Sullivan + Strumpf

MAR/APR 2021
Tony Albert
Glenn Barkley
Sanné Mestrom
Jeremy Sharma
María Fernanda Cardoso
Yang Yongliang

Editorial Directors
Ursula Sullivan and Joanna Strumpf
Managing Editor
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Senior Designer &
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FRONT COVER: Tony Albert, Conversations with
Preston: Christmas Bells (detail), 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on canvas
300 x 400 cm
Sullivan+Strumpf acknowledge the Gadigal people of the
Eora nation, the traditional custodians of whose lands the
Gallery stands. We pay respect to Elders, past, present
and emerging and recognise their continued connection
to Culture and Country.

CURATED BY NINA MIALL
27 MARCH –
11 JULY 2021
twma.com.au
Grant Stevens, Below the mountains and beyond the desert, a river runs through a valley of forests and grasslands,
towards an ocean 2020 (digital render detail). Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney
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Sanné Mestrom, works in progress.

5

Glenn Barkley
nearwildheaven, 2021
earthenware
23 cm diameter
MAR/APR 2021

Level Up
Ursula Sullivan+Joanna Strumpf
One of the greatest rewards as a gallerist/art dealer/
human is watching artists take their practice to the
next level, become representatives of their generation
and use that miraculous, silent, visual voice to start
discussions about our world that need to be had.
The four feature artists in this issue are all doing this –
Tony Albert, Sanné Mestrom, Glenn Barkley and María
Fernanda Cardoso – all in their own way, definitely
leveling up, and definitely taking on the issues of
our time.
Angela Goddard, Director, Griffith University Art
Museum and Chair of University Art Museums Australia,
has known Tony Albert since he was 20 years old working
as a junior trainee at the Queensland Art Gallery. She has
seen him mature and develop from a young artist, into
the (now 40) contemporary hero he is today. Her text
for his exhibition Conversations with Margaret Preston
mirrors the sensitivity in the work – Tony refers to it as: a
bit like a velvet boxing glove – approaching this tricky
but necessary conversation with the care and intelligence
it demands.
Sanné Mestrom is one of the most dynamic and
challenging sculptors working in Australia today.
Imogen Dixon-Smith draws parallels between Sanné and
Dada artist Hannah Höch, and how they both explore
creativity, labour and the female body. She challenges
the giants who have gone before her, defiantly
deconstructing, rearranging and questioning their
legacy, the Modernist patriarchy.
Glenn Barkley is a disruptive force in ceramics today.
His work – some so small they fit in the palm of your
hand – reaches way beyond the traditional language
of ceramics. At once beautiful, weird and hilarious, his
latest work is a melting pot of the deeply personal and
the overtly public social media: American presidents,
Caesar, Mozart, bushfires, gardening, music, COVID,
poetry. He represents life as we know it. So immerse
yourself.
Ahead of her 50th solo exhibition Gumnuts and
Sandstone, we take a closer look at the remarkable
career of María Fernanda Cardoso. Spaning over
30 years and three continents, her career has one
common thread throughout – a fascination with the
intrinsic geometry of the organic. From representing
her homeland of Colombia at the Venice Biennale to
performing her Cardoso Flea Circus literally everywhere
from the Pompidou in Paris to Sydney’s own Opera
House, we learn a little more about Cardoso before her
May exhibition at Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.
In this issue we also take a sneak peak into the studios
of Yang Yongliang and Jeremy Sharma, curate a small
but lovely selection of works on the timely theme of
Renewal, and give the Last Word to our great friends
and contemporary art supporters Rob Postema and
Trish Jungfer.
The rewards abound.
Enjoy,
Ursula & Joanna.
7

10
24
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MAR/APR 2021

Contents
64
10
18
24
32
46
54
60
64
66
Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb
In the Studio: Jeremy Sharma
Glenn Barkley: The Urn of Bitter Prophecy
Tony Albert: Conversations with Margaret Preston
María Fernanda Cardoso
Yang Yongliang: Allegory of the cave
Last Word: Do you Collect?
Quick Curate: Renewel
Up Next
9

Sanné Mestrom, works in progress.
Sanné Mestrom:
Body as Verb
The distorted echos of Hannah Höch’s photomontages reverberate
through Sanné Mestrom’s stone sculptures. The mashups of
both women transform pre-existing images and forms into entirely
new entities with inescapable references to modern life. Almost a
century later however, Mestrom’s work lets us sit with the lived reality
of Höch’s modernist legacy.
By Imogen Dixon-Smith
Exhibition: April 15 - May 8
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 15
11

Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb
One of the hallmarks of the English language is
the provision of a substantial lexicon where
one can find multiple terms to describe a
single phenomenon, each with specific connotations
that deviate ever so subtly. We can select from a
list of synonyms a word that pinpoints with relative
precision an action we wish to communicate and a
particular feeling we wish to signify. We can hold,
carry, bear or cradle a weight, each term’s accuracy
changing with the context of the situation described.
Sanné Mestrom’s new series Body as Verb formally
and conceptually explores the complex relationship
between support and agency, which is echoed in the
slippage between these four words. Experimenting
with notions of monumentality, permanence and
precision, Mestrom has fashioned abstracted bodily
forms of varying materiality, finish and size. She has
intentionally designed the series, including six robust
legs and a reclining body, to be both aesthetic and
functional – to hold each other (and the viewer) up
visually and physically.
Mestrom’s practice has always worked to complicate
understandings of sculpture, but has recently focused
more intently on exploring the agency of sculpture
and its accountability to public and private space and
the people that inhabit it. For Mestrom, this research
is inseparable from the personal: “like my body,
particularly since giving birth and motherhood…every
bit of me now has to ‘function’. My body has a job
to do, it has a responsibility to the world, and to the
beings in my life. Equally, these objects are not inert,
they also have a responsibility to other objects, and to
the world at large.”
While each individual object is autonomous, the group
can be reconfigured in countless arrangements –
prostrate, outstretched or squatting structures all offer
up sturdy support for smaller components or real bodies
in the space. Scattered across the lush green grass of
her Blue Mountain’s yard, Mestrom moves her models
around countless times allowing these humanesque
contours to climb and cradle one another, a process that
is equal parts chaos and nurture. The physical enactment
of her creative process becomes a rumination on her
own maternal body pulled in all directions as she works
to sustain her loved ones and her career. She laughs as
she describes to me how you would find her moving
through life most days, “I’ve always got my baby in
one arm, grocery bags in the other, I’m kicking the car
door shut with my foot, phone on my shoulder; that’s
kind of the picture of the working mum – everything is
working, every bit of me has a job to do – my brain as an
academic, my body as an artist, my heart as a mum.”
The utilitarian state of the female body could not be
more relevant to the lives we’ve lived over the past 12
months. Termed the ‘she-cession’ by researchers in the
US, women have been disproportionately affected by
the ongoing social impacts of the global pandemic.
The situation is strongly tied to the realities of women’s
labour. Female-dominated industries have been hit
the hardest and the pressure on working mothers to
juggle careers with caring responsibilities has intensified
during periods of school shutdowns. The ambiguity
of Mestrom’s raw, changeable forms enact visual and
experiential cues that reflect the ambivalence linking the
theoretical offerings and practical realities of liberation;
the conundrum of keeping up fulfilling work both within
and beyond the walls of the home.
MAR/APR 2021

Sanné Mestrom in her studio.
13

Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb
“Like my body, particularly since giving
birth and motherhood...every bit of
me now has to ‘function’. My body has
a job to do, it has a responsibility to
the world, and to the beings in my life.
Equally, these objects are not inert,
they also have a responsibility to other
objects, and to the world at large.”
Mestrom’s now distinctive curvilinear language has been
developed, remoulded and refined in constant dialogue
with male masters of modernism such as Brancusi and
Picasso. Previously referencing particular works or
archetypes of their stylistic legacy, here Mestrom shows
a maturity that exceeds the deconstruction of extant
historic objects and forms, instead manifesting the
visual residue left from a lifetime of canonical exposure
into novel forms that take on a life of their own. The
inheritance of Modernism is still palpable, but here, the
playfulness of her mutable sculptures share a resonance
with a particular female figure of 20th century art.
Pivoting away from her equivocation between reverence
and defiance of male modernists, the parallels that
can be drawn between Body as Verb and the work of
Dada artist Hannah Höch offers a reappraisal of women
exploring notions of creativity, labour and the female
body in new contexts.
The echo of Höch’s cyborg-like ‘New Woman’ mashed
together through the process of photomontage is
palpable in Mestrom’s sculptures. Described by Matthew
Biro as a “heterogenous constellation of fragments”
these images of the archetypal modern ‘liberated’
woman – part machine, part human, part media –
reflected both trauma and regeneration, the dual spirit
of the interwar Weimar period. Like Mestrom, Höch used
photomontage to move beyond plain political critique
and transform pre-existing images and forms into
entirely new entities, yes with inescapable references
to modern life, but with their own agency and energy
to perform. While Höch dealt with an unprecedented
historic moment that saw women enter the political and
professional sphere, almost a century later Mestrom’s
work allows us to sit with the lived reality of the these
modernist legacies. As our weight is lifted from the floor
we can appreciate the value of supportive mechanisms,
be they as conspicuous and tangible as a bench or as
ineffable as maternal nurture.
Imogen Dixon-Smith is a curator and writer currently
based between Gadigal, Ngunnawal and Ngambri
country.
Exhibition: April 15 - May 8
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 15
MAR/APR 2021

Sanné Mestrom, work in progress.
15

Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb
Ursula Sullivan chats to Sanné Mestrom about
Modernism, motherhood and modular art.
URS/ SANNÉ, I LOVE THE NEW WORK AND I’M
INTRIGUED ABOUT THE AESTHETIC PROGRESSION
FROM YOUR LAST EXHIBITION CORRECTIONS. BOTH
BODIES OF WORK ARE BASED IN FIGURATION, BUT
WHAT WAS CLEAN LINED, MODERNIST CURVES, HAS
BECOME CHUNKIER, SOLID, WEIGHTY. CAN YOU TELL
ME ABOUT HOW YOU ARRIVED HERE?
MAR/APR 2021
Sanné Mestrom, work in progress.
SM/ Yes, in a way the new works are more figurative than
those in the Corrections exhibition, albeit still modular
and somewhat contorted. The new works in Body as
Verb consist of interchangeable component parts made
from concrete, timber, plaster, steel and bronze. In
each work the sculptural forms that loosely resemble
body parts that are stacked on top of each other, but
not so as to form a single body, but rather a single
work might consist of one body holding another body.
Like people holding people, they assume an obscure
kind of intimacy - perhaps a comforting relationship
between forms, or perhaps a menacing co-dependency.
The irregularity of the forms is born out of their fairly
frenzied process of production: they are all made by
hand in a process of adding and subtracting materials
and elements, of building and breaking, constructing,
deconstructing, reconstructing, gathering and
disbursing, sealing and healing.

