring the importance of the natural environment.
He found it hard to make sense of the world. In I applied
my mind …, he chose the biblical text accordingly. Also
reflecting his state of mind is the way in which he tautly
structured the composition into a horizontal band and two
vertical columns filled with a careful, obsessive journey of
words written over the dark ground. It was one of the last
works he painted.
Twenty years after McCahon’s death in 1987, the
National Gallery pays tribute to an artistic journey of great
intensity and commitment in this travelling exhibition. Along
with Victory over death 2, the artist’s personal struggle and
passionate enquiries can be discovered in a range of intimate
and expansive ways, inscribed in imagery, words and
abstractions – in drawings, gouaches, prints and paintings
– that continue to intrigue and inspire us. a
Deborah HartSenior Curator,Australian Painting and Sculpture (after 1920)
Further information at nga.gov.au/McCahon
notes1 Colin McCahon quoted in Marja Bloem and Martin Browne
(eds), Colin McCahon: A question of faith, Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum and Nelson, New Zealand, Craig Potton Publishing, 2003, p. 202
2 Colin McCahon: A question of faith p. 160
Colin McCahon North Otago landscape
no. 14 1967 synthetic polymer paint on
composition board 60.0 x 120.7 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1997
Colin McCahon I applied my mind … 1982 synthetic polymer paint on
unstretched canvas 195.0 x 180.5 cm
on loan from a private collection, New Zealand
Eden (one of the most poetic images in McCahon’s art), and
the crucifixion and thirteen skulls representing Christ and his
disciples.
The background landscape in Crucifixion: the apple
branch points to important developments in his later work,
including landscapes such as North Otago landscape no. 14
1967 with its simplified, elemental forms. A couple of years
after painting this landscape McCahon completed a series of
about seventy-five ‘writing paintings and drawings’, applying
fragments of text onto vertical scrolls of off-white wallpaper.
The quotations come from several sources
including Matire Kereama’s The tail of the fish, poems by
Peter Hooper, and passages drawn from the New English
Bible which his wife, Anne, had given him. In these works
on paper McCahon embraces the shape of the long scrolls,
An artist abroad: the prints of James McNeill Whistler James McNeill Whistler was a key figure in the European art world of the 19th century. Influenced by the French Realists, the Dutch, Venetian and Japanese masters, Whistler’s prints are sublime visions of people and the places they inhabit. nga.gov.au/Whistler
Geelong Gallery, Geelong Vic., 7 June – 19 August 2007
Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston Tas., 1 September – 4 November 2007
The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions Three suitcases of works of art: Red case: myths and rituals includes works that reflect the spiritual beliefs of different cultures; Yellow case: form, space, design reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue case: technology. These suitcases thematically present a selection of art and design objects that may be borrowed free-of-charge for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres.
For further details and bookings telephone 02 6240 6432 or email Travex@nga.gov.au. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn
Colin McCahon A focus exhibition showcasing the Gallery’s holdings of one of the Australasian region’s most renowned and respected artists – Colin McCahon (1919–1987). The exhibition includes paintings and works on paper spanning the period from the 1950s to early 1980s. It is significant that the exhibition’s tour of Australia and New Zealand coincides with the 30th anniversary of the New Zealand government gifting to Australia in 1978 the iconic work, Victory over death 2 1970 which has become a destination work for the Gallery. nga.gov.au/McCahon
Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery @ Inveresk, Launceston Tas., 16 June – 2 September 2007
Imagining Papua New Guinea: screenprints from the national collection Imagining Papua New Guinea is an exhibition of screenprints from the national collection that celebrates Papua New Guinea’s independence and surveys its rich history of printmaking. Artists whose works are in the exhibition include Timothy Akis, Mathias Kauage, David Lasisi, John Man and Martin Morububuna. nga.gov.au/Imagining
Geraldton Regional Art Gallery, Geraldton WA, 6 April – 17 June 2007
Artspace Mackay, Mackay Qld, 13 July – 26 August 2007
travelling exhibitions winter 2007
James McNeill Whistler Portrait of Whistler 1859 (detail) etching and drypoint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Loundon Sainthill Costume design for the ugly sister from Cinderella 1958 (detail) gouache, pencil and watercolour on paper National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
The National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibitions Program is generously supported by Australian airExpress.
Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha 9th–10th century (detail) from Red case: myths and rituals National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Karl Lawrence Millard Lizard grinder 2000 (detail) brass, bronze, copper, sterling silver, money metal, Peugeot mechanism, stainless steel screws National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Michael Riley untitled from the series cloud [cow] 2000 (detail) printed 2005 chromogenic pigment photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and VISCOPY, Australia
Michael Riley: sights unseen Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia
Michael Riley (1960–2004) was one of the most important contemporary Indigenous visual artists of the past two decades. His contribution to the contemporary Indigenous and broader Australian visual arts industry was substantial and his film and video work challenged non-Indigenous perceptions of Indigenous experience, particularly among the most disenfranchised communities in the eastern region of Australia. nga.gov.au/Riley
Dubbo Regional Gallery, Dubbo NSW, 12 May – 8 July 2007, and concurrently
Moree Plains Gallery, Moree NSW, 19 May – 15 July 2007
Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane Qld, 27 July – 18 November 2007
Stage fright: the art of theatre (Focus Exhibition) In partnership with Australian Theatre for Young People Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia
Stage fright: the art of theatre raises the curtain on the world of theatre and dance through works of art, interactives and a program of workshops conducted by educators from the National Gallery and Australian Theatre for Young People. Worlds from mythology, fairytales and fantasy characters intended for the ballet, opera and stage are shown in exquisitely rendered finished drawings alongside others that have been quickly executed capturing the essence of an idea, posture, movement or character. nga.gov.au/StageFright
Walter Nicholls Memorial Gallery, Port Lincoln SA, 5 May – 3 June 2007
Red case: myths and rituals and Yellow case: form, space and design Mosman Art Gallery and Community Centre, Mosman NSW, 9 May – 3 June 2007
Caloundra Regional Art Gallery, Caloundra Qld, 16 July – 21 September 2007
Blue case: technology Walter Nicholls Memorial Gallery, Port Pirie SA, 4 June – 1 July 2007
Manning Regional Art Gallery, Taree NSW, 9 July – 30 September 2007
The 1888 Melbourne Cup Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor NSW, 20 July – 16 September 2007
Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change. Please contact the gallery or venue before your visit. For more information please phone +61 2 6240 6556 or email travex@nga.gov.au
Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950 oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest 2004
Mathias Kauage Independence Celebration I 1975 (detail) stencil National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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faces in view
1 John and Rosanna Hindmarsh with Ron Radford at the opening of
The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005 2 Michael and Philippa
Kalazjich and Janita and Col Cunnington at the opening of Grace Crowley:
being modern 3 Ray Kennedy, Anne McDonald and Alex Selenitsch at the
Australia print symposium 4 Children participating in the Creeping through
the jungle musical tour 5 Children participating in the Creeping through
the jungle floortalk 6 Visitors enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday
7 Daniel Thomas, Elena Taylor and Ron Radford at the opening of Grace
Crowley: being modern 8 Mandy and Lou Westende with Julienne Clunnies
Ross at the opening of The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005
9 Participants at the Australian print symposium 10 Children enjoying
Sculpture Garden Sunday 11 & 12 Children participating in the Creeping
through the jungle floortalk 13 Visitors enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday
14 John Hindmarsh, Rupert Myer, Roger Butler, and Gordon and Marilyn
Darling at the opening of The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005
15 Heather Ried, Tom Rose, Evie Rose, Axel Debenham-Lendon, Pam
Debenham and Mary-Lou Nugent at the opening of The story of Australian
printmaking 1801–2005 16 Children enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday
17 Hugh and Neve Elliott at Sculpture Garden Sunday
11 12 13
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For free, confidential appraisals by our art specialists
Please contact: Sydney: Adrian Newstead or Litsa Veldekis02 8344 5404Melbourne: Tim Abdallah or John Keats 03 9822 1911
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Mysteries of Arnhem Land
it’s in our nature to explore
Art of Ancient Arnhem Land
The oldest evidence of Aboriginal occupationhas been recorded at around 60,000 years inthe rock shelters of Kakadu. To this day themany different clan and language groupsthat own and occupy nearly fifty percent ofthe Northern Territory are testimony to theoldest cultural continuum in the world. Theirancestors explored, occupied, altered andmanaged this landscape since the creationtimes and today their ongoing custodianshipblends traditional practices with the cuttingedge of modern technology.
Your journey has been carefully designed toprovide you with a cumulative experiencethat will connect you to the spirit of theland, its fascinating characters and history.
One of the most dramatic and visible elements of the rich cultural tapestry youwill experience is in the artistic expression of the many different cultural groups, whichhas gained worldwide interest. The stonecountry of the Arnhem Land plateau hostsone of the worlds treasure troves of rock artdisplayed in stunning surroundings reachingback over 20,000 years. This legacy is carriedon by a host of contemporary artists work-ing in many mediums and materials from thetraditional bark paintings and delicate fibrecrafts to intricate designs on fabric, ceramicsand even carpets. All of this work relatesback to the stories and traditions arisingfrom the varied landscapes, which havemoulded and governed the lives of the
indigenous people who in many cases regardthe land as their ‘mother’.
