Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. ART with Daniel Thomas SCULPTURE AT MILDURA EVERY three years the Mildura Arts Centre puts on a survey exhibition of Australian sculpture. It's the most important sculpture event in Australia, and last weekend I was there to advise on purchases from the exhibition for Mildura's permanent collection. And there was a genuine popular success, a "Wind Construction" by Tony Coleing. It was 40 feet high, which is enormous, bigger than a two -storey house. From a high, cylindrical base, blue-green pipes branch waywardly and ter- minate in red and yellow windmills. It is highly original, somehow right for a flat desert oasis like Mildura - you can associa windmills for pumping water, with fertility, orange blossom, ripe grapes. Citizens who said they had never liked modern sculpture before said they'd pay good money for this. The city council, it was thought, might be able to find part of the $8000, and spontaneous donations to start a public appeal for the rest appeared on open- ing day. It could easily become a much -loved emblem for the city. Previously, prizes were awarded. But competitive art prizes are pretty un- dignified affairs - estab- lished artists won't enter them - and the Mildurn exhibition is now by invitation only, with a promise of purchases up to $4006. Mildura director Thomas McCullough, Melbourne sculptor Lenten Parr and I decided on purchases of work by Ron Robertson - Swann, Ken Reinhard. Nigel Lennon, Michael Young, Noel Hutchison (not Hutchinson), and, with the odd $100 remain- ing, photo souvenirs of Chrlsto's Little Bay. Obviously you can't buy much with $4000. Any- thing in bronze is expen- sive: k a single Stephen Walker is And the big -name Americans who have worked In Australia recently charge inter- national prices: &ankle- wicz's pieces are $14,000 It's amazing how access- ible sculpture has become since artists abandoned bronze for steel, plastics, and ready made alumin- ium materials. The bright color of these new materials, the various inflation pieces and the walk-in environment pieces all gave this year's Mildura show a mood of gaiety, lightness and grace, very different from the solemn, sometimes tormented mood of the early 1960s' bronze age. ADELAIDE: Next week I will report on the art exhibitions at the Adelaide Festival. They seldom put on a survey of their own local art scene but I wish they would. Adelaide art is different. At Mildura it was notice- able that the most way-out pieces came from Adelaide. Are they reacting against a very conservative estab- lishment? Or does the ab- sence of a good number of good older artists (the absence of a local tradition in fact) liberate them further than Sydney can? Or is it simply the presence of one very stimulating artist -teacher, Bill Greg- ory? Anyway, Tony Bishop (who is just back from England) had wavy alu- minium bands reaching to the ceiling; Bill Clements (who had some years in Japan) is a mad potter - tufts of hair grow from his clay figures, or a painted figure hides in a sentry box on a cabriole-leg table; Aleksander Danko's "Anxiety Switch" is two tiny gold nipples on a pur- ple velvet .cushion; Bill Gregory's own piece, an empty aluminium frame - table low on the floor a sheet of glass leaning ire - striped it is diagonally with mirror so that you can mix what's behind the spectator with what's behind the glass, both on the same plane, Nigel Lendon scattered his steel units casually on the ground; Max Lyle had a rippled walk-in tent of aluminium wires, Anthony Millowick a black tower of terracotta intestines. NEW ZEALAND: Last time it was the New Zea- land contingent at Mil- dura which made Avstra- Ilan sculpture look back- ward. Now, three years later, we've caught up, mostly with the help of Adelaide's and Melbourne's young artists. One of the very best pieces was W. R. Allen's "New Zealand Environ- ment," a walk-in box of aromatic hessian on a steel frame, with three floor surfaces, wool plus barbed wire, wood chips plus barbed wire, and fib- rous tow, the last with sus- pended threads of nylon above (for rain?) and the other two with the green- est neon crosses lighting them. I think it was a brilliant political state- ment, about Imprisonment In a land confined to pri- mary production, wool, grass and timber. Paul Beadle's smal 1 bronzes were almost the only figurative works in the exhibition, and they carried the gaiety mood just up-to-date abstraction. Mildura is New Zealand's most important showcase in Australia and it's wel- come that the New Zea- land Victoria Insurance Group gives the largest donation to Mildura's pur- chase fund. MELBOURNE: The young Melbourne artists were nearly as way-out at Adelaide's, but less intel- lectual, more funky, Like Peter Davidson's rows of giant nostrils trapped in a venetian blind, Peter Cole's squares of rope, glass, and dying lawn, Or Clive Murray -White's spheres sinking into the ground. Or Kevin Mortensen's plaster clouds. Even Roger Butler's rough three-legged shed, the closest approach to architecture I've seen in sculpture and very impres- sive. POLICY: The adventur- ous pieces by younger art- ists are often of imperman- ent materials, or of awk- ward size, and therefore not very buyable for the permanent collection of a small gallery. In any case, one always buys more established work for a 'per- manent collection. Only Noel Hutchison's sculpture was by an unknown begin- ner. FILM: At the Gala cinema, Pitt Street, sup- porting Hamlet is an ex- cellent and relevant film on contemporary Australian sculpture. BONYTHON: At the Bonython Gallery don't miss the Comalco Sculpture award, five aluminium models for a sculpture in a Canberra square. Above all. don't miss the out- standing exhibition by young Adelaide painter Robert Boyne& Highly for- malised super-realism, so intense a look at minute arid momentary subleties in the wprld of hard, literal fact, that the ob- jects -a match, a tea cup - become astounding and glamorous. 9