Art Ew - National Gallery of Australia

artonview 

ISSue no.51 spring 2007 

Sculpture Gallery • rOBert rauSchenBerG • Ocean tO OutBack

OC E A N to OUTBACK 

Australian landscape painting 1850 –1950 

The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition 

Proudly supported by the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibition Fund 

Russell Drysdale Emus in a landscape 1950 (detail) oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Estate of Russell Drysdale

artonview 

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Editor 

Jeanie Watson 

Designer 

MA@D Communication 

Photography 

Eleni Kypridis 

Barry Le Lievre 

Brenton McGeachie 

Steve Nebauer 

John Tassie 

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Published quarterly: 

Issue no. 51, Spring 2007 

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2 Director’s foreword 

6 Development office 

8 A new gallery for sculpture: wood, stone, metal, glass 

14 Pacific arts in the Gallery 

20 The ‘big guns’ of Culture Warriors 

26 Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978 

34 Black robe, white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu 

40 Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 

48 Collection focus: Ricketts photography collection 

54 New acquisitions 

66 Drawn in 

68 Faces in view 

70 Travelling exhibitions 

contents 

front cover: Giorgio de Chirico La Mort d’un esprit [Death of a spirit] 1916 oil on canvas 36.0 x 33.0 cm 

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the assistance of Harold and Bevelly Mitchell, 

Rupert and Annabel Myer and the NGA Foundation © Giorgio de Chirico Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007

director’s foreword 

Director Ron Radford 

with Senator the 

Hon. George Brandis SC, 

Minister for the Arts and Sport, 

who opened the successful 

George W Lambert exhibition 

(closes 16 September 2007) 

2 national gallery of australia 

Activity around the Gallery this year has been 

building up towards the twenty-fifth anniversary on 

12, 13 and 14 October. It will culminate in a gala weekend 

of celebrations, including the launch of the National 

Indigenous Art Triennial and an open day welcoming 

people to help recognise a quarter of a century of art and 

inspiration. The Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary year is a 

celebration of our magnificent past and more recent 

acquisitions, our excellent exhibitions and programs, the 

recent refurbishment and radical refocusing of our 

collection displays and, of course, the commencement of 

our building redevelopment. Stage one has recently begun. 

I am pleased to announce four very significant new 

acquisitions in celebration of our twenty-fifth anniversary. 

La Mort d’un esprit [Death of a spirit] 1916 is an early 

work by Giorgio de Chirico, an important Metaphysical 

artist who had a profound effect on Surrealism. This is the 

Gallery’s first early European modernist painting acquired 

in fifteen years. We have been searching for a work of this 

kind for some time and it is especially valuable for us to 

find one produced in Europe at a crucial period during the 

First World War. It is one of only two de Chirico works held 

in the country and the only early one. We acknowledge 

the financial assistance of Harold and Bevelly Mitchell 

and Rupert and Annabel Myer along with the Gallery’s 

Foundation for this major acquisition. It is featured on the 

cover of this issue of artonview. 

The second important acquisition, mentioned briefly 

in the last issue of the magazine, is Max Ernst’s Habakuk 

1934/1970. The giant black creature presides over the 

National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery, its four-and-ahalf-metre 

form appearing to change as you approach it. 

The knife-thin head, the eyes on stalks and the flowerpotlike 

body seem to rotate in a cylinder. The Gallery holds 

Ernst’s private collection of Indigenous art, which was so 

influential on Surrealism. Habakuk is a significant example 

of his work as a Surrealist artist and by far his largest work. 

The National Australia Bank generously helped us purchase 

the sculpture for the collection. 

The third major acquisition is from India and is the 

Gallery’s earliest image of the Buddha. The superb and 

imposing early Indian sculpture is a cornerstone for the 

Gallery’s ability to introduce visitors to the development of 

Buddhist art in India and beyond. The bold red sandstone 

seated Buddha from the second century Kushan centre of 

Mathura sits marvellously – physically and art historically – 

between the aniconic symbolism of our rare Amaravati 

marble panel depicting the life of the Buddha and the 

recently purchased large Gandharan Head of a bodhisattva 

with its strong Hellenic influence. We are enormously 

grateful for the generous assistance of Council member 

Roslyn Packer in this purchase. 

The fourth important acquisition is Clifford Possum 

Tjapaltjarri’s Warlugulong 1977, a seminal work by this 

pioneer of Papunya Tula painting of Central Australia. 

Although the Gallery holds the largest Aboriginal art 

collection, we have lacked a significant work by Clifford 

Possum. Warlugulong will be on permanent display in our 

main Central Desert room of the new Aboriginal and Torres 

Strait Islander wing. A more detailed essay about this work 

will appear in the next issue of artonview along with the 

announcement of other significant twenty-fifth anniversary 

acquisitions. 

The new Pacific Arts Gallery is now open to the public 

and features a number of spectacular works collected in 

the late 1960s and early 1970s alongside some recent 

acquisitions. Highlights include an imposing carved house 

post figure from the Sawos people, near the Sepik River, 

New Guinea, purchased in 1969. Conservation has recently 

removed a layer of dirt to reveal an orange, yellow and 

black painted face design. All too often the names of the 

spirits associated with traditional art from the Pacific were

neglected. However, this is a very rare instance when 

a work can be re-associated with its identity. We have 

been fortunate to learn more about this particular piece 

through an original photograph held at the Metropolitan 

Museum of Art which has the personal name of the figure 

written on the reverse: ‘Mogulapan’. Another particularly 

noteworthy work in the Pacific Arts Gallery is the figure of 

a man wearing a distinctly western hat yet also wearing 

Indigenous adornments. This figure, a recent acquisition 

from the Anthony Forge collection, is the only known 

portrait of an Australian undertaken by a New Guinean 

artist during the early twentieth century. Also featured is 

a refined and masterful stone pestle that exhibits a rare 

clarity of form for a daily utensil from any culture in the 

world. It comes from a little known prehistoric culture 

in New Guinea and is very likely to be 3500 years old, 

produced during the same era as the Gallery’s iconic 

Ambum stone which is also on display. Both stoneworks 

from New Guinea are the most ancient works in the 

Gallery’s large collection. 

The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial opens 

in October with the title Culture Warriors. This innovative 

exhibition, very generously sponsored by BHP Billiton, will 

be a permanent event in the Australian and international 

art calendar. Works selected for the Triennial have been 

created within the past three years and provide a highly 

considered snapshot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 

contemporary art practice. The exhibition features the 

work of thirty-one artists and encompasses a wide range 

of media including painting on canvas and bark, sculpture, 

textiles, weaving, new media, photo-media, printmaking, 

and installation work. 

Spring sees the opening of Robert Rauschenberg, our 

latest temporary exhibition in the Orde Poynton Gallery. 

Robert Rauschenberg entered the New York art world in 

1950 at a time when Abstract Expressionism was at its 

peak. Working outside the restrictions imposed by media, 

style and convention, he adopted a unique experimental 

methodology that paved the way for a number of 

subsequent movements, including Pop Art. His invention of 

‘combines’ and unique photo-collage and image transfer 

practices made him one of the most influential figures of 

the postwar period. This exhibition is supported by the 

Embassy of the United States of America. 

Another new exhibition is Black robe, white mist: art 

of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu. The tragic life of 

Rengetsu (1791–1875), whose name translates as Lotus 

Moon, inspired extraordinary creativity. One of a very few 

successful professional female artists of nineteenth-century 

Japan, Rengetsu was primarily a poet and calligrapher 

Rupert Myer AM, Chairman 

of the National Gallery of 

Australia Council, 

Steven Münchenberg, 

National Australia Bank, 

and Director Ron Radford 

contemplate the new 

acquisition, Max Ernst’s 

Habakuk, purchased with 

the assistance of the 

National Australia Bank 

artonview spring 2007 3


but also excelled in pottery and scroll painting. Largely 

drawn from international private collections, Black robe, 

white mist shows contemplative works of paper and clay 

inscribed with Rengetsu’s elegant poetry and understated 

calligraphy. Her work reflects the beauty of the imperfect 

and unconventional. This is the first time a major museum 

exhibition on her work has been staged outside Japan. 

The major travelling exhibition for the Gallery’s twentyfifth 

anniversary year, Ocean to Outback: Australian 

landscapes 1850–1950, has been curated by me specifically 

for the smaller galleries around Australia. Concentrating 

on the dynamic century of Australian landscape painting 

from the colonial 1850s and gold rush era to the 

period immediately following the Second World War, 

the exhibition features many of the Gallery’s treasured 

Australian landscapes alongside some fine but lesser 

known works from the national collection which have 

been especially cleaned and appropriately reframed for the 

exhibition. Ocean to Outback is truly national, travelling 

to and including images of every state and territory – 

from urban and suburban landscapes to outback and 

coastal views. The exhibition, sponsored by RM Williams, 

is accompanied by a substantial and very accessible fully 

illustrated catalogue. 

Internationally, as part of the Gallery’s anniversary 

celebrations, an exhibition of Australian art will be 

displayed at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, 

USA, in October. The show, Andy and Oz: parallel visions, 

curated by Tom Sokolowski, Director of the Andy Warhol 

Museum and Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian 

Painting and Sculpture (after 1920), coincides with a 

festival of Australian culture, and focuses on the work of 

Australian artists whose art has affinities with renowned 

American artist Andy Warhol. 

The Australian artists cross several generations and 

include works from the 1970s through to the present day. 

Artists such as Martin Sharp, Richard Larter, Tracey Moffatt, 

Juan Davila, Fiona Hall, Christian Thompson and Tim 

Horn will be featured. The works in the exhibition will be 

drawn predominantly from the Gallery’s collection. Some 

parallels between these artists’ works and Andy Warhol’s 

art are immediately apparent, while others are totally 

unexpected and surprising. This exciting event will provide 

a greater awareness of significant Australian art and artists 

internationally. We are grateful to Ann Lewis AM, Henry 

Gillespie and Penelope Seidler for their generous support 

of the exhibition. 

Finally, I am pleased to announce the release of Printed 

images by Australian artists 1885–1955 by Roger Butler, 

the second volume in our series of publications on the 

history of printing in Australia. It is as splendid as the first 

volume, Printed images in colonial Australia 1801–1901. 

The third volume, which deals with contemporary 

printmaking, will be released later this year. 

The celebrations for our twenty-fifth year won’t stop in 

October! Keep an eye out for more twenty-fifth anniversary 

events and major acquisitions throughout the year. 

Ron Radford

The following donations have been received 

as part of the National Gallery of Australia’s 

Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program. 

Donations 

Aranday Foundation 

Myer Foundation 

Rotary Belconnen 

Sheila Bignell 

Roslynne Bracher 

John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert-Jones 

Patrick Corrigan AM 

David Craddock 

The Curran Family Foundation 

Ferris Family Foundation 

Jane Flecknoe 

Henry Gillespie 

June P Gordon 

Rolf Harris AM OBE MBE 

Maree Heffernan 

His Excellency Major General Michael Jeffery AC 

CVO MC 

Lou Klepac 

Ann Lewis AM 

Robert and Susie Maple-Brown 

Harold Mitchell AO and Bevelly Mitchell 

Charles Nodrum 

Roslyn Packer AO 

Jennifer Prescott and John Prescott AC 

Maxine Rochester 

Penelope Seidler 

Morna E Vellacott 

The National Gallery of Australia Foundation 

would like to thank the family, friends and 

colleagues of Philippa Winn (NGA Educator 

1996–2005) who have contributed to the 

Philippa Winn Memorial Acquisition. 

Gifts and Bequests 

From the collection of Sir Francis Aglen 

(1869–1932). Given in memory of his 

daughter and their mother, Mrs Marion 

Hutton, by Peronelle Windeyer, Margaret 

Hutton, Jeremy Hutton and John Hutton 

Gift of Allan Behm and Rhyan Bloor 

Gift of Sue and Ian Bernadt 

Gift of Christopher and Philip Constable in 

memory of their mother Esther Constable 

Gift of Antony de Jong, grandson of the artist 

on behalf of The Duldig Studio 

Gift of the artist, Ruth Faerber 

Gift of Sara Kelly 

Gift of Mrs Ineke Kolder-Wicks 

Gift of Corbett Lyon and Yeuji Lyon Collection of 

Australian Contemporary Art, Melbourne 

Gift of Colonel NH Marshall, in memory of Prue 

Marshall 

Gift of the artist, Tracey Moffatt 

The Poynton Bequest 

Gift of Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler 

in memory of Harry Seidler 

Gift of Dr Beverley Wood 

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007 

In memory of Pixie Parsons (nee Roper) 

David Adams 

Ross Adamson 

Robert Albert AO 

Peter and Gillian Alderson 

Robert C Allmark 

Bill Anderson 

Susan Armitage 

Stuart Babbage 

Belinda Barrett 

Peter Boxall AO and Karen Chester 

Dr Berenice-Eve Calf 

Diana Colman in memory of her husband James 

Austin Colman 

Joan Daley OAM 

Winifred Davson MBE 

Maxwell Dickens 

Rosemary Dunn 

Tony Eastaway 

Peter Eddington and Joy Williams 

Brian Fitzpatrick 

Dr R and Mrs A Fleming 

Bill Galloway in memory of Ann Maria Paget 

Neilma Gantner 

Pauline M Griffin 

Aileen Hall 

Bill Hamilton 

Cheryl Hannah 

Natasha Hardy 

Karina Harris and Neil Hobbs 

John Harrison 

Ann Healey in memory of her husband 

David Healey 

Elizabeth Heard 

Shirley Hemmings 

Janet D Hine 

Rev Theodora Hobbs 

Joanne Glory Hooper 

Rev Bill Huff-Johnston and Rosemary 

Huff-Johnston 

Elspeth Humphries 

Dr Anthea Hyslop 

Fr WGA Jack 

Chris Johnson and Ann Parkinson 

Pamela V Kenny 

Dr Peter Kenny 

King O’Malley’s 

Sir Richard Kingsland AO CBE DFC 

Robyn Lance 

Paul and Beryl Legge Wilkinson 

Judith MacIntyre 

Jennifer J Manton 

Simon McGill 

Diana McRobbie in memory of her sister-in-law, 

Andrea Gibson McRobbie 

Joyce McRobbie in memory of her 

daughter-in-law, Andrea Gibson McRobbie 

Eveline Milne 

Joananne Mulholland and David Rivers 

credit lines 

W Newbigin 

Susan S Rogers 

Roslyn Russell, Museum Services 

Heather G Shakespeare 

George and Irene Skilton 

EJ Smith 

Wendy Smith 

Barry Smith-Roberts 

Ann Somers 

Prof. Ken and Maggie Taylor 

H Neil Truscott AM 

Chris van Reesch Snr 

Diana Walder OAM 

Joy Warren OAM, Director, Solander Gallery 

The Hon. E Gough Whitlam AC QC 

Y Wildash 

Muriel Wilkinson 

Tessa and Simon Wooldridge 

We would also like to thank the numerous 

anonymous donors who have donated to the 

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007. 

Grants 

Australia Council for the Arts through the 

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art 

Board, Visual Arts Board and Community 

Partnerships & Market Development 

(International) Board 

Australia–Japan Foundation 

Australian Government through Visions of 

Australia 

Japan Foundation (Tokyo) 

Arts NT through the Northern Territory 

Government’s Department of Natural 

Resources, Environment and the Arts 

Queensland Government (Australia), through 

the Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing 

and Export Agency (QIAMEA) Arts 

Partnership Program of Department of 

Premier and Cabinet 

Sponsorship 

NAB 

BHP Billiton 

ActewAGL 

Qantas 

Embassy of the United States of America 

Hindmarsh 

R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter 

Yalumba 

O’Leary Walker Wines 

Lambert Vineyards 

Casella Wines 

Forrest Inn and Apartments 

Gordon Darling Foundation 

Saville Park Suites 

WIN Television 


development office 


The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges and thanks the government and corporate 

supporters involved in our major twenty-fifth anniversary exhibitions, acquisitions and 

education and public programs. 

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 

The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial features a 

range of contemporary Australian Indigenous art practice 

and pays tribute to a key group of dedicated and important 

artists – in particular those whose respective careers span 

the four decades since the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals). 

In recognition of the national significance of the exhibition, 

the following organisations have provided their support, 

along with that of principal sponsor BHP Billiton. 

Visions of Australia 

Visions of Australia is an Australian Government program 

supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding 

assistance for the development and touring of Australian 

cultural material across Australia. The National Gallery 

of Australia is very proud of its longstanding relationship 

with Visions of Australia which has seen fifteen travelling 

exhibitions visit 110 venues throughout regional, remote 

and metropolitan Australia over a period of twelve years. 

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial has 

been granted funds under Round 4 of the Contemporary 

Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian 

Government program, and the Visual Arts and Craft 

Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and 

state and territory governments. 

Australia Council for the Arts 

The Australia Council for the Arts, through its Aboriginal 

and Torres Strait Islander Art Board, Visual Arts Board 

and Community Partnerships and Market Development 

(International) Board, has generously provided 

funding support. 

Arts NT 

Arts NT, through the Northern Territory Government’s 

Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the 

Arts, has provided support to artists and writers with 

cultural links to the Northern Territory to travel to Canberra 

for the opening of the exhibition and to participate in 

associated education and public programs. 

Queensland Indigenous Art Marketing Export Agency 

The exhibition has been generously supported by 

the Queensland Government (Australia), through the 

Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency 

(QIAMEA) Arts Partnership Program of Department of 

Premier and Cabinet. The exhibition and the accompanying 

catalogue include ten Indigenous artists and five writers 

with cultural links to Queensland. 

Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 

1850–1950 

This bold and generous twenty-fifth anniversary initiative 

aims to ensure that people across Australia have access 

to the treasures of the national collection. The exhibition 

will travel to Tamworth, Hobart, Mount Gambier, Ballarat, 

Perth, Cairns, Alice Springs, Newcastle and Canberra. 

R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter 

We welcome R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter as a valued 

sponsor of the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary travelling 

exhibition, Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape 

painting 1850–1950. This is a historic partnership between 

two iconic Australian organisations that will see fifty-eight 

important landscape paintings travel 18,500 km over a 

nineteen-month period to every state and territory in 

the country. It is a project that goes to the heart of the 

Gallery’s mandate of being truly national and the generous 

support of R.M.Williams (celebrating their seventy-fifth 

anniversary) has ensured that people in regional, remote 

and metropolitan Australia will have access to the treasures 

of their national collection. 

Visions of Australia 

In Round 28, Visions of Australia also granted funds to tour 

Ocean to Outback. 

The National Gallery of Australia Council 

Exhibitions Fund 

The fund has generously sponsored the national tour of 

Ocean to Outback. 

Black robe, white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist 

nun Rengetsu 

Australia–Japan Foundation and Japan Foundation 

(Tokyo) 

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the 

Australia–Japan Foundation and the Japan Foundation

(Tokyo) through its Japan Foundation Exhibitions Abroad 

Support Program have both generously contributed funds 

to the exhibition and publication, Black robe, white mist: 

art of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu. Their support 

ensures that the work of this important nineteenth-century 

Japanese artist will reach a new and broader Australian 

audience. 

Andy and Oz: Parallel Visions 

This exhibition is a collaborative project between the 

National Gallery of Australia and The Andy Warhol 

Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, that will be the National 

Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary international exhibition. 

The work of four generations of Australian artists who 

have been inspired by the famous artist, Andy Warhol, will 

be brought together and exhibited at The Andy Warhol 

Museum as part of the Australia Festival in Pittsburgh this 

October. We are grateful to Qantas, which has generously 

provided sponsorship to this exhibition, with support from 

Ann Lewis AM, Penelope Seidler and Henry Gillespie. 

Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978 

We welcome the generous support of the Embassy of 

the United States of America towards the exhibition, 

Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978, which draws together 

works from the Gallery’s rich collection of prints and 

multiples and features the artist’s innovative printmaking 

processes from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. 

Philippa Winn Memorial Acquisition 

Friends, family and colleagues of Philippa Winn, National 

Gallery Educator (1996–2005), have been very generous 

in their donation of funds to acquire a work of art for 

the national collection. Philippa was greatly admired and 

respected as an educator and for her ability to present 

and develop creative education and public programs at 

the Gallery. 

Corporate Members Program 

We are grateful to and thank the following for their 

continued corporate support: Casella Wines Pty Limited, 

The Brassey of Canberra, The Forrest Inn and Apartments 

and Saville Park Suites. We formally welcome Lambert 

Wines, Yalumba Wines, O’Leary Walker Wines, and JQ Pty 

Limited to the Corporate Members program and thank 

them for their generous support of the National Gallery’s 

Twenty-fifth Anniversary Program and the Decorative Arts 

and Design Fund respectively. 

Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program and 

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007 

Our thanks go to all the donors who have generously 

donated to both the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program 

and the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund for 2007. 

For further information please contact the NGA 

Foundation Office on (02) 6240 6454. 

(left to right) 

The Hon. Mark Vaile MP, 

Deputy Prime Minister, 

Leader of the Nationals and 

Minister for Transport and 

Regional Services; Rupert 

Myer AM (Chairman of NGA 

Council) and Ken Cowley AO, 

Chairman of R.M.Williams, 

The Bush Outfitter at the 

media launch of Ocean 

to Outback: Australian 

landscape painting 1850– 

1950, the National Gallery of 

Australia’s 25th Anniversary 

Travelling Exhibition 


national australia bank sculpture gallery 

Constantin Brancusi 

L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird 

in space] 1931–36 white 

marble, limestone ‘collar’, 

sandstone base overall 318.1 

x 42.5 (diameter) cm and 

L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird 

in space] c.1931–36 black 

marble, white marble ‘collar’, 

sandstone base overall 

328.4 x 51.4 (diameter) cm 

Purchased 1973 


A new gallery for sculpture: wood, stone, metal, glass 

On the evening of 22 May 2007 the National Gallery 

of Australia opened its new sculpture gallery, generously 

sponsored by the National Australia Bank. A range of works 

by American, European, Australian and Indigenous artists 

are on show. When the Gallery opened in October 1982, 

this impressive space originally showed sculpture from the 

modern collection. It again features masterpieces including 

Brancusi’s two Birds in space placed in a calm reflecting 

pool. The architects have created a beautiful and generous 

space, where light falls softly onto the works of art. Every 

season and every time of day is marked by changing light, 

which alters our perceptions of the sculptures. 

Made from traditional materials, often in unconventional 

ways, the works on show are created by carving and casting, 

assembled from found objects or even manufactured by 

industrial processes. Donald Judd’s untitled brass boxes 

of 1974, for example, replicate the exact geometry and 

uniformity of modern factory products. Their shiny, 

regulated march across the floor reflects and refracts their 

surroundings, which include the feet of visitors and the 

beautiful smoky grey tiles of the renewed slate flooring. 

Rocks and mirror square II 1971 unites a clean, crisp 

construction of factory-made mirrored glass with rough, 

hard rocks picked up in the countryside by the artist. 

Robert Smithson’s installation – which like Judd’s is placed 

directly onto the floor – hugs the ground, striving to merge 

into it and levitate at the same time. In his Suspended 

stone wallpiece 1976, Ken Unsworth uses river stones, 

made round through erosion over time, each tied up with 

thin wire. The rocks form a semicircle above the floor, 

which seems to defy the laws of physics. Stone becomes 

lighter than air. 

The most common manifestation of wood on show in 

the gallery is not carved, but roughly hewn or found objects, 

painted rather than raw or varnished. Louise Bourgeois 

made her sculpture originally between 1941 and 1948, 

and covered it with red and black paint. She talked of its 

genesis: as children, she and her brother hid under a table 

and watched their parents’ legs as they walked to and fro. 

The work’s meaning changed in 1979 when Bourgeois repainted 

it salmon pink and renamed it C.O.Y.O.T.E. after the 

prostitutes’ rights campaign ‘Call off your old tired ethics’.



Jannis Kounellis Untitled 

1990 (detail) three steel 

panels, clothes and beams 

each 200.0 x 181.0 x 25.0 cm 

Purchased 1992; Louise 

Bourgeois C.O.Y.O.T.E. 

1941–48 painted wood 

137.4 x 214.5 x 28.9 cm 

Purchased 1981; Robert 

Klippel No. 757 painted 

wood construction 

1988–89 painted wood 

253.0 x 171.0 x 146.0 cm 

Purchased 1989; Donald 

Judd Untitled 1974 brass 

each 101.6 x 101.6 x 101.6 cm 

Purchased 1975; 

Anselm Kiefer La Vie 

secrète des plantes [The 

secret life of plants] 2002 

lead, oil, chalk, pigment 

195.0 x 300.0 (diameter) cm 

Purchased 2003; 

Robert Smithson Rocks and 

mirror square II 1971 basalt 

rocks and mirrors 

36.0 x 220.0 x 220.0 cm 

Purchased 1977; Anselm 

Kiefer Abendland [Twilight 

of the West] 1989 lead 

sheet, synthetic polymer 

paint, ash, plaster, cement, 

earth, varnish on canvas and 

wood 400.0 x 380.0 x 12.0 cm 



Both Robert Klippel and Rosalie Gascoigne 

collected and re-used wooden objects. Klippel plays 

with architectonic elements in No. 757 Painted wood 

construction 1988–89 to create a new reality, based on 

manufactured things but now useful only as art. The 

weatherbeaten panels of Gascoigne’s Plenty 1986 are 

made of recycled box slats. The installation shines on a 

dull grey concrete wall, its golden hues and title perhaps 

implying fields of wheat or blond grass stretching out 

before our eyes. 

The earliest work on display is Elie Nadelman’s Horse 

c. 1911–15, which seems to gallop into the gallery. The 

animal’s sturdy body, carved from white plaster, balances 

on its absurdly delicate thoroughbred legs. The modernist 

sculptor’s impulse to pure form is taken to its ultimate 

abstract end in Brancusi’s black marble and white marble 

Birds in space of 1931–36. They embody the idea of flight, 

an upward striving which separates the earthbound from 

the free. Purchased from the sculptor by the Maharajah of 

Indore, the works were originally meant to be installed in a 

pavilion designed by Brancusi. Their current placement on 

simple geometric sandstone bases in a silent pool is based 

on a similar idea of contemplation and reflection. 

Combining stone and metal is unusual, because of 

possible contradictions between the methods of carving 

or casting employed by the sculptor. Anthony Caro’s 

Duccio variations no. 7 2000 is a promised gift from Ken 

Tyler and Maribeth Cohen through the American Friends 

of the Australian National Gallery. When Caro was invited 

to respond to a painting in the collection of the National 

Gallery, London, he made seven works in different 

materials. Each was based on Duccio’s Annunciation 1311, 

but responds to the painter’s depiction of architecture 

rather than the traditional subject. Here Caro assembles a 

new altarpiece with pieces of golden sandstone and found 

metal objects, painted gunmetal grey-blue. 

Max Ernst’s giant bronze Habakuk is a major new 

acquisition, purchased with the help of the National 

Australia Bank. It is a curious figure, conjuring up thoughts 

of birds, or reptiles, even partly machine or human. Ernst 

was a major Surrealist sculptor: this is a large version of 

an original work which he made in plaster in 1934, and 

reworked later that decade. A small edition in this size was 

authorised by the artist in 1970. His alter-ego was a birdman 

called Loplop. Habakuk’s body was created from casts 

of flowerpots, stacked on top of and inside one another.

Ernst then added a head, consisting of a giant tilted bill and 

eyes. At the foot of the figure is a third eye, and the plinth 

also bears a negative impression of another. Together these 

stand for inward and outward vision, forming a veiled 

reference to the biblical prophet Habakuk, for whom the 

sculpture is named. 

An untitled triptych by Jannis Kounellis from 1990 

combines hard-grade steel panels with I-beams used in 

building construction and pieces of men’s clothing. It 

serves as a contemporary crucifixion, implying Christ’s 

absent body, as well as the Trinity, by a man’s coat, jacket 

and trousers. The three parts also refer to conventional 

medieval and Renaissance iconography, the painted 

altarpiece with two wings around a central panel. The 

clothes provoke a more recent memory, that of the great 

post-war artist Joseph Beuys, whose use of men’s jackets, 

as well as felt and fat, haunts contemporary art. 

References to the natural world include a new sculpture 

by Glen Farmer Illortaminni, Jongijongini [Egret] 2005–06. 

Bronze is an unusual choice of material for a Tiwi artist, 

but the bird’s essentialised form, as with Brancusi’s birds 

and Nadelman’s horse, is conveyed by combining intense 

observation with artistic simplification. Maria Fernanda 

Cardoso uses the remains of real starfish in her installation 

Woven water: submarine landscape II 2003, where delicate, 

porous white skeletons float above the viewer, suspended 

on almost-invisible wires. Bronwyn Oliver weaves a similarly 

fragile web in Clasp 2006 and Garland 2006, but her 

medium is metal. Originally taken from the earth, the wire 

is forged and remade into forms analogous to nature’s. 

The only artist with two objects in the Sculpture 

Gallery is Anselm Kiefer, a German who now lives in 

France. Kiefer’s artistic practice centres on encounters 

with his country’s history and universal moral choices. His 

magisterial Twilight of the West 1990 combines embossed 

lead sheeting with oil paint and plaster below, depicting 

railway tracks leading into a desolate landscape. References 

include the soft, poisonous and alchemical metal lead, the 

impression of a manhole cover representing the sun, the 

Nazis’ use of trains to transport people to death camps, 

while the German title ‘Abendland’ implies the sun setting 

on civilisation. 

In his massive book The secret life of plants 2002, 

Kiefer obscures the possibility of anyone reading this 

tome inscribed with oil paint, chalk and pigments. 

The sculpture has a secret life of its own. As Shaun Lakin 


Klippel No. 757 painted 

wood construction 1988–89; 

Kounellis Untitled 1990; 

Max Ernst Habakuk 1934/70, 

cast 1995–98 bronze 

449.9 x 162.9 x 162.9 cm 

Purchased with the assistance 

of the National Australia 

Bank; Ken Unsworth 

Suspended stone wallpiece 

1976 river stones, steel wire 

215.0 x 140.0 x 104.5 cm 

Purchased 1976; Anthony 

Caro Duccio variations no.7 

2000 sandstone and steel 

189.5 x 198.0 x 103.0 cm 

On loan from Kenneth Tyler 

and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler 



(opposite, left to right) 

Kiefer La Vie secrète des plantes 

[The secret life of plants] 2002; 

Smithson Rocks and mirror square II 

1971; Kiefer Abendland [Twilight of 

the West] 1989 


Brancusi Birds in space 1931–36; 

Cy Twombly Untitled 1987–2004 

bronze, no. 4 from an edition of six 

368.3 x 88.9 x 34.3 cm Purchased 

2006 with the generous assistance 

of Roslyn Packer and members of the 

NGA Foundation: John Kaldor and 

Naomi Milgrom, Julie Kantor, Andrew 

Rogers; Kounellis Untitled 1990 

(detail); Bourgeois C.O.Y.O.T.E. 

1941–48

has remarked, it is named after a 1973 book by Peter 

Tompkins and Christopher Bird which investigates the 

physical, emotional and spiritual relations between plants, 

humans and the universe. 

Another contemporary artist who cogitates on 

questions of culture and history is the American Cy 

Twombly, who has lived and worked in Italy for the last 

fifty-five years. As well as paintings and drawings, Twombly 

makes sculptures. They are often assembled from industrial 

metal, plastic or wooden objects, then painted white and 

occasionally cast in bronze in small editions. Untitled 2005, 

one of an edition of six, has a unique patina, or surface 

treatment, of mottled pale grey-green. 

The patina has something of the quality of lichen 

covering gravestones in a shady cemetery, which is 

appropriate as it serves as a kind of memorial to a friend of 

the artist. Inscribed on the base are the words ‘In memory 

of Dominique Bozo’, who was head of the Pompidou 

Centre until his premature death in 1993. But ‘Victory’ 

is also written high on the work. It has a sail form, and a 

rectangular base, and stands the same height as a classical 

Greek sculpture in the Louvre, the Victory of Samothrace. 

She was the goddess of victory. The equivocal nature 

of death and memory is recalled when we consider that 

Admiral Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar from his 

flagship – and was fatally wounded on board – the Victory. 

Returning sculpture to the grand, meditative space of 

the lower level, now known as the National Australia Bank 

Sculpture Gallery, hopefully restores the original intention 

of the National Gallery’s founders to showcase sculpture 

as a central part of the collection, and to display it as a 

powerful and extraordinary medium of modern art. a 

Christine Dixon 

Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture 


pacific arts gallery 


Pacific arts in the Gallery 

Raharuhi Rukupo 

Aotearoa [New Zealand], 

North Island, Manutuke, 

Rongowhakaata people 

Figure from a house post 

[poutokomanawa] 

c. 1825–1840 (detail) 

wood, natural pigments 

79.7 x 26.5 x 20.2 cm 

National Gallery of Australia, 

Canberra Purchased 1981 

The National Gallery has a long history in bringing the 

arts of the non-Western world to its visitors – from Indian 

miniature paintings to faïence figures from Ancient Egypt. 

However, until recently, the Pacific Arts collection remained 

perhaps the least known of the world’s many spheres of 

art to our visitors. With the opening of the new Pacific 

Arts Gallery in July, some of the finest Pacific artworks in 

Australia, dating from around 3500 years ago to the midtwentieth 

century, are now on display. The origins of the 

collection stem from 1968 when the first item – a wood 

sculpture of a Papua New Guinean woman wearing a rain 

cape – was purchased from a Sydney art dealer by acting 

chairperson for the Commonwealth Advisory Board, 

Sir William Dargie. 

In broad geographic terms, the Pacific Arts collection 

encompasses around one-third of the world’s surface and 

is divided into three main areas: Polynesia, Micronesia and 

Melanesia. Within each of these areas exist many unique 

cultures, some sustained by less than 100 people and each 

with their own artistic forms of expression. Melanesia is 

by far the most diverse area of the collection, with works 

from New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and 

the great landmass of Papua New Guinea where more than 

800 languages are spoken. Given the diversity of Papua 

New Guinea’s Indigenous cultures, its proximity to Australia 

and the long and entwined history we share, it is not 

surprising that a greater portion of the collection is from 

Papua New Guinea. 

The next area of the Pacific Arts collection comes 

from Polynesia (meaning many islands), a vast triangular 

region of the Pacific with the three outermost points being 

New Zealand, Hawaii and remote Easter Island. Within 

the Polynesian triangle are the islands that fascinated 

eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European society 

with notions of noble savages and idyllic paradises – Tahiti, 

the Cook Islands, the Austral Islands and the Marquesas 

Islands. The Gallery holds only a small collection from these 

islands yet each work is more than 150 years old. Notable 

among them is the very fine Poutokomanawa house 

post figure carved by the great carver-priest and warrior 

Raharuhi Rukupo in the early 1840s. 

The qualities of the collection’s sometimes sublime, 

sometimes aggressively confronting works can be 

appreciated through their sculptural value alone. However,

they are all the more impressive after reflecting upon how 

each work was created. Connections to the environment 

played a great part in sourcing raw materials for sculpture. 

