Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

Leonard Shillam with his sculpture Threshold c.1966 Kathleen Shillam , Little creature c.1957 geometry of the natural and built structures and, indeed, his choice of the then-ungentrified suburb of Spring Hill as his subject matter, Brown’s painting was immediately discerned as revolutionary. For instance, in reviewing Brown’s 1945 exhibition at the Canberra Hotel, the critic for Brisbane’s Telegraph noted that ‘the south is more accustomed to the type of painting which Mr Brown now essays, but even in the south, it is doubtful if it has been displayed en masse in the manner of the present collection’. 17 Brown’s approach would find context when the ‘Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art’ travelled to Brisbane in August 1945. 18 During this period, WG Grant was similarly experimenting with colour in his expressively painted watercolours of ‘Bimbimbie’, the home he shared with his wife, artist Gwendolyn Grant, at Nundah on Brisbane’s northside; and on family holidays to Coolum. WG Grant’s artworks were accommodated by critics opposed to more overt expressions of Modernism, while younger artists, such as Joy Roggenkamp, were alive to what Dr Gertrude Langer would later acknowledge as Grant’s ‘large and bold brushwork’ and disregard for ‘the natural colour of objects’. 19 Sculptors Kathleen and Leonard Shillam progressed contemporary styles in their respective and collaborative practices after they established themselves at Brighton, on Brisbane’s bayside, building a series of studio spaces and subsidising their income with proceeds from their poultry farm. 20 The work they would show in their first joint exhibition at John Cooper’s Moreton Galleries in 1949 revealed the influence of British modernist Henry Moore, whose sculptures Leonard had encountered during his studies in England in the late 1930s, and which Kathleen knew from reproductions in the QAL and had seen in Melbourne in 1948. 21 Through their own work, their enthusiastic support of younger artists, and the support they in turn received from gallerists Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, who would become their dealers in 1952, the Shillams became Queensland’s most prominent sculptors.