John Lennox @ the Benalla Art Gallery

John Lennox @ the Benalla Art Gallery

It is always a pleasure to revisit regional galleries, and a stop-over at the Benalla Art Gallery is always a must on a trip along the Hume. Its collection is centred around the Ledger Gift of late 19th and early to mid 20th Century Australian art, and the Bennett Bequest, which allows the gallery to acquire works by modern and contemporary Australian artists.

The highlights of the permanent collection, usually on display in the front gallery, included such works as William Piguenit’s Mt Wellington at Sunrise with sweet little pink clouds; a beautifully atmospheric Louis Buvelot of The Barwon; sparkling pieces by Ethel Carrick Fox and Emanuel Phillips Fox; Arthur Streeton’s fresh study for The Golden Summers (the final version of which is at the National Gallery of Australia); several French landscapes by Rupert Bunny; a large-scale Clara Southern; and several good landscapes by Grace Cossington-Smith.

Australian Moderns are represented by a striking and menacing Charles Blackman of Flinders Street Station of 1950; and a cheerful and playful 1950s John Perceval of Children Playing at Aspendale among others.

Contemporary Australian artists are represented in the gallery’s collection by Ivan Durrant’s Judy Garland in Green of 1974; a vast Tim Storrier of Incendiary Structure; and a striking painting by Leonard French, which greets visitors at the entrance. Although the gallery has significant works by Juan Davila and Howard Arkley, these were not on display; sadly missing from display was also the monumental The Arc by Rick Amor, commemorating the destruction caused by 2002 bush fires around Benalla.

Through the energetic networking and fundraising efforts of its indefatigable director, Simon Klose, the gallery has also attracted a number of high-profile gifts under the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Tax Incentive for the Arts Scheme, which were on display in its annual Recent Acquisitions 2008 exhibition. The exhibition was notable for a significant number of paintings by Aboriginal Artists, such as sisters Angelina, Poly, and Kathleen Ngal, Cowboy Loy Pwerl, and numerous others.

The highlight of the current installation is an exhibition of paintings by the late John Lennox (1940-1996). His paintings, many featuring the nude, are executed with a high degree of naturalism mixing the quality of old masters with the unmistakeable contemporary objectivity. They have an arresting and disturbing multiplicity of meanings, erotic, dark and menacing.

For example, his Drum Man 1, 2 & 3 could be read either as a contemporary take on Diogenes, a Greek philosopher, who made a virtue of extreme poverty and lived in a tub; or a disturbingly realistic and unforgiving contemporary depiction of a homeless derelict, who made his home in an oil drum.

The Red Phone, which is slung across the back of many nudes in his paintings could either stand for phone sex, or a call for help from a suicide victim which was never made. Lennox’s Madonna Contemplating Nude and Man in Pipe are re-writing art history, with images derived from sources as diverse as Cimabue and Australian Heidelberg School. The introduction of a hung-up upside-down nude is rather disturbing, and can be read either as a depiction of a scene from an art drawing class or a scene of torture.

The obsession with death and suicides continues through paintings like Man at Water’s Edge, which shows an ambiguous figure of a naked man in the shallows of a river either bathing of contemplating suicide; Ophelia, which shows the body of a contemporary sister of the ill-fated Shakespearean heroine floating alongside a naked body of (who we may presume to be) her Hamlet; or in a series of multi-figure compositions that combine the post-impressionism of Bonnard and Vuillard, ­fin-de-siècle backgrounds of Gustav Klimt, and the contemporary graffiti.

John Lennox is not an artist who immediately springs to mind in the wider context of Australian art, but given the painterly quality and the psychological depth of his works, he is undoubtedly ought to be regarded as one of Australia’s most outstanding artists. Regional and tertiary galleries are fortunate in their ability to provide much-needed exhibitions for artists whose oeuvre may have been overlooked by the national or state collections.

PS: On a slightly lighter note, the Gallery Café at the Benalla Art Gallery is a definite must. I’ve tasted many of its delicious morsels over the years: it caters for everything from small sweet and savoury snacks, to fully cooked meals; and the quality of their coffee was approved with flying colours by my friend the committed coffee snob.

© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, 2009

http://www.bvram.com/

National Gallery of Victoria: General Notes on the Collection of Australian Art

National Gallery of Victoria: General Notes on the Collection of Australian Art

The new rehang of the Australian art collection at the National Gallery of Victoria in the Federation Square appears fresh and inventive. It still includes the old favourites, such as von Guérard, Streeton, McCubbin, Roberts, etc., but also introduces hitherto rarely seen works from the gallery’s collections and new acquisitions, bringing to light outstanding works by lesser-known artists. The resulting display is fresh and buoyant, offering new insights into more obscure areas and themes within Australian painting, sculpture, and decorative arts.

One is still met upon the entrance with the charmingly awkward portraits by Augustus Earle; idyllic early depictions of Aborigines by John Glover; and the meticulous “portraits” of Victorian 19th-Century homesteads by Eugène von Guérard. The careful integration of old indigenous artefacts is done thoughtfully and tastefully. The proliferation of decorative art objects – gold, silver, and jewellery – rounds off the visitor’s appreciation of the country’s 19th-Century art and culture.

Further, the display traces the development of Australian art from the early influences of émigré artists, such as Louis Buvelot, Eugène von Guérard, and Nicholas Chevalier, to the emergence of the national school. The inclusion of large-scale copies after Jacques-Louis David and Diego Velasquez by James Quinn, however, is quite baffling. They are included to illustrate the achievements of the National Gallery School of Art and the rewards of its Travelling Scholarship. One would have thought that a display of high quality original compositions by the School’s pupils and Award recipients would have been a better tribute, a more fitting testament to how well the new generation of Australian artists could paint, as opposed to how well they could to copy.

All the luminaries of the Heidelberg School are displayed en force: Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Fred McCubbin, Charles Conder, and others. The new installation steps away from the vision of Australian art as being predominantly landscape-based by inclusion of playful nudes and decorative allegorical paintings by Aby Altson, Arthur Loureiro, and C. Douglas Richardson. It’s a welcome relief from the hitherto dominating themes of pioneering struggles and heroic pathos of the late 19th-Century Australian art.

The displays of the early modern 20th-century paintings, which feature such old favourites as Rupert Bunny, Emanuel Phillips Fox, and Grace Cossington Smith, are enlivened by a fresh inclusion of paintings by Herbert Badham and James Colquhoun. Alongside the predictable staple of the 1940s – 1960s works – Yosl Bergner, John Brack, Russell Drysdale, Sid Nolan, Arthur Boyd, and Fred Williams – it is refreshing to see Edwin Tanner and Ian Fairweather. A line-up of small-scale works by Albert Tucker, James Gleeson, and Ivor Francis presents new facets of Australian surrealism.

I hoped that the plans for the Federation Square building would take into account the shortcomings of the installations of the permanent collection of Australian art in St Kilda Road. Those who still remember it would recall that the display inexplicably ended with the 1960s art, with a token work or three to represent the artistic developments between 1960s and the present. Unfortunately, the new building in the Federation Square suffers from the same problem; and it seems to be in a desperate need of another floor. While Australian art from 1780s to 1960s is represented in depth, the installations of the modern and contemporary works from the permanent collection still seem like an incidental afterthought. The matters were not helped with permanent installation of the Joseph Brown Collection, which further reduced the exhibition space for the modern and contemporary art collection, which now jostles for space with temporary exhibitions on the second and third levels of the gallery.

The securing of the Joseph Brown Collection for the National Gallery of Victoria was a major PR coup. Unfortunately, it can hardly compare to the Camondo gift to the Musée d’Orsay; or the Paul Mellon gift to the Yale Center for British Art, etc. It arrived at the NGV with ‘its eyes picked out’: a number of major works have been sold, retained by Joseph Brown’s family, or given away to other public institutions. Apart, perhaps, from Fred McCubbin’s Autumn Memories, Margaret Preston’s Flannel Flowers, and John Passmore’s Shag on Scratch, it does not improve on the display of the permanent collection. Instead, it presents smaller and second-rate versions of the works by the artists in the adjoining pavilions. One of the few redeeming features of the display is in the inclusion of the art from the 1970s, such as Brett Whiteley, Peter Upward, and Howard Taylor.