Your journey will bring you in touch withpeople both black and white with true pas-sion and a wealth of knowledge about thisunique part of Australia. Through theirinsight and interpretation you will gain arare experience of the power, beauty andmany contradictions of this area, whichremain a continuing fascination to all whoventure to the Top End.
Joc Schmiechen
Guest Lecturer – Orion Expedition Cruises
ORIO1061_ARNHEM_280x206 18/1/07 1:32 PM Page 1
it’s in our nature to explore
Art of Ancient Arnhem Land
The oldest evidence of Aboriginal occupationhas been recorded at around 60,000 years inthe rock shelters of Kakadu. To this day themany different clan and language groupsthat own and occupy nearly fifty percent ofthe Northern Territory are testimony to theoldest cultural continuum in the world. Theirancestors explored, occupied, altered andmanaged this landscape since the creationtimes and today their ongoing custodianshipblends traditional practices with the cuttingedge of modern technology.
Your journey has been carefully designed toprovide you with a cumulative experiencethat will connect you to the spirit of theland, its fascinating characters and history.
One of the most dramatic and visible elements of the rich cultural tapestry youwill experience is in the artistic expression of the many different cultural groups, whichhas gained worldwide interest. The stonecountry of the Arnhem Land plateau hostsone of the worlds treasure troves of rock artdisplayed in stunning surroundings reachingback over 20,000 years. This legacy is carriedon by a host of contemporary artists work-ing in many mediums and materials from thetraditional bark paintings and delicate fibrecrafts to intricate designs on fabric, ceramicsand even carpets. All of this work relatesback to the stories and traditions arisingfrom the varied landscapes, which havemoulded and governed the lives of the
indigenous people who in many cases regardthe land as their ‘mother’.
Your journey will bring you in touch withpeople both black and white with true pas-sion and a wealth of knowledge about thisunique part of Australia. Through theirinsight and interpretation you will gain arare experience of the power, beauty andmany contradictions of this area, whichremain a continuing fascination to all whoventure to the Top End.
Joc Schmiechen
Guest Lecturer – Orion Expedition Cruises
ORIO1061_ARNHEM_280x206 18/1/07 1:32 PM Page 1
T E R M S A N D C O N D I T I O N S
ORIO1061
Call your travel agent or visit www.orioncruises.com.au Phone 1300 361 012 or (02) 9033 8777.
1 0 N I G H T C R U I S E F A R E S
Ctgy Type Deck Description 10nt
B Stateroom 3 Oval Window or twin portholes. Sitting Area 7,200
A Stateroom 3 Oval Window. Sitting Area 8,360
JS Junior Suite 4 & 5 Rectangular Window. Sitting Area 9,930
DS Deluxe Suite 5 Rectangular Window. Living Room 10,880
BS Balcony Suite 5 French Balcony. Living Room 12,980
OS Owners’ 5 French Balcony 15,080Suite Separate bedroom & Living Room
Orion custom built for voyages of exploration. Her yacht-like intimacy isdeceiving as she is large enough to offerall the amenities you would demand of acruise ship. And, with a professional andexperienced crew of 75 taking care of thecomfort of just 50 couples, you can beassured the service onboard is unassumingand polished. Indeed, the by-words for
life onboard are ‘easy’ & ‘relaxed’ with noparticular dress code except ‘smart casual’.Dining is leisurely. Our signature dinnermenus have been created by award-winningSydney chef Serge Dansereau of ‘The Bathers’Pavilion’ at Balmoral, featuring culinarytraditions and produce from the regionswe visit. As your comfort is paramount,our staterooms and suites are spacious
and well appointed. Each offers you thechoice of either twin or queen size beds,picture windows or French balcony withsweeping ocean views, marble bathroom,flat-screen TV and DVD/CD player. The perfect retreat at the end of the day.
