Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

TWO important the year's on (That is unless a con- temporary French show, sent to Australia at ab- surdly short notice, can be found winter prem- ises in Sydney.] First. opening 'Tues- day (April 15) at Bony- thon, are the Power In- stitute's purchases made in Italy in 1968. One of the artists represented, Enrico RAJ, will visit Sydney and will lecture on Friday. Second, opening the following week, on Wed- nesday, April 23, "Art of the Space Age," a Stuyvesant Foundation exhibition of kinetic, lumina' and Op art, in- cluding such splendid artists as Pol Bury and Nicholas Swatter. Be- cause of the demolition of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery Society has arranged to present this instead of Australia Square. In its second week there will be a "Space Age Sympos- ium," a series of three lectures on the exhibi- Uon. John Peart John Peart is show- ing small paintings, pas- tels, and pen and ink diaWings at Waiters. An exhibition of new large paintings will be seen In !Natters' new large pre- mises in a few months. The drawings are of a kind previously un- seen, the rest is fami- liar enough by now, and as good as the younger generation of Austra- This kind of painting will always, I suppose, be accused of being WIltIpapier or textiles. It you can't accept it as painting - and it's as purely painterly and visual as painting can be - I suggest you try experiencing it as if it were music. Certainly there are references to visual things like the shimmer of water and sunlight, and to organic processes like plant or mould-growth. But his all-over, repented blobs of color pulse away on the surface of the can- vas, with haloes and echoes of both real and induced color which o as perate gsonaee very rgm much musical sound. It Is painting whose mood is very sensitive and subtle, but whose strictly artistic qualities are toughness, relent- lessness, and a deter- mination to push to- wards extremes and to eliminate irrelevance. And who wants mode- ration when you can have extremes? Aged 30 and under At Farmers the Con- temporary Art Society's annual "Young Con- temporaries" e.dilbition for artists aged 30 and under, was Judged by Harry Seidler, who awarded the Sydney Morning Herald Prize to David McInnek Com- mendations went to Bridget Searle and Jen- nifer Marshall. Mr. Seidle has no response to color, but he loves a nice clean hSrd edge and a smooth events ir the next two weeks will be ly majc, foreign exhibitions. ART -w with Daniel Thomas surface, and those are what he has singled out. If he liked grubby entree, a dirty collage it, John Wilkinson is ust as good as the win- ner. If personal drama and a touch of mor- bidity, then Robert Williams or Alexander Trompf are probably as good as the winner. II color and painterliness, then Stephen Earle, John Pearl, and Roy Jackson. II flat color - ken, then David Hum- phries. If anti-architec- tural wall construc- tions, then Tim John- son. If Pop Art, Alan Oldfield. If shaped can- vases, Ian Minks, or even Christopher John- son, who has been using his brother Michael's paints. If sernicubist nudes then Michael Taylor tthe other, non - Sydney, Michael Tay- lor.) Evidently there's a healthy amount of ex- periment, there's even some measure of achiev- ed personal style - Earle, Peart, Robert Williams. There is not much variation in qual- ity between one kind of experimenter and an- other. I almost think the best picture there was a n o n experimental straightforward figure composition of some art students by an art student, Misor. Fraser. John Howley The premises at Stanley and Crown Streets. East Sydney, which Artarmon Gal- leries ran for a few years as a city branch called the Darlinghurat Galleries, have Just been rented for a fort- night by the Tolarno Gallery, Melbourne, and renamed Tolarno Syd- ney. They were used to show paintings and drawings by John How- ley, Red the artist's wife was in charge of the gallery. It's a way that ex- hibitions often used to be organised in the past and if the artist and his family can stand the strain it's a pleasant way; It's warmer, one remembers that art gets made by real live peo- ple, in stualos, when otherwise one some- times feels the dealer such political punch. makes it; and that gold frames, marble, and carpet have always been around. Often artists minding their own exhibitions have become sulky. They hate the visitors} for liking things for the wrong reasons; some- times they have become hysterical non-stop ex- plainers. Mrs. Howley I liked, she was agree- able, discreet. The paintings too were done in a way we've not seen much lately. Figurative ac- tion - painting. Euro- pean -style not An.eri- can, and of the mid - 1950s. Sometimes as brushy as De Kooning, always as saturated coloristically as the Cobra Group. The drawings were a bit like Grosz, and made political comment on the Arab-Israeli War (Howley has spent some time in Israel). Men are mechanisms or puppets, manipulated by others; sexual and military drives become inter- mingled. These are good old themes, and the drawings carry them The titles indicate that the paintings are about the same things, but in fact the paint- ings no longer carry much political punch. They have become too seductive for that, the paint too sensuous, the color too rich, the or- ganisation too decora- tive. There doesn't seem much need for them to, remain figurative for, unlike the drawings, the abstract qualities ' are what you notice most. Hawley is history. We should not forget that In 1956 he and Donald Laycock, both then in Melbourne, were appar- ently the most advanced abstract - expressionists in Australia. His influence w a s important on t h e "Direction I" group, which launched a kind of abstract revolution in Sydney that year. TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. t13 APR 1959 Major foreign exhibitions