Allens art journal issue 2

…visual artists can play an important role: their responses confront and challenge preconceived notions of identity, of history. Importantly, they encourage us not to be indifferent to difference.

cover: JIAWEI SHEN Self-portrait with G E Morrison (detail) 1995 oil on canvas, 167 x 304cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Allens has a long history of working throughout Asia and, as a way of establishing connections and

While this draws attention to the contemporary

creating dialogue, selections of paintings from

cross-cultural phenomenon that has pervaded

the Allens Art Collection are displayed in offices in

many social, political and economic discussions

Jakarta, Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing.

and debates, it is also a reminder that cultural

It is fitting, therefore, in the second issue of the Allens Art Journal, that we acknowledge some of those artists in the Collection whose cultural

interchange has always part of Australia’s settlement and identity even though it has not always been acknowledged or celebrated.

backgrounds lie in the rich legacies and diverse

This is in spite of the much trumpeted

artistic traditions of this vast geographic region.

‘multiculturalism’ – a vexed term that too often

EAST/WEST is a convenient way of describing this dialogue. The intention is not to overemphasise differences; rather – as the artists included in this edition illustrate – it is to discover interconnections

glosses over the history of trade and cultural exchange, the complexities and subtleties and long-established networks of migration and settlement across the Asia region.

that add depth, even poignancy, to individual

In this sense, visual artists can play an important

practices. In turn, it is this vibrancy that enriches

role: their responses confront and challenge

contemporary visual culture in this country.

preconceived notions of identity, of history.

One writer recently suggested that ‘despite an incredible wealth of activity that has occurred throughout the last twenty years at least, Australian culture has yet to understand the impact that intercultural experiences have had on its evolution and how the anxiety of location – how we perceive, articulate and imagine the cultural histories which result from the specific geography and history of this continent – impacts on how we understand our art history and imagine its future.’1 1

Aaron Seeto, ‘Transcultural Radical’, www.artlink.com.au, vol 31 # 1, pp 28-31

Importantly, they encourage us not to be indifferent to difference. As the artists included in this issue reveal, their encapsulations of history and experience provide insight into the effects of socio-cultural processes – the work celebrates the local within the global, yet reminds us of just how fragile the local is when faced with the realities of all-encompassing global forces.

Allens is especially grateful to the artists and writers for their contribution to, and support of, the Allens online publishing venture. We also acknowledge the photographers Tom Psomotragos (Sydney) and Andrew Ashton (Melbourne) We would also like to thank Mengfei Pan and Vigen Galstyan and the University of Sydney. Integral to the University of Sydney’s Art Curatorship and associated postgraduate art history degrees, is the availability of internships within fine art institutions: Allens is pleased to be able to participate by offering specialised projects related to the Allens Art Collection and artist archive to students from these courses. Copyright for the text in the Allens Art Journal is held by Allens and the authors. Views expressed in these texts are not necessarily those of the publisher. Photography: Tom Psomotragos; Andrew Ashton (installation photography 101 Collins Street, Melbourne)

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EAST/WEST: SELFHOOD AND CULTURAL ISSUES THE PAINTINGS OF JIAWEI SHEN AND LINDY LEE Mengfei Pan

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Jiawei Shen and Lindy Lee have become important figures in Australia’s contemporary art scene. While their practices represent the multicultural diversity associated with the visual arts of this country, it is not just the soil of this place, thousands of miles from their homelands, that nurtures and supports their art. Key works by Jiawei Shen and Lindy Lee reveal deeper connections between here and there, the present and legacies associated with their past.

ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING: LINDY LEE’S UNTITLED (BLUE – EL GRECO’S COMPANION)

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Vigen Galstyan

INTERVIEWS: JIAWEI SHEN LINDY LEE

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FOCUS: MARIA CRUZ – TO BE TRANS-NATIONAL

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Maria Poulos in conversation with the artist

TIM JOHNSON – THE ART OF COLLABORATION

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Ewen McDonald

SAVANHDARY VONGPOOTHORN – PAINTING AS A DELICATE SKIN

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Maria Poulos in conversation with the artist

EXPERIENCE AND ABSTRACTION

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Savanhdary Vongpoothorn

SPOTLIGHT: LIN ONUS

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Ewen McDonald

JANET LAURENCE

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Maria Poulos

RECENT ACQUISITIONS: CLIFTON MACK

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RAMMEY RAMSEY

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ALLENS ART COLLECTION

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East/West: selfhood and cultural issues

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LINDY LEE Justice that punishes 1988 oil, wax on canvas, 174 x 134cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Allens art journal issue 2

EAST/WEST: SELFHOOD AND CULTURAL ISSUES Mengfei Pan

The paintings of Jiawei Shen and Lindy Lee.

Jiawei Shen and Lindy Lee have become important

explored notions of authenticity of selfhood by

figures in Australia’s contemporary art scene. While

employing copies of ‘masterpieces’ from the

their practices represent the multicultural diversity

Western tradition. Jiawei Shen’s Self-portrait with

associated with the visual arts of this country, it is

G E Morrison, on the other hand, is typical of his

not just the soil of this place, thousands of miles

continuing investigation into history – his large-

from their homelands, that nurtures and supports

scale oil painting illustrating typical compositional

their art.

aspects associated with the artist’s approach to

Key works by the artists in the Allens Art Collection

representation.

– Lindy Lee’s Justice that punishes (1988) and

Within the Collection, the three works generate

Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) 1989; and

an interesting dialogue: they reveal how two

Jiawei Shen’s Self-portrait with G E Morrison (1995)

Chinese Australian artists incorporate disparate

– reveal deeper connections between here and

cultural inheritances within artistic practice.

there, the present and legacies associated with

Understanding this cultural richness and these

their past.

formative personal memories is an important

The two works by Lindy Lee epitomise an earlier phase in her practice, the late 1990s, when she

dimension to the appreciation of Lee and Shen’s work. Biographical traces are evident in the paintings: the inclusion of portraits and other faces

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JIAWEI SHEN Self-portrait with G E Morrison 1995 oil on canvas, 167 x 304cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

– characters who fix the viewer with their gaze –

period, the 1960s-70s.1 His experiences during

are an obvious clue to the significance of particular

those years have, without doubt, profoundly

people and the past. While their individual

influenced his art, but when recalling the ebbs

backgrounds serve as artistic inspiration and

and flows – the absurdity, insanity and agony

result in different approaches to painting, there’s

happening to and around him at that time – he

a similarity in the way Lee and Shen attempt to

is quick to add that a positive ‘by-product’ of the

address notions of selfhood and cultural identity.

Cultural Revolution was that he was able to receive

Further, by focusing on the differences and the

art training and allowed to practise ‘art’.2 Shen’s

similarities – especially Shen’s Self-portrait with

personality was shaped in the tumult as well.

G E Morrison and Lee’s Untitled (blue – El Greco’s

The restricted access to literature and pictorial

Companion) – the insightful ways artists use the

resources – anything deemed heterodoxcal – and

personal to explore and address larger social and

the scarcity of these materials, due to censorship,

political issues through art becomes apparent.

did not blind him: rather, it made him more

CULTURAL ROOTS: MEMORY AND ARTISTIC INSPIRATION Jiawei Shen (b 1948) moved to Australia in 1989 and, when first introduced, tended to

skeptical and thirsty for knowledge and the ‘truth’ behind the official words. His critique of Chinese history has not ceased since moving to Australia: Self-portrait with G E Morrison, produced about six 1

be characterised by an earlier identity – as a

Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, New South Wales, 2010, pp 7-9

propaganda painter for the Communist Party during China’s turbulent Cultural Revolution

For more about the Cultural Revolution context of Shen’s art, see Grahame Kime, ‘Introduction’, Shen Jiawei: From Mao to Now 1961-2010,

2

Jiawei Shen, ‘The Fate of a Painting’, Shen Jiawei: From Mao to Now 1961-2010, op cit

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LINDY LEE Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) 1988 photocopy, synthetic polymer paint on Stonehenge paper, Perspex box frame 6 parts, each 42 x 29cm (unframed), 43 x 30.5cm (framed) Allens Art Collection © the artist

Photograph of Morrison in western China Source: Jiawei Shen, ed, Old China through G E Morrison’s eyes, trans Dou Kun, Fujian Education Press, Fuzhou, 2005, pp 8-9.

years after his arrival, is a significant work in this

Morrison’s autobiography and repeatedly included

regard. The painting reveals Shen’s passion for the

in books on his life.7 Shen also refers to some other

history painting genre – it’s the culmination of his

historical documents in the collection; for instance,

interest in modern history, a series of coincidences

a Chinese name given to Morrison by a Chinese

and an encounter with the photographic collection

scholar, a Chinese-style passport granted by the

of George Ernest Morrison held by the Mitchell

Qing government so that Morrison could travel

Library at the State Library of New South Wales.3

in four provinces in China, and several Chinese

Morrison (1862-1920) was an Australian journalist working for The Times who resided in Beijing. For more than two decades at the turn of the twentieth century, he travelled extensively throughout the country interpreting Chinese affairs for the outside world, often making political suggestions to the Chinese leaders at that time.

postage and imperial stamps. Although the appropriation of photography and the playfulness associated with the incorporation of passports and stamps are typical in contemporary art, the overall look of the painting is formal and classical – it’s realist in style and the figures are posed in a conventional manner. The solemnity of the largescale painting (167 x 304 cm) is emphasised by the

Morrison was such a lover of China , he considered

evocative and gloomy background colour. It seems

it his second home. He assisted the leaders to

that Shen’s formal training during the years of the

secure the best outcomes in negotiations with

Revolution and, later, at an academy – combined

Japan and the West. It seems that there was no

with his passion for historical subjects – is a legacy

better person than Shen – with his painterly skills

that the artist finds hard to break away from or is

in portraiture, scholarly research and thorough

reluctant to abandon.

4

understanding of the history of both countries – to produce a portrait of this legendary man. Shen selected a famous photograph in which Morrison is depicted in full Chinese garment with five Chinese people who assisted his trip in west China in 1890s.5 In his autobiography, An Australian in Beijing, Morrison expressed his admiration for these Chinese labourers’ frugal lifestyle.6 It is a significant and unique image that has been used on the cover of a 1970 reprinted version of 3

When Jiawei was working on a portrait of Hedda Hammer for the Archibald Prize he got to know her husband, Alastair, son of G E Morrison, through Powerhouse Museum curator Claire Roberts, which led to researching documents in the Morrison Collection held by the State Library of NSW. Much later, after the production of this

While the Cultural Revolution can be considered the cradle of Shen’s art, for Lindy Lee an intuitive approach to art-making was largely provoked by cultural perturbations in mid twentieth-century Australia. Lee’s parents were the first migrants in the family to leave China for Australia. Born in Brisbane in the 1950s, Lee’s sense of diaspora was further aggravated by the ‘White Australia Policy’ at that time. In the name of ‘self-protection’, the children were not allowed to speak Mandarin – even at home.8 As she recalled, her childhood was never a happy one.9 The darkness of childhood, and 7

The autobiography of Morrison, An Australian in China, first published in

self-portrait, Shen was fortunate to get funding (and the waiving of copyright fees) which enabled him to compile a book on the Morrison Collection, Old China through G E Morrison’s eyes, published by Fujian

1895, was a celebrated book that led to his appointment as a journalist for The Times. This photograph also appears in later books on his life, for instance: Cyril Pearl’s Morrison of Peking,1971; Peter Thompson’s The

4

Education Press in 2005. Interview with Jiawei Shen, 11 October 2011. For more about Morrison, see Nicholas Jose, ‘Preface’, Jiawei Shen (ed),

Man who Died Twice – The Life and Adventure of Morrison of Peking, 2004, and former National University of Australia professor Lo Hui-Min’s edited 8

5

Old China through G E Morrison’s eyes, trans Dou Kun, Fujian Education Press, Fuzhou, 2005, pp 11-14. ibid pp 8-9.

anthology, The Correspondence of G E Morrison, 1976. Andrew Taylor, ‘The search for self’, The Sun-Herald, 21 November 2010, p 3.

6

ibid.

9

ibid.

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trajectory’.14 For both artists, cultural roots and personal experiences are the reason for their distinctive approaches to painting. Yet, despite their disparate styles, the work of Shen and Lee address similar topics – for them art is a place where selfhood and cultural issues collide and merge.

