Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

L "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. SUNDAY TELIGRAPki, .QCTOBER 13, .1968 53 A TALE OF TWO CITIES GO to Newcastle this artists honored. Perhaps they a r e Brisbane's best artists, if one takes this to mean artists whose careers began in Bris- bane, even though they both left It for Sydney around the age of 20. (Maiv)g and Fairweather who now live in Brisbane began their careers else- where). 0 n e, John Peart, came to Sydney four years ago; the other, Lloyd Rees, came 50 years earlier, Lloyd Rees has been given a one-man show of 27 new paintings at the Von BertouchGallery. John Peart has won a $1000 prise donated by the Newcastle TV station NBN3 for a painting now on show at the City Art Gallery with selections from the 200 entered for the prize. The judge was Brian Finemore, substitut- ing for Eric Westbrook. (Pearl has also won the prize in the invitation sec- tion of the Mirror-Wara- tah exhibition In Sydney. Judges, Hal Missitigham, Laurie Thomas, James Mollison. The catalogue doesn't mention the prize money but I think it's substantial. This lucky week therefore means he should be able to take up his recent Qantas "Pace- setter" award lone of these increasingly numerous hut inadequate grants which give a fare but no money.) I would like to imagine that Brisbane had some- thing to do with their art - for I have family con- nections with it, and with the Outer Barcoo but I think it only shows that Brisbane is a good place to get out of when you're young. Perhaps it's a good rule to get out of any home- town at age 20. Most of the best young artists now seem to be dropouts from art school, escaped from Sydney for Europe at a much earlier age than they used to. Robertson - Swann, now at Rudy Komon's, may have com- pleted his sculpture course at tech for all I know, but he's typical of the new system, returning to Syd- ney With seven years in London behind him and still only 27. What Reea and Pearl do have in common, and it's fairly uncommon in Aus- tralia, is a deep need for the work of other artiste- the great ones-a need to see It discuss it, and ad- mire AC. It's a savage ob- session, they are compet- ing with Thitoretto, Tur- ner or Pollock, it is the beat that they want to beat, nothing less. A related quality is their uncommon broadness of Interest and openness of mind. Rees is Interested In the whole history of art, teaches it to architecture students; loves architec- ture as well as painting, the Gothic cathedrals as much as Sydney Opera House, which he knows to be of supreme but threatened beauty. He cares about the arts of urbanism and city -plan- ning, and in a Ruskinian way about social welfare. Pearl's voracious inves- tigations are different, and would not have been poss- ible in an earlier day. This year he acted in a splen- did surrealist film made by Julian Gibsone. Last year Week and you will find two Brisbane ART with Daniel Thomas he performed a kind of dance event in Sydney Town Hall with the entire Sydney Symphony Orches- tra, painting on a giant canvas in counterpoint with music by Nigel But- terly. He has painted on shaped canvases and box towers, has made hinged sculptures for the floor. Rees and Peart share a great sensitivity of touch, of sensuously handled paint. Rees's is soft and creamy, Pesrt's is delicately brusque and scrubby, his drawings ha v e been scratched finely as a tattoo. Both tend to produce all- over fields of pulsating color and tone whose opti- cal energies become em- blematic of universal atomic and microbiological energies. With Peart, as an ab- WHAT'S ON Art Gallery of New South Wales: Contem- porary Nordic Art, Can- adian prints and draw- ings, Print Council of Australia prize, Austra- lian and E.): sh water- colors (close today); European master draw- ings. Newcastle City Art Gallery: NBN Channel 3 art prize. Hyde Park: Mirror- Waratah art prizes (close today). Ma1quarie: Justin O'Brit (Wednesday). Farmers: Mixed show for new Gallery (Thurs- day). Central Street: Wendy Farmer. Walters: David Ran- kin. Stern: Mixed Show. Bonylhon: Carl Plate, Geoffrey Dance, Barry Brickell. Kenton: Ron Robert- son -Swann. Gallery PrimiUf: West Irian art. Artarmon: Harold Lane. Workshop Arts Centre: Student Potters. Berrima Gallery: Geoffrey Stocks. Stunt, =laconic', An- nual craft exhibition (2-5 today). Macquarie, Canberra: Michael Shannon. Sculpture Gallery, Canberra: Three sculp- tors. Von Bertouch, New - mine: Lloyd Rees. Tuesday Lecture: El- wyn Lynn, "Interne - tie; .1 exhibitions, Ven- ice and Kassel," Con- temporary Art Society, Adyar Hall, BlIgh Street. a p.m. Thursday Lectur e: Alexander Casubitoglou, ."The Francois Vase: Mythology and Greek Art," Carslaw Theatre No. 4. University of Sydney. 7.30 p.m. Gallery A: Michael Johnson (Thurs.). David Jones': Charles Blackman - Alice in Wonderland. street artist, there is little variation in quality. But with Rees, as a landscape painter, sonic subjects work better than others. His cliff -faces, like "Ls o of the Forest, Triamania", or "Southern Landscape, France", are usually better than his receding pano- ramas like "Derwent Estu- ary 2" or some of the "River at Richmond" series where space relations can become uncertain. In other succesful panoramas like "Northern Hills, Bathurst" or "A Memory of the South" a band of earth lies beneath a sky which is identical in color and handling, so that swelling movements pulse smoothly across the canvas instead of jerking back into it. Similarly a wall like "Cathedral 3" seems more successful than an interior punctuated by columns like "Cathedral 5". I am surprised that I have found so much in common between Rees rind Peart. Perhaps the quali- ties of unity, sensitivity, energy. sensuousness are simply qualities that all good art must have. NEWCASTLE Newcastle is a dump, de- pressing to look at and distressing to visit, with three-hour traffic jams on the highway where it crosses the Hawkesbury. There Is a noble row of flgtrees and some nice mangroves on the way to Hexham; in the city a fine Customs House, a hotel with unspoilt 1930s furni- ture, a splendid Post Office, a Cathedral with a Bume-Jones window, a few terrace houses, and nothing much else but poles and wires and smoke, A town of its size and wealth should have had a University and Art Gal- lery 100 years, not 10 (ab- sentee ownership of much of Newcastle's wealth must be the explanation). An active cultural life now begins to compensate for the stunted exterior envi- ronment, and the local television station's gift of a purchase prize to the City Art Gallery Is a most admirable example of civic pride. The NBN exhibition contains lots of good things besides the winner: Orban, Dawson, Rose, Lynn, Leach-Jones, Mich- ael Taylor, Coburn, Cas- sab and many others. There is a local section, the prize to Charles Pet- tinger. WARATAII FESTIVAL: Hyde Park's open air Mirror-Waratah art exhi- bition was depressing too. The setting is charming', but 015 "Traditional" paintings, 322 "Contempor- ary," and 103 sculptures (though perhaps not everything catalogued was on view), almost all by in-, competent amateurs, don't raise the spirits. Most are copied from magazine il- lustrations. No amusing halves are to be discovered this year like the one-time painter of 1000 waratahs, every petal perfect. The moat UllUsUal subject is a sad blonde nude seated aloe . at a kitchen table,ag bottle. Is arra beere nearly 1000 amateurs the gratification of public ex- hibition? Why not then maintain a year-round art market for them some- where, maybe Paddy's Market; ft would give them even more chance to show their work, and es - able the Wamtah Festival instead to make a wholly invitational, and cheerful exhibition for an audience that might otherwise never see non-magazine art,