Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

2. "TELEGRAPH" SjdneY, N.S.W. SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, MARCH 2a, 1965 51 merit -Around the World he new loo in Melbourne ON holiday I find during a one -day visit to Melbourne that it is firmly presenting a new image in its art. After all, it Is years since the Boyds and Blackman and Nolan Settled In London, though they are to be found In the dealers' stockrooms, especially recent Nolan drawings and sketches at the Aus- tralian Galleries. Now we are reminded that there was, all the time, an alternative tradition of Melbourne painting. It was as high-mind- ed and serious as the figurative mythmakers, and in this it still dif- fers from Sydney's sen- suality and hedonism. But like most Sydney 'painting it was ab- stract, or nearly so. Being a geometric ab- straction it in fact exactly parallels the submerged, alternative tradition in Sydney, the school of Hinder, Bat- son, Crowley and Firelle which maintained the values of classic ab- straction from 1939. through the romantic figuration of the for- ties and the romantic abstraction of the fif- ties. The Melbourne School is most easily thought of as the E, Piool of Len French, for huger Kemp, in spite of a large one- man show in Sydney, is scarcely known here. However the Survey exhibition at the Na- tional Gallery of Vic- toria is really the School of Roger Kemp. He has three younger aaso- elates: French, Len Crawford and George Johnson, and one very young one, Jan Senbergs (born 1939) who derives much more directly from French. Attractive exhibilien With six pictures by each of the artists it is a remarkably attractive exhibition, prop erly catalogued and illustrat- ed too, when previous such surveys at the National Gallery of Vic- toria went, infuriatingly, quite unrecorded. Yet it is still inade- quate. It tells you none of the things you really want to know. When did the artists make contact with each other? Just what did they gain from each other? (Per- haps they aren't in con- tact: the catalogue in- troduction says they "are not presented as being consciously a :noel," but the evidence of one's eyes requires that the absence of a school be proved, not its presence.) In particular, when and how was Kemp's style formed? None of the exhibited paintings are any older than 1960 so we can't know that Kemp's art was formed at least twenty-five years ago. Their aims can be guessed from their pic- ture titles. Kemp makes emblems of the struggle to bring order out of chaos, philosophy out of ignorance. This is the central theme, and with him it is presented very nakedly. The others embroider the theme. French, in the most sumptuous and imposing of the group's pictures prefers to memorialize the heroes who participated, not to record the struggle itself. Crawford describes the orderly harmony once it has been ach- ieved, as if in medieval music. Johnson exorcises the mysterious disorder of earth and seeds and germination by assimil- ating them to machine forms. And Senbergs' is also concerned with the machine but in its re- lation to human beings, not plants. the week in 1 10 ii- rt k. By Daniel Thomas Their symbolic ab- straction therefore is more mystic (Kemp has souls and crucifixes darting around in the void) and more socially conscious (Senbergs' worried about the mech- anisation of life) than Balson's In Sydney or Godfrey Miller's, whicti described the unified flux of nature, and ac- cepted it, in terms of the electronic and molecular structure common to it all. * * * ALSO in Melbourne, at Georges was one-man show of 36 small Leonard French stud,;.r, glowing like gems. At South Yam), Ed- werdlan poet cards con- verted to Pop Art by Rosemary Ryan. and given titles from Proust: confectionar as paint- ings but aware of ser- ious truths in Its themes. At 'Gallery A. Mel- bourne, an entirely de - What's llghtful survey of all known naive painters working in Australia except 13 A m Byrne (transport trouble), and Pro Hart (not wanted). Matilda Lister is the Granny of them all, with her helpful hints from Friend (and No- lan)? fifteen years ago. A discovery (from the Waratah Festival in Sydney) is Mr. Schlep, of Bathrust, with great botanical assemb often with waratahs, but, considering he's never sold a picture, quite vainglorious prices. Want to see again Mrs. Hessing and Mr. Homer we know, and Mr. Bastin, but Mr. Waiters and two farm- er's wives, Mrs. Chick and Mrs. Luders we don't, and want to see again for their very pure vision of Austra- lian landscape. The exhibition might be going to Sydney. NEW IN L - BOURNE. The Craft Centre, South Yarra, with a dependably high standard in pots. weav- ing and jewellery; com- parable with the high standard of Aladdin's in Sydney. NOT ON PUBLIC VIEW IN MELBOURNE. Fred Williams' new paintings, never better, weighty as Courbet. John Brack's first ex- hibition in years, of nasty things in shop windows, and the art- ist's reflection, staring at you. More use of shape, as well as his well-known wiry line fbr these knives and forceps and trusses and so on. The same cunning fluo- rescent color-combina- tions to light the pic- tures up. Very memor- able In their oddity. Virtually unknown in Sydney, but perhaps Brack's themes have been es Melbourne as Moonee Ponds, and as weakened as Barry Humphries' by exposure to a non -Melbourne audience. Why not get him to do a Sydney series? Also privately seen: the best young painter around for years, quite sinfully in love with art, but he will be name- less until he cheeses to exhibit. on in art Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Special exhibition, Ac- quisitions for 1964. Pottery by Shoji Hamada. Clune: Charles Black- man, paintings, draw- ings, collages. Gallery A: Colin Lanceley, assemblages. lithographs. Hungry Horse: John Coburn, paintings. Cor- inne van Hattum, jewel - /cry. Macquarie: Ke Yin Connor, paintings. Walters, Ann Thom- son, paintings and on: Preview of drDawominignsi. INS exhibitions. Horderns Mid - City: Archibald, Wynne and Sulman rejects. Little Gallery: April Crecy. Lentball, N. Sydney: Terry Williams. The Stables, Parra- matta: Five women painters. Fourment, N. Sydney: Mixed show. OPENING TUESDAY Darlinghurst: Sall Herman, New Guinea paintings. OPENING WEDNESDAY Stern: MLsed show.