FACE: SELFHOOD AND CULTURAL RENDEZVOUS

Morrison’s Chinese name given and written down by a Chinese scholar. Source: Jiawei Shen, ed, Old China through G E Morrison’s eyes, trans Dou Kun, Fujian Education

Self-portrait with G E Morrison demonstrates Shen’s flair for portraiture and exacting representation – a technical virtuosity that is well-respected both in China and in this country.15 He grasps the characteristics of his subjects and his painterly

Press, Fuzhou, 2005, p 5

touch is defined and confident – a confidence that, very likely, arises from his understanding of the history and stories concealed in photographs, a lack of cultural belonging, became the impetus for making art and continues to be a strong presence in her work.

in texts and books and revealed in interviews. In this painting he presents a hierarchically arranged group, highlighted by the colours chosen for each identity. Monochromatic grey is used to depict

Early in her career, during which time Justice that

the policeman on the very left and the two coolies

punishes and Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion)

flanking Morrison , while Shen and Morrison –

were produced, a major inspiration was the idea

the artist and his subject – are painted in bright

of ‘the copy’. This concept connects with her

colours … Shen in a yellow tunic top with a red-

memory of wanting to be a ‘blonde surfie chick’

covered book in his hand and Morrison in Chinese

when she was little, and the need to question

garb of peacock blue. While it is a painting of five

notions of selfhood – especially in regard to

people, it is more precise to describe the study as a

cultural dislocation. In those days, she felt like ‘a

dual portrait with three typical Chinese characters

fraud, a copy, a flawed one … counterfeit white and

in the shadows, as background information.

10

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counterfeit Chinese’. Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) adapts El Greco’s self-portrait, which she copied from a textbook on six A5 sheets of paper dozens of times.12 Compared with Shen’s self-portrait, Lee’s two works are painted in strong single hues – Justice that punishes in deep red and Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) in vibrant blue. Lee believes in the power of colour, which she associates with particular meanings. For instance, red invokes violence and love/hate emotions; blue is symbolic of introspection.13 The method and media, the ‘copy’ and strong colours, are characteristic of the artist’s early works.

The artist’s title focuses on the painting as a selfportrait. Yet, the inclusion of himself would not have been easy for Shen. It was not until the late 1970s that Chinese artists were allowed to put themselves in the works they produced or sign their names on the back.16 Emancipated from any form of restrictions in Sydney, Shen allowed his brush to dance more freely and did not hesitate to model himself in a casual outfit in front of a mirror.17 With his palette and red-covered book, he clearly identifies himself as an artist. The book is Morrison’s autobiography, An Australian in China, whose cover uses the exact photo Shen appropriates for his own composition. The way he

10 ibid. 11 Quoted in Melissa Chiu, ‘Struggling in the Ocean of Yes and No’, Lindy Lee, Benjamin Genocchio and Melissa Chiu (eds), Craftsman House, Sydney, 2001, p 16. 12 Interview with Lindy Lee, 8 November 2011. 13 ibid.

14 Interview with Jiawei Shen, 16 November 2011. 15 Shen has been a frequent finalist in the Archibald Portrait Prize. Many of his works are kept in national museums in China and Australia.. 16 Shen, ‘The Fate of a Painting’, op cit, p 31. 17 Interview with Jiawei Shen, 11 October 2011.

Allens art journal

always plays a significant role in one’s growth

East/West: selfhood and cultural issues

Jiawei Shen once wrote: ‘memory of the past

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Photograph of Morrison’s Chinese passport Source: Jiawei Shen, ed, Old China through G E Morrison’s eyes, trans. Dou Kun, Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, Fuzhou, 2005, p 6

firmly holds it close to his body, showing the cover,

reasons why Shen chose not to include the original

is reminiscent of how the Red Guards advocated

Chinese architectural background of the original

Mao’s words and the Party so exclusively. This book

photograph: in his work the ‘meeting’ place is

seems to be another indication of the impact of

undefined. Rather, the artist depicts an ambiguous

the Revolution: and the objects he has chosen to

space – a place located somewhere between East

hold can also be interpreted as representing the

and West. On one hand, the oil medium is typical

artist’s two forceful instruments – painting and

of Western art practice; on the other, the painting

reading as ways to understand the world.

is laden with Chinese references, including

In terms of portraiture, Shen’s positioning of himself is unusual. He does not put the ‘self’ at the centre but to the left. When compared to the

Morrison’s Chinese outfit, two Chinese passports, signatures, stamps, and margins that are clearly borrowed from Chinese scrolls.19

original photograph, the place Shen occupies in the

Alluding to traditions from the East and West,

painting is that of Laoh Wan (Old Wan), a guide,

Shen focuses on another ‘hybrid’ – Morrison

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horseman and an accountant. The multi-talented

himself, a Westerner wrapped in his adopted

Laoh Wan played a key role during Morrison’s trips

Chinese identity. But there is one slight difference

and his name is even passed down to the present.

separating Shen’s Morrison and the real one: in

Given this fact, the artist’s decision to put himself

the photograph that the artist has appropriated,

in that position stresses his belief not only in the

Morison’s fake glasses are removed, which,

role of the artist in society, but the significance of

seemingly, enhances his eye contact with the

his own presence in the painting.

viewer. In this particular East-West context,

Within the composition, Shen and Morrison occupy the same space: there is no obvious difference in stature between artist and writer/ envoy. Instead a powerful cultural rendezvous transcending time and space is proposed in this painting. Made ‘real’ (and seemingly authentic) by the artist’s realistic rendering, the narrative is in fact far from real: it would have been impossible for the two figures to have met, let alone be posed together in a picture. This may be one of the 18 Shen, Old China through G E Morrison’s eyes, op cit, pp 8-9.

although standing apart and not visually communicating with each other, the gaze of the two men – both keenly interested in Chinese politics, who seem to connect spiritually – invites us to enter their world, to explore their backgrounds and understand their formative fascination with China. Despite differences in appearance – their outfits reflecting the historical periods – the two share a physical locality: Morrison first landed in Shanghai from Australia 19 It is a tradition of Chinese scrolls to leave the margins of the silk after a painting has been fixed to its mounting.

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1950s, later, migrated to Australia .

propositions or meditations – their ‘irresolution’ a

Like Morrison , Shen genuinely cares about

comment on the fluidity of identity.

his country. In this respect, he is not unlike

Lee has said all her work is about self-portraiture.25

the American journalist Edgar Snow who

The blue portraits record what could be described

wrote Red Star over China (1937), a banned

as an ‘ahistorical melancholy’ – but a sentiment

book that influenced the young artist during

best understood within the historical context.

20

the Revolutionary years. If Morrison is often

Shen’s art also contains his own opinion towards

considered to be a symbol of cultural exchange

history. But, as many critics have pointed out, his

21

within a contentious historical context,

art is, in a way, self-suppression and denial, which

juxtaposing himself with Morrison, Shen similarly

is probably due in part to the impact of political

suggests a world of cross-cultural dialogue

turmoil upon the artist’s personality.26 Shen always

and where introspection is a place of infinite

tries to present the truth he discovers and believes,

possibilities.

and aims to achieve objective historical accounts

On the contrary, Lee’s art is based on her own cultural experiences. She often likens her art to the complexities one associates with reading a face, which she sees as key to human complexity – not just the colour of eyes and skin (the surface) but the traces that lead to recognition of the inner being.22 Compared with the realistic portraits of Jiawei Shen, Lee’s faces are mysterious, anonymous and, sometimes, just a vague silhouette. Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) encapsulates the self-probing associated with her practice. At first glance, this ‘copy’ may seem like the artist is vandalising one of the great paintings of the Western tradition, but this suite of six works

that can be conveyed, translated and disseminated by means of art. Culture, its cross-boundary fluidity and universal humanity, has been his usual topic and something to be celebrated in his art – ‘culture’; for Lee, it however, is not such a merry thing. The uneasiness associated with coping with two cultures – one ancestral that haunts her, the other, acquired, that has become her companion – accounts for Lee’s deep interest in philosophical thoughts and her acute artistic sensitivity. In both instances, despite the different approaches and formats, the artists’ encounters with their cultural backgrounds are metamorphosed … blended, if you like, each a double ‘self-portrait’.

– each slightly different in terms of clarity and

Lindy Lee’s Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion),

darkness – recounts something beyond what

and Shen’s Self-portrait with G E Morrison reflect

could be considered just A5 photocopies.23

the two artists’ ruminations over their past and

Lee’s summoning of El Greco , ‘the Greek’ who

notions of selfhood and culture. As witnesses,

established his career in Spain , alludes to her own

participants and bearers of history, they

‘outsider’ status and the self-assurance associated

imaginatively reveal the apprehensions associated

with a ‘European’ cultural identity. The woman in

with identity and trans-cultural experience.

El Greco’s portrait looms in the darkness, yet she

Through the processes of art they have been able

remains mysterious and taciturn: it’s as if Lee’s

to crystallise their thoughts, yet remain speculative

efforts to connect herself with Western culture

not only about formative individual circumstances

is in vain – the copy, the artist, results in another

but about the nature of cross-cultural dialogue.

depiction of otherness, emanating awkwardness

From childhood, both Shen and Lee had the

and alienation. The woman remains a stranger, a

intuitive feeling that art could provide a way

nomad, a wanderer seeking resolution, residence

through the labyrinth, without ever expecting to arrive at a particular destination.

20 Grahame Kime, ‘Interview with Shen Jiawei ‘, Shen Jiawei: From Mao to Now 1961-2010, op cit, 2010, p 22. 21 Morrison, in the words of Nicholas Jose – an established writer, art critic, and once Cultural Counsellor to the Australian Embassy Beijing – is ‘an embodiment of the close and continuing links between China and Australia, a human thread tying Chinese and Australian history together at significant points.’ Jose, ‘Preface’, Old China through G E Morrison’s eyes, op cit, p 11. 22 Interview with Lindy Lee, 8 November 2011. 23 The process of making these portraits is quite simple: first Lee brushed marine-blue on each sheet of paper and then putting them through the photocopy machine multiple times. Interview with Lindy Lee, 8 November 2011.

24 Lindy mentioned she is ‘malleable, changeable’. (see Taylor, ‘The search for self’, op cit, p 3). Her art trajectory proves her words: after this appropriation of Western paintings, she moved to appropriating family photographs and then aspects of Zen Buddhism.. 25 Taylor, op cit, p 3.. 26 Art critic John McDonald once commented, ‘Shen is a whole-hearted painter who has come through a tough artistic training in China. He has all the technical ability, the courage to take on ambitious compositions and a hint of self-deprecating wit’. (Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 1997).

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and remedy.24 These six blue portraits remain as

East/West: selfhood and cultural issues

in the 1890s, while Shen, born in Shanghai in the

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Another way of looking

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LINDY LEE Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) detail 1988 photocopy, synthetic polymer paint on Stonehenge paper, Perspex box frame 42 x 29cm (unframed), 43 x 30.5cm (framed) Allens Art Collection © the artist

A first generation Chinese Australian, Lindy Lee works like a cultural forensic investigator looking into issues of identity and belonging.

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ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING Vigen Galstyan

Lindy Lee’s Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion)

Lindy Lee is represented in the Allens Art Collection

It was shared by many artists of the time, such

with two mixed media paintings from the artist’s

as Tim Johnson and Micky Allan, and was quickly

early oeuvre. One of them, Untitled (blue –

embraced by major art institutions such as the

El Greco’s Companion), is a six panel assemblage

National Gallery in Canberra and the Art Gallery of

that encapsulates Lee’s rigorously conceptual

New South Wales, which purchased a number of

approach. A first generation Chinese Australian,

Lee’s works during the 1980s.

Lee works like a cultural forensic investigator looking into issues of identity and belonging. Her Eastern heritage comes to play an important role in her works, as it inevitably collides with the amalgamated, Western, profile of the Australian context. After studies in London, and later in Sydney, Lee began exhibiting alongside a new generation of Australian women artists who

The artist notes that as Australians ‘we have been bad copies of Europe’1 and her paintings of the 1980s demonstrate this literally by comprising ‘bad’ photocopies of Renaissance portraits. The ghostly visages of European noblemen stare at us with a blurry gaze, their multiplied, otherworldly presence as intimidating as it is eerie.

took on a highly critical, deconstructive stance

Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) belongs

towards the past. Her interest towards issues

to this series of reflections on Western art. The

of authenticity in the age of globalisation was evident almost from the beginning of her career.

1

www.artcollector.net.au/LindyLeeTheManyFacesofLindyLee. Accessed 12.03.2012.