For example, the tree trunk used for the impressive 

Kanganaman village house post at the entrance to the 

Pacific Arts Gallery would have been selected because the 

spirit that lived in the tree made itself ‘known’ to the artist. 

Once the tree was chosen, the artist simply worked on the 

natural shape of the wood to reveal the spirit’s true form. 

The tools used by some artists are remarkable in 

themselves – sharply ground edged stones (which in 

themselves took considerable time to produce) acted as 

the cutting blades of adzes for hewing out the mass and 

volume of an object. Smaller pieces of worked shell and 

bone, even the sharp teeth from small mammals, were 

employed to complete the finer details of a figure, mask or 

sculpture. To achieve a pleasingly smooth surface required 

laborious rubbing with the tough edge of a boar tusk or 

the rough skin of rays, sharks and certain plant leaves with 

abrasive properties. 

For Pacific art, colour can be equally as important 

as form, and the application of colour was often a ritual 

event in itself. Particular colours are known to be powerful 

visual communicators for different island cultures. Colour, 

when used within an important event or ceremony for 

many communities, symbolically communicates otherwise 

unsaid ideas and concepts. The colours used in arts from 

the Pacific were sourced from a variety of natural resources 

– plants, pounded shells, ochre and soot obtained by 

burning fruits such as candlenut all contributed to the 

artists’ palette. An exception is the Lower Sepik Spirit mask 

which is highlighted with Reckitt’s laundry bluing dye. This 

interesting adaptation shows that artists were not afraid 

to incorporate exotic materials. (Indeed the use of Western 

materials may have been considered a way to imbue a work 

with extra magical capabilities.) What seems to be a limited 

range of natural resources did not dim the imagination of 

the artist – the individuality, uniqueness and latent power 

of each artwork can still be felt in works that have endured 

many years of exposure to the tropical elements. 

Specialisation in certain media was common for many 

Pacific artists and their communities. A prestigious object 

such as a delicate Marquesan fan, Tahi, was made by 

specialists known as tuhuna who focused on refining 

the singular aspect of fan making in order to elevate the 

production to an artform difficult for others to replicate. 

Fans were made only on Tahuata Island and were exported 

great distances across the Marquesas group. The finely 

braided continuous cordage of the Hawaiian necklace, 

Lei niho palaoa, was once the preserve of artists who 

worked only with human hair – one of the most important 

materials in Hawaii. Hair was highly regarded as being 

Lower Sepik people 

Papua New Guinea, Lower 

Sepik River area 

Spirit mask c. 1885–1920 

wood, pigment, laundry 

dye 89.0 x 24.0 x 28.0 cm 



Te Fenua ‘Enata people 

French Polynesia, Marquesas 

Islands, Tahuata Island 

Fan [tahi’i] 1800–1850 

wood, pandanus, coconut 

fibre National Gallery 

of Australia, Canberra 



charged with mana, a spiritual power, as it grows 

directly from the head, which was considered the seat 

of the human spirit. As with the Marquesan fan, this 

necklace was a collaborative work and likely to have been 

commissioned by a wealthy member of the community. An 

artist skilled in working marine ivory would have produced 

the refined central hook-shaped pendant. These pendants 

have long been considered stylised fishhooks. They are also 

said to represent ‘the tongue of god’ in a protruding and 

aggressive manner. The pendant is fashioned from a whale 

tooth, indicating a connection to Kanaloa, the god of the 

sea, who provides a bounty of fish and seafood and whose 

waters surround all the Hawaiian Islands. These kinds of 

connections between art and life in the Pacific were and 

are inseparable. 

Many of the works in the Pacific Arts Gallery 

were created to give younger generations a better 

understanding of what it meant to be a member of 

a community. Initiation on the Sepik River was often 

part of the process of becoming an adult member of 

the community. The initiate would undergo a period of 

hardship and stressful rituals that culminated in a shortlived 

confrontation with a powerful spirit in the Haus 

tambaran (a place where spirits dwell). Pacific artists 

conceived works with the greatest possible visual force for 

the Haus tambaran in order to create a menacing reverence 

which viewers would clearly remember and cautiously 

regard all their lives, even if their glimpse was only fleeting. 

Artists depicted otherworldly beings, ancestors or spirits 

in forms that held a physical presence that conveyed the 

ancestors’ will and underlined their mastery over the 

environment in which the community lived. For some 

cultures, this environment was shaped by the deeds of 

distant primordial ancestors and was demonstrated by 

connections to natural features – lakes, mountains and 

coastlines. Animals such as crocodiles, hornbill birds, 

sago beetles, sea eagles, bonito fish and sharks were also 

incorporated into ancestral mythologies. These connections 

were stressed to the young so they would never forget 

their association with the local environment. 

Visitors to the Pacific Arts Gallery may be unsettled by 

the convulsive nature and compositions of some sculptures 

that do not immediately conform to the Western eye. 

In particular, the works from Melanesia hold great physical 

complexity, an example of which is the spirit figure 

Maunwial whose vestigial limbs, bulbous head and intense 

colours are a synthesis of the concrete and the abstract. 

Maunwial and several other works have been displayed 

floating free of the wall, in much the same manner as they 

once were displayed in spirit houses suspended from the 

rafters by cords of fibre. 

Recognition of Pacific arts has been a slow process due 

to the blossoming of anthropology in the late nineteenth 

and early twentieth century when the arts of Indigenous 

peoples were exhibited solely in museums and primarily as 

documents to one aspect of human history. Appreciation, 

however, did grow through the esteem shown by 

individuals in the Expressionist, Dadaist and Surrealist art 

collectives, including Pablo Picasso, Max Pechstein, André 

Breton and Paul Éluard, whose passion was guided by an 

aesthetic approach of pure contemplation and intuitive 

interpretation rather than any deeper understanding of 

the cultures of the Pacific. This appreciation blossomed 

during the mid-twentieth century, as seen in the history of 

the exquisite To-reri uno double figure from Lake Sentani 

that has been internationally acknowledged as one of 

the finest known works from the Pacific. For more than 

a decade, when works from the Pacific were making the 

slow transition from artefact to art, it stood in the gallery of 

Parisian art dealer Pierre Loeb, overlooked and unsold. The 

beauty inherent in the sculpture did not change, but the 

comprehension and susceptibility of the viewer did. 

In the intervening years from the building of our 

Pacific Arts collection in the late 1960s to today, this same 

transitory process means visitors to the gallery will see the 

masks and sculptures as more than curiosities or specimens 

of ‘the other’. They are objects of potent visual force 

that stand equally next to art from any period, culture or 

individual artist across the world. a 

Crispin Howarth 

Assistant Curator, Pacific Arts 

Hawaiian people 

United States of America, 

Hawaiian Islands 

Necklace [lei niho palaoa] 

1820–1860 marine ivory, 

human hair, plant fibre 


Canberrra Purchased 1970 


exhibitions galleries 

Jean Baptiste Apuatimi 

Tiwi people Yirrikapayi 2007 

natural earth pigments on 

canvas 160.0 x 200.0 cm 


Canberra 

Philip Gudthaykudthay 

Liyagalawumirr people 

Wagilag Sisters 2007 

natural earth pigments 

and Liquitex Matte Binder 

on Belgian linen 

172.0 x 120.0 cm 


Canberra 


The ‘big guns’ of Culture Warriors 

13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008 

Through their art and culture, the artists in Culture 

Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial tell the stories 

of their communities in an incredible diversity of ‘voices’ – 

humble, venerated, spiritual, customary, poignant, satirical, 

political, innovative and overt. Among the thirty-one artists 

featured in the Triennial, a core group of dedicated and 

significant artists deserve singular focus. Jean Baptiste 

Apuatimi, Philip Gudthaykudthay, John Mawurndjul, Lofty 

Bardayal Nadjamerrek and Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan 

Jr are fêted through major installations of their work in 

the exhibition, and through essay contributions in the 

accompanying exhibition publication. Colloquially referred 

to as ‘the big guns’, their respective careers span the four 

decades since the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals). Culture 

Warriors ensures that their work is seen and celebrated 

during their lifetime. 

Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, the only female artist in 

‘the big guns’, is a Tiwi elder whose traditional name is 

Pulukatu (female buffalo) and dance Jarrangini (buffalo). 

Apuatimi began working as an artist alongside her 

husband, acclaimed Tiwi elder and artist, Declan Apuatimi 

(1930–1985). Earlier this year, Jean talked with Angela Hill, 

Art Centre Co-ordinator at Tiwi Designs, about her art 

and culture: 

My name is Jean Baptiste Apuatimi. I am a painter. 

My husband Declan Karrilikiya Apuatimi taught me 

how to paint. I love my painting, I love doing it ... 

Now I am doing that. Painting makes me alive. 1

Apuatimi learnt by assisting her husband with his art-making 

and had her first solo exhibition in 1991. She has created 

a striking series of large canvases especially for Culture 

Warriors, which include figurative representations of tutini 

and pukumani objects, and body painting. A tiny figure, she 

nonetheless has a powerful presence, accompanied by a 

wicked sense of humour, declaring herself ‘a famous artist 

now’, through her inclusion in Culture Warriors. 

Philip Gudthaykudthay, one of the last conversant 

Liyagalawumirri speakers, was born c. 1925 and is a 

senior custodian of the Wagilag creation narrative. 

Gudthaykudthay’s totem is Burruwara, the native cat, 

which has seen him endowed with the nickname of 

‘Pussycat’. In 1983 Gudthaykudthay was the first Central 

Arnhem Land artist to have a solo show at a contemporary 

gallery, Garry Anderson Gallery in Sydney, making him 

possibly the first Aboriginal artist in Australia to hold a 

solo exhibition in a contemporary artspace. 

Although consistent in his artistic output, since being 

awarded an artist fellowship from the Aboriginal and 

Torres Strait Islander Art Board in 2006, his creative wellspring 

has been replenished, and he has produced a 

magnificent series of badurru (hollow logs) for Culture 

Warriors in his characteristically elegant and spare miny’tji 

(clan body design) and rarrk (cross-hatching), quite 

distinct from the larrakitj and lorrkon from Yirrkala and 

Maningrida, respectively. 

I’m botj [boss] here. Ramingining … Me, number 

one painter … Right up from painting, Milingimbi, 

Ngangalala, Ramingining, Maningrida, now come 

here, Ramingining. Stop here. Number one painter 

here. Bark, finish ‘im up here; canvas, finish ‘im up 

here. Hollow log. All painting here. Me, number one. 

John Mawurndjul is a member of the Kurulk clan of 

Kuninjku-speaking people of Western Arnhem Land. He is 

without doubt the most renowned Kuninjku artist working 

today, with an international reputation and lauded as a 

‘maestro’ by former French president Jacques Chirac at 

the opening of the Australian Indigenous Art Commission 

for the newest Parisian museum, Musée du quai Branly, 

in June 2006. 

My work and my rarrk (cross-hatching) have 

changed a lot since I started painting a long time 

ago [late 1970s]. That was with my brother [Jimmy 

Njiminjuma] and together, we have changed the 

rarrk and started to paint in a new style. We are 

new people … Now, I concentrate on painting 

important places, my land, my djang [sacred places]. 

I paint the power of that land … I keep thinking, I 

keep finding new ways, new styles for my paintings. 

I just can’t stop thinking about my paintings. 

Mawurndjul’s representations of Mardayin and sites 

associated with his traditional country of Milmilngkan – 

on bark and hollow logs – have become increasingly 

refined in his expert use of rarrk. Inspired by great classical 

Kuninjku artists such as Peter Marralwanga (Mawurndjul’s 

wife, Kay, is Marralwanga’s daughter and an artist in her 

own right) along with Yirawala and his elder brother Jimmy 

Njiminjuma, Mawurndjul’s artistic and cultural mastery 

was acknowledged when he was awarded the Clemenger 

Contemporary Art Award in 2003, and honoured in the 

solo exhibition Rärrk: John Mawurndjul journey through 

time in Northern Australia at the Museum Tinguely, Basel, 

in 2005. 

John Mawurndjul Kuninjku 

(Eastern Kunwinjku) people 

Billabong at Milmilngkan 

2006 natural earth pigment 

on bark 200.0 x 47.0 cm 


Canberra 

Arthur Koo’ekka 

Pambegan Jnr 

Wik Mungkan/Winchanam 

peoples Face painting 2006 

natural earth pigments 

and hibiscus charcoal with 

synthetic polymer binder 

on canvas 56.0 x 168.0 cm 


Canberra 


Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek is rightly acknowledged 

as one of the most learned elders of the Arnhem Land 

escarpment known as ‘Stone Country’, and is the last of 

the painters of the magnificent rock art galleries of the 

region; his final work, a simple, dynamic kangaroo and 

hunter in white ochre, was created in 2005. From the 

Kundedjnjenghm people, Mok clan, Nadjamerrek was born 

c. 1926 at Kukkulumurr, Western Arnhem Land, and, as his 

name suggests, his elevated, graceful physique was often 

seen traversing the length and breadth of Arnhem Land in 

his early adult years. 

Now residing at his outstation at Kabulwarnamyo, 

Bardayal paints sparingly, passing on his traditions to his 

grandsons, who sit quietly watching him as he paints. 

Although his hand is now somewhat unsteady, his great 

skill as an ‘old-style’ rock art painter is evident in the 

stunning barks and works on paper which have been 

secured for Culture Warriors. Bardayal may scrape back 

some of the ochre pigments on the bark canvases or 

paper sheets when dissatisfied with a particular line, but 

the stature of his figures – creation beings and totemic 

animals – remains unchallenged. Whereas Mawurndjul 

continually works on refining his sublime rarrk, filling the 

entire surface of his canvas, Bardayal’s painting reflects 

a fidelity to his cultural traditions, with the figurative 

elements reigning supreme. 

Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Jnr is one of the most 

respected Winchanam ceremonial elders in Aurukun, 

a community based on the western side of Cape York 

Peninsula in far north Queensland. Pambegan Jnr comes 

from a family of great standing in the community, learning 

his cultural traditions through his father, Arthur Koo’ekka 

Pambegan Snr (also an artist and cultural activist of great 

renown) who was among the first of the Wik-speaking 

people to live at Aurukun, a mission established by the 

Moravians at Archer River in 1904. 

I’d just say … I WON’T STOP DOING IT. This belong 

to all of us. We share it together … we share our 

culture and you sharing your culture. The culture, 

what you see in the carvings, in the body painting, 

what you see in the canvas, they more important, 

because this is the way we are, not going to lose it. 

Pambegan Jnr is known for his wonderful sculptural 

installations of ancestral stories, Bonefish Story Place and 

Flying Fox Story Place. The distinctive art of Aurukun – 

trademark body-paint design worn by performers in a set 

of horizontal stripes, alternating red, white and black2 – 

has also enjoyed a gradual move into the art market in the 

past twenty-five years, with younger artists encouraged 

by elders such as Pambegan Jnr. He is equally renowned 

for his skill and acumen as a ceremonial dancer and leader. 

Culture Warriors presents the first works on canvas by 

Pambegan Jnr alongside his installations. 

It has been a great honour to work with such 

inspirational artists and cultural activists, whose work and 

lives inspired the title of the inaugural National Indigenous 

Art Triennial. a 

Brenda L Croft 

Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art 

Curator, Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 

notes 

1 From an essay with Angela Hill, ‘Jean Baptiste recorded this 

introduction in Tiwi at Nguiu, Bathurst Island, on 3 February 2007 

which was transcribed and translated by Margaret Renee Kerinauia’. 

2 Peter Sutton, essay for the exhibition catalogue accompanying 

Culture Warriors. 

Lofty Bardayal 

Nadjamerrek 

Kundedjnjenghm people 

Ngalyod I 2005 natural 

earth pigments on bark 

45.0 x 134.0 cm on loan 

from Joseph Fekete and 

Annie Bartlett 


orde poynton gallery 

Artist Robert Rauschenberg 

in 1953 Photo by Allan Grant, 

Life Magazine © Time 

Warner Inc/Robert 

Rauschenberg/VAGA, New 

York/DACS, London 

Booster 1967 

from the Booster and 

seven studies series 1967 

colour lithograph, screenprint 

183.0 x 89.0 cm 




Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978 

1 September 2007 – 27 January 2008 

Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look. 

John Cage, avant-garde composer, 19611 Robert Rauschenberg has had an extensive impact 

on late twentieth-century visual culture. His work has 

been of central influence in many of the significant 

developments of post-war American art and has provided 

countless blueprints for artistic innovation by younger 

generations. Rauschenberg’s radical approach to his artistic 

practice was always sensational, with the artist producing 

works so experimental that they eluded definition and 

categorisation. The National Gallery of Australia holds 

an important collection of Rauschenberg’s works. These 

works exemplify the artist’s striking transition in subject 

matter and material during the late 1960s and throughout 

the 1970s – a shift from the imagery of American 

popular culture to a focus on the handmade and unique 

combinations of natural and found materials. Many of the 

works exhibited in Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978 reveal 

the artist’s overarching aim to ‘drag ordinary materials 

into the art world for a direct confrontation’. 2 It has been 

Rauschenberg’s perpetual mix of art with life that has 

ensured that his work appears as innovative today as it 

was forty years ago. 

