Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" 15 uLts 1968 Sydney, N.S.W. There's character in Sydney's galleries EACH art gallery will usually have a distinct character of its own. On the other hand, an art museum will usually have too wide a range of exhibits to create this personal atmosphere. When a dealer puts on a "house show"-that a mixed exhibition by artists of the gallery. -The works can be as intimate- ly related to each other as a private collection in a private house. Often the lesser artists that a dealer takes up will reveal more of his personal tastes that the big names that might originally have been launched elsewhere. Thus, in the current an- niversary show at Rudy Komona. it is not Fair- weather. Williams, Olsen, Robertson - Swann that should indicate his pre- dilections ao much as Shepherdson, Senb e r g 8, and the better-known Sib- ley, Kemp and Molrig. It looks as if Mr. Komon has a penchant for moody expressionism, emotional- ism, torment, darkness and drama. It Is a dif ferent taste from any other dealer's, and vire fa difference. The Watters Gallery shares something of this taste, though perhaps Mr. Watters likes extremes of any kind, either clean and neat or rough and dirty. Currntly at Watters Is one of their tormented shows. Fusionism "Fusionism is N 0 T surrealism," says Robert Willis-ns in the exhibition catalogue. It is "the com- pounding of the articulate pictorial vocabulary of all 'isms' into a NEW EN- TITY." Well, his paintings and combine - paintings with added plastic figures and metal machine oddments, are not too different from surrealism. And every artist fuses much, if not all, past art into a new entity, which is his per- sonal style. Not every artist feels the need to name or label has style, to ariculate it, but Williams does, and I'm told he's a good teacher. It's certainly clear what he's doing and It's interesting. lie sees nature, and life, as a destr the mechanism. For example, ter's main effect is to *ode. The organic and - the mechanical become most intimately related. Dentist's chair and vic- tim are fused. Monkeys are connected to electrical wires for experimental purposes: so are humans for the pleasures of mak- ing electric rock music. Tubes are inserted in us, skeleton levers work on us. Machines stare at us with bloodshot eyes. For this exhibition of lyrical violence the walls of the Watters Gallery have been painted black. Fastidious The special character of the Central Street Gal- lery is due more to a A WITH DANIEL THOMAS group than to any in- dividual. In 1066 several young color - field/hard - edge painters felt the ne..d of a suitable gallery. It was partly a matter of needing a well-proportioned and well -detailed architectural setting for their work. Now they have taken over the ground floor of their converted warehouse (the upstairs. is to con- tinue as a stock gallery). It is quite an architec- tural triumph. The emor- ousiy high room is not rec- tangular, but weds e - shaped. This means that after the narrow entrance, space keeps on expanding away from you. It is odd and exhilarating, like walking along a trumpet -blast. Except for a maverick Dick Watkins, the exhibits are as immaculate as the setting. Huge paintings glow on the walls. One huge steel sculpture by Noel Dunn - heavy black at its last appear- ance - is now freshly painted green and floats on the beige floor. David Jones is the gal- lery which has most in common with Central Street. Mr. Maine's pres- entation is equally fasti- dious and perfectionist. His exhibits are equally immaculate. His penchant, however, is not for the disembodied or the floating, but for the tangible. Nobody finds object., that so demand to be touched -polished oak, gleaming stone or stoneware. pati- nated bronze, Nobody finds objects with such a sense of bulk, firmness an d weight. Toe many of his Asian sculptures, by the way, are disappearing to Am- erica, Happy Gallery A's Mr. Hutchin- son tends to like happy art, which perhaps draws more closely on everyday physical and visual ex- perience than the ab- straction at Central Street. A bit of Pop Art is sometimes to be found. Janet Dawson and Mich- ael Johnson are typical, and Firth - Smith with his surf and sunshine. It's probably no acci- dent that Mr. Hutchinson is assisted by seductive. soft -voiced girls from Italy and France. Currently Lynette Ton- gue, in the second of three one -week debuts by young artists, paints ab- stract knobs and hollows -not rounded like Janet Dawson's, but angular and crystalline, and retaining some link with effects of climate and weather. The Macquarie is an- other gallery that usually show's happy pictures. Thetath, since its run by three partners, and acts more as an agent for art- ists than as a picture - dealing business, It's not so easy to account for its character, Maybe Rupert Bunny aWl presides. He is pres- ent in the current show. with Grey -Smith, De Teliga, Sall Herman, John Olsen, Thea Proctor and many others. Museum The Bonython Gallery puts on so many exhibl- tMns-up to five at a time -that one can't easily discern its personal iden- tity. One visits it rather In the way one might visit a municipal art museum with a very active exhibi- tion program and not much permanent collec- tion. Its interiors, too, are on a museum scale, not the smaller private house scale that galleries usually have. Currently it mixes glassy -modern (the Co- malco sculptures) with quiet craftsmanship (Syd- ney Printmakers) and with British comical illustration. like Rowlandson or S. T. Gill, converted tn to romplsh West African sculptures (Paul Beadle). These little crowd scenes In bronze are well -endowed with small genitalia. Mr. Frank McDonald's Clune Gallery has a dis- tinct character, some- thing to do with tradi- tional symbols of the good life of civilisation. His pictures often look French, and sometimes they are, You see more still Wes (food as subject matter) here than elsewhere. John Olsen's vision of food, drink and togetherness Is his special liking in current local art, but on the whole he prefers good manners extreme ges- tures Lately he has moved In- to Australian colonial painting, which he re. searches with a museum's intensity. Perhaps it's civilised to possess a sense of one's own his- tory. Certainly most colo- nial painting has the com- forting effect of providing us with an ancestry, British for drawing, French br painting - except for the German style of Von Guerard, which was not influential in Austra- lia but makes the best contribution to the cur- rent "Colonial Eye" oath roan. Archibald This year there will be no big Archibald exhibi- tion at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Only the winning pictures will be shown from those en- tered for the Archibald, Wynne and S u 1 na a n prizes. y obeli Time Magazine has given the Newcastle City Art haiku one of the cover ,traits painted for them spobell in 1963. It la on view. ara