At present, Australian modern and contemporary art occupies a small space in the upstairs galleries. It is a very modest and disappointing affair, consisting of token works by a small number of artists, working in a variety of stylistic directions and media. A large section of this gallery is occupied by Fred Williams’ Pilbara Series; otherwise, the last forty years are represented by Peter Booth, Jan Senbergs, Robert Hunter, Sally Smart, Hany Armanious, and a few lesser known Australian photographic artists. The development of contemporary art is thus represented as haphazard and disjointed, and one needs to travel either to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, or to the Queensland Art Gallery, to see a more coherent display of Australian art post 1960s in a museum setting.

© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, 2009

http://www.bvram.com/

A Tale of Two Exhibitions: Andreas Gursky & Rennie Ellis at the National Gallery of Victoria

A Tale of Two Exhibitions: Andreas Gursky & Rennie Ellis at the National Gallery of Victoria

Whether by a sheer coincidence or the result of an extraordinary planning, the photography department of the National Gallery of Victoria really gets the run for its money by the simultaneous staging of two major photographic exhibitions across both venues: Andreas Gursky at the International on St Kilda Road; and Rennie Ellis at the Federation Square. Both artists have chosen photography as their preferred medium of artistic expression; both use photography as the commentary on the contemporary life and society.

The Gursky exhibition is a must-see for the sheer overwhelming size and beauty of his images, which cannot be appreciated from the pages of a magazine or online jpegs. The artist is not represented commercially in Australia. Therefore, it is not every day that Melbournians – and Australians – are being treated to an exhibition of contemporary photography by an artist of Gursky’s talent and stature.

In the exhibition of about 20 large-scale photographic works, Andreas Gursky chronicles the human spectacle, whether at the Tokio stock exchange, North Korean stadium, or a Madonna concert. His photographs of the Niagara Falls and of an Alpine ski race approach the great masters of German Romanticism like Caspar David Friedrich in their representation of the Nature’s superiority and the inconsequentiality of the human being. He is also a proud successor to and an inventive pupil of Berndt and Hilda Becher (whose works are also on view elsewhere at the National Gallery of Victoria), seeking out the aesthetic perfection of geometry in a Parisian apartment block, an Egyptian pyramid, or a desert race track.

Homage to modern masters can be as subtle as in sporadically-placed coloured windows that turn an ordinary modern Parisian high-rise apartment block into a Mondrian painting; or as direct as in a photograph of a Jackson Pollock work, which contrasts the chaos and energy of the painting with the controlled stillness of its museum surroundings. Many of the photographs succeed due to the structural rhythm of repeating parallels and diagonals running through entire expanses of his works, be it a depiction of an asparagus field, overhead lighting tracks in a wicker factory, or rigidly fenced-off parcels of land in a cattle field.

Gursky’s art also pays homage to architects, designers, and planners, who created these rhythmic and geometric environments. His famous 99 Cent diptych makes the viewer aware of the merchandise display specialists. Their jobs involve co-ordinating complex store displays, where shapes and colours of the various merchandise are arranged to the best advantage of product manufacturers in their seduction of the consumer. Those of us who became mesmerised by the sheer incongruous, colourful spectacle of the 99 Cents will never look the same way at the supermarket shelves without thinking about the amount of work that goes into their arrangement.

Although only two photographs in the exhibition have not been digitally altered, the image manipulation is sometimes as subtle as in Kamionkande of 2007, where only the outfits of scientists in inflatable boats have been altered to resemble 19th-century boating enthusiasts; or as complex as the car racing triptych which was assembled from images taken over several years from racetracks around the world.

Andreas Gursky’s exhibition is one of the strongest testaments to the relevance of the medium of photography as an art form, the validity of which (as an art form) is still inexplicably debated even within Australia’s art collecting circles. Their sheer size and the technical superiority of production (including printing, mounting and framing) is worthy of admiration in its own right, and must be the envy of most Australian photographers coming to see the exhibition.