Watch Sanné working on Body as Verb.
URS/ THERE IS SOMETHING IN YOUR WORK THAT HARKS
URS/ AS LONG AS I’VE KNOWN YOU, YOU’VE BEEN
BACK TO MODERNIST WORKS, AND YET THEY FEEL
PASSIONATE ABOUT PUBLIC ART, THE WAY WE LIVE
DIFFERENT, LIKE MODERNISM HAS BEEN SUBVERTED
WITH SCULPTURE AND ALSO THE USE AND FUNCTION
BUT IT DOESN’T ACTUALLY REALISE IT YET… IS THERE
OF SCULPTURE. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THIS IN
A SUBVERSION/ DECONSTRUCTION/ FINGER UP TO
REFERENCE TO THE NEW WORK?
INTERVIEW
MODERNISM?
SM/ Initially my practice was deeply engaged with
post-modern discourse - a critique of Modernism.
But over time the work has moved away from such
explicit assumptions. Certain ideological critiques
are embedded in my practice, as they are in me as a
person, but these days my creative process is a much
more intuitive one. I spend a long time - a year or
more - moving slowly towards a body of sculptures.
Over this time period, as I continue to proliferate in the
studio - continuously testing, experimenting and playing
with forms - the works themselves come into view -
sometimes leisurely, sometimes sluggishly. It’s a bit like
moving through a fog, where you can only take one step
at a time and you just hope like hell that you’re moving
in the right direction. But the most important thing is
just to keep on moving. Looking back on a body of work,
once it’s near completion, things all look so obvious -
the forms, the materials, the ideas coalesced - but the
process of getting there can be harrowing.
SM/ I’m really interested in sculpture being integrated
into our everyday lives, rather than an inert object
that sit politely in a corner or on a pedestal. This
is why I’m interested in what I think of as ‘playable
sculpture’: something that is integrated into public life
by inviting physical engagement, alongside the works
more traditional artistic, intellectual and cultural value.
Ultimately, I’m interested in adding to intergenerational
and child-friendly art experiences in the public realm.
This has become of increasing interest to me since
becoming a mother, and seeing the world down on my
knees, through my son’s eyes. A child's experience of
public space consists largely of steps, eaves, drains,
gutters, corners, potholes and reflections - the very
features of public space that are largely invisible to
adults. Too often they are a neglected amenity of urban
design. I’m interested in exploring what role art can play
in redressing the world as it’s seen through a child’s eyes
so that public space can become less threatening and
more curious, dynamic and alive.
17

In the Studio:
Jeremy Sharma
My studio is located in a building dedicated for artist studios. It is modest in size with
windows, quite untypical, and the setup changes every three years when I reconfigure
it for the types of projects I’m developing.
Right now it looks a little like a work station and jamming studio as I have many
musical instruments lying about, a little library and a section dedicated to storage. It’s
an organised mess.
I have my older works stored at the back, where I’ve built a storage system. I have
a huge work table with my electronics gear, and the other space is like a living area
when I house my musical instruments. I generally make my large drawings downstairs
in the multipurpose hall and my little ones on my kitchen table in my apartment. If it’s
video editing I do it mostly at home, too.
I try to spend time in the studio as much as I can. Right now it’s every week, but it gets
intense sometimes.
For me, art and music don’t necessarily influence each other, but I think most artists
are into music. Music is more abstract and formless and uses a different part of
your brain that goes beyond the visual field, and hence I think it’s more free. Maybe
because I’m not schooled and I don’t have to explain to anyone what my music means,
so I try to adopt that sensibility in my art. Art has crept into music for me in the way
that sound and music are legitimate disciplines or mediums in contemporary art
and interdisciplinary practice. It is really about doing what interests you. Music can
produce images and images can produce music too, either through data translation or
just imaginatively. In a way, music can be the subject of art and art can be the subject
of music.
Jeremy Sharma at Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney June 10 - July 3
MAR/APR 2021

“For me, art and music don’t
necessarily influence each other...
Music is more abstract and formless...”
Jeremy Sharma in his studio.
Interview
19

In the Studio:
Jeremy Sharma
Jeremy Sharma
Changi, 2020
carbon on paper
23 x 31 cm
MAR/APR 2021

Jeremy Sharma
The Bathers 2 (after Géricault), 2020
carbon on paper
24.9 x 34.5 cm
21

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Australian Contemporary Art Magazine

On Fire:
Climate and Crisis
Until 20 March 2021
ima.org.au
07 3252 5750
420 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley QLD
Gordon Bennett, Naomi Blacklock, Paul Bong, Hannah Brontë,
Michael Candy, Kinly Grey, Dale Harding, Tracey Moffatt with Gary Hillberg,
Erika Scott, Madonna Staunton, Anne Wallace, Judy Watson,
Warraba Weatherall, Tintin Wulia, and Jemima Wyman.
Curated by Tim Riley Walsh.
The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia
Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory
Governments. The IMA is a member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia. This project is supported by the Queensland
Government through Arts Queensland and by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and
advisory body.
Image: Jemima Wyman, Haze...,
2020, 124.5 x 183 cm, handcut digital
photo collage. Courtesy the artist,
Milani Gallery, Brisbane, and Sullivan +
Strumpf, Sydney.

Glenn Barkley
Apocalyptic splash back (detail), 2021
earthenware
9.5 cm each (dimensions variable)
Glenn Barkley:
The Urn of Bitter
Prophecy
Anna Dunnill visits Glenn Barkley at home in his sprawling garden. It’s
a revealing perspective of the artist, who describes the language of
ceramics as a compost — an ancient pile, as old as people, holding
shapes, designs, glazes, cooking traditions, stories and the buried
thumbprints of millennia.
By Anna Dunnill
Exhibition: April 8 - May 8
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 8
25

Glenn Barkley: The Urn
of Bitter Prophecy
01. Glenn Barkley
Jefferson with butter chicken tumour, 2021
earthenware
13 x 6 x 5 cm
02. Glenn Barkley
Mozart Stink Bottle with classical base, 2021
earthenware
11.5 x 10.5 x 4 cm
03. Glenn Barkley
Caesar Stink Bottle, 2021
earthenware
9 x 5.5 x 2.5 cm
04. Glenn Barkley
Small flouro vase, 2021
earthenware
9.5 x 7.5 cm
05. Glenn Barkley
onthatjaggedshore, 2021
earthenware
23 x 14 cm
06. Glenn Barkley
Stinky Little Baby Bottle, 2021
earthenware
10.5 x 8.5 x 4 cm
01 02
MAR/APR 2021