The legendary Bauhaus figure, Josef Albers, was 

the head of fine art at Black Mountain College, North 

Carolina, when Rauschenberg enrolled in 1948. Under 

the supervision of the strict disciplinarian, Rauschenberg 

learnt about the essential qualities, or unique spirit, within 

all kinds of materials. Rauschenberg said of their studentteacher 

relationship, that Albers was ‘a beautiful teacher 

and an impossible person. He didn’t teach you how to 

“do art”. The focus was on the development of your own 

personal sense of looking. Years later … I’m still learning 

from what he taught me. What he taught me had to do 

with the whole visual world’. 3

Storyline I 

from the Reels (B+C) 

series 1968 

colour lithograph 

54.6 x 43.3 cm 



Storyline III 

from the Reels (B+C) 

series 1968 

colour lithograph 

54.6 x 44.6 cm 




It was also at Black Mountain College that Rauschenberg 

came into contact with several other key art world figures 

who had a vital and long-lasting impact upon his thinking 

and artistic pursuits. The artists Ben Shahn, Robert 

Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Jack Tworkov, Franz Kline 

and Aaron Sisskind were all teaching at Black Mountain. 

However, the most significant influence on the young 

artist was the celebrated avant-garde composer John 

Cage. Rauschenberg and Cage developed a relationship of 

reciprocal inspiration – a connection that provided both the 

artist and the composer with the daring that was required in 

the creation of their most innovative works. 

In contrast to the environment of Black Mountain 

College, the New York avant-garde art scene in 1949 

was dominated by Abstract Expressionism. The artistic 

giants Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock had 

established themselves as the most innovative of the 

Abstract Expressionists. Discussions focused on the inner 

emotional state of the individual artist as expressed in 

highly charged painted gestures. The more free-thinking 

Rauschenberg, however, worked outside these confines, 

adopting a methodology that sought to reunite art with 

everyday life, an ideology that was in complete opposition 

to the central tenets of Abstract Expressionism. Early in his 

career, Rauschenberg created controversy within the New 

York art scene with a series of ‘artistic pranks’, including 

his infamous erasure of a Willem de Kooning drawing. This 

rebellious act of destroying an established artist’s work 

gained him instant notoriety and secured Rauschenberg 

the position of New York’s enfant terrible. 

Despite his ‘prankster’ reputation, Rauschenberg 

was highly self-disciplined and determined to challenge 

himself. In 1951, Rauschenberg completed a series of white 

paintings, which were in contrast, followed by a series of 

black paintings. By limiting himself to a monochromatic 

palette, Rauschenberg performed an artistic exorcism, 

rendering the restrictions imposed by media, style and 

convention obsolete so that there were no psychological 

boundaries to what he could do from that point onwards. 

Only after such self-imposed regulation was Rauschenberg 

prepared for what he was to attempt next. In a radical 

transgression of artistic conventions, Rauschenberg 

began to fuse vertical, wall-mounted painterly works with 

horizontal, floor-based sculptural elements, usually in the 

form of found objects. His fusion of the two-dimensional 

picture plane and the three-dimensional object is now of 

legendary status. It was the invention of a new ‘species’ of 

art, which Rauschenberg termed ‘Combines’. 

Rauschenberg developed his own unique style by 

combining gestural mark-making with its antithesis – 

mechanically reproduced imagery. It was this remarkable 

clash of visual elements in Rauschenberg’s art that provided 

a major aesthetic fracture – a departure from the heroic 

painterly gestures of Abstract Expressionism and a move 

towards the adoption of popular culture as subject matter. 

This radical schism, however, would not have occurred had 

it not been for Jasper Johns, with whom Rauschenberg 

had a long and intense partnership, beginning in 1954. 

Rauschenberg and Johns lived above one another in the

same building, visiting each other every day and setting 

artistic challenges for each other. Rauschenberg has said 

of his partnership with Johns that, ‘He and I were each 

other’s first critics … Jasper and I literally traded ideas. 

He would say, “I’ve got a terrific idea for you” and then I 

would have to find one for him’. 4 The Rauschenberg–Johns 

relationship was one of the great creative relationships of 

the twentieth century. It propelled them both in radically 

new directions and contributed to the development of the 

Pop Art movement. 

Rauschenberg’s modus operandi has always been 

collage – the combination of disparate elements within a 

single composition. He has been a cultural archaeologist – 

a master of collecting, editing and assembling the imagery 

of society, the environment, life and time. He insists that 

there is no personal narrative embedded within his work, 

but rather that his imagery is arranged through a series of 

rapidly made associations based upon intuition. 

Rauschenberg’s series of dense collage works, 

Horsefeathers thirteen, is a striking example of the artist’s 

innate talent in constructing compositions of detailed 

sophistication. Mass media action images, such as running 

races, horse-riding and rowing, are mixed with more 

generalised subjects that blend the natural environment 

with the manufactured environment. Each image is 

poised on the precarious dynamic moment and, in this 

way, Rauschenberg succeeds in investing his works with a 

simultaneous sense of movement and suspense. There is no 

hierarchy of images – the path of visual exploration for each 

composition is of our own choosing, despite the occasional 

(and humorous) directional arrow. The Horsefeathers 

thirteen series is a visual experiment in the ‘random order’ 

of experience. 5 By presenting us with a series of signs 

that encourage multiple complex readings, the artist has 

attempted a collaboration with the specific memories, 

associations and thought processes of the individual viewer. 

Albino cactus (scale) 1977 

from the scale series 

1977–81 

ink transfer on silk, 

synthetic polymer paint 

on composition board, 

mirrorised synthetic 

polymer film, electric light, 

wood, rubber tyre 

88.7 x 442.1 x 122.0 cm 




Publicon – Station IV 

from the Publicons series 

1978 enamel on wood 

construction, collaged 

laminated silk and 

cotton, bicycle wheel, 

fluorescent light fixture, 

perspex, enamel on 

polished aluminium 

open 154.8 x 146.2 x 29.0 cm 




While the images and objects selected for inclusion 

within the artist’s compositions may not be personally 

symbolic, they do reveal much about the American social 

events and political issues of the cultural period in which 

they were created. The garishly coloured Reels (B + C) 

series appropriate the film stills from the 1967 Bonnie and 

Clyde movie, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, 

and expose Rauschenberg’s fascination with celebrity and 

the entertainment industry. In a similar fashion, the photocollage 

work Signs operates as a succinct visual summary 

of the cultural and political events of the 1960s, depicting 

the tragic musician Janis Joplin, the assassination of 

John F Kennedy, America’s race riots and the Vietnam War. 

Rauschenberg has always been an artist-activist, skilled 

in employing art to raise individual awareness of social, 

environmental and political issues. 

Rauschenberg’s work from the 1950s and 1960s can 

also be seen as a presentation of the street culture of the 

urban environment. During this period, Rauschenberg lived 

in New York and regularly walked the streets in order to 

collect the ‘surprises’ that the city had left for him. Many 

of these found objects were incorporated into his artwork, 

the most famous of which is a stuffed goat (Monogram 

1953–59). The Gallery’s Albino cactus (scale) with its 

combination of two-dimensional photographic imagery 

and three-dimensional found objects can be considered a 

late ‘Combine’ work. 

A ‘found’ tyre in Albino cactus (scale) is incorporated 

into Rauschenberg’s artistic expression, but it cannot be 

completely detached from its life spirit. The Duchampian 

displacement of the found object from life, and its 

subsequent transference to art, creates something akin to a 

split personality; that is, all found objects bring with them a 

history and/or pre-function which the artist allows to seep 

into the composition. Thus, in a collaborative encounter 

with his material, Rauschenberg becomes a choreographer 

of the historical meaning and value of the found object. 

The images collaged along the material panel 

backdrop of Albino cactus (scale) have been printed via a 

solvent-transfer process – a technique that Rauschenberg 

began to experiment with in 1959. However, the look of 

Albino cactus (scale) also recalls Rauschenberg’s many 

screenprinted paintings, first explored by the artist in 1962. 

(It was at the same time that Andy Warhol also adopted 

the screenprinting technique and the two artists traded 

ideas about the method.) The solvent transfer process and 

screenprinting technique liberated Rauschenberg’s work. 

With both forms of printmaking, the artist discovered ways

in which he could quickly and repetitively transfer his found 

imagery to the canvas of his paintings and Combines. 

Rauschenberg believed that the printmaking technique 

of lithography was old-fashioned and is notorious for 

having stated that ‘the second half of the twentieth 

century is no time to start writing on rocks’. Ironically, 

it is Rauschenberg who became a significant figure in 

the resurrection of American printmaking that occurred 

during the 1960s. He has subsequently worked with many 

leading print workshops to create more than 800 published 

editions. Printmaking is a technique that was perfectly 

suited to his methodology of layering found images and 

one which gave him total control over the size and scale of 

each component image. It was through printmaking that 

Rauschenberg was able to once again blur the distinctions 

between media and perfectly unite his obsessive use of the 

photographic image with painterly techniques. 

One of the most successful of Rauschenberg’s 

collaborations has been with the Gemini GEL print 

workshop – a printmaking partnership that has permanently 

changed the terrain of American printmaking. The artist’s 

highly experimental approach to print processes comes to 

the fore in the colour lithograph and screenprint Booster, 

created in 1967. For Booster, Rauschenberg decided to 

use a life-sized X-ray portrait of himself combined with 

an astrological chart, magazine images of athletes, the 

image of a chair and the images of two power drills. 

Printer Kenneth Tyler was a masterful facilitator for 

Rauschenberg’s ambitious project and the collaboration 

radically altered the aesthetic possibilities of planographic 

printmaking. Rauschenberg and Tyler pushed beyond what 

had previously been done by combining lithography and 

screenprinting in a new type of ‘hybrid’ print. The rules 

governing the size of lithographic printmaking were also 

ignored, and at the time of its creation Booster stood 

as the largest and most technically sophisticated print 

ever produced. Today, Booster remains one of the most 

significant prints of the twentieth century, a watershed that 

catapulted printmaking into a new era of experimentation. 

Rauschenberg’s collaborations with printmakers and 

print workshops have often not resembled traditional 

prints at all. In his typical mix of techniques and processes, 

the artist has radically re-interpreted the traditional notion 

of what constitutes a print. Seizing upon the notion of 

multiplicity, inherent in the printed form, Rauschenberg 

has frequently applied it to sculpture to create multiple 

sculptural works that are editioned, just as a traditional 

print can be editioned. His three-dimensional Publicon 

Cardbird III 

from the Cardbird series 

1971 photo-lithograph, 

screenprint, corrugated 

cardboard, tape 

98.0 x 90.6 cm 





station multiples are seven physical expressions of the clash 

of art and religion and a reference to Christ’s fourteen 

stations of the cross. Early in his life Rauschenberg was very 

involved in the Church and wanted to become a preacher. 

His decision was reversed, however, when he was told 

that the Church would not tolerate dancing (an activity 

that Rauschenberg was particularly good at). Just like this 

clash of religion and culture in life, the Publicon stations 

represent a similar clash of visual elements in art. They are 

austere containers that unfold to display intricately 

collaged, bright fabrics and electrical components. Akin to 

the individual steps that make up a choreographed dance, 

the works are adjustable through various configurations. 

As box-like containers, the Publicon stations also reveal 

the influence of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell. 

Rauschenberg closely studied the works of the two masters 

and repetitively referenced them in his own work. 

A fundamental shift in subject and material occurred 

in Rauschenberg’s work from the 1960s to the 1970s. 

In the 1960s he relied heavily upon American visual 

culture whereas in the 1970s Rauschenberg embraced 

an international perspective. The works from the 1970s 

also reflect the artist’s incessant experimentation with 

new materials. Where the 1960s were dominated by 

repetitive mass media imagery, the 1970s reveal a focus 

on natural fibres, a simplification of the artist’s materials to 

incorporate fabric, cardboard and other natural elements 

such as mud, rope and handmade paper. The catalyst for 

this dramatic change in both subject matter and material 

can be explained by a change in Rauschenberg’s physical 

environment – his decision to move from New York City 

to Captiva Island, Florida, had a profound effect on the 

appearance of his work. 

With no city to offer up its detritus, the artist turned 

to the things that surrounded him in his new environment 

and the move had yielded numerous cardboard boxes. 

Rauschenberg has suggested that his choice of cardboard 

as a new material was the result of ‘a desire … to work 

in a material of waste and softness. Something yielding 

with its only message a collection of lines imprinted like a 

friendly joke. A silent discussion of their history exposed 

by their new shapes’. 6 The Cardbird series of 1971 is a 

tongue-in-cheek visual joke, a printed mimic of cardboard 

constructions. The labour intensive process involved in the 

creation of the series remains invisible to the viewer – the 

artist created a prototype cardboard construction which 

was then photographed and the image transferred to a 

lithographic press and printed before a final lamination 

onto cardboard backing. The extreme complexity of 

construction belies the banality of the series and, in this 

way, Rauschenberg references both Pop’s Brillo boxes by 

Andy Warhol and Minimalist boxes, such as those by 

Donald Judd. By selecting the most mundane of materials, 

Rauschenberg once again succeeds in a glamorous 

makeover of the most ordinary of objects. This is an 

exploration of a new order of materials, a radical scrambling 

of the material hierarchy of modernism. 

During the 1970s, Rauschenberg’s new international 

focus required him to travel to several countries where he 

entered into significant collaborations with local artists 

and craftspeople. The first was in 1973 with the medieval 

paper mill Richard de Bas in Ambert, France. Once again, 

Rauschenberg imposed a disciplined stripping back of his 

art materials – this time it was not to do with colour but 

with the notion of the handmade. In particular, the artist 

wanted to engage with handmade paper as one of the 

most ancient of artistic traditions. The resulting series, 

Pages and fuses, is a group of paper pulp works where 

the Pages are formed from natural pulp and shaped into 

paper pieces that incorporate twine or scraps of fabric. In 

contrast, the Fuses are vivid pulp pieces dyed with bright 

pigments. It was precisely this innovative experiment with 

paper pulp that sparked a renewed interest in handmade 

paper, which inspired major paper works by artists such as 

Ellsworth Kelly, David Hockney and Helen Frankenthaler. 

Throughout his career, Rauschenberg worked with fabric 

in the creation of theatre costumes and stage sets. In 1974, 

however, his interest in the inherent properties of natural 

materials led him to experiment with the combination 

of fabric and printmaking. The Hoarfrost editions series, 

created at Gemini GEL, is named after the thin layer 

of ice that forms on cold surfaces and was inspired by 

Rauschenberg’s observation of printmakers using ‘large 

sheets of gauze … to wipe stones and presses … and hung 

about the room to dry … how they float in the air, veiling 

machinery, prints tacked to walls, furniture’. 7 The imagery 

of the Hoarfrost editions was drawn from the Sunday 

Los Angeles Times and printed onto layers of silk, muslin 

and cheesecloth. The artist has exploited the transparent 

layering of material in order to suspend the image within 

the work itself, enabling the viewer to both look at and 

look through the work – to see both the positive space and 

the negative space in conjunction with the environment 

behind the work. Everyday objects, such as paper bags, are 

in sophisticated contrast with the ghostly imprinted imagery 

and the delicate fabric folds and layers. 

Rauschenberg’s quest for continued international 

involvement took him to Ahmadabad, India, to work in 

a paper mill that had been established as an ashram for 

untouchables. Rauschenberg was immediately struck by 

the contrast between the rich paper mill owners and the 

absolute poverty of the mill workers. The artist’s specific 

environment once again provided him with materials 

and in 1975 he set about making the Bones and unions 

series. For the Bones, the collaborative team wove strips of 

bamboo with handmade paper embedded with segments

of brightly coloured Indian saris. In the creation of the 

Unions, Rauschenberg sought to incorporate the mud 

that was used by the villagers to build their homes. He 

achieved this by concocting a rag-mud mixture consisting 

of paper pulp, fenugreek powder, ground tamarind 

seed, chalk powder, gum powder and copper sulphate 

mixed with water, all of which was then kiln fired. For 

Rauschenberg, the striking contrast between the sensuous 

colour of the saris against the aromatic and earthy 

aesthetic of the rag-mud encapsulated the manifest social 

and cultural contrasts of India. 

In all of his artistic pursuits, Rauschenberg has been 

an enthusiast for collaboration, working with numerous 

artists, composers, papermakers and printmakers. His joy in 

creating works of art within a reciprocal exchange has also 

extended to his materials. By looking beyond the apparent 

ordinariness of everyday experience, Rauschenberg 

celebrates the life spirit of all things, realising the unique 

qualities of everything from individual colours, mass media 

clippings, paper, fabric and mud to electric lightbulbs and 

old tyres. In this way, Rauschenberg has imbued his art 

with the visual ‘poetry of infinite possibilities’. 8 a 

Jaklyn Babington 

Curator, International Prints and Drawings 

This exhibition is supported by the Embassy of the 

United States of America 

notes 

1 John Cage, ‘On Robert Rauschenberg, artist, and his work’ (first 

published in Metro, Milan, 1961); republished in Silence, 4th edition, 

The M.I.T Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 

1970, p. 98. 

2 Walter Hopps, ‘Introduction: Rauschenberg’s art of fusion’ in Walter 

Hopps and Susan Davidson, Robert Rauschenberg: a retrospective, The 

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1997, p. 29. 

3 Calvin Tomkins, Off the wall: the art world of our time, Doubleday & 

co., New York, 1980, p. 32. 

4 Tomkins, p. 118. 

5 Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Random order’, Location, New York, Volume 1 

Spring 1963, pp. 27–31. 

6 Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Note: Cardbirds’ in Rauschenberg: Cardbirds, 

promotional brochure, Gemini G.E.L, Los Angeles, 1971, n.p. 

7 Ruth Fine, ‘Writing on rocks, rubbing on silk, layering on paper’ 

in Walter Hopps and Susan Davidson, Robert Rauschenberg: a 

retrospective, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 

1997, p. 384. 

