Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. ART with Daniel Thomas MARTIN SHARP'S PAST MARTI'N SHARP'S was where the avant-garde gallery Sharp's last Sydney exhibition war in these very rooms. But one can't help remembering other pictures, other exhibitions. On this wall Olsen's "Spanish Encounter," on that an Upward "New Reality," here a Meadmore sculpture, there a Klippel. Elwyn Lynn, Firth -Smith and Van Wieringen were here. "Muffled Drums" beat their manifesto. A large painting by Peter Powditch, of an exhibition opening, where visitors peered up to Olsen's painted ceilings, has been borrowed by Sharp as a reference to these rooms and their past activities. They don't have exhi- bition openings like the old ones any more (the old days were always the best) but last week Sharp's was practically a love -in. A lot of faces that hadn't been visible lately in the art world came up from the underground down from the establishment, sideways from the sub- urbs. The exhibition takes over the whole building. So now you can penetrate the secrets of the former backrooms, the offices, the storerooms. Each room has been fi.shly painted, all - red, all-black, or red/ green; the stair rails are flesh -pink, with eyes. The exhibits, if recent, are often homages to Van Gogh. Martin Sharp thinks Van Gogh is a saint, the greatest turn -on man: "I have a terrible lucidity at moments, when nature is so glorious." There is a painting where Van Gogh meets Mickey Mouse, but there is also a room of small col- lages, where "Sharp's sil- ver scissors" have cut up exhibition is a nostalgia trip. It's at 59 Macleay Stree., which Clune Galleries opened in 1957 to become Sydney's principal for several years. The building is now due to be demolished. color reproluctions so that he can introduce artists to each other, by putting one artist's figure into anoth- er's landscape. These can be very witty and vey%ermoving. Munch's nuet billiard girl is in Van G odg 's den, Dobeil's Billy Boy among Van Gogh 's Cypresses, Albert Tucker meets Mag- ritte, Nolan (of course) joins Toni Roberts, a Raphael Christ floats tenderly in McCubbin s bushland. Also recent are large le acre of hearts andenprinte phalluses, imploring friendship, and here Sharp's message is most literally naked. He loves his friends, cherishes them, maintains the relationships with care. Not only people are friends but also his own old paint- , exhibited here, are f ends. They take us back to his schooldays, his first oil peAntintos on old pillows, preserved by his mother. It's like my favourite Jean Renoir statement "Everybody is indispen- sable' There's an irony, of which he's perfectly aware. His big message is per- sonal communication. And he doesn't mind putting it across with commercial "communications" media. His own drawing style once paid homage to Aus- tralian newspaper illustra- tors, to Phil May and Hop, and he himself has drawn for newspapers. He's pleased to join the poster revival. Indeed, what merit there was in the psyched- elic art of 1966-67, is prob- ably greatest in pos'ers like Sharp's Bob LPtan, included, with others, in this exhibition. It's an extraordinarily stimulating show, and not only fur those who have shared something of Sharp's pest. Its way of stressing the value of all - embracing memory, the value of the past, is a reminder that for the McLuhan generation avantgardism and reac- tion are equally Irrelevant. Past and present are all one, and inextricably inter- mingled. MACQUARIE - Laur- ence Hope has c o in e back after six years or so in foreign parts. It looks as if there were hard times in London, hessian instead of canvas, meagre paint. His subjects were of people confined to bed, but whether from ooldness or illness is not clear. And it looks as if back in Aus- tralia he has ample paint to cover large canvases, of Queensland tropicana. There is an authentic wistful poetry, somewhat morbid, in his Sicket- London pictures, which has evaporated from the large, exotic decorations. Mary Macqueen, an ex- cellent minor artist from Melbourne, has visited Sydney, made some lively Harbor watercolors, and yearningly tremulous animal lithographs at the Zoo. CLUNE - Geoffrey Proud's paintings on glass have faded from his former dramatic blues and reds to pale beige, the colors of yellowed paper and litho- graphic illustrations in Victorian storybooks. Violence and bestiality lurk in these at -first-sight decorous fairytales. ti\ OTT H Ian Chandler, a young Adelaide painter of science -notion abstraction; freely blomorphic images unhappily living in a pure geometric world; the draw - seem better than the paintin gs.