03
04 05
06
27

Glenn Barkley: The Urn
of Bitter Prophecy
“Good years follow bad, the earth
renews itself, trees fruit, flowers
bloom. Fire and flood and plague
and war pass over the surface, leaving
fragments in their wake.”
MAR/APR 2021
I
collect ceramic shards from my garden. They show up
with surprising regularity, broken fragments emerging
from the rich clay soil along with a beetroot or a clump
of mallow. When I brush off the dirt I can conjure the
vessel-bodies they came from, filling in the blanks of a
china plate or a patterned tile, following the curve of a
heavy brown-glazed flowerpot. Buried for years, perhaps
decades, they rise to the surface, disturbed by plant
roots, by the swelling and evaporation of water,
by digging.
In 2020 I got really into plants; when the usual routines
and milestones dissolved into a soupy blur I clung to the
cycles of nature to prove that time had passed. And it did
pass, slowly, steadily. The earth doth like a snake renew.
It sheds its exhausted old skin, emerges a gleaming
creature. Green shoots emerge, uncurl, sprout buds.
I became very invested in our compost bin with its
jewel-bright worms. I marvelled at the transformation
of rancid food scraps and torn paper into dark rich
sweet-smelling soil, which we dug back into the garden,
beginning again.
Glenn Barkley describes the language of ceramics as a
compost. It’s an ancient pile, as old as people, holding
shapes, designs, glazes, cooking traditions, stories, the
buried thumbprints of millennia. Fossicking through,
he pulls out an amphora—a large round urn with two
handles, scored with geometric shapes—made in Cyprus
around 2700 years ago. A salt-glazed ‘Beardman’ jug
from 17th century Germany, found on the wreck of the
Batavia, off the Western Australian coast. A bust of
Abraham Lincoln. A clay pipe. A Japanese glaze. A 1980s
mass-produced ceramic platypus. A 1789 Wedgwood
medallion depicting a classical Greek scene, made using
clay dug by Arthur Phillips from present-day Sydney
cove, within days of landing.
The compost of history is eaten by worms and excreted
as contemporary culture. “Worms are like the selfextruders,
in the same way that an artist might be,”
Barkley said in a 2015 interview. “When you read and
you look at history and look at objects, and you go
to museums and you look at ceramics, all this passes
through you into the work, in the same way as the worm
passes molecules and wastes through its body.”
My notes from our conversation are a catalogue of
extruded scraps: Fire, plague. Classicism. Internet
language. Protest. Folk tradition. Op-shop aesthetic.
The Founding Fathers.

Glenn Barkley
beforethefirstfarflash, 2021
earthenware
59 x 33 x 37 cm
29

“Worms are like the self-extruders, in
the same way that an artist might be.”
Glenn Barkley
pox pot with tokens and handles, 2021
earthenware
51 x 32 cm
MAR/APR 2021

Glenn Barkley: The Urn
of Bitter Prophecy
Surfaces textured and pitted, Barkley’s tiles and pots are
adorned with fragments pulled from the pile. A beard,
an ear, a pattern, a stamp; cast, pressed and moulded,
glazed in brilliant colours that defy the false purity of
classical white marble. These pots are monumental
in size, huge urns heavy with accumulated histories
transformed into something new.
Barkley’s pots also bear texts sifted from the humus of
literature, from ‘The Lark Ascending’ to Judith Wright’s
‘Black Cockatoos’ to a Guns’N’Roses song (‘I used to
do a little but a little wouldn’t do’, the refrain of both
addiction and capitalism). The exhibition’s title, and the
texts on several pots, are drawn from the final chorus of
Hellas, a narrative poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Written
in 1822, the poem recounts the ongoing war between
Greece and Turkey. At its end, a chorus of captive Greek
women plead for the end of war and death: The world’s
great age begins anew, they prophesy; we return to
the beginning of the cycle and history repeats itself, an
ouroboros, a perpetual worm.
four acres, which he manages to the point of being “sort
of in control but not really.” He likes “blowsy flowers”,
colourful untidy things like dahlias and camellias, like
the pops of colour in his glazes. “We’ve had the biggest
dahlias we’ve ever had, this year,” he says, “because of
the rain. It’s been rainy—really hot—rainy—really hot.
We’re going to have a bumper crop of citrus too. It’s
been a really great year for the garden, after a really bad
couple of years.”
Good years follow bad, the earth renews itself, trees
fruit, flowers bloom. Fire and flood and plague and war
pass over the surface, leaving fragments in their wake—
potsherds, poems, battleground debris—that sink down
into the clay and decompose, or wait there until they’re
disturbed by roots, by water, by digging.
Exhibition: April 8 - May 8
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 8
Clay, Barkley says, is “inherently scatalogical, the same
way that gardening is”. He tells me about his garden:
31

MAR/APR 2021

Tony Albert
Conversations with Preston: Fennel Flowers and Sturt’s Desert Pea, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
62 x 57 cm
Tony Albert:
Conversations with
Margaret Preston
An important strand of Tony Albert’s practice is appropriated and
abstracted Aboriginal designs, symbols and caricature images of
Aboriginal people, under a loose banner termed ‘Aboriginalia’. In
this latest series of works ‘Conversations with Margaret Preston’,
Albert turns to the well-known oeuvre of Australian modernist
printmaker and painter Margaret Preston (1875-1963).
By Angela Goddard, Director, Griffith University Art Museum
Exhibition: March 18 - April 10
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE MARCH 18
33

MAR/APR 2021

Tony Albert
I feel the weight of the world on my
shoulder, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric
on Arches paper
57 x 76 cm
35