8 Cage, p.103. 

Preview 

from the Hoarfrost editions 

series 1974 

lithograph and screenprint 

transferred to a collage 

of paper bags, silk chiffon, 

silk taffeta 

175.3 x 204.5 cm 




project gallery 

Rengetsu’s memorial stone 

at Saihoji, near Jinkoin. 

The calligraphy was designed 

by Tomioka Tessai 


Black robe, white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist nun 

Rengetsu 


Black robe, white mist celebrates the life and work of 

Otagaki Rengetsu or Lotus Moon (1791–1875). Featuring 

delicate ceramics, calligraphy and scroll painting, it is the 

first exhibition outside Japan to focus solely on the work of 

Rengetsu, who lived an exceptional life at a time of great 

social and political upheaval. Black robe, white mist brings 

together many objects never before exhibited, the majority 

of which are in private collections. 

Born the illegitimate daughter of a courtesan and a 

high-ranking samurai in a Kyoto pleasure district, Rengetsu 

died a Buddhist nun renowned as a poet, calligrapher, 

potter and painter. She was included in Heian jinbutsu 

shi, a list of prominent people in Kyoto, in 1838, 1852 

and 1867, and even today she is one of the characters in 

Kyoto’s annual Jidai Matsuri or Festival of the Ages, which 

includes a parade of historical figures. 

Despite her fame, relatively little is known with 

certainty about Rengetsu and much that is believed about 

her owes more to fantasy and romantic conceptions of 

her character and astonishing beauty than to reality. She 

endured personal tragedy from early in her life and it was 

these experiences that led to her remarkably productive 

artistic career. 

Originally called Nobu, Rengetsu was adopted as 

a baby by Otagaki Hanzaemon Teruhisa, a lay priest at 

Chion’in, the major Pure Land Buddhist temple in Kyoto, 

and his wife Nawa. Teruhisa and Nawa had five sons 

only one of whom, Katahisa, was still alive at the time 

of Rengetsu’s adoption. When she was eight or nine, 

Rengetsu went to live at Kameoka Castle where, as a ladyin-waiting, 

she received training in poetry, calligraphy, 

dance, needlework and martial arts. During the time 

Rengetsu was at Kameoka, Nawa and Katahisa both died. 

At the age of sixteen or seventeen Rengetsu returned 

to Kyoto and married Oka Tenzo. In keeping with custom, 

he was adopted into the Otagaki family and his name 

changed accordingly. He became Naoichi Mochihisa. 

Rengetsu’s first child, a son, was born soon after the 

marriage but lived only twenty days. The couple also had 

two daughters but they too died young, one at a few 

months and the other as a small child. In a rare occurrence 

for the time, Rengetsu eventually divorced the apparently 

depraved Mochihisa. 

Her second marriage was a happy match but ended 

tragically when her husband Ishikawa Jujiro (who became 

Hisatoshi upon adoption) died from tuberculosis. The pair 

had at least one daughter and possibly two. The night 

before his death, Rengetsu marked her intention never to 

remarry by cutting off her hair. Aged thirty-three, she soon 

became a nun, adopting Lotus Moon as her name. Teruhisa 

was ordained at the same time and, with Rengetsu’s 

remaining child, or children, they moved to a Chion’in

hermitage. Within a decade Teruhisa and the last of 

Rengetsu’s children had died. The nun then left the temple 

to make her own way in the world. 

In search of a means of support, she considered 

teaching the board game gõ, which Teruhisa had taught 

her, or waka poetry, which she had studied at Kameoka. 

(Waka poems have thirty-one syllables divided into five 

lines of five-seven-five-seven-seven syllables.) Although 

neither career was a success, Rengetsu’s verse did 

contribute to her later work. In her late forties or early 

fifties, Rengetsu began making tea ceramics. In describing 

her teapots, Rengetsu modestly wrote, ‘they were very 

humble and the shapes were unrefined. The poems I 

carved on them I wrote when I had a moment free. I never 

had much free time.’ 1 

Rengetsu’s combination of pottery, poetry and 

calligraphy, usually using Japanese kana rather than 

Chinese kanji characters, was inspired. These simple, 

often roughly made, objects proved enormously popular. 

Though doubtless an exaggeration, it has been said that 

Rengetsu made more than 50,000 works in her lifetime 

and that every Kyoto household included at least one 

example, be it a tea vessel, sweets dish, sake flask or 

cup, tanzaku poem sheet, or a painting with calligraphy. 

Rengetsu’s work was so popular that even within her 

lifetime it was imitated and faked, a practice that has 

continued intermittently to the present and which makes 

it difficult to confidently attribute many Rengetsustyle 

objects to the artist herself. In many ways this is 

unimportant as such things did not concern Rengetsu. 

She is believed to have willingly helped others make 

their ceramics and paintings more saleable by adding her 

calligraphy to them. In one story, a ceramics manufacturer 

asked Rengetsu to inscribe copies of her work because 

they couldn’t duplicate her calligraphy. She agreed, even 

presenting some originals so better copies could be made. 

To keep up with demand for her ceramics, Rengetsu also 

worked with professional potters, including Isso (dates 

unknown) and Kuroda Koryo (1822–1895). Known as 

Rengetsu II, Kuroda had Rengetsu’s permission to sign his 

work with her name and continued to do so after her death. 

The Makuzuan hermitage 

at Chion’in, Kyoto, where 

Rengetsu lived with her 

daughter/s and her adoptive 

father Teruhisa 

(opposite) 

Otagaki Rengetsu and 

Tomioka Tessai In this 

world hanging scroll 

[kakemono] c. 1855 ink on 

paper 92.0 x 20.0 cm overall 


Canberra 

Otagaki Rengetsu and 

Wada Gozan/Gesshin 

The goddess Amaterasu’s 

divine light hanging scroll 

[kakemono] 1864 (detail) 

ink on paper 

sheet 33.1 x 56.6 cm 

Museum DKM/Stiftung DKM, 

Duisburg, Germany 

Down to the Kamo river vase 

[hanaire] 1850–75 

glazed ceramic, incising 

29.3 x 3.5 x 3.5 cm 

Private collection, Basel 


With her work sought after and a reputation for beauty 

as well as generous acts of charity, the reclusive Rengetsu 

often moved several times a year to avoid unwanted 

attention. She eventually settled at Jinkoin, a Shingon 

Buddhist temple outside Kyoto city, and stayed there 

until the end of her life. Rengetsu’s time at the temple 

resulted in thousands of works, especially paintings and 

calligraphies. In a poem about calligraphy that evokes 

the feeling of her delicate, but powerful, rounded hand, 

Rengetsu wrote: 

Taking up the brush 

just for the joy of it, 

writing on and on, 

leaving behind 

long lines of dancing letters. 

(translation John Stevens) 2 

At Jinkoin, Rengetsu often collaborated with Wada 

Gozan/Gesshin (Moon Mind), who became a priest at 

the temple after the death of his wife. She also created 

collaborative works, gassaku, with a number of other 

artists, including the painters Mori Kansai (1814–1894) 

and Tomioka Tessai (1835–1924). Rengetsu and the much 

younger Tessai were very close and she thought of him as a 

son. A scroll painting in the Gallery’s collection featuring a 

painting of eggplants by Tessai and calligraphy by Rengetsu 

reads: ‘In this world there are certain forms which bring 

[welcome] thoughts to mind. The eggplant serves as a 

symbol of happiness’ (translation Patricia Fister). 3 

Rengetsu’s poems also appear without illustration on 

tanzaku poem sheet and scrolls. 

In 1875 Rengetsu died in the temple tearoom she 

had lived and worked in for a decade. She requested that 

Tessai alone be contacted following her death, and it was 

her adored friend who designed the calligraphy on her 

unassuming memorial stone near Jinkoin. In her eighties, 

Rengetsu wrote her autobiography in waka and prose in 

a letter to Tessai. It included the poem: 

The day begins 

I’m busy with my crafts 

the day ends 

I pray to Buddha 

and I have nothing to worry about. 

(translation Lee Johnson) 4 a 

Melanie Eastburn 

Curator, Asian Art 

The exhibition catalogue is available from the National 

Gallery of Australia Shop on 02 6240 6420 

Further information at nga.gov.au/Rengetsu 

notes 

1 Lee Johnson, ‘The life and art of Otagaki Rengetsu’, Master of Arts 

thesis, University of Kansas, 1988, appendix 2. 

2 John Stevens, Lotus Moon: the poetry of the Buddhist nun Rengetsu, 

Buffalo: White Pine Press, 2005, p. 98. 

3 Patricia Fister, ‘Waka poet-painters in Kyoto’, in Japanese women 

artists: 1600–1900, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 

New York: Lawrence, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1988, p.153 

4 A translation of Rengetsu’s autobiography appears in Johnson, 1988, 

appendix 2. 

Set of five sencha tea cups 

1873 glazed stoneware 

height: 4.5 cm each 

Private collection, Brussels 

(opposite) 

Let us consider ageing, 

teapot [kyusu] c. 1850 

ceramic, incising 

11.1 x 17.0 cm 


Canberra 

Fluttering merrily sake flask 

[tokkuri] 1870 glazed 

stoneware, incising 

15.0 x 8.0 x 8.0 cm 

Museum DKM/Stiftung DKM, 

Duisburg, Germany 


travelling exhibition 

Knut Bull 

The wreck of the 

‘George the Third’ 1850 

oil on canvas 

84.5 x 123.0 cm 


Canberra Purchased with 

funds from the Nerissa 

Johnson Bequest 2001 

Eugene von Guérard 

Schnapper Point from 

‘Beleura’ 1870 oil on canvas 

66.1 x 104.2 cm 


Canberra From the James 

Fairfax collection, gift of 

Bridgestar Pty Ltd 1995 


Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 

4 August 2007 – 3 May 2009 

… it is continually exciting, these curious and strange rhythms which one discovers in a vast 

landscape, the juxtaposition of figures, of objects, all these things are exciting. Add to that 

again the peculiarity of the particular land in which we live here, and you get a quality of 

strangeness that you do not find, I think, anywhere else. Russell Drysdale, 1960 1 

From the white heat of our beaches to the red heart of 

central Australia, Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape 

painting 1850–1950 conveys the great beauty and diversity 

of the Australian continent. Curated by the National Gallery’s 

Director Ron Radford, this major travelling exhibition is 

a celebration of the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary. It 

features treasured Australian landscape paintings from the 

national collection and will travel to venues throughout each 

Australian state and territory until 2009. 

Encompassing colonial through to modernist works, the 

exhibition spans the great century of Australian landscape 

art. From 1850 to 1950 landscape was the most painted 

and celebrated theme in Australian art. As well as images 

which convey the geographical extremes of the continent, 

Ocean to Outback includes works that reflect significant 

events that transformed the social fabric of Australia – 

droughts and bushfires, the gold rushes, the Depression, 

and times of war. 

The exhibition begins with a dramatic shipwreck scene 

off Tasmania’s east coast painted by convict artist Knut Bull 

(1811–1889). The wreck of the ‘George the Third’ 1850 

depicts the aftermath of the shipwreck in 1835 of the 

convict transport ship. Following a four-month voyage from 

London and bound for Hobart, the 35-metre ship entered 

D’Entrecasteaux Channel on the evening of 12 April 1835. 

Less than 200 kilometres from its destination, the ship 

struck submerged rock and in the catastrophe that followed 

127 of the 220 convicts on board died. 2 Survivors’ accounts 

said the ship’s crew fired their weapons at convicts who, in 

a state of panic, attempted to break from their confines as 

the vessel went down. 

The painting is dominated by a huge sky, with the 

broken George the Third dwarfed by the expanse. Waves 

crash over the decks of the ship while a few figures in the 

foreground attempt to salvage cargo and supplies. This is 

a seascape that evokes trepidation and anxiety. The small 

figures contribute to the feeling of human vulnerability 

when challenged by the extremities of nature. 

Australia’s finest late colonial landscape artist from 

the period, Eugene von Guérard (1811–1901), painted 

images of Australia from the perspective of an observer, 

explorer and a resident. Von Guérard received numerous 

commissions for ‘homestead portraits’. These commissions 

were generally paintings of properties owned by graziers 

who were keen to display the results of their hard 

labours on the land. Schnapper Point from ‘Beleura’ 1870 

was painted for James Butchart who owned Beleura 

homestead, built in 1863. Schnapper Point is located near 

Mornington Peninsula on Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay 

(approximately forty kilometres from Melbourne). Von 

Guérard depicts the sweeping views from the property 

across the bay – an area that had become a popular 

holiday destination for Melbourne residents.

Thomas Baines 

Gouty stem tree, 

Adansonia Gregorii, 

58 feet circumference, near 

a creek south-east of Stokes 

Range, Victoria River 1868 

oil on canvas 45.2 x 66.5 cm 




Exploration of the Australian continent by Europeans 

was a risky and arduous pursuit. The professional 

explorer–artist Thomas Baines (1820–1875) was one of 

a group of eighteen people who formed the 1855 North 

Australian Expedition party. The purpose of this expedition 

was to determine the existence of natural resources for 

settlement in far north-west Australia. Under the command 

of Augustus Charles Gregory the expedition lasted from 

August 1855 to November 1856, with the group reaching 

the mouth of the Victoria River on the upper north-west 

coast of the Northern Territory on 15 September 1855. 

Baines’s official role in the party was as artist and 

storekeeper – he made hundreds of sketches, recorded 

weather conditions and kept a detailed journal of daily 

life. Painted in London some thirteen years after the 

expedition, Gouty stem tree, Adansonia Gregorii, 58 

feet circumference, near a creek south-east of Stokes 

Range, Victoria River 1868 depicts the party campsite 

and an enormous water-yielding baobab tree. The artist 

has painted himself in the lower right-hand side, sitting 

underneath a makeshift shelter sketching the tree. 

While artists such as Thomas Baines recorded the far 

reaches of Australia, the major settlements of Sydney and 

Melbourne continued to expand. Rail soon connected 

townships located close to the Blue Mountains and 

Dandenong Ranges to Sydney and Melbourne. Tom Roberts 

(1856–1931) and Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) used the 

rail to travel to the outskirts of Melbourne where they 

established artists’ camps on the fringe of suburbia, first at 

Box Hill and later at Eaglemont. 

Tom Roberts first visited Box Hill to paint in 1882, 

accompanied by Frederick McCubbin (1855–1917) and 

Louis Abrahams (1852–1903). The artists set up camp on 

land owned by a local farmer, David Houston. 3 In A Sunday 

afternoon c. 1886 Roberts depicts an intimate picnic. 

Framed by spindly gums and bathed in dappled light, a 

young couple relax in the bush, the woman reading to her 

companion from a newspaper. At the time, a belief in the 

health benefits of country air was becoming popular with 

city dwellers, who sought recreational activities in the bush 

or by the ocean. Roberts’s observant eye depicts small 

details in this scene such as the trail of smoke from the 

man’s pipe, the dark wine bottle on the crisp white cloth 

and the light falling softly on the leaves of the eucalypts.

Arthur Streeton’s The selector’s hut (Whelan on the 

log) 1890 is an image that conveys the ‘pioneering spirit’ 

which underpinned the Australian nationalist attitude 

of the late nineteenth century. Streeton depicted iconic 

elements of the land – the ‘blue and gold’ of sky and 

earth, golden grass and shimmering light, a slender 

silhouetted gum tree, and a bush pioneer. He shows a 

man at rest from the toil of clearing the land and making 

his home. The man depicted is Jack Whelan, the caretaker 

of the Eaglemont estate where Streeton had been given 

permission to set up ‘camp’ in an old house in the summer 

of 1888. Early the next year he was joined by Charles 

Conder (1868–1909) and Tom Roberts. The camp provided 

the perfect working environment – a reasonably isolated 

bush location close to the city of Melbourne. 

Works by Australian Impressionists such as Roberts, 

Streeton and Conder showcase the national collection’s 

great holdings from this period. Alongside these are scenes 

of modern, misty Melbourne as captured by Clarice Beckett 

(1887–1935). Beckett’s lyrical and evocative landscapes 

remained largely unknown to Australian audiences during her 

lifetime. She was a dedicated artist who, despite dismissive 

reviews and few sales, continued to paint and exhibit regularly. 

Beckett always painted outdoors, usually in the early 

morning or evening, around the bays and streets of 

her family home in the Melbourne beachside suburb of 

Beaumaris. She sought to convey the beauty of her local 

environment, be it through the afterglow of a bright 

sunset, the shimmering heat of a tarred road or 

headlights shining through misty rain. She excelled at 

depicting particular effects of nature, such as haze, 

rain, mist and smoke. Beaumaris seascape c. 1925 is a 

meditative image of a still sea, a tree-lined cliff and distant 

coastline. Beckett has paid close attention to the subtle 

effects of light and shade reflected in the water. The soft 

lilac and pink hues of the sea, coastline and sky dissolve 

into bands of colour. The subject is so tonally reduced it 

appears to be almost abstracted. 

Work by another female artist of the period, Elise 

Blumann (1897–1990), depicts a ferocious storm scene 

on Perth’s Swan River. Blumann painted the Swan and the 

native melaleuca trees of the region many times. Escaping 

the Nazi regime that devastated much of Europe, Germanborn 

Blumann came to Perth with her husband and two 

children in 1938. Educated at the Berlin Academy of Arts 

and the Royal Art School Berlin, Blumann was familiar 

Tom Roberts 

A Sunday afternoon c. 1886 




Arthur Streeton 

The selector’s hut 

(Whelan on the log) 1890 





with the modern art of Europe. In Australia her modernist 

painting was unconventional, and she was regarded as a 

valued member of Perth’s artistic community. 