Relax and indulge
Dili
E a s t T i m o r
N o r t h e r n Te r r i t o r y
Baucau Com
d
ontalrfalls
King George Falls
Wyndham
Mitchell Falls
DARWIN
ArnhemLand
Mt.Borradaile
Maningrida
Victoria SettlementPort Essingtion
Melville Island
GrooteEylandt
Cape WesselWessel Islands
Yirrkala
CapeYork
Peninsulat Bay
ft PointEl QuestroLake Argyle
Hunter River
Pirlangimpi
ArnhemBay
ElchoIsland
10 Night Art of Ancient Arnhem Land
Sep 6 Darwin
Sep 7 Pirlangimpi (Melville Island)
Sep 8 Victoria Settlement (Port Essington)
Sep 9 Maningrida
Sep 10 Arnhem Bay
Sep 11 Groote Eylandt
Sep 12 Yirrkala
Sep 13 Jensen Bay / Hole In The Wall
Sep 14 Elcho Island
Sep 15 at sea
Sep 16 Darwin
2007 Departure: September 6
Please note this replaces the previouslyscheduled Kimberley Expedition.
Fares are per person in Australian Dollars.
Fares are cruise only: quoted per person in Australian dollarsand are based on twin occupancy. All bookings are subject to theTerms and Conditions of the Orion Expedition Cruises PassageContract, a copy of which is available upon request, or by accessingwww.orioncruises.com.auFares include: accommodation as booked cruise transportation,all meals onboard, 24-hour room service, entertainment and educational programmes, use of ship’s sporting equipment andfacilities, port & handling charges, Zodiac and tender transfers,access to the ship’s library of CDs/DVDs, govt fees & taxes.Fares also include: the service of an experienced cruise staff.Gratuities are not expected, however if you wish to recogniseexceptional service from an individual staff member, you are welcome to do so at your discretion.Fares do not include: any items of a personal nature, not limitedto travel and medical insurance, laundry charges, shopping onboard,bar expenses, hairdressing and massage treatments optionalshore excursions, medical services, telephone and internet charges.
Prices: are current at the time of printing. They may be subjectto currency fluctuation, fuel price and tax increases until full pay-ment is received.Itineraries: are subject to prevailing tidal and weather condi-tions and may be changed without notice.Deposits: 25% of the cruise fare is due within 7 days of an offerof accommodation being made.Final payments: the balance of the cruise fare is due 90 daysprior to sailing date.Cancellations: received 121 days or more prior to sailing: forAntarctic cruises a penalty of A$1,000 per person applies. allother cruises, no penalty. Cancellations received 120-91 dayprior to sailing: penalty of loss of deposit applies.Cancellations received 90 days or less prior to sailing: penalty of100% applies. Orion Expedition Cruises offers a CancellationProtection Plan, details available upon request.
3rd/4th Guests: some staterooms accommodate a third or fourthperson. Adults aged 16 years and over pay 50% (children aged2-15 years pay 25%) of the applicable stateroom category farewhen sharing the room with two full-fare guests.Single Travellers: should request rates for sole occupancy ofstaterooms from Orion Expedition Cruises.All Staterooms and Suites: have ocean views, flat-screen TVand DVD/CD player, mini-refrigerator, marble bathroom withshower, safe-deposit box, ample wardrobe space, and the choiceof either Queen size or twin beds.Suites OS and BS have a French balcony (except suite OS509which has two large rectangular windows). The French balcony features floor to ceiling sliding glass doors and a small outsidearea for viewing. Suites DS and JS feature large rectangular windows(except suites JS418 and JS419 which have large oval windows).Staterooms B and A have large oval windows (except stateroomsB322 & B323 which have twin portholes) and sitting area withtub chair.
ORIO1061_ARNHEM_280x206 18/1/07 1:33 PM Page 2
T E R M S A N D C O N D I T I O N S
ORIO1061
Call your travel agent or visit www.orioncruises.com.au Phone 1300 361 012 or (02) 9033 8777.
1 0 N I G H T C R U I S E F A R E S
Ctgy Type Deck Description 10nt
B Stateroom 3 Oval Window or twin portholes. Sitting Area 7,200
A Stateroom 3 Oval Window. Sitting Area 8,360
JS Junior Suite 4 & 5 Rectangular Window. Sitting Area 9,930
DS Deluxe Suite 5 Rectangular Window. Living Room 10,880
BS Balcony Suite 5 French Balcony. Living Room 12,980
OS Owners’ 5 French Balcony 15,080Suite Separate bedroom & Living Room
Orion custom built for voyages of exploration. Her yacht-like intimacy isdeceiving as she is large enough to offerall the amenities you would demand of acruise ship. And, with a professional andexperienced crew of 75 taking care of thecomfort of just 50 couples, you can beassured the service onboard is unassumingand polished. Indeed, the by-words for
life onboard are ‘easy’ & ‘relaxed’ with noparticular dress code except ‘smart casual’.Dining is leisurely. Our signature dinnermenus have been created by award-winningSydney chef Serge Dansereau of ‘The Bathers’Pavilion’ at Balmoral, featuring culinarytraditions and produce from the regionswe visit. As your comfort is paramount,our staterooms and suites are spacious
and well appointed. Each offers you thechoice of either twin or queen size beds,picture windows or French balcony withsweeping ocean views, marble bathroom,flat-screen TV and DVD/CD player. The perfect retreat at the end of the day.