Tony Albert: Conversations
with Margaret Preston
Now acknowledged as Australia's preeminent
modernist between the wars, Preston
enjoyed immense popularity in art and design
communities in Australia from the 1920s for several
decades, with many of her articles published in The
Home magazine and Art in Australia encouraging
readers to take designs and symbols from Aboriginal
art to devise a uniquely Australian cultural expression.
One of the most popular of these was her 1930 article
‘The Application of Aboriginal Designs’ in which she
called for all Australians to ‘be Aboriginal’.(1) However
benevolent in intent, an expression of a larger interest
in Aboriginal art and culture informed by her travels
throughout Australia, these exhortations have since been
criticised by subsequent generations for their casual
lack of understanding of the appropriation of sacred
designs. As curator Hetti Perkins has said of Preston’s
use of Aboriginal motifs: ‘It's like speaking in a French
accent without speaking French. The accent is there, the
intonation is there, but the meaning is not.’(2)
Many contemporary Indigenous artists have since
engaged with Preston’s appropriations, calling out
her lack of acknowledgment of individual makers and
sources, including Trevor Nickolls, Marshall Bell, Richard
Bell, and perhaps most determinedly, Gordon Bennett.
Bennett took motifs including the male Aboriginal figure
from Preston’s ‘Expulsion’ and the black swan from a
1923 woodcut and tangled them in Piet Mondrian’s high
modernist grid in his ‘Home Décor’ series (1995-2013),
and directly quoted from a suite of designs Preston
published in Art in Australia in 1925. In his later series
of abstract paintings ‘Home Décor: After M. Preston’
(2008-13), Albert has primarily been drawn to Preston’s
hand coloured woodcut still lives of native flowers. These
works were incredibly popular but often dismissed as
‘decorative’ by critics and the art establishment. Preston
herself was dismissed as a mere flower painter by many
powerful art world figures such as Norman Lindsay
and John Reed, for her privileging the decorative and
avoiding realism or literary references in her work.
Albert’s interest lies in the consequences of Preston’s
encouragements - these kitsch caricatures of Aboriginal
designs and motifs still found on tea towels, tablecloths,
table runners, handkerchiefs, placemats, and lengths
of fabric, rather than the sophisticated abstraction she
envisioned. Albert’s own relationship to these objects
is affectionate - he has collected these items since
childhood, tempered with a keen awareness of the
cultural inappropriateness and disregard for the spiritual
significance they embody. His collection of fabric
accumulated over decades, sourced from op shops, eBay
and friends, has in part been seen in an earlier body
of work ‘Mid Century Modern’ 2016 as backgrounds to
vintage ashtrays where ‘Aboriginal faces and bodies
were once receptacles for hot ash and cigarette butts.’(3)
Their motifs include a mélange of caricatured Aboriginal
faces, stylised boomerangs and other weapons; motifs
and animal shapes borrowed from Yolgnu and Tiwi
bark paintings, to north Queensland rainforest shields
and jawun baskets, to desert body painting designs, all
mixed in together. These are cut into shapes and glued
onto Arches paper or canvas, ringed with painted black
borders. Albert chooses source prints by Preston for the
graphic strength of their hand-coloured flat planes of
Cubist-influenced modernism.
MAR/APR 2021
Tony Albert
Conversations with Preston: Peace Lily (detail), 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
153 x 103 cm

37

Tony Albert: Conversations
with Margaret Preston
MAR/APR 2021
LEFT: Tony Albert
Abstract: Aboriginal Art IV, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
76 x 57 cm
RIGHT: Tony Albert
Conversations with Preston: Abstraction (Curtain Design), 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
153 x 102 cm

39

Tony Albert: Conversations
with Margaret Preston
MAR/APR 2021
Albert’s major diptych ‘Conversations with Preston:
Christmas Bells’ 2020 is based on Preston’s handcoloured
print ‘Christmas Bells’ 1925, held in the
National Gallery of Australia’s collection. The reds and
yellows of the native Blandfordia nobilis are made up
of strong black outlines on bright red fabric. The vase,
which was black and inscribed with a white V pattern in
Preston’s original, is here made up of squares of mostly
linen tea towels, many of them with the text ‘Australian
Aboriginal Art’ with glimpses of both a calendar and a
map of the continent.
Interestingly, fake Preston works abound in op shops and
on the internet, and Albert has used several questionable
Prestons as source images further extending a complex
web of appropriation and cultural theft, such as his three
depictions of single protea flowers.
Albert has also used one of Preston’s mysterious late
religious works in this series. Her 1952 colour stencil,
gouache on thin black card ‘Expulsion’ was part of
a series of biblical themed works, popular perhaps
due to post-war religious revivalism that also saw the
inauguration of the Blake Prize for Religious art in 1951.
Never sold by the artist, the work was gifted by her
widower in 1967 to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
On a flat background, at the very top of the composition,
a white God presides symmetrically like an icon figure,
with a whip in one hand and a sword in another. Instead
of an archway to the garden, a corrugated iron fence
and a wire gate, secured with a padlock as the central
focal point. Adam and Eve are depicted as Aboriginal
people – they have dark skin and wear loincloths, being
driven from the garden into an Australian landscape
overrun with scotch thistles. Adam holds an object
aloft, appealing to the God who has forsaken him; Eve
holds a baby. This work is confounding in its casting of
the sinners as black, and god as white. It could perhaps
be seen as depicting the Christian biblical allegory to
describe how Aboriginal people were cast out from their
own country, by the misuse of Christianity itself, but
this is reading too much into the work of an artist who
avoided political statements herself on the realities of life
for Aboriginal people.
Preston saw the use of Aboriginal imagery as a vehicle,
a way for Australian artists to make truly original
contributions to the pursuit of Modernism. Art historian
Ian MacLean asks if Bennett’s works both parody
Preston as well as participate in and reproduce her
framing of Aboriginality within modernism.(4) Albert is
also doing this and more - not making a damning call
to denounce Preston, but, as the title of this series title
suggests, answering her call to dialogue with Aboriginal
art and motifs with his own conversation, while also
demonstrating that the ambition to ‘be Aboriginal’ has
resulted in the sometimes grotesque caricatures we see
in these fabrics, which counteract the positive spirit of
her making. Albert says:
At the core of my work is a kind of reconciliation with
these racist objects’ very existence. Yes, they are painful
reiterations of a violent and oppressive history, but
we cannot hide or destroy them because they are an
important societal record that should not be forgotten.
I’m trying to reconcile those two positions.(5)
This project of constructive reconciliation has multiple
implications. Albert highlights Preston’s formidable
skill at rendering the humble still life into the most
graphically powerful expressions of Modernism in
Australia, while also reminding us of the consequences
of using sacred images without acknowledgment or
respect. His intention is dialogue; a conversation, which
is not to say these conversations will not be confronting
and uncomfortable, but will hopefully and ultimately also
be productive.
Exhibition: March 18 - April 10
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE MARCH 18