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work comprises of photocopied reproductions

for the imagination with the passage of time,

of a woman’s portrait attributed to El Greco

fuelling new constructs and paradigms that shift

and currently in the Philadelphia Museum

the original meaning in order to create new ones.

of Art. Repeating the image across six panels

The thick layering of the photocopier’s black ink

arranged in sequence, Lee glazes each one with

suggests our accumulated distance from the

layers of thinned, transparent oil paint. All of

‘original source’, yet its ghostly presence continues

the panels are the same, yet different. The artist

to hover in our reality.

has allowed the mistakes and accidents that arise due to overprinting in the photocopier to come through the paint layer. In order to see these subtle differences, the viewer has to fully concentrate as Lee’s painting demands a prolonged scrutiny in order to ‘reveal’ itself. The frequent appropriation of El Greco’s imagery in Lee’s works is not accidental. The sixteenth century GreekSpanish artist faced similar issues of being a perpetual outsider trying to construct his selfhood in a foreign context. According to the artist, the appeal of ‘El Greco’s deep sense of fervent belief’ is another important aspect of identification for

Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) is also, as Terry Smith suggests, a reflection on the limitations of painting, the muted, confined and immobile state of images that are trapped within the frame.3 In a way, Lee’s work can be seen as an attempt to liberate the painted image from its contextual corset. Works like Untitled (blue – El Greco’s Companion) and especially the larger multipanel renditions like Philosophy of the Parvenu, (1990), create a rhythmic movement that seems to explode off the edges of the frame and continue to evolve in the imagination of the viewer.

her practice, which is so informed by Zen Buddhist

We can also see the painting as a commentary

philosophy.2

on Australian art’s hereditary reliance on the

Despite this, the work immediately conjures up memories of Warhol’s multi-panel screenprints. But the prerogative is completely different. If Warhol’s aim is to pinpoint the pre-eminence of the surface and the vacuity of the self, Lee uses the device of the copy to arrive at a different conclusion. She is not interested in how history vanishes into thin air or becomes commodified POP iconography. What appears more pertinent to her concerns is how history becomes a mine 2

Andrew Taylor. ‘The Search For Self: an interview with Lindy Lee’ in The Sun Herald, 21 November 2010, p 3.

Western tradition: like a child unwilling to leave the parent’s shadow, it seems destined to emulate the seductive certainties of this formidable patriarch. Yet Lee’s commentary does not satirise the ‘copy culture’ of Australia; rather surprisingly, she validates the process of copying itself that informs so much of our current context. Through incessant borrowing and distancing, the ‘original’ has become a newly transformed entity: it is a simulacra with an identity of its own. 3

Bernard Smith and Terry Smith, Australian Painting 1788-1990, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p 549.

LINDY LEE

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INTERVIEWS: JIAWEI SHEN

Jiawei Shen and Lindy Lee

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Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

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MARIA CRUZ Organic No 2 1991 oil on canvas, 183 x 213cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

…the fern is like any microscopic image of plant growth, of tendrils uncoiling. I was really impressed by that kind of essence in form – in many ways, every growing thing unfolds like the fern.

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FOCUS: MARIA CRUZ – TO BE TRANS-NATIONAL Maria Poulos in conversation with Maria Cruz

In 1997, Maria Cruz won the prestigious Portia

art historical references and philosophy, Cruz

Geach Memorial Award, with her painting Maria

merges figuration, text and compositional aspects

painting 1997. While the title refers to the artist

associated with abstraction within her practice.

herself, ‘Maria’ is such a generic name and yet there is a resonance, a rich legacy associated with it. Maria Cruz is painting a self-portrait but the image alludes to the many Marias who have been painted over time. This oscillation between the ordinary and the elevated is one way of approaching Maria Cruz’s attitude to art-making and her responses to the vibrancy to be discovered in the world around us. Her paintings have a metaphysical quality that connects with reflection, personal and communal exchange; yet, semiotics and colour theory play pivotal roles. Incorporating the anecdotal alongside

A motif in Cruz’s visual language is the liana, a woody climbing tropical vine. In her hands, the liana symbolises the vital energy of organic growth, which in some of her paintings becomes an arabesque-like, dynamic form epitomising the relationship between culture and nature. An expatriate visual artist now based in Berlin, Maria Cruz lived and worked in Sydney from the 1980s. Despite moving in international circles, she has always maintained close ties with this, her homeland, and the Philippines, the place of her birth.

and Organic No 2 1991 – both now hanging in the

purchased for the Allens Art Collection.

reception of the Melbourne Office at 101 Collins

MC: When I saw it again, I thought ‘Oh my God … it’s a European one’. The drawing was included in my very first show, when I graduated from Sydney College of the Arts. I was so touched to see it hanging in the Sydney office. Former managing partner, the late Hugh Jamieson – whose passion and vision was the driving force of the Allens Art Collection – saw it at your first show?

Street – appear quite different in terms of subject and the way they are painted. Yet, the abstract curving forms suggest they could be part of a series incorporating the liana vine. Do you usually work this way, following an idea but across a range of resolutions? My paintings don’t usually follow on from each other, I don’t paint in a methodical way. This approach came later, it’s what I do now. But in the 1980s and 90s I would have had several canvases

Yes, it’s amazing when you think of what Hugh

hanging in my studio and would’ve worked on

did. I met Hugh through Mori Gallery – I had

them simultaneously with the same idea … trying

just finished art school and was about to go to

different colours and different ways of applying the

Germany to further my studies.

paint.

Given the range of your work in the Allens Art

Did you have any particular influences? Were there

Collection, your approach defies categorisation. It

any particular artists who inspired you at the time?

can be considered abstract, figurative, portraiture and even landscape

In those days I liked the ideas and the abstractions of people like Gerhard Richter and painters like

My work crosses categories in the same way that it

Sigmar Polke and Albert Oehlen. These artists

does for many other contemporary artists who are

influenced my work a lot.

interested in all forms of visual material. I feel that I am like those artists who are informed by things that catch their eye. I’m particularly interested in colour, in nature, text as form … any kind of image. The depiction of events and aspects of everyday life triggers something in me. Your paintings in the Allens Art Collection date predominately from the 1980s and 1990s; what were you focusing on at that time?

You’ve moved on in your practice and have experimented with other media, yet you continue to paint. Tell me about your attraction to paint, its plasticity. Paint is a material that I still connect with even though I’ve moved on and now incorporate other media. Paint – more than other processes – is so immediate and it’s so primal. I can have an idea or a feeling that I want to express and communicate,

During the 1980s I had been working with colours

and immediately I can do it. I can paint it. I can see

and the processes of painting. I’d been very

a result. And in terms of colours and material, the

experimental with my manner and application of

plasticity of paint is ideal … it’s so connected with

paint. Basically, layer upon layer of changes and

touch, and that’s probably what attracts me the

corrections. I don’t hesitate in removing something

most.

from the painting if I am not happy with it, and to overlay it with another image. I was very interested in creating lines, very linear forms against colour

Do you consider your works to be autobiographical?

field explosions of different combinations. And I

Not in the sense that they have a narrative about

think those works were very much informed by

myself. I think they are more about improvisation.

nature. They’re like clouds or bursts of green in the

This period of my painting was more about

landscape, and forms like hills. At the time I was

impulse and stimulus and learning to work on a

particularly interested in a particular organic form

large format, on different scales and formats …

that is like a sphere from a plant – the liana and its

and, I think, with a real interest in nature.

tendrils, a botanical form from which I derive many of my abstract forms.

Allens art journal

Two works, Carrier of human emotion 1989-90

early drawings and the earliest of your works

Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

MP: Untitled (drawing) 1985 is one of your very

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Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

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MARIA CRUZ Untitled (drawing) 1985 acrylic on paper, 113.5 x 101 (unframed), 140 x 126 cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

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MARIA CRUZ Grace 1990-91 oil on canvas, 121 x 91cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Speaking of nature, and perhaps the lush

I did quite a few paintings just using the names

vegetation of the Philippines, do these works relate

of the days of the week. I’m not sure if one of the

to your cultural upbringing?

works you mention is part of this series … it would

I’m not sure my fascination with nature relates directly to my cultural upbringing … but I am very, very inspired by nature everywhere. I have, in fact, memorised the perfect land/seascape for me – I can paint it with a few brush strokes. It’s not a particular place, it’s more like a mindscape. But whether it’s a Filipino landscape or a European

be hard to tell, the words were so obscured. But that’s how I became interested in text as form. I then started giving meaning to each letter … not so much a personal meaning, but what the letter shape could be visually on a canvas. In this sense the letter, word or text relates to everything else included in the composition.

landscape, I’m not so sure – both are landscapes

Looking again at the large-scale canvas Organic

that create the same feelings for me.

No 2 1991, can you describe the origins of that

The use of text in your work, often subtle, is

work?

intriguing. In Post Office 1989-90, Untitled (Boy)

It’s a succession, a repetition of the same kind

1990 and Untitled (Reflection) 1990, words are

of form with two spheres at both ends, and it’s

embedded within the surface but, in a certain

a version of this fernlike growth or tendril that

light, visible beneath layers of paint.

emerges when a seed sprouts. The forms in this

I work a lot with text as a form now, but during the late 1980s and early 90s was when I started experimenting with words. The text I used then was hidden and it appears more like a secret message … I was attempting to combine lettering with very abstract forms. I remember at that time

work are all repetitions of that energy. Someone once described the fern to me … it is like any microscopic image of plant growth, of tendrils uncoiling. I was really impressed by that kind of essence in form – in many ways, every growing thing unfolds like the fern.

Do you consider this an abstract painting when,

This applies also to the smaller painting Grace

equally, it could be a landscape or figurative

1990.

like writing – a secret language …

Grace was the beginning of my interest in spheres. And, as the title suggests, there’s a religious connotation to the work as well. I’m very interested

For me Organic No 2 is an abstract painting

in religious icons and religious paintings of the

and, similarly, the earlier work Carrier of human

middle ages and, in particular, an artist called

emotion, which has a variation of the same fern-

Stefan Lochner. I often have a fear of God feeling

like tendril motif. I like the fact that the use of

in some of my images. Grace connotes a kind of

this symbol connotes other things … it’s a way of

reverence but more like a light, an omnipotent

opening up the picture to interpretation by others.

light. And the burst of colour in the middle of this

Actually, the larger painting is a combination

work lights up the picture’s imagery … like a cloud,

of different movements of my body – the way

a plume of colour bursting from a halo.

I work with paint. I still work this way … there’s an essential connection between the body, the

Do you intentionally take ideas from art history?

act of painting and the scale of the work. And, of

Yes, especially the paintings I’m currently working

course, there’s the impact of colour. I really like

on. I am working from icons but mixing them

clashing colours … I do not follow traditional rules

with comic representations of sound or light –

about colour combinations. And perhaps you’re

juxtaposing colour, the material that I get from

right about the calligraphic aspect because of my

comics and the details I glean from religious

interest with text and writing.

paintings. But the results are abstract, there are

Tell me about the work When I liked romantic painting 1989-90. The linear motif has gone, replaced by a burst of white paint across the surface.

no images. There are lines … in fact, I’ve become really interested in Aboriginal work from the desert and bark paintings. I’m now based in Germany and recently began painting on board – works that lean against the wall rather than hanging them.

Visiting the Allens office, it was so nice to see all

It’s as if I’m internalising all these references from

these works again, especially When I liked romantic

comics, allusions to religious iconography and now

painting. It has that effect of repelling you but

Aboriginal paintings, that suddenly emerge as pop

drawing you in at the same time. This is a duality

imagery.

that I like to play with in my work – and in this work I used varnish on parts of the canvas so that the two surface effects play off each other. When I was making this work I had became interested in hard edge abstraction – and the works that followed were more hard edge, colour field

Let’s return to another highly varnished painting, Boy 1990. Like Grace, and other works from this period, it has a sensuous surface and is as much about the materiality of paint as it is refering to a deeper, less obvious meaning.

paintings. The central burst of white you describe

Unlike Grace, this painting is not about spheres

was not made by scumbling but the very opposite,

or religiosity; it alludes to graffiti or street art

by using a brush and layering the paint. It was very

that was sold in the Philippines in the 1960s. For

intense work … layering, correcting and erasing.

instance, when they wrote ‘Boy,’ they made it into

That’s why the painting looks as if it’s still in the

the physical appearance of a boy. Basically, this

process of being made.

is the background to the painting. Talking about

And because it looks like it’s ‘always being made’, this, again, opens up the possibilities for viewers to complete the work … Yes, that’s the intention.

sensuous surfaces, though, these days I have bad reactions to paint – I cannot work the way I used to. As a young painter, I just went crazy, I lived in my studio breathing all these fumes all the time. Now I get headaches and turps irritates my eyes – I’ve even lost my sense of smell. I still work with oil, but I use just the purest oils … besides, they really have the most intense colour.

