Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. ,h t .111.1111 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiii 110M1111 iiiiiiiiiiii 11111ffil iiiiiiiiii iiiii 1111.11.1111111 iiiiii Art on the streets THERE really ore, I'm told, people who think they have to pay to enter an art gallery. Or that they will be bullied in the manner of a tough little dress shop into buying something before they are allowed to escape. If a gallery can really frighten, then I suppose these same people are the ones who might benefit by exposure to paintings and sculptures in the safety of Hyde Park, or the Savings Bank in Martin Place. In the bank they will see an exhibition with _ little that's misleading, g for the Blake Prize 1 competition seems the s most respected exhibi- E Hon in Australia-more good artists send to it fi than to any other. But in the open-air ' of Hyde Park, the Mir- ror-Waratah exhibition gives space to several hundred pictures and sculptures, most of which of course are ' amateur rubbish. It scarcely helps the frightened ones to come g to terms with art when - so little of the real ithing is there amongst s the worthy incompet- 1 ence, or the sheer a squalid -mindedness. 2 This year the free- for-all had only a few minor prizes (they g might well be reduced in value even further), while a whopping £1000 ,. was available for one of ' 23 artists present strict- ly by invitation only. Their work is clearly separated from the rest, their three pictures each are This, and the I1000, em- phasizes where the art is. Some beginner might start to think, to worry things over, for the first time. Of course the open section is still there for discovering naive s: Jean Johnson looks like one at first but isn't; A. B. K. Watkins is technically, though not in his art -world subject matter; the waratahs and wattle -blossom by Mrs. Clifton has the complete obsessive con- viction of the real primitives. The open section is also for noting good students, namely A. Zakarauskas, J. T. Makin, I. Udris. Promising painters The Invitation section looked as if promroci new painters, or but unjustly neglected I mature painters, were chosen for invitation - that is Col Jordon and John Firth -Smith on one hand; Bob Dicker- son, Guy Grey-Smith anti Nancy Borlasa on the other, with Connor, Milgate, Robert Grieve, Fulibrook, Bitching, etc. in between. (Catalogued but not exhibited was Gary Shead a promis- ing new painter. Has he been doing nudes again? Has he been sensored by the Hyde Park Rangers, when the small town ladies at Herrima took their I nudes without fuss?) The big prize was Sidney Ball's. He works in Adelaide, whence he returned from New York a few months ago, with a style rather dif- ferent from anything we've seen In Australia. a Half-way between Op end Hard -Edge, It's cer- tainly not short on j craftsmanship; n e n t evenly smooth surfacestran, - salons. AS for content, I its intention is to say Isomething about what it's like to live today in the Space Age. I think Ihe succeeds. Each 'As- tute is a square con- taining a circle which operates as a window into deep space-if not down a gunsight, then the view from a satel- lite where disturbingly near-symmetrical bands suggest infinite exten- sion beyond the field of vision and subtle inse- curity, after the stable reference point of the circular enclosure (or viewer's platform). The Blake Prize looks good this year, the quality is even, it's very well hung; and maybe it isn't quite as good us it looks. (assemblagegrom a good of pop -religious building blocks by Reinhard to familiar trecento Sien- ese Christianity by Jus- tin O'Brien. The week i4 A tit ov Daniel Thomas I would have given the prize to Roger Kemp, who, to me, appears genuinely religious, has lost his terrible rigidity, but kept his forceful muscularity. His pic- tures would make splen- did church decoration. yet the inconography ("The Ascension') is traditional, and also the style (Gothic stained glass). The winning picture by Asher Bilu Is a carefully -textured illu- sion of a great flame (of a paint-splash) and this may be too personal an image for church use. In any case it seems an inappropriately labor- ious technique for an image of spontaneity and release. I dislike it. And since one cannot judge well what one dis- likes, I bow to the jury, which included Elwyn Lynn and Earle Backen, both experienced, from their own work, In this kind of painting. ELWYN LYNN Elwyn Lynn (Chine) is a skin -painter. He is classified as a textural - 1st but he differs from, What's Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Special exhibition "Cen- tre 5," five Melbourne Sculptors. Commonwealth Sav- ings Bank, Martin Place: Blake Prize 1966 (closes Wednesday). Chine: Elwyn Lynn, paintings. Darlinghtust: Mar- garet 011ey, paintings and drawings Drawings by Daryl Lindsay, P. Beck, F, McNamara, R. Stewart. Santini Art Centre: New Guinea, Timor and Eskimo Art. New sup- plies. Hungry Horse: Erwin Fabian, sculptures and monotypes. David Jones: Furni- ture, glass, pictures, etc. Frances Jones: Joan Martin. Stables, Pymbl e, Georgina Worth. Von Hertouch, New- castle: Guy Warren, oils and watercolors. Crane, Wollongong: Hans Schuster, paint- ings. ...assmenuasessmsttoutts.......ast I think, all others in Australia by using his textures not to prettily a picture of something else, but as the whole expressive content. At its best, it's really very sensuous indeed in due course we can expect sensuality, and perhaps even eroticism, though it might turn out per- verse. For besides taut skin and soft skin, sleek or scratchy, wrinkled from cold, or flaking from heat, there is skin that is rotting and gangrenous; or skin whose layers are being s. stared at as they are prised apart, wavy s layer after wavy layer; or skin that has become polished saddlery (Western, perhaps the best) with punctures and scars and sutures. Although animal skins, or geological skins are more implied than human skins, the geo- logical ones are less successful. The earth's surface is a skin, float- ing on liquids, like curdled cream floating ; on milk. Some of the earthy ones are all right, but sometimes there is a temptation to let something repre- sentational appear, ob- ject-like, in space-for example, "Tableland"- and Ms seems quite at variance with the pas- sionate concentration on surface. Nor do long incisions always main- tain their linear vitality for this most opposite of a gestural painter; 3 far more alive are the a niggling little jabs tha' accent a surface, in- stead of competing with it. Color is almost com- pletely avoided-Ws ir- relevant and destructive to texture-though it's used in a minimal, ghostly way, to indicate qualities of light and temperature. Lynn is one of those relatively uncom m o n painters who aren't so airborne when young, but who slowly matures in middle age (he Is 47). It was only last year, in the Rubinstein Scholarship, that he appeared as a really important painter. The current one-man show has pictures as success- ful, and some that are less so. There are also some collages at 40 guineas (the "striped" one to be noted). The pictures: 50 to 500 guineas. on in art Canberra Gallery A: Charles Red dington. paintings, OPENING MONDAY Gallery A: Paul Far- tos, paintings. OPENING TUESDAY Dominion: 10 x 14 inches exhibition. Canberra Macquarie: Desmond Digby "The Australian Matron." OPENING WEDNESDAY Macquarie: Guy War- ren, paintings. Komon: Eric Smith. Stern: Mixed show. Walters: Mixed show. Farmers: Contempor- ary Art Society Inter- state Exhibition and Taffs Prize. Education D e par l- ment: Society of Artists, Annual Exhibition, OPENING FRIDAY Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Special Exhibition: Ab- stract Watercolors by 14 Americans (from Mus- eum of Modern Art, New York.)