Tony Albert
Conversations with Preston: Protea (attributed) III, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
76 x 58 cm
Endnotes
1. Margaret Preston, ‘The Application of Aboriginal Designs’ Art in Australia, 3rd series, no 31, March 1930.
2. Hetti Perkins quoted in Alexa Moses,’ Shadow cast over a painter's legacy’, Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 2005, p.11.
3. Bruce Johnson McLean, ‘Invisible truths’, Tony Albert: Visible [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of
Modern Art, Brisbane, 2018, p.18.
4. Ian McLean, ‘Gordon Bennett's Home Decor: the joker in the pack’, Law Text Culture, 4, 1998, p.290.
5. Tony Albert interviewed by Maura Reilly, ‘I am important: An interview with Tony Albert’, Tony Albert, Art & Australia/ Dott
Publishing, Paddington, NSW, 2015, p.49.
41

Watch Tony working on Conversations with Margaret Preston.
MAR/APR 2021
Tony Albert
Abstract: Aboriginal Art II, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
153 x 102 cm

43

Tony Albert
Conversations with Preston: Peace Lily, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
153 x 103 cm

Tony Albert
Conversations with Preston: Ranunculus, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
153 x 103 cm
45

María Fernanda
Cardoso
Three continents and 30 years of art making.
MAR/APR 2021
The work of María Fernanda Cardoso has a consistent
feature – looking at the different ways geometry
manifesting itself in living creatures. Cardoso has
developed a powerful body of work based on the
intrinsic forms of animals and plants, and combining
them in unexpected ways. Her work evolves in series
that are developed over a long periods of time, from
sculpture to scientific research, through to public
performance.
Initially when Cardoso still lived in Colombia, she would
take local materials and native dead animals in order
to build sculptures and enigmatic objects alluding to
pre-Columbian myths and indigenous traditions. Typical
objects such as totumas, earth soaps, homemade glue,
bocadillos, and other elements pertaining to local
cultures were combined in surprising works. Pieces with
flies, grasshoppers, snakes, wall lizards and frogs are
considered key pieces of contemporary Colombian art:
one of them, Corona para una princesa Chibcha(Crown
for a Chibcha Princess) was awarded the first prize for the
II Biennial at Bogotá’s Museum of Modern Art in 1990.
In the early 1990s, Cardoso moved to the United States,
where she began her research on fleas – a ubiquitous
domestic parasite. A few years later, the Cardoso Flea
Circus, initially a performance belonging to the realm of
art, becomes an authentic mass show. Simultaneously,
Cardoso investigates the behaviour of insects, with a
particular interest in the phenomenon of camouflage,
characteristic of some species that may be seen as
a reflection of the immigrant’s will to belong and to
become one with her context.
After living in San Francisco for several years, Cardoso
moved to Sydney, Australia. This led to a renewed
investigation of different traditions and materials, such
as sheep’s wool and emu feathers, while preserving
an emphasis on the intrinsic geometry of the organic.
Cardoso devotes long periods of time to her series,
with her work on fleas taking a whole decade. Since
the beginning of this century, the artist has undertaken
an investigation into the incredible formal diversity of
the reproductive organs in some animals, particularly
at the microscopic level, in a long-term project on the
morphology of reproductive organs of small animals and
insects, featured in the Museum of Copulatory Organs
(MoCO).
In the last decade, Cardoso has delved further into
her research on plants and animals, often resorting to
scientific tools and processes to create images otherwise
impossible to attain. The Naked Flora series shows
close-ups of reproductive organs of flowers, composite
images obtained by a complex optical and digital setup.
On the Origins of Art I and II and the Actual Size series
focus on the elaborate courtship “dances” of miniature
Peacock spiders. In recent years she has created several
large-scale public works: Sandstone Pollen, scientifically
accurate pollen models digitally carved in sandstone.
While I Live I Will Grow, a living urban sculpture that
embodies non-human timeframes as a powerful
commentary about the transience of monuments, and
Tree Full of Life, a large tree whose foliage is entirely
composed of insects that resemble leaves. Gumnuts,
her latest series, uses seeds from various species of
Australian trees to create vibrant optical pieces that
highlight the intricate morphologies of this overlooked
but ever present feature of the local landscape.
José Roca & Alejandro Marin
Excerpts from: Animalario de María Fernanda Cardoso.
Bogotá: Seguros Bolívar, 2013. p5
Exhibition: May 20 - June 5
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE MAY 20

47

PREVIOUS PAGE: María Fernanda Cardoso with her work
Eucalyptus Gumnuts Kuru Alala, Photo credit: Jillian Nalty
MAR/APR 2021
LEFT: María Fernanda Cardoso
Emu Flag #1, 2007
emu feathers, fibreglass netting, metal rod, glue
209 x 180 x 20 cm
RIGHT: María Fernanda Cardoso
Reversible B (Emu rectangle worn), 2006-2008
180 x 120cm

