Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

DETAIL fr,rn Heart of the Hunter, Charles Reddington, Gallery A. "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W The courage of Reddington CHARLES REDDINGTON'S new exhibition at Gallery A is startling, for us, and extremely brave on his part. He seems to have completely changed his style, Just when the old was beginning to be- come eamapoilypultar, faacne his work had been gradu- ally U l thegetting two yearsbogged since he moved to Syd- ney from Adelaide, and most of the pictures seen and liked In. the big miNed exhibitions were actually painted In South Australia. The exhibition cata- logue says the "current show reflects the change of environment from open spaces of the Coro- mandel Valley ton the outskirts of Adelaide) to the confines of the city of Sydney." I don't know whether that's Reddington or his gal- lery speaking. Certainly it was easy to relate the old style to the apricot -pink soil, Lite fertile orchard valleys among round, humped hills, and to the pearly light of Coro- mandel. And simultane- ously to the intimate Pleasures of the female nude. It is not easy to relate the forms in his new pictures to the archi- tectural scenery of Syd- ney, and "confines" must mean the inside of a house. For the only recognisable forms seem to be taken from fur- niture - chairs, cup- boards, odd bits of fret- work and turning, cab- riole legs and violins. The very fine "Strength and Sanity" is a sus- pended cluster of rich forms which somehow become an updated Sa- mmie trophy. I think these furni- ture pictures, and the previous flesh pictures can be seen as different aspects of an art con- cerned with domestic bliss, the privacies of home and family, where little things gain unex- pected intensity and meaning. Anyway, with work so serious, and import mt. yet diffi- cult bn.ause unfamiliar, one may perhaps at- tempt an interpreta- tion based on personal knowledge. And I have - -- found that Reddington en (amine, among wife, children, chairs, rugs and food and drink, Is the Reddington that comes most vividly to mind. The old pictures had surfaces of the most caressing sweetness, the new are impersonal and flat. The old were paint- erly, tonal, and soft edged; the new have clearly outlined edges, they are extremely clearly and precisely put together; and they have many colors, not close harmonies. Superficially they make one think of Janet Dawson, but he is not yet the colorist that she is (he is, for example, using green for the first time in public), while she muffles her structures by compari- son with his explicit- ness. The sweetness that's gone from the modelled surfaces is perhaps what he's put- ' tin, into the still re- latively unsuccessful color (sweetness, of a swingy, Jazz kind. is in my opinion an essential Reddington quality). Perhaps, too, the ob- viously art nouveau un- dulation is an attempt at intense sweetness of line instead of surface. And since there has been no style more in- tense or private than art nouveau of the 1890s, his use of the style may be another clue, besides the fur- niture motels, to the intimist, privacy of these pictures. It's easy to Judge which are the best. They are the ones where there is a rich spatial interplay; those where Instead of the humps and hollows once made by shading and modelling there is now a counterpoint by over. lapping shapes or Jux- The week in / k - rt By Daniel Thomas taposed colors. Many of his dead-pan sur- faces bulge in and outwards-like pods on tendrils-Just as much as his old painterliness did. It's worrying when farts stay flat, like the all in 'Strength In Sani' em..', disc-, In "Heart of the Hunter", though these are still two of the best, along with "Myself When I Am Real" and "Orating Tease". (I can't yet see that these titles are any help for understanding what it's about). Al- though we can demand more practice with the color, and with the edges - if you make a decision for neatness maculated be really im- - there are still some. pretty good pictures here. And the whole exhibition is a courageous bootstrap gaion, He's out of tine ORIGINAL PRINTS At Rudy Komon's are 50 original prints by Yugoslav artists work- ing in Belgrade. All are technically impeccable, most are rather sub- dued, most are modern, but sometimes old- fashioned modern - 1930's abstraction, Kan- dinsky, Klee, even Mur- ray Griffin linocuts. Or wnen Krsmanovic does a Tapies etching he timidly conceals figures in the texture. Others I liked were Tikvesa, Prodanovic, Martinovic, Makes, Krslc and Cvoro- etc. Sensible prices 12-45 guineas. At Terry ciune's the international prints are as smart and new- lashioned as you could wish. Australia has Nolan's Leda litho- graphs, and two of the new large Ned Kellys. Enrico Bars little Du - buffet men with medals are the soft friendly end of pop art (I think they're etchings, not lithographs, and that he's Italian not Spanish as the catalogue says,. Three Japanese really show where School of Paris stylishness has moved to (Again they're not lithographs; Ikeda's and Fukazawa's are metal prints with etch- ing, aquatint and dry - point etc.; Fukuns have always been a puzzle. I find a Tokyo Bienrale catalogue calls his prints stencils, so per- haps they're a kind of alikacreen). And Lich- tenstein, Rauschenberg and Warhul, completely anti -style, anti -charm give the hard end of pop art, or at lookleaat Lichtenstein s properly offensive - the other two begin to look quite ingratiating. recommend Lichten- stein's "Terror" a girl's head from a strip car- toon, with disturbing candiegrease tears stuck below her eyes; he's pointing out the surreal weirdness all around us in the mass media. However, these Ameri- can prints do Present a problem-not of art but of art market ethics. Some are exhibition posters, to which a pencil signature has been added; none have edition numbers except Lichtenstein's "Grecian Column" and even it comes in the huge edi- tion of 300 copies. "The Foot" is a half-tone reproduction; the others look like commercial lithographs or silk- screens, and one would like to . know whether the artist himself exe- cuted them, or whether some artisan carried them out from the artist's designs. If so, they are not original prints, te,t only signed reproduc What's on in Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Special exhibitions: Ian Fairweather (LAST DAY); Chinese cerani- les. Chine: International prints. Komon: Yugoslav prints. Dominion: Art in Architecture. Hungry Horse: Eight painters. Gallery A: Charles Reddington, paintings. Wafters: Sheila Mc- Donald. paintings. Macquarie: R 0 Y Fluke, paintings. Stern: Brian Dunlop, paintings; Anton Murre, stone carvings. Aladdins: Helen Mas- on, New Zealand potter. ' Commonwealth Sav- ings Bank, Marlin Place: Mouth and Foot Artists. Grace Bros., Chats - wood: Grace Art Prize. Lindfield Senior CM- art sena Centre: Northside artists, original prints. Mosman Town Hall: English medieval pots. Workshop Arts Centre, Willoughby: Adult Students, Von Bertouch, New- castle: Michael Hitch- ing. Crana, Wollongong: Oensyo group, Japanese calligraphy. Canberra Gallery. A: Senta Taft's Oceanic Sculpture. OPENING MONDAY Education Depart- ment Gallery: Water- color Institute. Annual exhibition. OPENING TUESDAY Darlinghunt: Paul Haefliger, paintings 1956. Little Gallery: Ruth Faerber, paintings and lithographs. OPENING WEDNES- DAY David Jones: Thal Khmer sculpture.