Relax and indulge
Dili
E a s t T i m o r
N o r t h e r n Te r r i t o r y
Baucau Com
d
ontalrfalls
King George Falls
Wyndham
Mitchell Falls
DARWIN
ArnhemLand
Mt.Borradaile
Maningrida
Victoria SettlementPort Essingtion
Melville Island
GrooteEylandt
Cape WesselWessel Islands
Yirrkala
CapeYork
Peninsulat Bay
ft PointEl QuestroLake Argyle
Hunter River
Pirlangimpi
ArnhemBay
ElchoIsland
10 Night Art of Ancient Arnhem Land
Sep 6 Darwin
Sep 7 Pirlangimpi (Melville Island)
Sep 8 Victoria Settlement (Port Essington)
Sep 9 Maningrida
Sep 10 Arnhem Bay
Sep 11 Groote Eylandt
Sep 12 Yirrkala
Sep 13 Jensen Bay / Hole In The Wall
Sep 14 Elcho Island
Sep 15 at sea
Sep 16 Darwin
2007 Departure: September 6
Please note this replaces the previouslyscheduled Kimberley Expedition.
Fares are per person in Australian Dollars.
Fares are cruise only: quoted per person in Australian dollarsand are based on twin occupancy. All bookings are subject to theTerms and Conditions of the Orion Expedition Cruises PassageContract, a copy of which is available upon request, or by accessingwww.orioncruises.com.auFares include: accommodation as booked cruise transportation,all meals onboard, 24-hour room service, entertainment and educational programmes, use of ship’s sporting equipment andfacilities, port & handling charges, Zodiac and tender transfers,access to the ship’s library of CDs/DVDs, govt fees & taxes.Fares also include: the service of an experienced cruise staff.Gratuities are not expected, however if you wish to recogniseexceptional service from an individual staff member, you are welcome to do so at your discretion.Fares do not include: any items of a personal nature, not limitedto travel and medical insurance, laundry charges, shopping onboard,bar expenses, hairdressing and massage treatments optionalshore excursions, medical services, telephone and internet charges.
Prices: are current at the time of printing. They may be subjectto currency fluctuation, fuel price and tax increases until full pay-ment is received.Itineraries: are subject to prevailing tidal and weather condi-tions and may be changed without notice.Deposits: 25% of the cruise fare is due within 7 days of an offerof accommodation being made.Final payments: the balance of the cruise fare is due 90 daysprior to sailing date.Cancellations: received 121 days or more prior to sailing: forAntarctic cruises a penalty of A$1,000 per person applies. allother cruises, no penalty. Cancellations received 120-91 dayprior to sailing: penalty of loss of deposit applies.Cancellations received 90 days or less prior to sailing: penalty of100% applies. Orion Expedition Cruises offers a CancellationProtection Plan, details available upon request.
3rd/4th Guests: some staterooms accommodate a third or fourthperson. Adults aged 16 years and over pay 50% (children aged2-15 years pay 25%) of the applicable stateroom category farewhen sharing the room with two full-fare guests.Single Travellers: should request rates for sole occupancy ofstaterooms from Orion Expedition Cruises.All Staterooms and Suites: have ocean views, flat-screen TVand DVD/CD player, mini-refrigerator, marble bathroom withshower, safe-deposit box, ample wardrobe space, and the choiceof either Queen size or twin beds.Suites OS and BS have a French balcony (except suite OS509which has two large rectangular windows). The French balcony features floor to ceiling sliding glass doors and a small outsidearea for viewing. Suites DS and JS feature large rectangular windows(except suites JS418 and JS419 which have large oval windows).Staterooms B and A have large oval windows (except stateroomsB322 & B323 which have twin portholes) and sitting area withtub chair.
ORIO1061_ARNHEM_280x206 18/1/07 1:33 PM Page 2
T E R M S A N D C O N D I T I O N S
ORIO1061
Call your travel agent or visit www.orioncruises.com.au Phone 1300 361 012 or (02) 9033 8777.