49

María Fernanda Cardoso: Timeline
CALABAZAS
1987 — Moves to NY
from Bogota, Colombia
– completes Masters of
Fine Arts, Sculpture at Yale
University 1990.
CORN COIL
AMERICAN MARBLE
1989
1990 Arte Colombiano de
los 80: Escultura. Centro
Colombo Americano. Bogota,
Colombia.
1994 Ante America. (Touring
exhibition). Biblioteca Luis
Angel Arango, Bogota,
Colombia.
Collection: Tate Modern,
London and the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney
1992
CEMETERY / VERTICAL GARDEN (1992-1999)
1999 Modern Starts: People, Places,
Things, Museum of Modern Art. New
York, U.S.A
2003 Zoomorphia: María Fernanda
Cardoso. MCA Museum of
Contemporary Art. Sydney
Collection: Perez Art Museum, Miami
2002
BUTTERFLY DRAWINGS SERIES (2002-2003)
1990
CROWN FOR A CHIBCHA PRINCESS
1994
CARDOSO FLEA CIRCUS (1994-2000)
2006
II Bienal de Bogotá. Museo de Arte
Moderno. Bogota, Colombia. First Prize
Collection: DAROS Latinamerica
Collection
Returns to Bogota.
1991 — Moves to California.
Cardoso Flea Circus, live performances and exhibitions
including , San Francisco Exploratorium, The New Museum
of Contemporary Art, New York, Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris, Sydney Opera House.
Collection : Tate Modern, London, UK
EMU SERIES (2006-2009)
WOVEN WATER / SUBMARINE LANDSCAPE (1994-2003)
2003 Woven Water. 50th International Art Exhibition Venice
Biennale. ILLA Pavillion, curated by Irma Aristizábal.
2015 Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America.
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA.
Collection: Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston
1997 — Moves to Sydney.

IT’S NOT SIZE THAT MATTERS IT IS SHAPE (2008-2011)
SANDSTONE POLLEN (2014-2016)
Museum of Copulatory Organs (MoCO). 18th Biennale
of Sydney. Sydney, Australia.
International Convention Centre ICC, Darling Harbour,
Sydney. Commissioned by Lend Lease.
Collection: National Gallery of Australia
MUSEUM OF COPULATORY ORGANS (MOCO) (2008-2012)
MARATUS SERIES (2014-PRESENT)
2008
2014
On the Origin of Art, Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Hobart, Tasmania.
Collection: Tate Modern, London and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney
2009
2015
GUMNUTS KURU ALALA (2009-21)
2011 Kuru Alala, Tjampi Desert Weavers residency
2009-12 Kuru Ala: Eyes Open Tjanpi Dessert Weavers. María Fernanda
Cardoso, Alison Clouson – a nation-wide touring exhibition
WHILE I LIVE I WILL GROW (2015-2018)
Green Square Public Art Program
Commissioned by the City of Sydney Council.
51

MAR/APR 2021

Agua Tejida Blanca / Woven Water White, 2003
Blue Starfish, metal
dimensions variable
Included as Colombia’s representation in the 50th
International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale. ILLA
Pavillion, curated by Irma Aristizábal. Venice, Italy.
53

Yang
Yongliang:
Allegory of
the cave
In the lead up to his June exhibition, Yang
Yongliang chats about New York and its influence
on his work.
MAR/APR 2021
Yang Yongliang
Early Spring, 2019
giclee print on fine art paper
200 x 135 cm
edition of 7 + 2 AP

55

Yang Yongliang:
Allegory of the cave
YOU MOVED TO NEW YORK FROM SHANGHAI IN 2018.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Yang Yongliang (YYL)/ I moved to New York from Shanghai
in the summer of 2018. I was thrilled to find a cozy studio
office in Garment District in midtown Manhattan. It was
a dream come true. Throughout the turbulent year of
2020, I stayed in the city and experienced the ups and the
downs with it. In the hardest time, I’ve seen New York’s
vulnerability as well as its strength. New York used to
be a dreamland to me. But after 2020, it started to feel
like home. I grew a sense of conviction with New York
along with its hardship. Strangely, it gives me a sense of
belonging.
From February 2020 until now, small businesses moved
out from Manhattan one after another. By the time my
lease ended in November, most of my neighbours on
my floor were gone. To me, it also doesn’t make sense
to keep an office aside from home. I extended my
office lease until my home lease ended, before leaving
Manhattan by the end of January 2021. Now I’m happily
relocated in a loft space in Long Island City, Queens.
Moving to Queens is liberating, I have to admit!
DO YOU WORK PRIMARILY USING A COMPUTER? WHAT
KIND OF STUDIO DO YOU HAVE? WHAT WOULD YOUR
DREAM STUDIO BE?
HOW DO CONCEPTS FORM FOR YOU?
YYL/ I believe good concepts form naturally. Concepts
form naturally for me, at least. The one thing I know to do
is to be patient with myself. I also believe that concepts
are very personal. It has to do with the places one has
lived in, the cultures one has experienced, the languages
one has spoken and the people one has cared for. I try
not to change the concepts before new concepts were
naturally formed.
Recently I’ve been thinking about a new series of works
that are more deeply tied to nature. Even though I still
live in the city, I don’t necessarily interact with it. Instead,
I go to upstate New York every other week for open air.
Nature has given me new impact in the year of 2020.
WHAT ARE YOU READING RIGHT NOW?
YYL/ A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking), Homo
Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari),
and Killing Commendatore (Haruki Murakami).
Exhibition: June 10 - July 3
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE JUNE 10
YYL/ Yes, on daily basis I work primarily using a
computer. At the moment, I have a home office with
many screens in it, in which I refer to as my cave. I like my
cave for what it is right now. However, due to the travel
restriction that have pretty much grounded me for a year,
my dream studio would be the same cave with mobility.
It would be wonderful if the cave can travel freely.
MAR/APR 2021

“I also believe that concepts are very
personal. It has to do with the places
one has lived in, the cultures one
has experienced, the languages one
has spoken and the people one has
cared for.”
Yang Yongliang in New York City.
INTERVIEW
57