Allens art journal

the hint of calligraphy, the flowing linear pattern is

Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

painting derived from natural forms? There’s even

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Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

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MARIA CRUZ Post office 1989-90 oil on canvas, 101 x 101 cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Although your work might not be specifically

‘Oh, I see the world as a big house, and I have

cross-cultural, you are a Filipina who has taken on

different rooms in this house, and so I don’t see

Western modes of practice. Is this something that

it necessarily as separate places.’ I guess for me

you think is relevant to your practice?

personally, this is a good way of adapting to my

Yes, I think it is relevant. Whenever I go back to the

situation and the paths I move along.

Philippines I notice that my mode of practice is

Some critics have talked about the ways

different in that it’s more informed by abstraction.

you reference globalisation and migration,

There the culture is highly figurative, seeing the

mediatisation and tourism in your work. Is your

world as images in their perfect form and never as

nationality and background intrinsic to what you

abstractions.

do, or do you see yourself purely as an artist?

Although you were born in the Philippines, your

I think my background is intrinsic to what I do

roots are there, and you obviously have very strong

because I couldn’t live without the stimulus of

ties to the place, but you’ve travelled extensively

Manila. I couldn’t be producing the work that I am

and now live in Berlin.

producing now without the vibrancy of that city.

Yes, I’m probably one of those people who see the world as flat! I’m always joking, saying

I see myself as a ‘trans-national’. I’m a citizen of three countries, really.

Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

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MARIA CRUZ Carrier of human emotion 1989-90 oil on canvas, 101 x 101cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Australia, the Philippines and Germany? Yes. My family lives here in Australia, my granddaughter is here, and then my father is in the Philippines, and I am married to a German. Although I can see myself as a little bit of everything – that is, as a tourist in all these countries, a trans-national – I have a very sacred memory related to my origins, which can never be removed. There’s no way you could erase it. And I find myself keeping a lot of things from the Philippines. It is the third-largest Catholic nation in the world and the first in Asia, and my family has an old tradition from my great-great-great grandfather, where we change the clothing of our statute of St Peter. I keep the clothing and everything, so I have a stack of these things. Every third year the family changes the clothing … it’s a big ritual.

Recently, I was reading a text by Svetlana Boym – a Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University as well as a media artist, playwright and novelist – who writes on the relationship between memory and modernity, and between homesickness and sickness of home. She was talking about the Russian emigrate essentially, but I felt it really applied to me. She describes how you have a kind of love-hate relationship with your place of origin. You see it with a critical eye sometimes and then, if other people talk about it in a negative way, you don’t accept it. I am still very much part of my culture … but it’s very much a push-and-pull relationship.

Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

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MARIA CRUZ When I liked romantic painting 1989-90 oil on canvas, 160 x160 cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Some of your paintings are inspired by personal

of paintings that related to the 1972 earthquake

photographs, or other images that you’ve sourced

in the Philippines. These paintings were

from magazines and books. Are these items self

autobiographical in the sense that I depicted, in

referential?

an abstract way, what happened to the crockery in

Yes, some of them are from my own photo albums from when I was a child. When I paint these images, the painting process takes over but the impetus and original images are based on what happened in real life. At one time, I painted a series

my mother’s house. The shards and pieces of china were sprawled across the floor, they resembled still life paintings except that the ceramics and the plates were completely dishevelled.

Maria Cruz – To be trans-national

Interview: Maria Cruz

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… the way I work with paint … there’s an essential connection between the body, the act of painting and the scale of the work.

Tim Johnson: The art of collaboration

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TIM JOHNSON Lakota 1989 oil on canvas, 151 x 121cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

The interconnections made when working between cultures and communities are made manifest in the techniques and symbols Johnson has absorbed into his practice.

Allens art journal issue 2

FOCUS: TIM JOHNSON THE ART OF COLLABORATION Ewen McDonald

The only limits to painting … are those set by the artist who is afraid to reflect the reality of his or her mind.1 1

Tim Johnson, artist statement, Notes on Painting 1970-77, published by the artist, Sydney 1977

In Tim Johnson’s paintings, images are scattered

exist independently of time – so we can paint the

cross the canvas like signs on a complex map,

future.’2

traversing time as well as space. This artist is a traveller in the physical, imaginary and conceptual sense of the word. His paintings as well as his songs (he has been writing and recording rock/ blues music since the early 1970s), document his journeys through various cultures and places. While his references to Aboriginal painting have often defined discussions of Johnson’s art, his practice needs to be more widely understood in terms of a conceptual eclecticism that has been part of his approach since the early 1970s. As an artist and occasional writer, Johnson also invokes the power of dreams: ‘Images are dreams and

It could be suggested that Tim Johnson’s distinctive painting style – at once interpretative and celebratory of the potential of appropriation and the insights that can be gained by appreciating key elements from other traditions – represents the hybrid reality of contemporary Australian culture. Emphasising Australia’s geographic proximity to Asia, the artist considers the legacy of European art history of less relevance, perhaps, than the diverse cultural, spiritual and artistic practices of our Eastern neighbours, our Indigenous communities and other First Nation artists who, similarly, have had to confront the challenges of oppressive colonisation.

1

Tim Johnson, artist statement, Notes on Painting 1970-77, published by the artist, Sydney 1977.

2

Sue Cramer, ‘Illusory Worlds: an essay on Tim Johnson’, catalogue essay for Documenta IX, Mori Gallery, Sydney 1992.

Tim Johnson: The art of collaboration

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TIM JOHNSON Platte River 1989 acrylic on linen, 152 x 182cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Tim Johnson: The art of collaboration

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TIM JOHNSON Red Mt Meru 2000 oil on linen, 152 x 183cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

tied to Renaissance perspective nor limited by a

‘Australian art could be seen within the context of

need to embody the physically experienced world,

Aboriginal, Asian and American traditions and still

but a place for storytelling and mapping. Later,

have its own identity.’ Recognising the impossibility

this approach connected with the use of multiple,

of such an all-encompassing approach, Johnson

interlocking picture planes associated with Eastern

has come to focus on the need to work in a shared

painting (especially Chinese and Tibetan landscape

symbolic space … ‘perhaps like a Buddhist Pure

painting) and totemic aspects of Native American

Land, or the mandala itself, to create an illusory

art.

reality or virtual reality in which the space that the artwork occupies is revealed to the audience that read enough signs to begin to unravel its meanings.’3

The interconnections made when working between cultures and communities are made manifest in the techniques and symbols Johnson has absorbed into his practice. For instance, the

From a practice encapsulating counter-culture

dots associated with much Aboriginal painting

ideals, conceptualism, a restless eclecticism and

become in Johnson’s work a compositional

cross-media experimentation – which included

device (like the differing registers of reprographic

sculpture, kinetics, film, installation, photography,

image-making), a vibrant ground upon which the

artist books, music and performance work –

energy associated with meaningful collaboration

Johnson developed a painting practice that has

is communicated to the viewer. The artist is ever

increasingly focused on cross-cultural dialogue.

hopeful that cultures can learn from each other,

Since the 1980s he has explored a range of

that inclusion will counter feelings of being

interconnected cultural references and sources

indifferent to difference. In this sense, Johnson’s

– at first inspired by his experiences travelling

paintings traverse that fine line between pictorial

throughout Asia in the 1970s and, then later, when

reality and the world outside the frame – a world

he worked with Aboriginal artists from the Pintupi,

that is, based on effective, respectful dialogue and

Warlpiri and Anmatyerre communities at Papunya

exchange.

in the Western Desert. By this time, the artist realised the significance of collaborating with

Further reading: Sue Cramer, ‘Illusory Worlds: an essay on Tim Johnson’, catalogue essay for Documenta IX, Mori Gallery, Sydney

other artists: he was one of the first Australian

1992; Barbara Flynn, ‘Tim Johnson’, Emerge and Review: a look into

artists to work with the Papunya Tula artists but

the UBS Australian Art Collection, UBS, Sydney 2007, pp 52-53

more as a pupil than a teacher. At the time he

Tim Johnson (born 1947) lives and works in Sydney. Recent solo exhibitions include Supernatural, Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2011); Emulation, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney and Worlds Apart, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (2010); Painting Ideas, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2009). He has been included in numerous international group exhibitions, including 2011 Roundabout, City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand (2011); Open Air: Portraits in the Landscape, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra (2008); Flight Patterns, MOCA, Los Angeles, USA (2000); Antipodean Currents, Guggenheim, New York, USA (1995) and Documenta 9, Kassel, Germany (1992).

wrote: ‘Papunya is a place where new technology and pure abstraction meet an ancient wisdom and an art that transcends European knowledge and systems.’4 A consequence of these exchanges with senior artists like Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, Clifford Possum Tjapatjarri and Michael Nelson Jagamara, was that Johnson was given permission to use some non-sacred Aboriginal motifs in his own work. Similarly, he adopted the notion of painting being a field of images in deep space – no longer 3

Tim Johnson and My Le Thi 2002, correspondence between the artists and curator Wayne Tunnicliffe, quoted in ‘The symbolic space of Tim Johnson’, Brought to light II: contemporary Australian art 1966-2006, Lynne Seear and Julie Ewington (eds), Queensland Art Gallery Publishing, 2007, p 167.

4

‘Travel Songs’, Tension 9, 1986 republished in Tim Johnson, Mori Gallery, Sydney and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 1987.

TIM JOHNSON Justine n/d oil on linen, 152 x 60cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Tim Johnson: The art of collaboration

The artist once suggested it would be great if

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Tim Johnson: The art of collaboration

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Painting as a delicate skin

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SAVANHDARY VONGPOOTHORN Criss Cross 1998 acrylic on perforated canvas, 183 x 153cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Identity for me is a fluid idea and you negotiate between the identity that you were born with, the places and situations you have been in, and personal experiences.

Allens art journal issue 2

FOCUS: PAINTING AS A DELICATE SKIN Savanhdary Vongpoothorn in conversation with Maria Poulos

Laos – a landlocked country in Southeast Asia

refugee camp at Nong Khai on the Thai boarder,

has had a long and tumultuous history. In 1893 it

arrived as a refugee in Australia in 1979. She had

became a French Protectorate; in 1945 it briefly

been separated from her father who was a captain

gained independence after Japanese occupation,

in the Royal Army and who was also marked for

but returned to French rule until it was granted

execution by the Communists. During 1979 those

autonomy in 1949. In 1953 a long civil war began

connected with old regime were rounded up for

which was quashed in 1975 when the Communist

‘re-education’. She was eight years old when

Pathet Lao movement came to power.

she came with her mother and three brothers

Despite the many social and political upheavals, Theravada Buddhism has remained a dominant

to live in a Department of Immigration hostel in Cabramatta, west of Sydney.

force in Lao culture: its significance reflected in

In 1998, Savanhdary returned to Laos with her

the language, temples, literature and all forms

parents. This was the first time she’d seen her

of creative expression, including the visual and

home country since escaping the civil war and the

performing arts.

first time she met her 93 year-old-grandmother –

This is the birthplace of artist, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn who, after fleeing her home in southern Laos and spending nine months in a

it was a particularly emotional time for the artist and her family to whom she feels very close. Her parents had renounced Buddhism after arriving in

an effort to assimilate into Australian culture – but

conceptually, Savanhdary creates meditative,

twenty years later, when they returned to Laos and

introspective works. While the juxtaposition

to the temple, her father, Mungsamai became a

of delicate washes and perforations may seem

Buddhist monk. This visit was also a turning point

contradictory, the combination builds a complex

in Savanhdary’s artistic practice. On her return to

web of repeated forms that allude to the optical

Sydney she began exploring new techniques that

rhythms associated with minimalist abstraction as

have their origins in the traditional arts of Laos

much as they refer to the patterns and textures of

– the most obvious being the puncturing of the

woven cloth.

canvas with hundreds of small holes, often within a grid-like pattern, that not only recall the textures and methods of weaving but the rituals associated with fabrics and touch. Despite the fact that her childhood memories are tainted by war – and she has no nostalgia for Laos – there is a certain serenity in work. Her paintings could be considered as prayers, forms of meditation wherein each mark can be understood as a reference to the repetition inherent in breathing, chanting and music. As a monk, poet and musician, her father has not only helped her retrace her cultural past, he has become her studio assistant – working by her side, burning holes with a soldering iron to delineate the grid-like structures sketched by Savanhdary upon the canvas that have come to typify her practice. Originally trained in sculpture, Savanhdary’s practice moved from installation to object painting, and her painting processes have shifted from fibre washes and glue to acrylic on canvas. There are notable affinities in her work with Aboriginal art, her work is similarly grounded in cultural beliefs and rituals. Knowledge of Laotian textiles and, increasingly, experiences within the Australian landscape are key sources. The subtle

MP: It’s some time since you grew up and fled from Laos. How do you look back upon that time now? SV: I don’t think about it much, because I don’t dwell on it. Sometimes my mother would talk about her family background, and how she grew up with ten siblings. And she’ll talk about her grandfather – my great grandfather – the little that she knew him and the little time that she had spent with him listening to his stories. I’m always riveted … I just love hearing the history of my family, I’m fascinated by it. In terms of growing up in Laos, I don’t have a lot of memories – and remembering has a lot to do with language. Watching my children growing up, I see how crucial and important a first language is … how it informs their learning, their memories … When I was young, up the to the age of eight, my social interaction was limited. The main source of stimulation was my mother … I was always with her. I went to school but I never really picked up the language in a formal way, like learning to read or write. I guess what I’m trying to say is that language is a crucial link to remembering, to memories. The beauty of your work is that it is so evocative.

colours and muted tones, and the dot matrix of knotted threads, reference not only the weft

There is another level to language – the visual.

and weave of traditional textiles, they reveal the

I grew up with traditional textiles, with rituals,

influence of Australian art history.

weddings and other functions associated with the temple and other similar places – and in all

There is a formality to the compositional structure

of these the visual aspect is vibrant and strong. I

of her work. Often, an alternating rhythm is

remember these things about Laotian culture but

established between scraped back, worn and

not the formal language.

almost bleached-out sections and more vibrantly coloured panels. Yet, simultaneously, the paintings

Perhaps this has to do with the trauma of being

evoke not only the poetic landscapes of Dorothea

forced from one’s homeland?