1 0 N I G H T C R U I S E F A R E S
Ctgy Type Deck Description 10nt
B Stateroom 3 Oval Window or twin portholes. Sitting Area 7,200
A Stateroom 3 Oval Window. Sitting Area 8,360
JS Junior Suite 4 & 5 Rectangular Window. Sitting Area 9,930
DS Deluxe Suite 5 Rectangular Window. Living Room 10,880
BS Balcony Suite 5 French Balcony. Living Room 12,980
OS Owners’ 5 French Balcony 15,080Suite Separate bedroom & Living Room
Orion custom built for voyages of exploration. Her yacht-like intimacy isdeceiving as she is large enough to offerall the amenities you would demand of acruise ship. And, with a professional andexperienced crew of 75 taking care of thecomfort of just 50 couples, you can beassured the service onboard is unassumingand polished. Indeed, the by-words for
life onboard are ‘easy’ & ‘relaxed’ with noparticular dress code except ‘smart casual’.Dining is leisurely. Our signature dinnermenus have been created by award-winningSydney chef Serge Dansereau of ‘The Bathers’Pavilion’ at Balmoral, featuring culinarytraditions and produce from the regionswe visit. As your comfort is paramount,our staterooms and suites are spacious
and well appointed. Each offers you thechoice of either twin or queen size beds,picture windows or French balcony withsweeping ocean views, marble bathroom,flat-screen TV and DVD/CD player. The perfect retreat at the end of the day.
Relax and indulge
Dili
E a s t T i m o r
N o r t h e r n Te r r i t o r y
Baucau Com
d
ontalrfalls
King George Falls
Wyndham
Mitchell Falls
DARWIN
ArnhemLand
Mt.Borradaile
Maningrida
Victoria SettlementPort Essingtion
Melville Island
GrooteEylandt
Cape WesselWessel Islands
Yirrkala
CapeYork
Peninsulat Bay
ft PointEl QuestroLake Argyle
Hunter River
Pirlangimpi
ArnhemBay
ElchoIsland
10 Night Art of Ancient Arnhem Land
Sep 6 Darwin
Sep 7 Pirlangimpi (Melville Island)
Sep 8 Victoria Settlement (Port Essington)
Sep 9 Maningrida
Sep 10 Arnhem Bay
Sep 11 Groote Eylandt
Sep 12 Yirrkala
Sep 13 Jensen Bay / Hole In The Wall
Sep 14 Elcho Island
Sep 15 at sea
Sep 16 Darwin
2007 Departure: September 6
Please note this replaces the previouslyscheduled Kimberley Expedition.
Fares are per person in Australian Dollars.
Fares are cruise only: quoted per person in Australian dollarsand are based on twin occupancy. All bookings are subject to theTerms and Conditions of the Orion Expedition Cruises PassageContract, a copy of which is available upon request, or by accessingwww.orioncruises.com.auFares include: accommodation as booked cruise transportation,all meals onboard, 24-hour room service, entertainment and educational programmes, use of ship’s sporting equipment andfacilities, port & handling charges, Zodiac and tender transfers,access to the ship’s library of CDs/DVDs, govt fees & taxes.Fares also include: the service of an experienced cruise staff.Gratuities are not expected, however if you wish to recogniseexceptional service from an individual staff member, you are welcome to do so at your discretion.Fares do not include: any items of a personal nature, not limitedto travel and medical insurance, laundry charges, shopping onboard,bar expenses, hairdressing and massage treatments optionalshore excursions, medical services, telephone and internet charges.
Prices: are current at the time of printing. They may be subjectto currency fluctuation, fuel price and tax increases until full pay-ment is received.Itineraries: are subject to prevailing tidal and weather condi-tions and may be changed without notice.Deposits: 25% of the cruise fare is due within 7 days of an offerof accommodation being made.Final payments: the balance of the cruise fare is due 90 daysprior to sailing date.Cancellations: received 121 days or more prior to sailing: forAntarctic cruises a penalty of A$1,000 per person applies. allother cruises, no penalty. Cancellations received 120-91 dayprior to sailing: penalty of loss of deposit applies.Cancellations received 90 days or less prior to sailing: penalty of100% applies. Orion Expedition Cruises offers a CancellationProtection Plan, details available upon request.
