NGA_AR_13-14

East Asian acquisitions include a group of boys’
kimonos from 1920s–40s Japan emblazoned
with graphics related to war, including cannons,
battleships, tanks and soldiers as symbols of
Japanese patriotism. The textiles are part of a
commitment to developing the collection of
children’s clothing from across Asia.
An exceptional pair of high-quality 1860s travel
albums of views and portraits of British India by
Bourne and Shepherd and other leading studios
augmented the Gallery’s significant collection of
photography in the region. Pioneer British travel
photographer Samuel Bourne is represented
by a range of loose prints suitable for wall
display, and the pair of albums are essential for
a future exhibition of Bourne and Shepherd’s
work. A number of gaps in genres included in
the exhibition Garden of the East: photography
in Indonesia 1850s–1940s led to acquisitions of
historical works by European photographers at
work in the Dutch East Indies, including four
major albums by German-born Tassilo Adam and
two unusually large exhibition prints by Swiss
photojournalist Gotthard Schuh. Asia–Pacific
Pictorialism has been an area being developed for
some years, and the acquisition of a group of 1920s
prints by Arthur de Carvalho, working in China
and Bali in the 1920s and 1930s, gave considerable
strength to that collection. Work by contemporary
Indonesian photomedia artists FX Harsono,
Mella Jaarsma and Melati Suryodarmo were
also acquired.
There were a number of gifts of historical and
contemporary work. The American Friends of
the National Gallery of Australia presented a
group of works by various Asian and Australasian
photographers from between the 1880s and
1940s, most of which had been included in the
2008 exhibition Picture paradise: Asia–Pacific
photography 1840s–1940s as loans from collector
David Knaus. Collector Peter Lee of Singapore
presented two works and collaborating artists
Jon Anderson and Edwin Low presented two
digital portrait studies from their 2010 series
Manga dreams.
International art
Nine modern and contemporary sculptures were
acquired for the international collection this year,
including Head and bird (Tete et oiseau) 1981,
an intriguing and haunting bronze by the famous
Surrealist artist Joan Miró. His assemblages, made
in the spirit of Picasso, were constructed using all
kinds of collected objects, elements of wood and
iron, and subsequently cast in bronze. The work
was purchased through the Tony Gilbert AM
Bequest Fund.
Anthony Caro’s sandstone and steel Duccio
variations no 7 2000 was a gift from the American
Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, made
possible with the generous support of Kenneth
Tyler AO and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler. Inspired
by a painting in the National Gallery, London,
it represents the career of this important British
artist. Caro’s paper sculpture #4 Big white 1982 was
a gift from Penelope Seidler AM.
A recent installation by Jessica Stockholder,
Buff ambit 2006, reveals her extraordinary
combination of banal and strange objects into
a carefully composed and tiered sculpture that
steps out from the wall.
The Gallery purchased six light works by the
contemporary American artist James Turrell.
Joecar (red) 1968 is an early projection piece and
Shanta II (blue) 1970 uses projected light set into
the wall, causing the viewer to perceive an object
floating within the gallery. The construction of
a light-infused void for Orca 1984 makes a ‘fog’
or ‘veil’ of light, which the artist compares to the
experience of ‘flying blind’. After green 1993/2003
brings together fibre-optic, LED and fluorescent
lights to develop an immersive environment.
Bindu shards 2010 contains and isolates a single
person in a sphere for an intense fifteen-minute
cycle and has been likened to a three-dimensional
bodily kaleidoscope. Dark matters 2011, one of
Turrell’s most demanding works, removes light
from the experience altogether and subjects the
viewer to a meditative space in which he or she
may perceive an internal light. In addition, the
Gallery purchased, through the Poynton Bequest
Fund, Turrell’s portfolio First light 1989–90 of
seven etchings and aquatints.
The Gallery continued to acquire works through
the Poynton Bequest Fund, named after the late
Orde Poynton AO, CMG. William Kentridge’s
portfolio of watermarked drawings Sheets of
evidence 2009, Anish Kapoor’s suites of etchings
Shadow V 2013 and History 2007 and Grayson
NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA ANNUAL REPORT 2013–14 41