MacKellar – ‘the stark white ring-barked forests, sapphire-misted mountains, the green tangle of leaves and ferns on warm ochred soil, brown streams and soft, dim skies’ – but aspects of the later works of Ian Fairweather and Fred Williams.

Maybe … I mean, I’ve never really thought of it in that way. But when I hear my mother talk about how she escaped on her own with four children on a boat and how the boat almost sank and how she had to get the water out the boat … I just

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Detailed and layered both physically and

Painting as a delicate skin

Australia – deciding to attend a Christian church in

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courage and bravery. And being a mother myself

get some food, she came back to find there was

now, I wonder if I could do that with my children?

only a little bit of rice left. She asked me “What

But, I guess, if it comes to choosing life or death

happened?” and I said “Oh, that man next door, he

you’d do anything for your children.

asked if he could have some … and he took like, you

I remember vividly prior to escaping, when my mother took us four children at dawn to a place of

know, a lot.” Mum got so upset, and this is what I remember!1

hiding, near the river. We stayed there all day and

Coming to Australia must have been a real culture

we were not allowed to move or speak until night

shock? You’ve talked about the red roofs being like

time when someone came to take us down the

mushrooms …

river and into the little boat. But apart from that I remember our house and the well at the back.

Yes … those roofs had quite an impact! And the way the houses were so close together. Absolutely!

Visual forms like sarongs and things like that,

Arriving in Australia was a culture shock for all of

remain too – but I think some of these memories

us.

are of early days here in Australia when I was growing up. Connected with the trauma of that night, your father was already on a hit list of wanted people …

Yet your family assimilated quite easily … or at least they wanted to. Yes, they wanted to assimilate. Uppermost in their mind was education. After staying in a hostel in

Yes, that’s true. His brother was a colonel, and he

Cabramatta and being around a lot of people with

was a captain. When they took his brother, we

similar backgrounds, they wondered how you

knew we had to escape.

could get an education when you’re always with

When your family returned to Laos later for a visit that too must’ve been very difficult? It was. While my father’s family had been on one side, my mother’s family was on the opposite. They’re staunch communists … they’re in the party and they’ve become key players in running the country. My auntie back then, was the leader of the Women’s Union and two of my cousins are now working in the Prime Minister’s office.

your own people and hearing only their language. My mum had a nephew who lived in Narwee so my parents decided that we should go and live near them. We ended up just a block away from their house and went to school there. Narwee was so different to Cabramatta. Every weekend my father would take the family to the city- we’d walk to the station, take the train into town, go to Chinatown, then have McDonald’s and go into the Greater Union

Prior to arriving in Australia you spent nine months

cinema complex, not to watch a film … because we

in a Thai border camp, do you have memories of

couldn’t afford it … but to just run around and play

that time?

safely away from danger. That was our weekend entertainment.

I do have one memory that is strong – when my mum growled at me.

Later on we moved from Narwee to Campbelltown.

It was because everyone had been designated

When did you first become interested in art?

a particular spot where you could keep all your things. We had a mat on which we’d sit, sleep and eat and then we’d clear things away … but someone would always have to sit there to look after your belongings otherwise things would get stolen. My three brothers were always going off and playing like kids do, but I always stayed with my mother because I was a young girl and the only daughter and my mum was overprotective of me. So I was the one who had to sit on this mat and look after our things. We had a container full of

Well, I have to say I wasn’t very academic at school, but I excelled in Art and English. I chose all the wrong subjects … subjects that my more academically-inclined friends chose like science and economics which I flunked anyway. I should have opted for the humanities. My marks and my art portfolio got me into art school where I was fortunate enough to have really good, inspiring teachers. I loved art school and the idea was instilled in me that anything, any material could

Allens art journal

sticky rice and on one occasion when she went to

Painting as a delicate skin

get shivers up my spine thinking about it. Such

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Painting as a delicate skin

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SAVANHDARY VONGPOOTHORN New leaves 1998 acrylic on perforated canvas, 96.5 x 95.5 Allens Art Collection © the artist

be art. This was important because I had no money

I immersed myself in the processes of making,

and the focus on the appreciation of materials

working with tactile materials, and playing with

and objects … any object … . was liberating. I didn’t

possibilities. I didn’t think about how I was going

have to spend money I didn’t have on art materials

to survive … I was on an Austudy program and

… . I started to go out into the bush, to find things

I was just thinking ‘Maybe I could just live on

and to do something with them. It was fun, it

government support! By then I knew I just wanted

was exciting, it expanded my thinking. At the

to do this, to be an artist.

time I had no idea what it meant to be an artist, but when I was in my second year I was invited to submit a proposal for a group exhibition at the Performance Space in Sydney. From that point I just kept on going.

In 1994, I began to work at Wedderburn, at Roy Jackson’s studio, and for eight years I was surrounded by other artists who were equally inspired by that location.

In 1998, I applied for an Australia Council working

and living at Wedderburn … the focus was very

grant to prepare a series for exhibition. I was

much about the place, the surrounding bushland.

work.

When I look at that work now, I think about Wedderburn, the colours, my studio. It encapsulates that place, where I was at the time

It was like ‘Wow!’ … more money than I had

and what was happening in my life. That’s the

ever had in my whole life. It enabled me to

underlying personal narrative.

stop waitressing on Friday and Saturday nights, something I had done since I was 18. I decided no more casual jobs – not even the casual work at Utopia Gallery on Saturdays. I decided to take my luck on sales and be a fulltime artist. When were you introduced to Aboriginal art?

It’s equally an abstract, geometric work. The subtle, muted tones, the weft and warp of traditional woven textiles, and it’s the beginning of the dot matrix patterning … You’re right. At that stage I felt strongly connected to influences from my background, my education …

Through working at Utopia Art Sydney and

my life. Thinking back, I’m really lucky to have been

prior to that, working as a gallery technician at

able to work at Wedderburn with all the other

Campbelltown Art Centre. Being exposed to artists

artists and thankful for the opportunities that

from Papunya greatly inspired my work.

arose. Criss Cross is a work that encapsulates this

You first exhibited found objects and things

period of my life.

discovered in the bush and later, you incorporated

Did it take you a long time to create a work like

repetition and patterns into your work …

that one?

Yes, but when I was making floor installations,

It did take me a long time because back then, I was

the grid was always there as a compositional

doing everything on my own – the preparation of

device. The grid was an ideal structure to deal with

the canvas as well as the final realisation of the

objects and repetition … I was interested in how

work. My dad wasn’t helping me in those days.

you could juxtapose organic materials and the

With this particular painting I started by drawing a

inorganic. The grid was the most effective way of

grid on the back of the canvas and worked on both

presenting ideas and the floor is a ground I was

the back and front at the same time.

very comfortable with. When I graduated from art school I created a mandala-like piece using

What was the purpose of painting from the back?

bush material, making hundreds upon hundreds

I worked on the back of it because when you

of these little objects from gluing casuarina and

perforate the canvas – which I did with a soldering

banksia seeds and stems together so that they

iron – the paint seeps through to the front and the

looked like little insects.

colours stain the holes made by the burning. This

The work I do now also incorporates repetitive elements but it is more focused on a meditative, perhaps mantra-like, aspect. It’s the processes of

was the first part of the painting process and then I painted over the seepages on the front of the work.

making … each a reflection on how the particular

Do you have a preconceived notion of exactly what

work is realised. While there’s an underlying

it is you’re going to paint?

personal narrative, I don’t see the finished work as overly emotional.

No … I can’t work that way. I don’t make preliminary drawings before I start. So I have no

Tell me about the narrative aspect of your two

idea how a work’s going to turn out. Usually I have

works in the Allens Art Collection, Criss Cross and

a vague idea but it’s more to do with trying out

New Leaves both painted in 1998.

a particular technique. Often I work on several

Criss Cross was the work I did for my 1998 solo

canvases simultaneously.

show for which I was awarded the grant. It was

Your work has been described in terms of

inspired by my experience of Aboriginal paintings

alternating rhythms. For instance, the formal compositional aspect of Criss Cross where the

Allens art journal

award of $15,000 to be able to focus on making

Painting as a delicate skin

successful … this was my big break … I received an

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Australian artist but with a Laotian background.

optically, to move forward and back within

That’s my identity … how I use it, or how it comes

the picture plane. And the surface has a worn,

out, is different in the different situations I find

weathered look as if parts of it have been bleached.

myself in. For me it’s not a conflict and I don’t see it

The painterly effects in that work were difficult to

as a conflict.

achieve because optically, at times, the opposite

More than identity, my work reflects where I am

was happening to what I was attempting to

living. Where I live now is fantastic – we back

achieve. But in the end, it all needed to come

onto a reserve and I go for a lot of walks into the

together as one work without jarring. It’s similar

bush land around Mt Ainslie. It’s no wonder my

to the dimensions apparent in Aboriginal painting

current focus is on landscape painting … so I guess

where the lines, colours and contrasts create

I could be called ‘an Australian landscape painter’!

amazing optical patterns yet it all comes together

I don’t ever want to be pigeonholed in terms of

as one work.

my identity and just because I use my cultural

New Leaves is complex in this way: it has the vibrancy you’ve just described that one associates with Aboriginal painting. What’s the narrative behind that one?

heritage, doesn’t mean it’s always apparent or crucial to my work. It depends on the personal narrative that’s happening at the time. My last show included works made while my daughter and my dad were with me in the studio and, obviously,

New Leaves was also completed in Wedderburn. It

I was thinking a lot about the past and our history

was Spring and the new leaves were coming out

… it came up in the conversations we were having.

and I just loved all of the colours and the verticality

Aspects filtered through in the work because of the

of the tree trunks I could see outside my studio

emotional impact of being together in the studio

window.

at that time. I think what I’m trying to say is that sometimes my Laotian background is stronger in

One writer suggested correlations with your work

the work than the landscape … at other times the

and paintings by Fred Williams.

landscape is dominant. I think with New Leaves

I love Fred Williams’ work – especially the Chinese and Japanese influences. The Wedderburn studio

that’s the case whereas in a painting like Criss Cross there’s a real sense of two cultural identities.

was right in the bush. When you stepped outside it

Given your reputation and acceptance as an

was straight into mulch and leaves … it was dense,

Australian artist, and the circumstances of your

intense, but it was not impenetrable. I’d go for long

arrival in this country, do you think about what

walks and find details … the colours, vines growing

talents may lie hidden in refugee camps and

over bushes, new flowers that had just come up. I

detention centres.

was inspired by all these subtle, detailed patterns and textures … the visual richness to be found

I do … and it upsets me. I have always felt strongly

in the bush. My work at the time synthesised all

about the plight of refugees.

these elements. Does your identity play any role in your work? The cross cultural nature of your upbringing suggests a range of influences beyond those associated with Western art traditions.

Given the importance of your mother in your life, is there a strong feminist aspect to your practice? Laotian culture is matriarchal. Yes, we control the boys, the men … I grew up with three older brothers yet my mum and I were the bosses! So

Identity for me is a fluid idea and you negotiate

as a woman, I’ve inherited many of my mother’s

between the identity that you were born with,

strengths and her courage … I feel empowered by

the places and situations you have been in, and

that legacy.

personal experiences. I see myself as an artist, an

Painting as a delicate skin

darker and lighter rectangular shapes appear,

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Allens art journal issue 2

EXPERIENCE AND ABSTRACTION Savanhdary Vongpoothorn

…if I had to sum up the meaning of abstraction in my work, it would be found somewhere in the space between experience and memory.