3rd/4th Guests: some staterooms accommodate a third or fourthperson. Adults aged 16 years and over pay 50% (children aged2-15 years pay 25%) of the applicable stateroom category farewhen sharing the room with two full-fare guests.Single Travellers: should request rates for sole occupancy ofstaterooms from Orion Expedition Cruises.All Staterooms and Suites: have ocean views, flat-screen TVand DVD/CD player, mini-refrigerator, marble bathroom withshower, safe-deposit box, ample wardrobe space, and the choiceof either Queen size or twin beds.Suites OS and BS have a French balcony (except suite OS509which has two large rectangular windows). The French balcony features floor to ceiling sliding glass doors and a small outsidearea for viewing. Suites DS and JS feature large rectangular windows(except suites JS418 and JS419 which have large oval windows).Staterooms B and A have large oval windows (except stateroomsB322 & B323 which have twin portholes) and sitting area withtub chair.
ORIO1061_ARNHEM_280x206 18/1/07 1:33 PM Page 2
T E R M S A N D C O N D I T I O N S
ORIO1061
Call your travel agent or visit www.orioncruises.com.au Phone 1300 361 012 or (02) 9033 8777.
1 0 N I G H T C R U I S E F A R E S
Ctgy Type Deck Description 10nt
B Stateroom 3 Oval Window or twin portholes. Sitting Area 7,200
A Stateroom 3 Oval Window. Sitting Area 8,360
JS Junior Suite 4 & 5 Rectangular Window. Sitting Area 9,930
DS Deluxe Suite 5 Rectangular Window. Living Room 10,880
BS Balcony Suite 5 French Balcony. Living Room 12,980
OS Owners’ 5 French Balcony 15,080Suite Separate bedroom & Living Room
Orion custom built for voyages of exploration. Her yacht-like intimacy isdeceiving as she is large enough to offerall the amenities you would demand of acruise ship. And, with a professional andexperienced crew of 75 taking care of thecomfort of just 50 couples, you can beassured the service onboard is unassumingand polished. Indeed, the by-words for
life onboard are ‘easy’ & ‘relaxed’ with noparticular dress code except ‘smart casual’.Dining is leisurely. Our signature dinnermenus have been created by award-winningSydney chef Serge Dansereau of ‘The Bathers’Pavilion’ at Balmoral, featuring culinarytraditions and produce from the regionswe visit. As your comfort is paramount,our staterooms and suites are spacious
and well appointed. Each offers you thechoice of either twin or queen size beds,picture windows or French balcony withsweeping ocean views, marble bathroom,flat-screen TV and DVD/CD player. The perfect retreat at the end of the day.
Relax and indulge
Dili
E a s t T i m o r
N o r t h e r n Te r r i t o r y
Baucau Com
d
ontalrfalls
King George Falls
Wyndham
Mitchell Falls
DARWIN
ArnhemLand
Mt.Borradaile
Maningrida
Victoria SettlementPort Essingtion
Melville Island
GrooteEylandt
Cape WesselWessel Islands
Yirrkala
CapeYork
Peninsulat Bay
ft PointEl QuestroLake Argyle
Hunter River
Pirlangimpi
ArnhemBay
ElchoIsland
10 Night Art of Ancient Arnhem Land
Sep 6 Darwin
Sep 7 Pirlangimpi (Melville Island)
Sep 8 Victoria Settlement (Port Essington)
Sep 9 Maningrida
Sep 10 Arnhem Bay
Sep 11 Groote Eylandt
Sep 12 Yirrkala
Sep 13 Jensen Bay / Hole In The Wall
Sep 14 Elcho Island
Sep 15 at sea
Sep 16 Darwin
2007 Departure: September 6
Please note this replaces the previouslyscheduled Kimberley Expedition.
Fares are per person in Australian Dollars.
Fares are cruise only: quoted per person in Australian dollarsand are based on twin occupancy. All bookings are subject to theTerms and Conditions of the Orion Expedition Cruises PassageContract, a copy of which is available upon request, or by accessingwww.orioncruises.com.auFares include: accommodation as booked cruise transportation,all meals onboard, 24-hour room service, entertainment and educational programmes, use of ship’s sporting equipment andfacilities, port & handling charges, Zodiac and tender transfers,access to the ship’s library of CDs/DVDs, govt fees & taxes.Fares also include: the service of an experienced cruise staff.Gratuities are not expected, however if you wish to recogniseexceptional service from an individual staff member, you are welcome to do so at your discretion.Fares do not include: any items of a personal nature, not limitedto travel and medical insurance, laundry charges, shopping onboard,bar expenses, hairdressing and massage treatments optionalshore excursions, medical services, telephone and internet charges.