THIS SUMMER
SEE THE WORLD THROUGH ART AND DESIGN
OVER 100 ARTISTS & DESIGNERS FROM 33 COUNTRIES
FREE ENTRY
Aïda Muluneh Seed of the soul 2017 (detail) from the A Memory of Hope series 2017
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2018 © Aïda Muluneh
The NGV warmly thanks Triennial Major Supporter Bowness Family Foundation for their support.
NGV.MELBOURNE
PRESENTING PARTNER PRINCIPAL PARTNER MAJOR PARTNERS
NGV TRIENNIAL CHAMPIONS
LOTI & VICTOR SMORGON FUND | LEIGH CLIFFORD AO & SUE CLIFFORD | BARRY JANES & PAUL CROSS | FELTON BEQUEST |
JOHN HIGGINS AO & JODIE MAUNDER | NGVWA | PAULA FOX AO & FOX FAMILY FOUNDATION | NEVILLE & DIANA BERTALLI

OC CURRENT
AFFAIR
February – 19 June 2021 // 13 February – 19 June 2021 // 13 February
BREAKING NEWS
roppaNOW // OCCURRENT AFFAIR // proppaNOW // OCCURRENT AFFAIR // proppaNOW /
// Vernon Ah Kee // Tony Albert // Richard Bell // Megan Cope //
n Cope// Jennifer Herd // Gordon Hookey // Laurie Nilsen // Vernon A
UQ
ART MUSEUM

Last Word:
Do you collect?
Robert Postema and Dr Patricia Jungfer
MAR/APR 2021
Whether it is the opening of a commercial
gallery’s latest offering or a curated exhibition
at a public gallery, contemporary art has
its protocols and rituals. The attendees are frequently
dressed in a neutral colour, more probably than not in
black, so as not to overwhelm the art that is on display. If
you go to these events often enough, the faces become
familiar. There is an acknowledging nod and smile. You
start to chat with others. Connections and commonalities
are explored, with the work closest to you often the
focus of a shared commentary before the ritual of
engagement follows a predictable path.
Following preliminaries, the conversation moves on to
‘have you bought anything in the show’ (commercial
exhibitions) or ‘are you familiar with the artist’ (public
exhibitions). Not infrequently, the question then arises
‘are you a collector?’ We can recall the first time this
question was posed. We looked at each other and the
provocateur, not knowing what to answer. As time has
gone by, we understand we do ‘collect’. To us it means
supporting a sector of the community that is brave and
prepared to document and comment on the issues of
our time. It also means we have a hopeless addiction to
buying art.
Of course, and almost inevitability having made the ‘we
are collectors’ admission, the next question is ‘what is
the focus of your collection’ Our hearts would sink again
because we would then have to confess that there is no
focus, no theme and we cannot even stick to a genre.
Behind our cheery façade, we worry ‘what does the
person asking this question make of us’ because we
have an ‘eclectic’ collection. The polite description of
what we have accumulated over the years. We admire
the collector who sets out to buy only women artists,
time-based media art or some other defined or erudite
theme. We are in awe of the discipline that comes
with buying exclusively conceptual or minimalist work.
However, these are not characteristics we possess. Alas,
as well as having little self-control, we appear to have
no focus in our collection. Initially we would then smile
and quickly shift the conversation to what the other
person’s focus was. We knew this was safer ground and
terminate the squirming discomfort that reminded us
of our childhood and being caught being naughty or
undisciplined.
We don’t worry about this question anymore. We
have worked out we just like seeing, experiencing and
immersing ourselves in contemporary art. We can cope
with the dreaded question now. We can even afford a
knowing smile, when it comes up. We do in fact have a
theme to our collection. It reflects who we are and how
we view the world. No, we don’t collect one type of art
or one medium or whatever. We just collect what we love
and what speaks to us!

Sydney Ball, Infinex #45 (2019), in Robert and Patricia’s home.
61

“As time has gone by, we understand
we do ‘collect’. To us it means
supporting a sector of the community
that is brave and prepared to
document and comment on the issues
of our time. It also means we have a
hopeless addiction to buying art.”
Tony Albert, Brothers (The Prodigal Son) 1 (2020), in
Robert and Patricia’s home.

Sanné Mestrom, Garden commission (2016),
in Robert and Patricia’s garden.
63

Quick Curate:
Renewel
Grant Stevens
The Waterfalls III, 2016
archival ink on archival paper
82.5 x 55 cm
edition of 3 + 2AP
AUD $1,950

Sam Leach
Boucher x Superstudio, 2020
oil on wood
50 x 50 cm
AUD $18,700
Sam Jinks
Untitled (Babies), 2012
silicone, pigment, resin, human hair
36 x 36 x 18 cm
edition 3 of 3 + 2AP
AUD $38,500
65

Up Next
TONY ALBERT
CONVERSATIONS WITH MARGARET PRESTON
18.03.21
GLENN BARKLEY
THE URN OF BITTER PROPHECY
08.04.21
SANNÉ MESTROM
THE BODY IS A VERB
15.04.21
MAY
JUNE
20.05.21 María Fernanda Cardoso
Gumnuts and Sandstone
10.06.21 Yang Yongliang
10.06.21 Jeremy Sharma

Kirsten Coelho
Kirsten Coehlo creates functional forms and vessels of otherworldly perfection. In Kirsten Coelho,
the first major publication on a practice spanning thirty years, author Wendy Walker traces the
evolution of Coelho’s textured practice, in which an ever-expanding framework of art historical,
literary and cinematic references has driven a succession of formal shifts – a shaping of changes.
This beautiful, lavishly illustrated book of 176 pages will be released in
September 2020. For pre-orders and enquiries, please contact publisher
Wakefield Press at info@wakefieldpress.com.au or phone +61.8.83524455.

Tony Albert, History Repeats, 2020
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper
76 x 57 cm

SYDNEY
799 Elizabeth St
Zetland, Sydney NSW 2017
Australia
P +61 2 9698 4696
E art@sullivanstrumpf.com
SINGAPORE
P +65 83107529
Megan Arlin | Gallery Director
E megan@sullivanstrumpf.com