In 2003, I wrote a brief ‘linear’ narrative of my

full swing. We stayed in a refugee camp in

life as an introductory text for Abstractions,

Nong Khai, Thailand, for nine months before

an exhibition curated by Mandy Thomas and

we came to Australia. Upon arrival we were

presented at the Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra. Of

provided accommodation by the Department

course, while this narrative may appear whole, it is

of Immigration in a hostel in Western Sydney’s

in fact fragmentary.

Cabramatta. After one year in the hostel my

I’d like to begin with how my family and I left Laos, and end by writing about my recent return there

parents became anxious to leave and start a new life in the larger Australian community.

as a tourist. In the course of telling this story I hope

My father came from a military family. In Laos

to be able to say something about how experience

he had been an army captain, and his brother a

and abstraction speak to each other in my art

colonel. With virtually no English, the only work

practice.

he could find in Australia was as a manual worker.

My family and I escaped from Laos to Thailand in 1979 – a year in which things became unstable for many as the rounding up of those connected with the old regime for ‘re-education’ got into

He worked as a printer for 20 years until his recent retirement. My father worked hard for little pay, but with four young children to support he had little choice. As soon as my father started this job, we moved out of the hostel to an apartment

being shared by Theravada Buddhists from Sri

hopes for a new life in a new country were mainly

Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and

invested in their children’s education and, they

Laos. The other temple is known as the Lao temple.

thought, the only way for their children to have

We frequent both. My mother is finally at home,

a decent education was for us all to immerse

through religion and our connection with the Lao

ourselves in the Australian way of life and have

community. I grew up and went to art school with

Australian friends. They believed we would not get

this cultural and religious background.

around too many Asians.

Towards the end of my final year at art school I had a studio in the bush at Wedderburn, a rural

The only family we had in Narwee was my

area 15 minutes out of Campbelltown. There,

cousin’s. Otherwise we were isolated from the Lao

you wake up and see birds and wallabies, and

community. Occasionally we would attend cultural

when it is hot you can see goannas walking in the

events at the Buddhist temple in Stanmore,

bush. Sometimes, when it is really hot, there are

Sydney. But, one day, the people from the Church

bushfires. Once, the fire came right up to the ridge,

of England came knocking at our door and my

a few metres away from the studio. The entire

parents invited them in. They stayed for hours

area of bush that could be seen from the studio

talking about God and Jesus, and how they wanted

was burnt out. Trees that had been green and

our family to join their church. My father thought

leafy were just skeletal. Everything was black and

that this was the greatest, that finally somebody in

charcoal. It looked like a moonscape.

Australia wanted us to be part of their community. So we went to church every Sunday for two years and my three older brothers and I went to Sunday School. This went on until, one night, my mother had a dream. She dreamt there were two men fighting at the foot of her bed, one wearing a yellow robe with a shaved head, the other wearing white rags with long hair and blue eyes. They fought and wrestled, until the man wearing white rags with blue eyes walked away. My mother saw

After the fire the rain came and the trees and bush were rejuvenated. New leaves grew and the animals were back. During that rain the light on the gum trees was grey and subdued. My source of inspiration had been from this bushland environment. Here I must thank my friend, the painter Roy Jackson, who has been a great supporter of my work, and has often inspired me to ‘get on with it’.

this as a sign, that the Buddha was telling her she

The works I produced in the first two years of living

was betraying her own ancestral roots and culture

in Wedderburn were mainly floor installations. I

by going to church. After working for two years,

collected and connected many things from the

my father had some money saved, and my parents

bush such as seedpods, vines and flower stamens.

decided to move back to Western Sydney. They

Content and form in these earlier works derived

bought a house in Campbelltown.

from the physical properties of these objects, with

Campbelltown in the early 1980s was a small town, with a small population of Asians. In the

which I played around, manipulating them to form an image in a metaphorical way.

last 20 years it has grown enormously. But living in

One floor installation is Legs on Seeds 1992 (300cm

Campbelltown even then, you got a real sense that

diameter). This work is made up of Casuarina

this part of Australia was indeed a multicultural

seeds and Banksia stalks. The stalks have hooks

society. The friends I went to school with were

at the end, which became legs for the seedpods.

Greek, Italian, Dutch/Indonesian, Filipino,

Each individual ‘seed on legs’ is travelling in a circle

Vietnamese, Cambodian, Slavic, Romanian and Lao.

towards a diamond centre and back out again, in

Campbelltown has the second largest Lao community in Sydney, the largest being in Fairfield.

a mandala form. The work suggests, among other things, that time is cyclical.

The growth of this community brought with it

The idea for another floor installation work, Vine

a need for a centre where people could practice

Water 1993 (200 x 200cm), came about while

their faith. There are now two Buddhist temples

I was walking in the bush. I found some trees

in the Campbelltown area, both only 20 minutes

and scrub covered in pristine vines. Pulling them

from our house. One temple is more multicultural,

apart, I felt both their softness and their strength.

Experience and abstraction

an education or speak the language well if we lived

Allens art journal

in Narwee in Sydney’s outer south. My parents’

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before crocheting them. The spiral was the natural

where a skilled weaver has deliberately offset the

form to come out of this process. For this work I

image to give it an optical illusory effect). I am also

did some research into hydrodynamics, learning

keenly aware that in Laos, textile production is

how in England the locations for castles were

woman’s domain, and a vital part of the domestic

chosen because there were signs of water lines

economy.

in the ground.1 My work was inspired by this juxtaposition of a man-made form – the castle – and the natural geodetic lines.

Although a Buddhist, I am not an avid reader of Buddhist books. My house is not filled with them. I do have a few books on Buddhist philosophy

Thus, in my installation a grid of plaster cubes

that I return to, contemplating a sentence

(moulded from ice cubes) formed the base for

remembered or discovering a new one. But my

the natural material of the bush vines, with their

practice as a Buddhist consists chiefly in going to

watery spiral forms. The last floor installation I

the temple, talking to the Abbot, eating and so

have done to date is Rice Lines 1994 (200 x 200cm).

on, and is ultimately bound up with Lao Buddhist

This work is made up of flour, water, salt and rice

cultural practice. If my work has been informed by

grains. Black rice grains are embedded in circular

Buddhist metaphysics, then these are principles

‘cakes’ (moulded from cake tins) arrayed in rows

that I have absorbed in my many visits to the

of one, two, three and four. The rice lines become

temple as a child. This is reflected in the fact that

denser in the centre and expand out, expressing

my very first installation work in 1991 referenced

my abiding concern with the mandala and the

the food offerings that are a vital part of Theravada

meanings it contains.

Buddhist cultural practice. I had hand-moulded

The longer I stayed at Wedderburn the more I felt I wanted to paint. Two years after arriving there I did. Initially, I stuck bush material onto paper, drawing with Casuarina seeds directly onto paper (as in Annica, 1994). Next, I stuck fibre washers onto canvas to create the Kasina series (Fire Kasina, Air Kasina, Water Kasina and Breath Kasina, 1995).2

cooked glutinous rice into rough conical objects that looked like miniature stupas. These were then slowly burnt in the kiln, which resulted in the base of the cone turning a golden yellow colour which gradually turned into charcoal at the top. I then stacked these objects in a pyramid form on a circular bed of grains of rice. At the temple food is offered to ancestral beings accompanied by the

After graduating from art school, I had a casual

rhythmical chanting of the monks. The monks are

job as a gallery technician at Campbelltown

mediators for these offerings. Their consumption

Regional Art Gallery. It was here that I was exposed

of the food denotes the end of the offering. The

to contemporary Aboriginal painting and Asian

lay people can then participate in eating, an act

textiles. After an exhibition called Phoenix and

symbolising death and rebirth. My installation

Dragons came to the gallery, I realised I didn’t need

evokes this burnt offering, not least in the smell of

to look far for inspiration. I was impelled to look

burnt rice which emanates from it. It was included

at the Lao textiles which were part of my own

in the Untitled 92 exhibition at the Performance

heritage and cultural background. These became

Space, Sydney.

an important reference point for my work, and as a result, my early works on paper from 1996 involved perforating the paper with a sharp needle as a direct reference to stitching.

Dating from 1996, this Buddhist influence can also be seen in the names of my perforated works on paper, which are titled in Pali, the Theravada Buddhist language (eg Sakala, which means

Growing up I was always surrounded by beautiful

‘entire’, and Jitatta, meaning ‘one who has subdued

Lao textiles, which I have in turn worn to temples

the mind’.)

and weddings. Until I woke up to them, Lao textiles were for me always something that were only functional. My current appreciation of traditional Lao textiles is not only for their beauty and vibrant colours, but also the structure of the weave, 1

Guy Underwood, The Pattern of the Past, London: Abacus, 1972.

2

Kasina are coloured discs used by monks to aid meditation.

In 1996, I started to think about paper as object rather than just surface – a result of the technique of perforation, since perforating the paper had warped it and given it a wave-like appearance. After perforating paper I moved on to perforating canvas. Initially, I used a hole puncher to cut

Allens art journal

especially in a complex piece of fabric (for instance

Experience and abstraction

I unravelled them and knotted them into strings

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ground, the raised walkways between buildings,

air and space through the work. Subsequently

and the subterranean passages all exist within

I replaced this technique by that of using a

the same visual space. This had the effect of

soldering iron to make the holes – a method

disorientating my whole sense of balance and

which proved more efficient and provided more

perspective. Various Levels 2002 is one of the

scope for experimentation. Unlike the hole punch,

results of this experience.

which created a marked tension between the canvas as two dimensional surface and three dimensional object.

I have travelled so much in the last few years, living between Australia and Singapore. I have travelled in Asia, once to Scotland and twice each to London and Paris. After all this, I can still say that the most

From 1998, the landscape entered into my work,

enduring inspiration for me is Australia and the

represented in the abstract through colour, light,

Australian landscape. The vastness of the country

space and mood. The textile influence is still

awaits my discovery. Still holding strong in my

present, but increasingly in the abstract rather

memory is that mysterious rock in the Centre:

than as a direct reference to my cultural heritage.

the light, the colours … and Asia, real as a place,

The painting Weaving Trees 1998 is suggestive of

experienced by an Asian woman who inhabits

the synthesis of these two elements, weaving and

Australianness.

the landscape. One could read this as a metaphor for the way Australia for me is about home and place, and this is woven into the painting – much like the Lao women weaving their life stories into their fabric.

On a trip back to Laos between December 2003 and the New Year I had an experience I want to relate (my second time back, but my first time back as a ‘tourist’). Eating outside at a restaurant on the Mekong River in Luang Prabang, I saw an

I have been painting for more than ten years now,

elderly man with thick glasses sitting on a chair

and my work no longer draws on traditional Lao

under a tree. He was weaving a fishing net hooked

textiles alone. Rather, I have spent some years

onto a branch of the tree. I could hardly contain

looking at and appreciating other textile traditions.

my curiosity during lunch. After our meal I went

In 2000, I had a residency in Arbroath, Scotland,

straight to him, still hungry to know what he was

at Hospitalfield House. Discovering an old book

doing, and how he was doing it. At the same time

on clan tartans in a second-hand bookstore in

I was in awe of the exquisiteness of his fine work,

Edinburgh actually led me to experiment with

which must have taken him months to do. Like

tartan designs as visual abstract forms. I combined

a true capitalist I offered to buy his net, a price

tartan patterns with bindis which I bought in

for which I had to negotiate with his son, as the

Singapore’s Little India shortly before going to

father appeared to be perplexed by the whole

Scotland, so that the works I produced in Arbroath

thing. Walking away feeling elated that I had taken

and on my return to Sydney form something of

possession of such beauty, at the same time I felt

a travelogue. What resulted was the Highland

sad and guilty about the fact that I had taken away

Mandala series.

his net for a miserly 80 000 kip, which is equivalent

Another studio residency I took was in Tokyo, in 2002. I went to Tokyo to research contemporary and traditional Japanese textiles. While in Japan I also became interested in Japanese Zen temples and gardens, which I saw on my trip to Kyoto. The golden yellow of Kyoto’s autumn leaves, and the silvery grey lights reflected in the gravel, gave welcome relief from the gaudy colours of Tokyo. This experience led me to experiment with the lines of the raked stoned garden. Another enduring

to $13. What would he do now? A friend suggested ‘He’ll just make another one,’ and I was a little bit consoled. I like to think that I have recognised a fellow artist, but some nagging questions remain from this encounter with the elderly man. Should I have taken his net away from him? Was he actually intending to use such a fine-holed fishing net? Is this a measure of how depleted the fish stocks in the Mekong River are? Was he aware fishing with such a net would make things worse?

