Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

What's on in art Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Special Exhibitions: Re- cent Australia Sculp- ture; Sculptors' Draw- ings. Hungry Horse: Primi- tive Pacific Art. Gallery A: Oceanic Sculpture Clone John Olsen paintin; drawings and tapestir. Dominion: M I c haN Emit, paintings. Little (;allery: Eliza- beth Durack paintings and drawings. Darlin Aural ( today only. ft en at 186 Pal. mer fl)."11111.STAlit Grafted, LW. OP; Willoughby Laurence Ware. sculpture. Von Bertouch, New- castle: Mary Beeston. paintings. Crana, W o I iongong: Robert Grieve, paintings. OPENING TUESDAY DarlIngharst: Donald Friend, paintings. OPENING DAY WEDNES- Farmers: CAS Young Contemporaries Mena Danlla Vassii- leff, paintings; Ross Manwaring. sculpture. Wallet: John Pearl Robert Yilliams Ja "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W 91tPR High standard of sculpture BETTER Australian pointing and better Australian sculp- ture than we've seen in Sydney for a couple of years is visible in Sydney for the next month. It's the sort you wouldn't be ashamod to show to strangers --- say, at the Venice Biennial or the Carnegie or Guggenheim Inter- nationals. I refer to !Clip- pers three pieces in the big sculpture survey at the Art Gallery of N.S.W. and to Olsen's one- man show of new paintings and a tapestry at Clune's. There's nothing like the company of lesser work to show up the merits of the real thing, and one doesn't mind that this first -ever sur- vey of Australian sculp- ture includes some rub- bish. We need to know the whole scene. (It's not absolutely complete though: Don- ald Friend's sculptures were too fragile to tra- vel, Donald Brook wasn't known when Its tour began last year Joe Mason and Kath- leen William would have fitted in, and some older sculptors - perhaps no longer productive - are absent, e.g. Daphne Mayo, Wentcher George Allen. Stanley mmon d. Victor Gr enhalgh. And four spezialists in architec- tural work had no re- cent exhibition pieces and are given photo. murals Instead: Dads well, Lewers, Bass ant' Hinder.) COMPLETE RANGE All the same the lav- ishly Illustrated cata- logue, with 24 sculptors from Aarons to Maras does cover the whole range. The range In quality is considerable: Klippei seems of world stan- dard, Kane very good Redpath, Walker, Bal- dessin and Meadmore are good. perhaps Jo - mantas and !Anton Parr likewise, and so on down to Ruth Adams who is no good at all The range In style Is complete, from aca- demic realism to total abstraction, from closed soildities to open line. work In space. But the majority Is abstract, as Is only to be expected' and the majority is in- clined to he solid. sol- emn, black and would- be monumental. Indeed the show is more uniform than one would wish. Nearly everyone works In metal -bronze or steel - or in cements pretend- ing to be bronze, like Baldessln. Besides Kane only Last and Jomanta, carve In wood Nobody offers stone. Nobody tries new materials like plastic. Nobody tries color. or even white- ness. All this metal wea ethmenrproof) and the soi- 1 or M tgneh itielipatpaMptsransYstiad, not from inner neces- sity but from aware- ness of a possible mar- ket; samples for archi- tectural commissions In fact. Some specific obser- vations: Norma Red - path's rocky evocations of timelessness, or rather of slow geological time, have the glamor of fine craftsmanship, of best Milanese bronze - casting, but seem to have grown too big, ar- bitrary i i scale ither than inevitable. In the small group of figurative sculptors The week in 1- 11 t By Oaniei Thomas Hohaus is a delightful and sensitive academic with the smallest ex- hibit, an eight - inch kneeling woman; Sal- dessin, a young man recently back from his Italian studies, has a promisingly bulbous dancer. ugly -smart, Among the abstract* Julius Kane is another artist previously un- known In Sydney, anu on the evidence of the unfinished wood-carv- ing of visceral, foetal forms suspended In the trunk, his recent death is a ,erious loss. This piece, and the Henry Moore in the Gallery's permanent col- lection, and the exhib- ition 0 sculptors' draw- ings in the next room all make the point that the surrealist wing of 20th -century art has had more lasting vitality than the academic Greek -Roman - Italian tradition. And Kllppei's early surrealist phase has left a permanent trace of mystery and ambiguity in his Junk construe. Hons. However abstrac- tedly he may think of them they do acquire an Inner presence, they do become things, perhaps organisms. certainly bursting with potential movement and thus charged with life. They are elegant springy, graceful; they marvellously activate the space they inhabit One six - footer flails sparely through all dir- ections, another bights concentrated one ex- plodes In all directions. and third is a standing monumentalitt relief to you t thp necessitIzIfor tillIjewpfih ticallitUre Is 11. , OLSEN Although the scuip- ture exhibition is im-1 mensely interesting! Olsen's rllows a total surrender to a state of Joy. Thl' Is because his rare ski is - a sense of color ua ique in Austra- lian art, i way of keep- ing the longest lines miraculously a li r e, sometimes the control of very rich and com- plex spaces and shapes - are all put to the service of a very Minnie subject matter. His work is all about Use simple pleasures of everyday life; his life,. here, now, in Sydney.. We can respond effort- j lessly to his hills and valleys, winding streets and waterfronts, to his summer sunshine, his beaches, swimming, pic- nicking gardening, talk- ing, eating and lovemak- ing and children's games. It is tile same dream of domestic bour- geois bliss that makes the French Imp: es- sionista so accessible. His sunshinels less a matter for romance than theirs however, and its dependsnility seems to require Hie ad- dition of a very few re- minders of life's dark - news and dangers; snapping dog. sharks, or in the wonderful bleached gold ceiling - Painting "Le Soleil," menacing deep blue band of advancing night. Olsen. at 37. Is fully formed as an artist. His work is not very differ- ent from the last exhi- bitions and is not likely to become so. We may expect it to get better, but not to change greatly. When a talent Is settled (though air- i borne) It Is easy to see 1 why he wants to spread it wide, beyond easel paintings, to ceilings (he has now done seven: let's hope the Opera House will sup- ply another some day), to magazine illustration (some brilliant lettering in Vogue Australia last year), to ceramic tiles of which there is vague' talk, and to the tps. miry In this exhibition. From an edition of six being woven in Portu- ml this must be the most sumptuous object ever made by Austra- lian art, though inevit- ably It is mechanical by comparison with the paintings With the two Mt. painted ceilings instal- led above, the three large paintings, eight smaller ones and some elegant and vivid little crayon drawings, the Clime Gallery for once Is transformed into a brilliant rogoco pfsrlion, ah'