In Storm on the Swan 1946 Blumann uses broad 

sweeping gestures – strong horizontal and diagonal 

brushwork – to capture the power of a storm. Wind and 

rain beat against the limbs of the trees which appear 

to almost float in space. This dynamic and sensitive 

composition displays Blumann’s modern approach to her 

art and her desire to capture the ‘essential spirit’ of nature. 4 

Areas of the painting’s surface are blank, while others are 

scratched with the end of her brush to indicate sharp, fast 

rain. This is a vigorous, physical and quickly executed work, 

a powerful response to the speed in which a storm can 

approach and pass. 

Modernist experiments of colour theory by Roland 

Wakelin (1887–1971) and Roy de Maistre (1894–1968) are 

included in the exhibition. In de Maistre’s rarely exhibited 

Forest landscape c. 1920 he has adapted the subject of a 

felled tree to create a painting concerned with modernist 

principles of form, rhythm, symmetry and colour. 

Historically, the subject of the felled tree in the Australian 

bush has reflected artistic interests in rural industry, the 

natural grandeur of forests and, in some instances, an 

awareness of conservation issues related to loss and 

destruction. For de Maistre, tree trunks have been reduced 

to angular planes of colour and the composition is united 

by vivid greens that portray the forest floor and foliage. 

De Maistre has explored a range of colour tones, using subtle 

shifts in greens, reds and browns throughout the painting. 

Forest landscape belongs to a period when de Maistre 

was interested in the broken colour approach of Cézanne 

and the relationship between colour and music. He had 

studied violin and viola at the Sydney Conservatorium, 

and art at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales and 

Julian Ashton Art School. Working with musician Adrian 

Verbrugghen he developed a colour music scale where 

the spectrum of colours related to notes of the major and 

minor musical scales. The colour music theory was further 

underscored by de Maistre’s interest in the psychological 

effects of colour and its relationship to the expression of 

emotional states. Quoting the English poet-performer and 

colour theorist Beatrice Irwin, de Maistre wrote that colour 

‘brings the conscious realisation of the deepest underlying 

principles of nature … it constitutes the very song of life 

and is, as it were, the spiritual speech of every living thing’. 5 

A number of paintings in Ocean to Outback reveal how 

artists used the landscape as inspiration during difficult 

times of drought, depression or war. Works by Russell 

Drysdale (1912–1981) and Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) 

explore the drama and expressive possibilities inherent 

in the land. In 1944 Drysdale was commissioned by the 

Sydney Morning Herald to accompany journalist Keith 

Newman to western New South Wales to document 

Elise Blumann 

Storm on the Swan 1946 

oil on paper mounted on 

cardboard on composition 

board 57.0 x 67.0 cm 



Roy de Maistre 

Forest landscape c.1920 

oil on cardboard 

35.4 x 40.6 cm 



(opposite) 

Clarice Beckett 

Beaumaris seascape c.1925 

oil on cardboard 

50.0 x 49.0 cm 




Russell Drysdale 

Emus in a landscape 

1950 oil on canvas 

101.6 x 127.0 cm 




the effects of the drought. This experience significantly 

changed the way he viewed the Australian landscape. 

The photographs and sketches he made on the trip 

informed much of his work in the following years. 

In Emus in a landscape 1950 Drysdale explores the 

strange and surreal qualities of the Australian outback. 

The native birds move quietly through the landscape, 

passing a precariously arranged structure of wood and 

corrugated iron. This sculptured mass of refuse represents 

the remains of a previous settlement. It could be an 

abandoned dwelling or a wrecked ship on a dried inland 

sea. Drysdale creates a sliding space between reality and 

imagination, fact and myth, and captures the vast space 

and timelessness of the outback. 

Between 1947 and 1950 Sidney Nolan spent months 

travelling through remote areas of Australia. Using money 

he had made from a successful exhibition of Queensland 

outback paintings held at the David Jones Gallery in Sydney 

in March 1949, Nolan, accompanied by his wife Cynthia 

and stepdaughter Jinx, travelled through Central Australia, 

the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South 

Australia. This trip, from June to September 1949, inspired 

a body of work and a series of paintings that depict inland 

Australia from an aerial perspective. 

Inland Australia 1950 is an extraordinary aerial image of 

the ‘heart’ of the continent, possibly of the Durack Range. 

With the composition board lying flat on a table Nolan has 

pushed the paint around the surface of the work. In some 

areas the paint has been wiped back, exposing the white 

undercoat of the composition board. The undulating shapes 

and intense colour of the red earth evoke an ‘otherworldly’ 

sensation – a feeling of the land’s inherent grandeur, 

timelessness and mystery. Nolan described the work as ‘a 

composite impression of the country from the air’. Painted 

in his Sydney studio, he used photographs taken from the 

aeroplane as a visual aid. Inland Australia is an example of 

Nolan’s technique of fusing elements from existing locations 

with a landscape remembered from experience. 


1850–1950 includes images of the furthest points of

distance and geography across Australia. Created by some 

of our greatest landscape artists, these paintings reveal the 

compelling beauty, extreme conditions and qualities of the 

Australian environment that have made landscape painting 

a vital force in Australian culture. a 

Beatrice Gralton 

Associate Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture 

The exhibition catalogue is available from the National 

Gallery of Australia Shop on 02 6240 6420 

Further information at nga.gov.au/OceantoOutback 

notes 

1 Russell Drysdale, interview by Hazel de Berg, 1960, Canberra: 

National Library of Australia, [deB 27]. 

2 Michael Roe, An Imperial disaster: the wreck of George the Third, 

Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 2006, p. 12. 

3 Leigh Astbury, ‘Memory and desire: Box Hill 1855–88’, in Terence 

Lane (ed.), Australian impressionism, Melbourne: National Gallery 

of Victoria, 2007, p. 51. 

4 John Scott & Richard Woldendorp, Landscapes of Western Australia, 

Claremont, Western Australia: Aeolian Press, 1986, p. 17. 

5 Roy de Maistre, extract from lecture on ‘Colour in relation to painting’, 

in Colour in art, exhibition catalogue, The Art Salon, Penzance 

Chambers, Sydney, 1919. 

Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth NSW, 

4 August – 22 September 2007 

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 

Tas., 5 October – 25 November 2007 

Riddoch Art Gallery, Mt Gambier SA, 

8 December 2007 – 20 January 2008 

Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat Vic., 

2 February – 30 March 2008 

Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth WA, 

13 April – 1 June 2008 

Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns QLD, 

21 June – 27 July 2008 

Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs NT, 

9 August – 19 October 2008 

Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle NSW, 

8 November 2008 – 18 January 2009 

Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra ACT, 

31 January – 3 May 2009 

Sidney Nolan 

Inland Australia 1950 

oil and enamel paint on 

composition board 

91.5 x 121.0 cm 




collection focus 

Samuel Bourne 

Wanga Valley, view 1860s 

albumen silver photograph 

29.0 x 24.0 cm 


Canberra 


Ricketts photography collection 

Since 1973 the Gallery’s photography collection has 

grown to include about 15,000 Australian and international 

works, with the latter category chiefly being by twentiethcentury 

European and American photographers. An 

energetic program of acquiring South and Southeast Asian 

photographs began in 2006 after Director Ron Radford 

initiated a more central role for art of the Asia–Pacific 

region. In February 2007 the Gallery acquired more than 

200 nineteenth-century photographs from India along with 

a small group of works from Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon 

(Sri Lanka). These came from a collection assembled over 

thirty years in London by Howard and Jane Ricketts whose 

holdings and research have formed the basis of a number 

of pioneering survey shows of Indian photography. Chiefly 

dating from the 1850s to the 1880s, the photographs 

from the Ricketts collection acquired by the Gallery include 

individual photographs on paper and those in albums and 

illustrated books by the best-known British photographers 

who collectively made some of the earliest images in India, 

Burma and Ceylon. 

India was one of the first countries outside Europe 

and America to take up photography. By January 1840 

a daguerreotype apparatus was for sale in Calcutta 

(Kolkata). Despite the difficulties of photochemistry in 

a tropical climate, a number of daguerreotype studios 

existed in India. Surviving daguerreotypes from anywhere 

in Asia, however, are scarce. From the mid-1850s the 

daguerreotype was superseded by the alternative process 

of photographs on paper from a negative on glass. The 

process appealed to the legions of mostly British men 

stationed in India as part of the East India Company and 

other colonial ventures. It was a diversion and a way of 

conveying what India was like to families, friends and 

investors. Photography also became for Indians a means 

of presenting themselves to the foreigners. Government 

bodies also soon adopted pioneering survey projects using 

photography to encompass and manage the huge physical 

and cultural diversity of India. 

Among the earliest works in the Ricketts collection are 

twenty-six views from 1858 of significant sites in the First 

War of Independence (also known as the Indian ‘Mutiny’). 

These were taken by Italian-born British professional 

photographer Felice Beato, who, having previously 

photographed in the Crimea and the Middle East, was 

the most experienced photographer to work in India. His 

images are the only known photographs of many of the 

historic buildings in the conflict that were later demolished. 

Beato went on to China in 1860 where he made pictures 

of the Boxer rebellion (of which an album is also held by 

the Gallery) and then established a studio in Japan. Beato 

went to Burma in 1885 to document the Third Burma War. 

He remained there developing studios which specialised in 

photographs of ‘Burmese beauties’ and ‘native types’.


Colin Murray 

Reversing station on the 

S.I.P. at Khandalla on the 

Bhue Ghats albumen silver 

photograph 18.8 x 30.4 cm 


Canberra 

Charles T Scowen 

Sinhalese girl 1870s 


28.0 x 22.0 cm 


Canberra 


Large-scale albumen prints are the exemplary 

achievements of the nineteenth century; costly and 

technically demanding, only the best resourced 

photographers could undertake such mammoth prints. 

Those who did included military officers who had learned 

photography in India and came to be assigned on official 

monuments surveys or took on projects out of personal 

interest and ambition. In the Ricketts collection this type 

of survey work is represented by eleven large prints from 

1855 to 1857 by Captain Thomas Biggs (1822–1905) of 

the Bombay Artillery and Dr William Pigou (1818–1858) 

of the Bombay Medical Service, which come from 

Architecture in Dharwar and Mysore, a three-volume 

photographically illustrated book by Anglo-Indian scholar 

Colonel Meadows Taylor published in London in 1866. 

Working from 1855 to 1857 Biggs and Pigou were the first 

designated ‘architectural photographers’ of sites in western 

India. Dr John Murray (1809–1898) of the Bengal Medical 

Establishment specialised in Mughal architecture of Agra, 

Fatehpur Sikri and Delhi and mastered the difficult process 

of mammoth plate paper negatives. The Gallery holds two 

of his dense but mezzotint-like prints, including one from 

his 1858 portfolio Agra and its vicinity. 

Bombay photographers William Johnson and William 

Henderson were among the earliest to make ethnographic 

studies in India in 1857. Johnson’s The oriental races and 

tribes, residents and visitors of Bombay (issued in two 

volumes in London from 1863 to 1866) was the first 

photographically illustrated ethnographical publication 

on India. 

Consumption of photography was by no means 

limited to foreigners’ interests; royalty and upper echelon 

administrators in India and elsewhere in Asia were keen 

to present images of themselves as presents in exchange 

for the many photographs sent to them by the crowned 

heads and statesmen of Europe. A small group of portraits 

of maharajas by unknown photographers in the Ricketts 

collection reveal the splendour of the royal courts. 

The largest individual holding and aesthetically the 

‘jewel in the crown’ of the Ricketts collection is the group


of sixty-four large prints by landscape photographer 

Samuel Bourne, an experienced landscape and portrait 

photographer in England active in societies and salons who 

moved to India in 1862 and worked there until 1870 and 

returned in the 1880s. He was in partnership with Charles 

Shepherd and later Colin Murray at various times. Bourne 

made a series on the sites of the ‘Mutiny’ in 1864 but his 

renown comes from the distinctive elegant abstract design 

of his landscape and wilderness views taken on extensive 

journeys to Simla, Kashmir and Himalayas in the 1860s, 

which won him medals in Britain. 

Photography in India was impossible without local 

labourers. Bourne, for example, had some thirty porters 

and assistants on his Himalayan journeys. Indians were 

widely employed as assistants to foreign photographers 

but increasingly became photographers in their own 

right. In the 1870s a photographer at the Madras School 

of Industrial Art was employed by James Breeks to take 

photographs for his book An account of the primitive 

tribes and monuments of the Nilagiris, published in 1873. 

Current scholarly consensus is that the photographer was 

a local, C Lyahsawmy. The first high profile Indian-born 

photographer was Lala Deen Dayal (1844–1905), a civil 

engineer who became skilled as an amateur photographer 

by the 1870s while working for Sir Henry Daly, the Agent 

to the Governor General for Central India. Deen Dayal 

set up on his own studio in 1885, becoming the most 

prominent and acclaimed photographer of Princely India 

until his death in 1905. 

Research into the spread of photography in the 

Asia–Pacific region has revealed that while some 

photographers and eras are widely celebrated, others such 

as Charles Scowen in Ceylon and Beato in Burma are not 

because their works are later than the colonial era of high 

adventures or ‘first’ views. The Gallery aims to bring to 

greater prominence many of these lesser-known bodies 

of work by pioneer photographers in the Asia–Pacific in 

the National Photography Festival exhibition from July 

until October 2008. The Gallery’s survey exhibition will 

showcase many works from the Ricketts collection and will 

be the first such survey of photographic art in the region. a 

Gael Newton 

Senior Curator, Photography 

Unknown photographer 

Maharana’s elephant, 

Udaipur 1880s–90s 


19.2 x 24.4 cm National 

Gallery of Australia, Canberra 

(opposite) 

Charles Shepherd 

Khyber Pass 1860s 


19.9 x 29.1 cm 


Canberra 

Felice Beato The Mosque 

Picket on the ridge, Delhi 

1858 albumen silver 

photograph 25.5 x 30.4 cm 


Canberra 


new acquisition International Painting and Sculpture 

Max Ernst Habakuk 

1934/1970 bronze 

449.9 x 162.9 x 162.9 cm 

no. six of a planned edition 

of ten, cast 1995–1998 



the assistance of the 

National Australia Bank 


Max Ernst Habakuk 

Max Ernst was a towering figure in the revolutionary 

artistic and literary movement of Surrealism, a sculptor, 

painter, graphic artist and inventor of frottage. His 

monumental bronze Habakuk is a memorable and 

outstanding statement of modern art. A dark, looming, 

bird-like column, Habakuk is engaging and eccentric, yet at 

the same time its huge size and shiny black patina make it 

seem severe, even ominous. The sculpture is a large version 

of the original plaster executed by Ernst in 1934 and 

reworked later in the 1930s. 

Habakuk’s body was created from casts of flowerpots, 

stacked on top of and inside one another. Ernst then added 

a head, consisting of a giant tilted bill and eyes, and a 

circular plinth. At the foot of the figure is a third eye, and 

the plinth also bears a negative impression of one of the 

eyes. These were cast from a desert stone found by Roland 

Penrose, the English Surrealist collector, painter and poet, 

who gave it to Ernst in 1929. He called it Rose de sable, œil 

de sphinx [Rose of sand, eye of the sphinx]. 

Together, the eye and the impression on the plinth 

represent inward and outward vision, and form a veiled 

reference to the biblical prophet Habakuk, after whom 

the sculpture is named. In his study, Max Ernst: sculpture, 

Jürgen Pech draws a parallel between Ernst’s perceived 

connection ‘between the soothsayer and visionary of the 

Bible and the visionary, transcendental aspects of his own 

work.’ The Book of Habakuk is one of the last, and shortest, 

books of the Old Testament. It is a song, a conversation 

between the prophet and God, in which Habakuk asks God 

to curse his enemies. These include the Chaldeans, and 

interestingly, the makers of idols, that is, sculptors: 

What profiteth the graven image that the maker 

thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a 

teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth 

therein, to make dumb idols? 

When Ernst first worked with plaster maquettes, 

he had no money to cast them in bronze. According to 

Werner Spies in Max Ernst: sculptures, maisons, paysages, 

‘Ernst agreed, in 1970, that a monumental version of 

Habakuk should be carried out, expressing above all the 

still-remaining Dada refusal to accept formal purism, which 

he had denigrated in Cologne [fifty years earlier] ...’ One 

cast of the larger version was made in 1970 for Düsseldorf, 

and is now installed in the Grabbeplatz. The Gallery’s 

cast is numbered ‘6’, part of the planned edition of ten 

authorised and plaster signed by Ernst in 1970, and cast 

by Susse Fondeur, Paris. Only four were realised. The large 

plaster has been destroyed, so no more can be made. 

Its totemic form places Habakuk within the context of 

Ernst’s own enthusiastic and discerning collecting of art 

from Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. These sculptures 

reflect his personal taste, acquired as they caught his eye 

and resonated with him aesthetically. Ninety-six works from 

his collection are held in the National Gallery of Australia. 

Christine Dixon and Bronwyn Campbell 

International Painting and Sculpture

new acquisition International Painting and Sculpture 

Giorgio de Chirico 

La Mort d’un esprit 

[Death of a spirit] 1916 




the assistance of Harold and 

Bevelly Mitchell, Rupert and 

Annabel Myer and the 

NGA Foundation 


Giorgio de Chirico Death of a spirit 

Giorgio de Chirico is an important figure in twentiethcentury 

art, renowned for his invention of Metaphysical 

painting (pittura metafisica), which preceded Dada and 

Surrealism from about 1911 into the 1930s. The artist’s 

imaginative symbolic language – especially human figures 

meshed with machines, often placed in incongruous 

settings such as classical or mechanical landscapes – is 

seminal to modern art. 