experience I had in Japan was that of walking

In retrospect, after walking away with the net I

among the confusing multiple levels of the

could not put my finger on why the feeling of guilt

cityscape around Shinjuku in Tokyo’s ‘centre’. The

and sadness came over me. I was torn between

Experience and abstraction

the soldering iron made raised perforations,

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into the canvas. This allowed the play of light,

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wanting to keep the net as an exquisite object and

The fishing net is now hanging in our house in

wanting to give it back to him. The elderly man’s

Canberra, the object of my inspiration. I plan to

reaction to the money exchanged was an anti-

do a number of canvas works using this weaving

climax for me, as he appeared totally disinterested

technique. I am fortunate enough to have a cousin

by it. Not knowing what to do with it, he even

living in Australia, originally from Luang Prabang,

tried to give the money to his son, but the son

who is a fishing nut and knows how to make

said that it was his money, and he should keep it.

this type of net. He will teach me, and I hope to

I think deep down I expected him to be thrilled by

collaborate with him.

my offer. The fact that he was not, threw me. We were momentarily caught between each other’s worlds. With my money I had dragged the elderly man into my world; I had turned something that had for him only a functional and useful value into a commodity. What was traditional became an object of fetishisation. At the same time I had identified with his mode of production. The image of him weaving under the tree spoke to me about the net being made according to the rhythm of a pre-industrial world. The unexpected meeting with the elderly man made me think about my process of perforating the canvas and paper, and about the contrast between the ‘staccato’ movement of the perforation and the fluid motion of the paint brush. The repetition and regular nature of the perforations are much like the elderly man’s weaving, and suggest to me a similarity in the passage of time through our work. The old man’s work was not made as a commodity; the production of the net was an end in itself. All of which made me think about my early installation works. Why I had chosen to make the kind of work I did, using the perishable kind of material that I did? It also made me think of my recent works on canvas – how they get sold, and the strange relationship of ownership. That to me is an abstraction in itself.

Finally, what can one say about abstraction in one’s work, where the process of working is not about words but everything about the visual: colour, light, space and composition? And if the work is done through the process of doing it, how does one describe this ‘process’? What I can say is that before I begin painting there is always a visual inner plan. Often this plan is not the end result, and the work goes through a visual journey to arrive at a finished result that includes elements not conceived of before the painting was started. But sometimes this inner plan is so clear and so in harmony with the material – paint, paper, cotton threads, seed pods or grains of rice – that the work seems to travel along a single road. I don’t really have the language to talk about how I get from where I am when I start to the finished work, but if I had to sum up the meaning of abstraction in my work, it would be found somewhere in the space between experience and memory. This essay reproduced with permission of the artist.

Experience and abstraction

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Lin Onus

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LIN ONUS Arafura n/d acrylic on canvas, 182.5 x 182.5cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Looking at Onus’ vibrant, fertile depiction of the waterhole, one can readily associate the mother and child relationship with the adjective ‘gulunbuy’ – his pool is full of life…

Allens art journal issue 2

SPOTLIGHT: LIN ONUS Ewen McDonald

…[a] bridge between cultures, between technology and ideas.

Lin Onus was born into a politically active,

see him as ‘some sort of bridge between cultures,

suburban Melbourne home in the late 1940s. His

between technology and ideas.’2

parents – Glaswegian-born Mary McLintoch and Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta man from Cummeranunja, near Echuca on the New South Wales banks of the Murray River – were members of the Communist Party as well as campaigners for Aboriginal rights in Australia. From an early age he was aware of the problems urban-born Aborigines faced: when he left school in is early teens he realised he had

If he was driven to find a place and acceptance for himself in the contemporary visual arts of this country, it was through his unique, idiosyncratic and sometimes subversive merging of Western and Indigenous painting traditions that secured his position as a pioneering artist determined to bring Aboriginal issues to the fore.

absorbed ‘everyone else’s history and values but

His practice crossed boundaries: illustration,

not those that were rightfully my own’.1 Later,

painting and sculptural forms absorbed aspects

Onus acknowledged that it was difficult to ‘resolve

of his two ancestries, at times harmoniously

the extent of his Koori-ness and the extent of his

but, more often than not, he created provocative

White-ness’ but that he hoped that history would

juxtapositions to deliberately challenge nonAboriginal peoples’ knowledge and interpretation

1

Quoted in Jennifer Isaacs, Aboriginality: Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings and Prints, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1992, np.

2

Sylvia Kleinert & Margo Neale, The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford University Press, 2000, p 667.

Lin Onus

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of Indigenous society and its many complex

back to Arnhem Land – the influence of which can

traditions.

be seen in his later paintings where traditional

Onus first exhibited a work in 1974 – a painting inspired by the discovery of a box of watercolours found at his father’s shop, Aboriginal Enterprises. This was followed by an exhibition at the Aborigines Advancement League in Melbourne in 1975.3 In many respects, the socio-political milieu of the artist’s upbringing laid the foundations to his artistic practice – he may have been self-taught

techniques and patterns merge eloquently with Western realism. A key element is the distinctive rarrk or traditional cross-hatching that Onus began to incorporate into his compositions. For some writers, the resulting visual disjunctions that typify the later paintings, act as ‘enduring metaphors for the cultural destruction suffered as a direct result of colonisation’.5

but the cross-cultural, hybrid nature of artistic

The undated painting Arafura is typical of this

influences gave his painting a certain power and

later period. The title refers to the vast inland

immediacy. 4

fresh-water Arafura swamp that, geologically, is

During the 1980s Onus was the Victorian representative on the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council. At this time, on a trip to Arnhem Land, he meet the Yolngu elder and artist Jack Wunuwun at Maningrida and through him, Onus gained links to the elder’s extensive family. Wunuwun, convinced that the ‘Kooris down south’ had lost much of their culture due to early assimilation, became his adoptive father and mentor, giving Onus traditional designs he could paint. For over a decade, Onus made frequent visits 3

The Aborigines Advancement League had been established by his father,

4

his uncle Eric Onus and others during Lin Onus’ formative years. He was a follower of the American Black Power movement and in 1971, he played an active role in the Bunwurring (Kulin) Land Claim in Sherbrooke Forrest in Victoria. Despite these key events however, Onus concluded that the best way he could contribute to Aboriginal causes was to use the power of his art to communicate his feelings about the challenges facing all Australians.

considered a consequence of the last ice age but is now an extensive flood-plain with a network of waterways and rivers flowing towards the Arafura Sea that lies to the north of the Australian continent. To the Aboriginal people inhabiting North-east Arnhem Land – the Yolngu who divide themselves into two moieties (halves), the Dhuwa and Yirritja – the land, social relations and the universe are grouped within this division. Accordingly, Yolngu art represents the the world – seasons, animals and plants – within this system of moieties: for instance, the natural environment is divided into key groupings – waterholes (Gulunbuy), mangroves (Larrtha’puy), beaches

5

Sylvia Kleinert, Urban Dingo: the art and life of Lin Onus 1948-1996, Margo Neale (ed), Craftsman House Sydney, 2000, p 29.

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(Rangipuy), forests (Diltjipuy), jungle (Retjapuy)

intertwined by the artist whose work often

and plains (Niydjiyapuy).6

incorporates such trompe l’oeil ambiguities –

Onus’ painting connects with this profound and complex legacy. Watercourses and swamp areas – Gulunbuy – have great ceremonial significance for the Yolngu: the word ‘gulun’ used to describe

equates not only with the Yolngu moiety system, it reveals Onus’ merging of Western and Aboriginal traditions of representation and his attempts to reconcile them.

them in Djambarrpuyngu language, literally means

It was Lin Onus’ wish to have his work bridge a

‘stomach’ but is also synonymous with ‘womb’.

divided society. Despite his life being tragically cut

Looking at Onus’ vibrant, fertile depiction of the

short, he is celebrated as a pioneer of the urban

waterhole, one can readily associate the mother

Aboriginal art movement – the roots of which were

and child relationship with the adjective ‘gulunbuy’

nurtured by his father’s activism and the turbulent

– his pool is full of life, lilies rise up towards the

years when Aboriginal rights were being vigorously

light and beneath them in the dark water are

fought for by many urban Indigenous groups. In

rectangular, stylised depictions of plant life painted

1993, the artist was awarded an Order of Australia

in typical Yolngu fashion. On closer inspection,

for his commitment to Aboriginal arts and for his

one can see reflected in the water, the shadows of

significant contribution as a painter/sculptor.

tree trunks topped with spindly foliage, the bush canopy surrounding the pond. This ‘doubling’ of the world – above and below the water masterfully 6

Further reading, see Djon Mundine’s exhibition catalogue, The Native Born: Objects and Representations from Ramingining, Arnhem Land, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2002.

Lin Onus, 1948-96 Yorta Yorta, Southern Riverine Region, Melbourne, South-east region language group: Wiradjuri.

Janet Laurance

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ARTIST’S NAME Title, Year Materials 00 x 00 inches © the artist

ARTIST’S NAME Title, Year Materials 00 x 00 inches © the artist

JANET LAURENCE Iosis 1989 mixed media on canvas diptych, each panel 160 x 60cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Allens art journal issue 2

SPOTLIGHT: JANET LAURENCE Maria Poulos

With a poetic and thoughtful sensibility, Laurence explores ideas of nature, science, history, transformation and memory.

Alchemical transformation, perception and history

adhesive and metallic printed dots and a Japanese

are appropriate ways to describe the underlying

paper support. An abstract image, it is created

themes throughout Janet Laurence’s oeuvre. In

with collaged paper, textures printed in black

many respects, her work represents the nexus

ink; runny silver metallic pigment and shellac

between art, science, imagination and memory.

on layered Japanese paper. Runny showers of

She uses a diverse range of materials to produce

paint drip or stream across the surface of the

works which are often a response to specific sites

work. Reflective surfaces have often featured in

or environments such as Iosis 1989, from the

Laurence’s artworks which now feature glass for

Pacific Iosis series. These works were created and

its alchemical properties, particularly its ability to

influenced by Laurence’s experience while living

transform from liquid to solid through the agency

in Japan. The Asian references which become

of fire which allows for degrees of translucency

apparent include the use of Washi paper, the

and transparency. Conversely, the transparency of

scale and form of the works which are likened

glass and reflective surfaces is revelatory, reflecting

to Japanese screens, Chinese landscape panel

the transient effects of light and allowing the

paintings and vertical scrolls.

viewer to witness processes of change. Laurence

Iosis 1989 is a diptych made from gold, silver and metallic pigments, black ink, shellac, paper,

references Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘sfumato’, (the process of applying multiple layers of paint to create shadows of ambiguity, as in Mona Lisa’s

Janet Laurance

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Laurence has always been profoundly aware of the interconnection of all life forms and in this instance, the title Iosis is a way of describing the flux, or instability and transience which occur in matter.

Janet Laurance

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enigmatic smile) and in Iosis 1989 she employs

With a poetic and thoughtful sensibility, Laurence

this method to slow perception and to evoke the

explores ideas of nature, science, history,

passing of time and memory, causing the viewer to

transformation and memory. Layers of images and

linger and look more closely, perhaps to meditate

meanings are created through a sophisticated

on the mysteries that lie beyond the painted veils

grasp of materials to create shadows and

that make up this work.

reflections of nature, the world and the beholders’

The word ‘Iosis’, from the Greek language is a term used in alchemical writing and in art as a symbol to represent the purple phase (or Iosis) of the ‘Great Work’ which is the third and final stage of transformation. It is marked by the purpling or reddening of the material and occurs during the ‘coagulation’ operation. It can include blood, a phoenix, a rose, a crowned king, or a figure wearing red clothes. Laurence has always been profoundly aware of the interconnection of all life forms and in this instance, the title Iosis is a way of describing the flux, or instability and transience which occurs in matter. Laurence says: The painting is part of a series of works where I was exploring paint as matter in its various states. This was part of my interest in alchemy. It’s the transformation of the matter that is important in this case – of fluids spilling, pouring, forming and unforming what may have been solid.1

1

Email correspondence, Janet Laurence and the writer, 4 June 2012.

place in it. Janet Laurence is a Sydney based artist who has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas since the 1980s. Her work is represented in many major Australian and international collections and has been included in several national survey exhibitions. Public commissions and architectural collaborations include significant national and international projects, such as: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Australian War Memorial, Canberra (1993); The Edge of the Trees (with Fiona Foley), Museum of Sydney (1994); 49 Veils(with Jisuk Han), award-winning windows for the Central Synagogue, Sydney (1999); In the Shadow, Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Homebush Bay (1998– 2000); Stilled Lives, collection showcases, permanent display, Melbourne Museum (2000); the Australian War Memorial (with Tonkin Zulaikha Greer architects), Hyde Park, London; and The Breath We Share, The Sidney Myer Commemorative Sculpture, Victoria (both 2003). Her most recent solo exhibitions in Australia include: ‘Birdsong’, Object Gallery, Sydney; ‘Janet Laurence’, Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane (both 2006); and ‘Greenhouse’, Sherman Galleries, Sydney (2005). A survey exhibition of her work was held in 2005 at the ANU Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra.