The Rennie Ellis exhibition at the NGV Australia gathers a representative selection of over 200 works, which provides an insight into the Australian life and society from the 1960s to 1980s. Rennie Ellis, however, is not a fine art photographer, and his documentary works are disadvantaged by being displayed in the context of the state’s (and the nation’s) premier fine arts venue. His photography is candid and haphazard; the former journalist does not preoccupy himself with the fine art issues of lighting, quality, or design. Ellis’s snap shots do not allow for psychological penetration of his characters. The artist remains a dispassionate observer, an unwelcome intruder, an accidental chronicler.

His Liberal Party Faithful of 1981 falls dismally short of Diane Arbus. His Drag Queens of 1973 do not attain the psychological penetration of Nan Goldin. The essence of the sexual liberation has passed him by; his nudes are devoid of sensuality or sexuality. He identifies more with the bemused spectators of striptease joints than with the performers. His stripper snaps are more suited to gag postcards rather than museum walls. The Kings Cross series of 1971 had the potential of approaching Arbus’ depth and quality, but Ellis’ interaction with his subjects is always too brief to form an emotive rapport. Auntie Mame, Kings Cross of 1971 could have become an exceptional and iconic image in more experienced hands. The photograph of Carlotta contains all the hallmarks of a great penetrative study of such an exciting and colourful character, and yet Ellis walks away with a shot which is uncomposed and messy.

Thematically arranged exhibition displays further attest to the lost opportunities within Ellis’ work that could have potentially lifted them above the ordinary. His beach shots have not produced a single image that would equal or rival iconic works by either Max or Rex Dupain. The graffiti studies of 1974 would have benefited from a more studied and formalistic approach to the architecture. They have the potential of being a jocular antidote to the formulaic works of Bechers and, perhaps, even Gursky. Instead, they are merely amateur snapshots of anonymous witticisms. It is baffling and unfathomable that his series of the Melbourne Cup and Decadence photographs only faintly engage in social commentary. There are barely any distinctions or comparisons between the different classes of society; between the members’ stands and general admission crowds at the Melbourne Cup; between house parties in Toorak or in Sunbury. An entire wall is dedicated to his documentation of the (predominantly Melburnian) night club scene, yet the incongruous use of the blinding flash of his camera strips the bars bare of their seedy atmosphere.

The exhibition is not totally devoid of truly good and strong works which show what Rennie Ellis was indeed capable of documentary and fine art photography. My Son Joshua Learning to Swim, of 1972, is a delightful underwater study of chubby kids bouncing about in suspended animation of the swimming pool. The chaotic human cluster in the foreground contrasts wonderfully with the underwater stillness in the background. Tattoos, New York, of 1976, is perhaps the artist’s most famous image of youths displaying their body decorations. The photograph attracts by its androgyny, arresting sexuality, youthful irreverence, and hypnotic undulating lines of bodies, limbs, and underwear. Cropped-off heads accentuate the voyeuristic magnitude of the image. The portrait of Alan Bond of 1985 becomes a universal symbol of the 1980s’ culture of excess; while Michelle, Windsor, of 1978, is perhaps the only image of frank and open sexuality in the show. In both works Ellis succeeded in penetrated the psychological divide of his photographic lens. The interaction between the artist and his models is frank and open; the resulting images are arresting and memorable.

Rennie Ellis’ body of work is historically important. As the wall text says, his works are “lasting affirmations of his time,” but does this make them suitable for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria? Australia is not short of talented artists practising photography as an art form, and one walks away with the feeling that the documentary quality of this exhibition is by far more suited to be shown in the context of a state library, a tertiary collection, or a specialist photographic venue, like the CCP or MGA.

The Andreas Gursky exhibition at the NGV International http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/andreasgursky and the Rennie Ellis exhibition at the NGV Australia http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/rennieellis/index.html are on until 22 February 2009.

(C) Eugene Barilo von Reisberg