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines 

the nature of reality. For de Chirico, true reality was hidden 

behind appearances. He invented a language of images 

which represented human presence by placing everyday 

objects such as statues, mannequins, set-squares and 

biscuits within a compressed and fictional space. The poet 

Guillaume Apollinaire named the style ‘metaphysical’ 

in 1913. According to the art historian Matthew Gale, 

de Chirico thought that reality was ‘visible only to the 

“clearsighted” at enigmatic moments’. 

De Chirico studied art in Munich from 1905, moving to 

Paris in 1911. There he met such Cubist and Fauvist artists 

as Picasso, Derain, Braque and Brancusi, and avant-garde 

writers such as Apollinaire. His first solo exhibition, largely 

unsuccessful, was held in Rome in 1919. Viewers found his 

paintings disturbing, especially the unusual treatment of 

space: claustrophobic interiors, unusual angles and cut-off 

planes, with deadpan representations of classical statues or 

tailor’s dummies lending an eerie quasi-human presence. 

In 1914 de Chirico enlisted in the Italian army and was 

sent to Ferrara. There he met Carrà and Papini, soon to be 

his colleagues in Metaphysical painting, and mixed with 

Futurist and Dada artists. By 1916 de Chirico concentrated on 

small, stifling still-life compositions, often featuring biscuits, 

set-squares, planks, maps, military insignia and flags. 

Death of a spirit features two French biscuits frontally 

placed onto orange geometric receding planes, flanked 

by a black disc and surrounded by yellow, red and green 

forms. The elements crowd uneasily into an ambiguous 

space, which reads as an interior, opening onto an 

unsettling urban landscape. The tense composition and 

bright, constrained palette animate this small and vigorous 

painting. Its content and style embody an extraordinary 

moment in modern painting when Cubism, Dada and 

Abstraction collided in de Chirico’s new Metaphysics. 

The style of Metaphysical painting strongly influenced 

Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, as 

Gale notes in the Grove Dictionary of art: 

On his arrival in Paris in 1922, Ernst’s painting 

reflected the admiration of his poet friends for de 

Chirico … the painters who became Surrealists after 

Ernst almost all passed through a period of stylistic 

debt to de Chirico, notably Salvador Dalí and Alberto 

Giacometti (the leading creators of the Surrealist 

Object), René Magritte [and others]. 

De Chirico was also important to the Australian 

painters James Cant and James Gleeson. Indeed, Cant 

almost certainly saw Death of a spirit in London. It was 

shown there twice while he lived there, first in 1937 at the 

Zwemmer Gallery in the exhibition Chirico–Picasso, and 

again at the London Gallery in Giorgio de Chirico 1911– 

1917, in October–November 1938. Some of the costumes 

de Chirico designed for Diaghilev’s production of Le Bal in 

1929 are held in the Gallery’s collection. 

Christine Dixon 

Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture

new acquisition Asian Art 

Kushan dynasty 

Mathura, India 

Seated Buddha 1st–2nd 

century red sandstone 

129.5 x 101.6 x 30.5 cm 

Purchased with the 

generous assistance of 

Roslyn Packer 2007 


Kushan Buddha 

This superb Indian sculpture has recently been added 

to the permanent display of art from South Asia. The 

unusually large seated Buddha is not only a spectacular 

example of early Indian sculpture, but also a key image 

in understanding the development of Buddhist art 

throughout Asia. The sculpture has survived, largely intact, 

from the second century of the Current Era. 

During the first to third centuries a large part of 

northern and western India and Pakistan was ruled 

by the powerful Kushan dynasty that originated in 

central Asia. The two great Kushan political centres – at 

Gandhara and Mathura – each developed its own style of 

monumental Buddhist art. Importantly, both were noted 

for their anthropomorphic depictions of the Buddha who 

had hitherto been represented by symbols such as his 

footprints, the empty throne, the bodhi tree and the wheel 

of law. These are the central focus of the Gallery’s fine 

large marble Amaravati frieze from a stupa from eastern 

India, dated to roughly the same period. 

Mathura was a prosperous city and an ancient religious 

and political capital that predated the rise of the Kushan 

dynasty. It was also a centre for stone carving to serve 

the temple complexes. A bold and distinctively Indian 

style of figurative sculpture developed at Mathura, in 

contrast to the strongly Hellenic but rather delicate 

figures of neighbouring Gandhara, which are superbly 

represented in the Gallery’s collection by a large grey-schist 

standing bodhisattva and the recently acquired head of 

a bodhisattva. In contrast, this sculpture is formed from 

the striking mottled-red Sikri sandstone typical of the 

Mathuran region of northern India. 

Buddhism flourished in India at this time and it was 

during the Kushan dynasty that the representation 

of the Buddha, with his characteristic features 

of a cranial protuberance and extended earlobes 

dressed in the monastic robe that would become the 

enduring iconography for the depiction of Buddha in 

anthropomorphic form, was established. This is a fine 

early example of this key development in Asian art. 

Characteristic of the evolving, quintessentially Indian 

style of sculpture from Mathura, the torso of the Buddha 

is robust and powerful, with a plump, gently smiling 

face and wide-open eyes. He is shown with several of 

the thirty-two marks (lakshanas) of a great man – the 

broad ‘chest of a lion’, the urna or tuft of hair between 

the eyebrows (which in this case would once have been 

embellished with a precious jewel), circles or wheels on 

the soles of his feet, webbed fingers, folds of flesh at the 

neck, elongated earlobes and a topknot of hair. The last 

of these is the ushnisha, or cranial protuberance, that 

signifies Buddha’s spiritual advancement. In contrast to 

the Gandharan images of Buddha and bodhisattvas clad 

in elaborate royal robes, Mathuran Buddhas are depicted 

in almost diaphanous garments that cling to the body and 

accentuate the human form. 

The Buddha is seated in the meditation posture with 

his legs crossed, the upturned soles of his feet carved with 

two auspicious symbols in shallow relief – a discus (cakra) 

and a triratna. The cakra represents the wheel of Buddhist 

teachings, with the ‘turning of the wheel’ signifying the 

transmission of Buddhist teachings. Each of the Buddha’s 

toes is carved with a small swastika, another recurring 

symbol of Buddhism. The figure holds one hand, now 

missing, aloft in what would have been the fear-dispelling 

gesture (abhaya mudra), while his other hand is placed 

squarely on his left knee. 

Installed in a niche in the new Indian Gallery, the 

Seated Buddha provides visitors with new insights into 

the history of Asian art. We are grateful to Ros Packer, 

Chair of the Acquisitions Committee of the Gallery’s 

governing Council, for her timely donation that secured 

this masterpiece for the national collection. 

Robyn Maxwell 

Senior Curator, Asian Art

new acquisition Photography 

Robyn Stacey 

Gorilla skull 2005 

Type C colour photograph 

100.0 x 162.0 cm 


Canberra 


Robyn Stacey Gorilla skull 

Robyn Stacey belongs to a generation of photomedia 

artists who came to prominence in the 1980s. These 

artists were unconcerned with, even suspicious of, the 

claims to truth by various styles of personal documentary 

photography dominant in art museums in the 1970s. They 

spurned reportage photography and embraced visual 

culture as a source rather than the ‘real’ world. The artists 

of this movement (later called Postmodernism) happily 

appropriated images from the past as well as popular 

culture, including the look of ‘old master’ paintings or 

fifties and sixties magazines and television. 

From her earliest series in the mid 1980s, Robyn Stacey 

has created seductive and vibrantly coloured tableaux 

involving great technical expertise in synthesising multiple 

sources and motifs which has been greatly facilitated by 

the emergence of digital manipulation. Her earliest efforts 

are hand-coloured black-and-white prints; later works 

involve complex overlays. Stacey’s series works, such as Kiss 

kiss bang bang 1985 and All the sounds of fear 1990, were 

grounded in popular culture with a slightly sixties Pop look, 

but presented a modern world made somewhat anxious 

and edgy. By contrast her work since the 1990s has made 

use of science and the deathly quiet of a number of natural 

history museum collections in which she worked during 

several residencies. 

Gorilla skull 2005 comes from Stacey’s Beau monde 

series which draws on collections at the Macleay Museum, 

Sydney, and recalls the tradition of the Dutch genre of 

nature morte paintings in which the still-life objects provide 

a moral lesson on the vanity of world. The reference to the 

gorilla (a threatened species symbolising humankind) and 

coral (a threatened wonder of Australia’s northern coast) 

alongside dead specimens under the microscope and an 

ominously placed geological hammer, combine to create 

an anxiety often found in her early works. Stacey’s art 

entertains and yet reminds us of dangers to the planet. 

Gael Newton 

Senior Curator, Photography

Howard Taylor Rainbow and supernumerary 

Howard Taylor was an incessant observer of nature, 

concerned with recording perceived phenomena in nature. 

In 1976, largely influenced by his admiration of Constable, 

Taylor painted a group of paintings in a small format in 

which he focused on clouds and the skies. One of these is 

Rainbow and supernumerary 1976. He based the works 

on drawings in his sketchbook, where he made day–to-day 

observations, including details of weather, sunlight and 

shadow. Rainbows were a particular source of fascination. 

In Rainbow and supernumerary Taylor demonstrated his 

commitment to looking, his fascination with the natural 

world and his sensitivity to recording the transient 

effects of light. 

Taylor was born in Hamilton, Victoria, on 29 August 

1918 and moved to Perth with his family in 1932. He 

served with the air force during the Second World War 

until his capture in 1940. In 1949 Taylor returned to 

Western Australia and settled in the Darling Ranges on the 

outskirts of Perth, where he became fascinated with the 

new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture 

bush landscape and forest forms which became central to 

his work. In 1967 he moved to Northcliffe in the heart of 

the tall-timber karri and jarrah forests of the south-west 

of Western Australia where he produced some of his most 

powerful, impeccably crafted evocations of nature. He died 

on 19 July 2001. 

As Daniel Thomas has remarked, ‘Howard Taylor was 

an Australian and his brilliant gifts and stunning vision was 

totally focused on the depiction of his beloved Australian 

bush. His vision, however, went far beyond the focus of 

any painter before him, in that none of them, irrespective 

of their unquestioned brilliance, ever interrogated and 

captured the complexity of structure, the ephemeral quality 

of its light and colour, or the rich and subtle patina of its 

living forms, as he did’. 

Anne Gray 

Head of Australian Art 

Howard Taylor 

Rainbow and supernumerary 

1976 oil on composition 

board 21.7 x 30.5 cm 


Canberra Gift of Sue and 

Ian Bernadt 2007 


new acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings 

Roy Kennedy 

Wiradjuri people 

I’m never alone 2005 

etching, printed in black ink 

from one plate 

platemark 25.0 x 33.0 cm 


Canberra 


Roy Kennedy I’m never alone 

Wiradjuri artist Roy Kennedy was born in the early 1930s 

in Griffith in central New South Wales. Kennedy spent 

his childhood on a government-run mission located on 

the banks of the Murrumbidgee River, downstream from 

Narrandera and Hay. As a young man he worked on farms in 

the district and later moved to Sydney. In 1995 he enrolled 

at the Eora Centre for Aboriginal Studies at the Sydney 

Institute of Technology where he pursued his interest in 

printmaking. He was student and artist of the year at Eora in 

1999, and won a NAIDOC Week award that same year. 

Kennedy’s etchings provide a graphic documentation 

of his memories of the Aboriginal mission environment. 

Through his sure placement of key elements – the church, 

the police station, his own mission hut and recreation 

areas – a vivid and very personal picture emerges of how 

people lived on the mission during the Depression. Of 

I’m never alone he writes ‘all my lovely memories of my 

mission are always there. Some are sad times and some are 

good memories’. His family had been moved from nearby 

stations to the mission many years before and the concept 

of relocation is a constant theme in his art. Of Mission boy 

dreams Kennedy recalls ‘from far back as I can remember 

I’ve always wondered when we would have our own home 

and years on I’m still wondering’. 

The mission on which Kennedy spent his youth was 

closed in 1941. His graphic etchings provide us with a 

historically acute and sensitive picture of mission life 

during this period. 

Mary-Lou Nugent 

Curatorial Assistant, Australia Prints and Drawings

William Nicholas Lady and child 

A ready market for portraiture arose with the spread of 

settlement and the rise of prosperity in colonial Australia. 

From the 1820s to the 1850s there were more professional 

portraitists working in both watercolour and oil in the 

colony than landscape artists. 

Watercolourist, etcher and lithographer William 

Nicholas (1807–1854) found acclaim after just ten years in 

Australia, with the Sydney Morning Herald of 27 July 1847 

reporting: ‘His fame is now established in Sydney as the 

best portrait painter in watercolours in the colony, and the 

consequence is that there are more heads offered to him 

for decapitation than he is able to take off.’ 

Nicholas’s sensitively rendered untitled watercolour 

reflects the much sought-after English portrait style of 

the period. An exquisitely painted portrait, the faces in 

particular are superb examples of the stippling technique 

for which Nicholas was renowned. Further research may 

well reveal the identity of this fashionable, well-to-do 

young mother and her child, dressed in finely embroidered 

christening robe and bonnet. 

Even in the distant colonies, the quiet, demure aspects 

of women’s dress of the Victorian period dictated fashion. 

Watered silks in pastel tones were the height of fashion 

in the 1840s, and the woman’s gown of celestial blue 

typically has a high bodice with a low-waisted, V-shaped 

front panel trimmed with a white lace collar. The influence 

of medievalism is evident in the angular lines of the bodice 

with its reference to the Gothic arch. Showy, full sleeves 

slowly lost favour in the Victorian period and the dress has 

stylish, closely fitting sleeves with pleating at the elbow. By 

contrast, the skirt is full, to emphasise the narrow sculpted 

waistline. The hairstyle is also typical of contemporary 

fashion: centrally parted, held by combs, ringlets forward 

of the ears, and a plaited knot at the back. The gold 

brooch on her bodice, painted in a blend of ground gold 

leaf and gum arabic, is a delicate final touch. 

Anne McDonald 

Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings 

new acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings 

William Nicholas 

not titled [Lady and child] 

c. 1847 

watercolour, pencil and 

ground gold leaf and gum 

arabic on cardboard 

image 22.4 x 17.6 cm 


Canberra 


new acquisition Decorative Arts and Design 

Toots Zynsky Pennellata 

2005 glass filet de verre 

27.0 x 59.5 x 31.0 cm 


Canberra 


Toots Zynsky Pennellata 

The ethereal quality of Toots Zynsky’s 2005 work, 

Pennellata, is characteristic of the extraordinary glass 

vessels that have placed her among the leading 

practitioners of contemporary studio glass. Its layered 

colours are animated by reflected and refracted light, 

each linear element inflecting the visual quality of the 

next as the viewer’s gaze moves from its outer to its inner 

surfaces. Their shaded, drawing-like quality is the result 

of a complex and demanding process of construction by 

which two layers of glass threads, in about sixty colours, 

are assembled flat before being fused and formed into a 

circular sheet of glass. This sheet is then mould-slumped 

in the kiln before final manipulation into the undulating, 

organic form that characterises all of Zynsky’s work. 

Mary Ann (Toots) Zynsky was born in Boston, 

Massachusetts, in 1951, and gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts 

from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. After 

moving to New York in 1980, she founded and developed 

the second New York Experimental Glass Workshop (now 

known as Urban Glass), where she developed technical 

processes for the production of the fine glass threads, or 

‘canes’, used as a key element in the design of her glass 

works. Zynsky describes the technique of constructing 

open vessel forms works entirely composed of these fused 

and thermo-formed glass elements as ‘filet de verre’. 

From 1983 to 1999, she worked from a studio base in 

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, immersing herself in the 

traditions of European glass, drawing inspiration and 

technical knowledge from Venetian glass in particular. 

An interest in music also took her to West Africa, where 

she participated in a recording project of West Ghanaian 

traditional music, an experience that exposed her to the 

vibrant colours and patterns of the region’s traditional art 

and design, influences that were interpreted in the complex 

colour orchestrations of her later work. 

Robert Bell 

Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Marion Mahony Griffin Window panel 

Marion Mahony Griffin was born in the United States of 

America in 1871 and died there in 1961. She graduated 

in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of 

Technology in 1894, and became one of the world’s first 

registered women architects. In 1895, she joined the 

Chicago practice of architect Frank Lloyd Wright where, 

in addition to working as an architect, she became 

Wright’s key delineator and developed his designs for 

architectural glass and other decorative arts and interior 

design projects. A professional relationship with another of 

Wright’s staff, the architect Walter Burley Griffin became 

personal with their marriage in 1911. When Walter Burley 

Griffin won the competition for the design of Canberra, 

with an entry prepared jointly with Marion, she joined him 

in Australia, living and working in Canberra, Melbourne, 

and Castlecrag in Sydney from 1914 to 1937. 

This coloured and iridised glass window panel, with a 

geometric border design around a clear glass centre panel, 

is similar to designs for window panels designed by Wright 

new acquisition Decorative Arts and Design 

and delineated by his staff in Chicago from 1907 to 1912. 

While ‘leaded glass’ is used as a generic descriptor for 

such window panels, the glass elements of the work are 

fixed together with zinc, allowing a more precise fit of the 

complex geometrical elements of Wright’s designs. Such 

work was usually carried out to Wright’s specifications by 

the Linden Glass Company in Chicago. The design of this 

panel has been attributed to Marion Mahony Griffin and 

it is a work closely associated with her and Walter Burley 

Griffin during a critical time in their partnership with Frank 

Lloyd Wright. As it was a valued part of their personal 

possessions in Australia, it is highly probable that the 

Griffins intended to use the panel in one of their projects 

in Australia, or to use it as a model for further works and 

a demonstration of their design approach to architectural 

decoration. 