Clifton Mack

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CLIFTON MACK Jarman Island (Lighthouse)I 2011 acrylic on canvas, 122 x 79cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

Allens art journal issue 2

RECENT ACQUISITION: CLIFTON MACK Ewen McDonald

The lamp may long be extinguished, but the lighthouse on Jarman Island remains a powerful beacon in the eyes of the acclaimed Yindjibandi elder and artist, Clifton Mack. An old photograph of the Jarman Island lighthouse

in the north west region of Western Australia2

shows the late nineteenth century, 15-metre high

– the lighthouse was a crucial navigational

tower standing aloft a rocky outcrop. Another

marker, guiding fleets of pearling boats (until

image shows a dilapidated structure – with its

the burgeoning industry moved north towards

outer coating of red and white paint peeling –

Broome) and freighters bringing supplies into Port

restrained by steel cables, anchoring it into its

Headland. For 40 years the settlement at Cossack

surrounds. Decommissioned in 1985 (superseded

was a gateway to the Pilbara and Kimberley

by the Cape Lambert Lighthouse), the lighthouse

regions – especially during the West Pilbara Coast

and the adjacent keepers rubble-and-mortar

gold rush years – but by 1900 the pearling luggers

cottage were in desperate need of preservation.1

and gold-diggers had vanished and, because the

Located on an island separated from the mainland only at high tide, just a few kilometres beyond Cossack – the historic shipping port established in 1866 near Roebourne and the Harding River 1

The restoration of the Jarman Island Lighthouse was authorised and overseen by the Heritage Council Of Western Australia from 2003. Both the lighthouse and the keeper’s cottage are now classified by the National Trust of Australia.

tidal estuary at Cossack was subject to silting, the port could not accommodate the larger sailing vessels. The town rapidly declined and by the 1950s was largely abandoned.

2

Originally named Butchers Inlet when it was established in the early 1860s as a landing place for European settlers, Cossack was a major port until the early 1900s.

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In North-West history, Jarman Island and its

towards a starry night, its island base lapped by

lighthouse is an important historical site.

white tipped waves.

The lighthouse is one of the few remaining prefabricated cast iron structures shipped from England to be reassembled on the island.3 Ordered in kit form (which included the tools and exterior paint) the shipment arrived a year later in 1887 and was put together by a labour force made up of prisoners from Roebourne, including Chinese, Asian and Arabian pearlers who had been stranded in Cossack during the cyclone season. The plated, cast iron segments (each about an inch thick) were designed to be flanged and bolted together on the inside of the structure, creating a smooth exterior surface less prone to salt spray corrosion.

At sunset, it is said, the sandy earth around the lighthouse absorbs a reddish hue, and in this painting the rising ochre-coloured mound is littered with footprints of the many gulls settling there. Some commentators have suggested the persistence of seagulls represents the natural world and the iconic tower is emblematic of the fragility of human endeavour. In this sense, the lighthouse is equally a symbol of invasive European settlement and the impact of colonial enterprise on the traditional owners of the West Pilbara coastal region.4

Completed when the lens arrived separately from

Historical events and particular Pilbara sites

England, the lighthouse required a resident keeper

have become a preoccupation of Clifton Mack:

to ensure its four-wick Douglas burner (fuelled by

a second painting in the Allens Art Collection

kerosene or paraffin oil) was lit every night. In 1917

monumentalises Dawson’s Well located at the old

the lighthouse was automated, its burner replaced

turn-off to Millstream on the Tablelands. It too,

by a sun-valve activated acetylene gas lamp.

lies within Yindjibarni country. As the artist has

The lamp may long be extinguished, but the lighthouse on Jarman Island remains a powerful beacon in the eyes of the acclaimed Yindjibandi elder and artist, Clifton Mack. His painting brings new life to the tower and in this particular work, he depicts the now restored structure sitting

described, the well was dug by European settlers who needed a resting place and watering hole for horse and wagon travellers.5 The Yindjibarni people also camped nearby on the river bed, close to where the railway line was laid that linked 4

3

Cast iron towers were constructed in segmented form as a viable way to establish lights to remote locations.

See Oliver Watts, exhibition brochure, Clifton Mack / 15 February – 17 March 2011, Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney, and Jeremy Eccles, ‘When the world was soft’, exhibition review, Aboriginal Art News, www. aboriginalartnews.com.au/2011/03.

majestically atop the outcrop: rocket-like, it strains 5

Artist text prepared by Yinjaa-Barni Art for the Certificate of Authenticity for the painting Dawson’s Well, catalogue # 1112-11.

Clifton Mack

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CLIFTON MACK Dawson’s Well I 2011 acrylic on canvas, 72 x 108cm Allens Art Collection © the artist

the settlement at Tom Price to Port Samson, the coastal port that by 1904 had replaced the jetty at Cossack. As with Mack’s Jarman Island Lighthouse series, the rock structure at the centre marking Dawson’s Well dominates the painting, the viewer’s eye drawn to it by the railway track, roadway and river that lead towards the watering hole. Again, the image encapsulates two worlds – Yindjibarni country and a frontier land. While the painting represents a junction, a resting place, it could equally refer to a painful disjunction between two vastly different cultures – and more recently, to a clash of values in what now, for some, is a vast and empty mineral rich land just waiting to be exploited while for others, it is a place of enduring cultural significance with sacred, ceremonial and historical sites that need to be protected. Sources: Lighthouses of Western Australia Inc [http://www. lighthouse.net.au/lights/WA/Jarman%20Island/Jarman%20 Island.htm. Accessed April 2012] and Karratha Visitor Centre [http://www.pilbaracoast.com/attractions/jarman-islandlighthouse. Accessed April 2012].

Clifton Mack Born: Iremagadu (Roebourne) Western Australia, 1952 Skin: Balyirri Tribe: Yindjibandi / Language: Millstream Tableland Clifton Mack started painting in mid 2001 at the BujeeNhoor-Pu Centre in Cossack where through Pilbara TAFE he attended tertiary courses in art. Since 2006 he has been a key artist with Yinjaa-Barni Art. His country, its stories, native flora and fauna, and bush tools inform his work. In this way he continues the traditions and knowledge of water courses – the locations, seasonal patterns and lore connected with Warlu, the fresh-water snake, associated with his father Long Mack, the revered Yindjibarndi Rainmaker. Mack has had solo exhibitions in Perth and Sydney since 2009 and has been included in national and international group exhibitions including the annual Cossack Art Awards (where he has won a prize every year since 2002); Colours of Our Country exhibitions (sponsored by Rio Tinto, 2006-11); the Telstra National Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Art Award Darwin (2010); LNG15 World Conference, Barcelona, Spain (2007) and Antica Terra Pulsante, Vitali Gallery, Florence, Italy (2006). In 2011 he was awarded the Royal Bank of Scotland Emerging Artist Award, Sydney.

Rammey Ramsey

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RAMMEY RAMSEY Warlawoon Country 2007 natural earth pigments on linen, 122 x 135 cm Provenance: Jirrawun Arts, WA [RR200711134] Courtesy of the artist and Caruana & Reid Fine Art, Sydney Allens Art Collection © the artist

Allens art journal issue 2

RECENT ACQUISITION: RAMMEY RAMSEY Maria Poulos

Concerned with transmitting Gija traditions and law to future generations, his works express important spiritual messages regarding country and the natural elements – earth, wind, fire and water. Rammey Ramsey was born at Old Greensvale

True to his law, he only paints stories he has

Station (now Bow River Station) in north-Western

custodial rights to through birth and family. Many

Australia in the mid 1930s. He is a Gija man of

of his restrained sophisticated paintings depict

Jungurra skin whose parents were from the Elgee

the gorge north-west of Halls Creek, in an area

Cliffs, west of the Bedford Downs. His Giga name is

surrounding Elgee Cliffs. The Gija style of Ramsey’s

Warlawoon which is the name given to the area of

country has a figurative orientation influenced

his country. Although he has worked all his life in

by regional rock art and ceremonial body paint

the bush as a stockman and is renown for breaking

designs and Ramsey draws on both Western

in horses, he is also a dancer and a teacher.

Desert and East Kimberley styles to create an

Beginning to paint in 2000 for Jirrawun Arts, Ramsey is now a leading member of the East Kimberley painting movement that commenced in the early 1980s under the auspices of the great Gija law man and artist Paddy (Jampin) Jaminji (1912-96) and Rover Thomas Joolama (c192698). The legacy of these influential artists and their generation is now carried on in the work of Rammey Ramsey.

idiosyncratic synthesis that is rare in the work of bush artists. Like Rover Thomas Joolama, Ramsey has developed a dynamic artistic language which is free from the ritual structures of Western desert art, powerfully conveying his deep affinity to the East Kimberley landscape. Hills, rocks, cliffs, wallaby holes, camping places, rivers, rocks in the riverbed, waterholes, roads, stockyards and meeting places appear as distillations of important

Rammey Ramsey

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features in the landscape. A line might depict a

and the natural elements – earth, wind, fire and

road or a river, a circle a waterhole, a camping

water. Visions of the Kimberly – that is, heat,

place, a cave, rectangles, stock yards or hills. Red

dust, the smoke of a grass fire, clouds of mist and

ochres surrounding black representational forms

rain – are also apparent. His bold compositions

of hills, rivers and stockyards are transformed

are permeated by the spirit of the country of his

into atmospheric fields that move in degrees

birth and this knowledge now reaches beyond

from white-pink to red. Details and outlines are

his community to the wider public. His visionary

emphasised with lines of white pipe-clay stippling.

ochred paintings merge the past and the present,

Strokes and rhythms of brushwork are the result

the spiritual and the physical, to suggest the

of mixing two colours ‘wet-in-wet’ directly on to

topography of the East Kimberly landscape and the

the surface of the canvas – ‘the ngarranggarni

presence of unforeseen forces within it.

way’ he adopted from Goowoonji (Paddy Bedford c1922-2007). Concerned with transmitting Gija traditions and law to future generations, his works express important spiritual messages regarding country

Source: Caruana & Reid Fine Art and Jirrawun Arts, text by Frances Kofod and Tony Oliver. © Jirrawun Arts 2004.

ALLENS ART COLLECTION Over recent decades, artists have been exploring the rich legacy of art history and have critically examined the conventions and contexts of the tradition of art. These days, it is common for the work of artists to go beyond aesthetic concerns and to challenge preconceived notions about the nature of art and its role in society. While much contemporary practice is based on a

The works also reflect the passion of former

broader use of materials, new technologies and

Partner Hugh Jamieson – the driving force of the

responses to different cultural contexts, works

Collection. In an introduction to an exhibition of

in the Allens Art Collection illustrate that the

works in 1993, he wrote:

art of painting and aesthetic concerns are still fundamental to artistic expression.

‘In the closing years of the twentieth century, Australians, if they are to survive,

The Allens Art Collection dates from the late 1970s,

are faced with the need to find innovative

when the firm moved into the offices of the then-

solutions to their problems. This is also

new MLC Centre, Sydney. What began as a way of

true in the practice of law. For those of us

enlivening the office environment has grown with

who work with the Collection in front of

time to become a significant survey of painting

us every day, the artists encourage us to

over the last four decades. The Collection now has

confront the new, not only through the

more than 1000 works hanging in all of our offices.

colour and vitality of their works, but also

They not only create vibrant workplaces in a range

by the messages they convey. By supporting

of contexts, but reveal an ongoing commitment to

working artists, the firm is encouraging

young and emerging artists in this country. In fact,

the development of Australian cultural

a core purpose of the Collection is to support

expression. By providing a platform for this

young, unknown Australian artists – we don’t buy

expression, the firm makes a statement

work from artists who already have a high profile.

about the sort of Australia it believes in.’

Allens respects the rights of all artists and copyright owners. All works that appear on this website do so with the consent of the artists or copyright owners. You must not reproduce, copy or transmit any

exploit any of the works on this site for commercial

image or information contained on this site

purposes. Contravention would be an infringement

without the permission of the artist or copyright

under the Copyright Act. Requests for publication

owner (other than for the purposes of a ‘fair dealing’

of any of the works appearing on this website

with the work under the Copyright Act 1968 (cth),

should be made to us in writing.

such as for private research or study). You must not

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