Prices: are current at the time of printing. They may be subjectto currency fluctuation, fuel price and tax increases until full pay-ment is received.Itineraries: are subject to prevailing tidal and weather condi-tions and may be changed without notice.Deposits: 25% of the cruise fare is due within 7 days of an offerof accommodation being made.Final payments: the balance of the cruise fare is due 90 daysprior to sailing date.Cancellations: received 121 days or more prior to sailing: forAntarctic cruises a penalty of A$1,000 per person applies. allother cruises, no penalty. Cancellations received 120-91 dayprior to sailing: penalty of loss of deposit applies.Cancellations received 90 days or less prior to sailing: penalty of100% applies. Orion Expedition Cruises offers a CancellationProtection Plan, details available upon request.
3rd/4th Guests: some staterooms accommodate a third or fourthperson. Adults aged 16 years and over pay 50% (children aged2-15 years pay 25%) of the applicable stateroom category farewhen sharing the room with two full-fare guests.Single Travellers: should request rates for sole occupancy ofstaterooms from Orion Expedition Cruises.All Staterooms and Suites: have ocean views, flat-screen TVand DVD/CD player, mini-refrigerator, marble bathroom withshower, safe-deposit box, ample wardrobe space, and the choiceof either Queen size or twin beds.Suites OS and BS have a French balcony (except suite OS509which has two large rectangular windows). The French balcony features floor to ceiling sliding glass doors and a small outsidearea for viewing. Suites DS and JS feature large rectangular windows(except suites JS418 and JS419 which have large oval windows).Staterooms B and A have large oval windows (except stateroomsB322 & B323 which have twin portholes) and sitting area withtub chair.
ORIO1061_ARNHEM_280x206 18/1/07 1:33 PM Page 2
For terms and conditions please refer to www.orioncruises.com.au
Mysteries of Arnhem Land
Join Orion as she explores Australia’s remote
Arnhem Land Coast. Led by Orion’s Expedition
team and supported by specialist Guest Lecturers
you will follow the history from Ancient Rock
to contemporary indigenous Art, visit remote
communities, meet the artists and feel their
connection with this timeless land.
Orion provides the ideal medium to taste a little
magic from the comforts of 5 star expedition
cruising in an unobtrusive manner that touches
land and people ever so lightly. Orion is custom
built for voyages of exploration. Her yacht-like
intimacy is deceiving as she is large enough to
offer all the amenities you would demand of a
cruise ship. As your comfort is paramount, our
Staterooms and Suites are spacious and well
appointed. All with ocean views, TV/DVD, sitting
areas and marble en-suite bathrooms. With a
professional and experienced crew of 75 taking
care of the comfort of just 50 couples, you can
be assured the service onboard is unassuming
and polished.
Explore Arnhem Land in 5 Star Luxury
Gallery Shop open 7 days 10am–5pm Phone 02 6240 6420 ngashop.com.au
Australian made bags by Nicola Cerini
Mysteries of Arnhem Land
Celebrating
the inaugural National Indigenous
Art Triennial
64 national gallery of australia
C•A•N•B•E•R•R•A
The Brassey of CanberraBelmore Gardens and Macquarie Street,
Barton ACT 2600
Telephone: 02 6273 3766Facsimile: 02 6273 2791
Toll Free Telephone: 1800 659 191Email: info@brassey.net.auhttp: //www.brassey.net.au
B A R T O N
Canberran Owned and Operated
Hibernation Package
per night.Overnight accommodation in a Heritage Room.
Two full buffet breakfasts. Two bottles of Hardys Collection Wine, 1 Cabernet Merlot & 1 Semillion Chardonay.
Entry for 2 into Parliament House.Valid 01/03/07 – 31/08/07.
Subject to availability. *Extra person is $15.00
$159.00
Brassey Hibernation 233x297.indd1 1 17/5/07 10:13:12 AM
National Gallery of Australia, CanberraGeorge Lambert The white glove 1921 (detail) Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney purchased 1922 photograph: Jenni Carter for AGNSW
29 June – 9 September 2007
nga.gov.au
A brushstroke into our past ActewAGL is delighted to be major sponsor of the George Lambert Retrospective: Heroes and Icons exhibition. Lambert’s painting The squatter’s daughter, depicting Michelago in 1923, is symbolic to ActewAGL as it refl ects on a time when ActewAGL was building the foundations to provide essential services to Canberra and the region.
Recognising the importance of Australian art – always.
George Lambert The squatter’s daughter 1923–24
Michelago / New South Wales / Australia Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, CanberraPurchased with the generous assistance of
James Fairfax AO and Philip Bacon AM, 1991
CCA
407/
10
ActewAGL Retail ABN 46 221 314 841.
Athol Shmith Vivien Leigh 1948 gelatin silver photograph 50.0 x 39.3 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 26 May – 19 August 2007
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