Robert Bell 

Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design 

Marion Mahony Griffin, 

in association with 

Walter Burley Griffin 

and Frank Lloyd Wright 

Window panel c. 1910 

glass, zinc cames, wood 

frame 45.0 x 45.0 x 4.5 cm 


Canberra 


children’s gallery 

Mike Brown Half lady 

on chair 1975 pen on 

paper sheet 26.0 x 26.0 cm 


Canberra 

Sidney Nolan 

Bushranger head with 

red and yellow mask 

1947 charcoal, enamel 

31.4 x 25.2 cm 


Canberra 

Drawn in 


14 July – 25 November 2007 

A dot becomes a line and then a form; each drawing 

unfolds from a single mark. It is the finished drawing that 

shows how this simple beginning can be transformed. 

More than any other medium, drawing is accessible 

to everyone. Sketching a map, doodling while on the 

telephone, even writing can be considered drawing. 

Design, animation, architecture, mathematics and the 

sciences all use drawing. Individual observations are 

interpreted through drawing by both the maker and 

their audience. It is a means to record experience, 

whether literally or imaginatively. Children draw, and so 

did Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein. For all three, 

drawing is a means for experimentation and exploration. 

Drawn in, an exhibition for children, highlights figure 

drawing by many Australian artists. The drawings selected 

include portraits, self-portraits, figures in landscapes and 

imaginary forms. Even within this relatively narrow range of 

subjects, the materials and techniques used by each artist 

show the diversity of drawing. 

Children will be able to see that drawing is not one 

thing. It can be about replicating the world around them, it 

can be about the creative power of mark making and it can 

be about the process itself, how each mark predetermines 

the ones that follow. Some drawings focus on line, some 

on tone, some use colour and some incorporate all of 

these elements. The vertical black pen lines used by 

Richard Larter in his drawing, Untitled, portrait of a woman 

with a scarf 1975, are confident and bold. This work 

demonstrates Larter’s unique use of line, for the balance 

he creates between his marks and the page forms the 

portrait. Another artist in the exhibition who plays with the 

arrangement of positive and negative space is Tim Johnson 

in his drawing MN at Papunya 1987. This drawing uses 

tone rather than line to hint at a figure in the landscape. 

Johnson’s airy technique suggests the heat of central 

Australia, and the Indigenous artist working in the open is 

shown as part of the country, rather than separate from his 

surroundings. 

Drawing examines the act of looking – looking out 

and looking in. Drawing can also link directly to memory 

and imagination. The charcoal drawings of Sidney Nolan’s 

rugged band of bushrangers, including Bushranger head 

with red and yellow mask 1947, display an uncertainty 

and vulnerability through their smudged and broken lines. 

In these drawings Nolan is not only examining these men 

as individuals with thoughts and feelings, he is also using 

them to think about the bushranger as an expression of 

Australian identity. 

Drawing is a wonderful activity used with skill and 

humour by a range of Australian artists in this exhibition. 

Drawing can be neat or messy, cool or hot and it can 

be about concrete and abstract ideas. Drawn in invites 

children and their parents to participate in various drawing 

activities in the exhibition space. An easel and mirror allow 

visitors to observe and draw themselves, tables provide 

materials for drawing in response to music, free drawing 

with pencil and paper and the mechanical etch-a-sketch 

which makes a continuous line as two dials are rotated. 

The exhibition will give children and their parents the 

confidence to see that when it comes to drawing, there is 

no right way to do it. 

Adriane Boag 

Educator, Youth and Community Programs


1 2 3 

4 5 

6 7 8 

9 

10

13 

11 

exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 4 Brian and Lesley Oakes at 

16 

the Members’ opening of the 17 exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 

5 Geoffrey King OAM and Rae King at the Members’ opening of the exhibition, George W 

Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 6,7,8 Children participating in a shell workshop 

with Marilyn Russell (pictured) and Esme Timbery during NAIDOC Week 9 Children at the 

National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery open day 10 Performance by Emma Bossard 

and Jane Ryan in response to Brancusi’s Birds in space; part of the National Australia Bank 

Sculpture Gallery open day 11 Family attending the tour of the Aboriginal memorial during 

NAIDOC Week 12 Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, Angela Hill, Philip Gudthaykudthay, Peter 

Mingululu, Belinda Scott, Arthur Pambegan Jr, Luke Kawangka, Daniel Boyd and Brenda L 

Croft at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 13 Rupert Myer AM at 

the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 14 Arthur Pambegan Jr at the 

announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 15 Peter Mingululu and Belinda Scott 

at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 16 His Excellency Mr Robert 

McCallum Jr, United States Ambassador to Australia and Mrs Mary McCallum with Director 

Ron Radford AM 17 Jean Baptiste Apuatimi performing at the announcement of the National 

Indigenous Art Triennial 

17 

faces in view 

1 Anna Gray, curator, and Daniel Thomas AM at the opening of the exhibition, George W 

Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 2 Sir Richard Kingsland AO CBE DFC and Lady 

Kathleen Kingsland at the opening of the exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: 

heroes and icons 3 John Mackay, ActewAGL, and Colette Mackay at the opening of the 

14 

artonview spring 2007 69 

12 

15

James McNeill Whistler 

Portrait of Whistler 1859 

(detail) etching and drypoint 


Canberra 

Loundon Sainthill Costume 

design for the ugly sister from 

Cinderella 1958 (detail) 

gouache, pencil and watercolour 

on paper 


Canberra 

Michael Riley untitled from the 

series cloud [cow] 2000 

(detail) printed 2005 

chromogenic pigment 

photograph National Gallery 

of Australia, Canberra Courtesy 

of the Michael Riley Foundation 

and VISCOPY, Australia 

Mathias Kauage 

Independence Celebration I 

1975 (detail) stencil National 

Gallery of Australia, Canberra 

Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the 

apple branch 1950 (detail) 

oil on canvas 


Canberra Purchased with funds 

from the Sir Otto and Lady 

Margaret Frankel Bequest 2004. 

An artist abroad: the prints of 

James McNeill Whistler 

James McNeill Whistler was a key figure in 

the European art world of the 19th century. 

Influenced by the French Realists, the Dutch, 

Venetian and Japanese masters, Whistler’s 

prints are sublime visions of people and the 

places they inhabit. nga.gov.au/Whistler 

Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston 

Tas., 1 September – 4 November 2007 

Stage fright: the art of theatre 

In partnership with Australian Theatre for 

Young People 

Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian 

Government Program supporting touring exhibitions 

by providing funding assistance for the development 

and touring of cultural material across Australia 

Stage fright: the art of theatre raises the curtain 

on the world of theatre and dance through works 

of art, interactives and a program of workshops 

conducted by educators from the National 

Gallery and Australian Theatre for Young People. 

Worlds from mythology, fairytales and fantasy 

characters intended for the ballet, opera and 

stage are shown in exquisitely rendered finished 

drawings alongside others that have been quickly 

executed capturing the essence of an idea, posture, 

movement or character. nga.gov.au/StageFright 

Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Booragul NSW, 

14 September – 28 October 2007 

Michael Riley: sights unseen 





Michael Riley (1960–2004) was one of the most 

important contemporary Indigenous visual artists 

of the past two decades. His contribution to the 

contemporary Indigenous and broader Australian 

visual arts industry was substantial and his film 

and video work challenged non-Indigenous 

perceptions of Indigenous experience, particularly 

among the most disenfranchised communities in 

the eastern region of Australia. nga.gov.au/Riley 

Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane Qld, 

27 July – 18 November 2007 

Imagining Papua New Guinea: screenprints 

from the national collection 

This exhibition of screenprints from the national 

collection celebrates Papua New Guinea’s 

independence and surveys its rich history 

of printmaking. Artists whose works are in 

the exhibition include Timothy Akis, Mathias 

Kauage, David Lasisi, John Man and Martin 

Morububuna. nga.gov.au/Imagining 

Noosa Regional Gallery, Noosa Qld, 

9 November – 5 December 2007 

Colin McCahon 

A focus exhibition showcasing the Gallery’s 

holdings of one of the Australasian region’s most 

renowned and respected artists – Colin McCahon 

(1919–1987). The exhibition includes paintings and 

works on paper spanning the period from the 1950s 

to early 1980s. It is significant that the exhibition’s 

tour of Australia and New Zealand coincides with the 

30th anniversary of the New Zealand government 

gifting to Australia in 1978 the iconic work Victory 

over death 2 1970. nga.gov.au/McCahon 

Dell Gallery@QCA, Brisbane Qld, 

19 September – 28 October 2007 

Grace Crowley Abstract painting 

1947 (detail) oil on cardboard 


Canberra 

Russell Drysdale Emus in a 

landscape 1950 (detail) 

oil on canvas 



Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha 

9th–10th century (detail) from 

Red case: myths and rituals 


Canberra 

Karl Lawrence Millard 

Lizard grinder 2000 

(detail) brass, bronze, copper, 

sterling silver, money metal, 

Peugeot mechanism, stainless 

steel screws National Gallery of 

Australia, Canberra 

travelling exhibitions spring 2007 

Grace Crowley: being modern 

One of the leading figures in the development of 

modernism in Australia, Grace Crowley’s life and art 

intersected with some of the major movements of 20th 

century art. This will be the first exhibition of Grace 

Crowley’s work since 1975 and will include important 

works from public and private collections. Spanning the 

1920s through to the 1960s, the exhibition will trace her 

remarkable artistic journey from painter of atmospheric 

Australian landscapes to her extraordinary late abstracts. 

nga.gov.au/Crowley 

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide SA, 

27 July – 28 October 2007 


1850–1950 

The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th 

Anniversary Travelling Exhibition 





Proudly sponsored by R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter and 

the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund 

To mark the Gallery’s 25th anniversary, this exhibition 

of treasured works from the National Collection has 

been curated by Director Ron Radford for a national 

tour. Every Australian state and territory is represented 

through the works of iconic artists such as Clarice 

Beckett, Arthur Boyd, Grace Cossington Smith, Russell 

Drysdale, Hans Heysen, Max Meldrum, Sidney Nolan, 

Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Eugene von Guérard. 

nga.gov.au/OceantoOutback 

Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth NSW, 

3 August – 22 September 2007 

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart Tas., 

5 October – 25 November 2007 

The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling 

Exhibitions 

Three suitcases of works of art: Red case: myths and 

rituals includes works that reflect the spiritual beliefs 

of different cultures; Yellow case: form, space, design 

reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue 

case: technology. These suitcases thematically present 

a selection of art and design objects that may be 

borrowed free-of-charge for the enjoyment of children 

and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres. 

For further details and bookings telephone 

02 6240 6432 or email Travex@nga.gov.au. 

nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn 

Red case: myths and rituals and Yellow case: form, 

space and design 

Caloundra Regional Art Gallery, Caloundra Qld, 

16 July – 21 September 2007 

Blue case: technology 

Manning Regional Art Gallery, Taree NSW, 


The 1888 Melbourne Cup 

Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor NSW, 


Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change. 

Please contact the gallery or venue before 

your visit. For more information please phone 

+61 2 6240 6556 or email travex@nga.gov.au 

The National Gallery of Australia Travelling 

Exhibitions Program is generously 

supported by Australian airExpress.

a new star 

is born 

Vibrant. Dynamic. Inspiring. Unique. It’s what 

made the National Gallery of Australia one 

of the world’s great art institutions and it’s 

why we’re shaping a new direction with the 

National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery. 

Create a new direction for yourself and enjoy 

the new star of the Sculpture Gallery. 

NAB is proud to partner with the National 

Gallery of Australia to bring you the National 

Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery. 

©2007 National Australia Bank Limited ABN 12 004 044 937 30874 �7/07� 

Max Ernst, Habakuk, 1934-1970, bronze. Purchased with the assistance of National Australia Bank 

2007 Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. ©Max Ernst. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007. 

03Art on view ad.indd 1 28/6/07 10:51:49 AM 

The art of relaxation 

at SAVILLE. 

With Saville Park Suites Canberra’s convenient location in the heart of the city, the 

National Gallery, shopping and many of Canberra’s attractions are all just a short 

stroll away. 

View one of the many exhibitions on display at the National Gallery and enjoy 

apartment facilities or relax and be pampered by traditional hotel services at Saville. 

Gallery Packages start from $189 * per night 

Includes overnight accomodation and breakfast for two. Special car parking rate 

of $5.00 per day and 25% discount off food when dining in Zipp Restaurant in 

conjunction with this package. 

*Subject to availability and conditions apply. Valid to 14 September 2007. 

For more information or to make a booking call 1800 630 588 or visit 

savillehotelgroup.com 

extraordinary every day

Proud Supporter of the 


To purchase O’Leary Walker wines visit 

www.discountwines.com/nga.htm 

Proudly supporting the 


To purchase Yalumba wines visit 

www.discountwines.com/nga.htm

Open Garden 

& 

Gallery 

Southern Highlands 

An exciting collection by: 

John Kirton 

Margie Mullins 

Nadine Harvey 

Libby Hobbs 

Margaret Shepherd 

Jenny Stewart 

Cindy Pryma 

Jean Griffin 

Patrice Cooke 

Melinda Haylock 

Martial Cosyn 

Vanessa Forbes 

The Burrows 

Tugalong Road 

Canyonleigh NSW 2577 

Take the Illwarra Hwy exit from 

the Hume Highway and follow the 

signs to Canyonleigh. 

Entry to garden $5.00 - supporting 

NSW Rural Fire Service. 

28th October - 4th November, 2007 

10am - 4pm 

Blue Pond by John Kirton 

This exquisite ten acre garden, often likened 

to the garden of French impressionist Claude 

Monet in Giverny, France and which HighLife 

Magazine described as a “Highlands’ Garden 

Oasis with a Touch of Monet”, will be open 

to the public for the first time this year. 

The Burrows is a roaming garden transformed 

from bare paddocks at Canyonleigh. Situated 

on the south-western edge of the Southern 

Highlands, half way between Sydney and 

Canberra, The Burrows has been part of the 

Australian Open Garden scheme and has 

been featured in a number of magazines. 

Also open will be The Kirton Gallery, a private 

art gallery housed in a restored hay shed 

adjacent to the garden.

THE LEADING AUSTRALIAN OWNED ART AUCTIONEERS AND VALUERS 

Final Entries Invited 

Major Fine Art Auction 

SYDNEY 5+6 December 2007 

Entries close 24 October 2007 

For confi dential appraisals by our art specialists, please contact: 

Melbourne 03 9822 1911 Sydney 02 8344 5404 


www.deutschermenzies.com 

www.lawsonmenzies.com.au 

Robert Klippel NO. 251 1985-86 1970, 

87.0 cm height.

C•A•N•B•E•R•R•A 

BARTON 

celebrating 25 years 

LAMBERT, George 

The red shawl 

(Olave Cunninghame Graham) 1913 

oil on canvas 

96.70 (H) x 76.00 (W) cm 

Gallery of New South Art Wales, 

Sydney, purchased in 1934 

Sydney photograph: Jenni Carter 

National Gallery of 

Australia Package 

$ 175.00 

per night. 

Based on Twin share/double and includes full buffet breakfast for 2 people, 

admission to the National Gallery including George Lambert Exhibition and entry 

for 2 at Old Parliament House. 

$30.00 extra person per night. Valid until 16th September 2007. 

The Brassey of Canberra 

Belmore Gardens and Macquarie Street, 

Barton ACT 2600 

Telephone: 02 6273 3766 

Facsimile: 02 6273 2791 

Toll Free Telephone: 1800 659 191 

Email: info@brassey.net.au 

http: //www.brassey.net.au 

Canberran Owned and Operated 

The Brassey of Canberra Celebrating our 80th birthday 


INDIGENOUS HERITAGE 

MANY STORIES, MANY FORMS 

The deep wealth of Indigenous art, music and dance enriches all Australians. BHP Billiton 

values our Indigenous heritage, traditional and contemporary. 

Through our offi ces and operations across Australia, many of which are located within rural 

and remote areas, we have long-standing relationships with Indigenous communities. 

We have a long history of supporting Indigenous cross-cultural programs in Australia and 

we continue to look for ways that we can help contribute to the communities in which we 

operate or have a presence, so that we can leave a lasting, positive legacy within our 

communities. BHP Billiton are immensely proud to be associated with the National 

Gallery of Australia and their landmark event, the inaugural National Indigenous Art 

Triennial, CULTURE WARRIORS. 

May the Indigenous stories in all their forms be seen and heard forever. 

bhpbilliton.com 

Richard BELL (1953) 

Kamilaroi/Kooma/Jiman/Gurang Gurang peoples 

Australian Art It’s an Aboriginal thing, 2006 (detail) 

synthetic polymer paint on canvas 

Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria 

Courtesy the artist and Bellas Milani Gallery

�� 


National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 

nga.gov.au/Rauschenberg 

This exhibition is supported by the 

Embassy of the United States of America 

Robert Rauschenberg Publicon – Station I from the Publicons series enamel on wood, collaged laminated silk and cotton, gold leafed paddle, light bulb, perspex, enamel on polished aluminium 

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1979 © Robert Rauschenberg Licensed by VAGA and VISCOPY, Australia, 2007 The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency

Richard Bell Australian art it’s an Aboriginal thing 2006 synthetic polymer paint on canvas Acquired 2006 TarraWarra Museum of Art collection courtesy the artist and Bellas Milani Gallery 

�� 

13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008 

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 

A National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency nga.gov.au/NIAT07

Art Ew - National Gallery of Australia

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