Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

CHRISTMAS FARE MIXED AS their final exhibitions of the season, before summer closing, galleries often pui on mixed shows from their own stables of artists. Sometimes there's a special effort to make the work low-priced so that it can join the Christmas present market. Gallery A's "5 cents and up wonder Xmas show" is partly an anti -Christmas show. There's a proper paint- ing or two, some pleas- ant toys (a soap - bubble machine), about 100 gaily painted fibre- glass gingerbread men, $8 each by Stephen Reed. There's a sun- burst by Janet Daw- son, of stretched drap- ery lengths left over from Nimrod Street"s Giggles, and some art - tablecloths by Lynette Tongue. There are de- licious jams and jellies in jars. But there are also nasty things In jars. A rhinoceros heart claim- ed by Peter Kennedy. By Nigel Lendon a sausage in aspic, quiet- sy breeding poison itunes; its jar is neat, and the lid carries the artist's neatly engraved signature; the super- clean can't really break their habits. A second South Aus- tralian air-freighted a small unwrapped schoolbag with some small bits of nostalgic rubbish inside. The best thing about the Lendon was the engraved signature, and Wallace-Crabbe's words were also more important than the ob- ject. He sent an in- struction sheet for the Gallery beginning "It's name in One of the Bags of Love". Donald Brook has produced some excel- lent words about the exhibition and they, too, are more import- ant than the exhibits, more ironic, funnier, more successfully sub- versive. Where will it end? Criticism has always been pact of a work of art, a small part, like a barnacle on a ship. Here it is the best part it has swallowed the art whole. Or, the ex- hibits are only the raw material (like paint, canvas, timber) wait- ing to be converted into art -words. There are other Christmas shows, all good of their kind, at Macquarie, Bonython, Komon, Holdsworth, Chine and David Jones. But, of course, one- man shows are always more important than any mixed exhibition. Dick Watkins at 38 Hargrave Street, Pad- dington (by appoint- ment only, telephone Chandler Coventry) shows 10 action paint- ings, black paint trail- ed on raw canvas. Once upon a time Watkins seemed to be progres- sing normally, from abstract - expression- ism to assemblage to hard-edge (he showed Australia's first hard- edge painting, in 1963). Ten he seemed to be working backwards, not only to Matiast and to the Russian construct- ivists that are close be- hind hard-edge any- way, but to Seurat and fauvism and may- be Duchainp. This year he revert- ed to action-painting, than which nothing could be more out- moded. Yet he still looked good. Perhaps, one wondered, it was his no doubt instinctive and beautiful color that held his career together? leo ("Rolla") Prim- rose shows "extended paintings" at Inhibo- dress, a new co-oper- ative gallery for young artists at 38 Charles Street, Woolloomooloo. There are canvas - wrapped stretchers, chopped up canvasses, plump envelopes of white foam, an arched net to walk under, a yards -long sausage of colored canvases twisted together and there are photographs. I think he's good with objects, has a sensuous feel for ma- terials, that he likes canvas and wood and string, as well as using ART with Daniel Thomas them for their refer- ence to rectangular paintings for walls. But almost all his pieces ask to be ar- ranged by the spec- tator, so his pleasure in handling materials and processing them is also something he wants to gl the spec- tator. This is a very worth- while gallery. It's open every day: weekdays from 5.30 each evening weekends from 10 am each morning. There will be a David Ahern concert at 7.30 pm next Saturday. The (lune Galleries' annual "Colonial Eye" exhibition is also a sort of Christmas present show, by the gallery's artists, But the topo- graphical lithographs and engravings cost more than the new prints elsewhere in town. Conrad Martens' most important litho- graph, Sydney from the North Shore, is here. Henry Burn, who Is Melbourne's answer to Conrad Martens as a colonial painter of ro- mantic landscape, and who has almost never been seen in Sydney, is represented with a typ- ically over -sweet 1850s painting. The best and liveliest piece is a watercolor by Augustus Earle, done on the Beagle, when it called at the Cape Verde Islands; Charles Darwin was the famous member of the expedition. The Bonython Gallery is half-filled with work from stock. Theres' also a one - man show of 15 pleasantly scrubby, high - keyed, semi - abstract bush land- scapes by Geoffrey Dance, not expensive. And a one-man show of pots by Alan Peascod whose work is strong, straightforward, good humored, and welcome for not being Japo- Australian. The 1970 Comaleo Invitation Award for sculpture in aluminium is at the Bonython too. John Davis won it; if I'd been judge I might have awarded it to Nigel Lendon. The other invited artists were Max Lyle, Ken Reinhard, Tony Coleing a n d Lenton Parr The last's was a pretty good cubist vignette, but as a "relief sculpture to be fixed to the solid wall end of a glazed foyer in a new adminis- tration building for a public authority" I think It would look like a clip -on brooch. London's would have both activated the wall and dematerialised it, which I'm sure would be virtues in the usual stodgy public authority buildings (only one exception; the New South Wales Govern- ment Architect's team). The winner, John Davis, also subverts the wall in a surrealist way by dangling a row of jumbo faucets at the bottom of his piece; this somehow implies that the end of the foyer should be a large bath in need of massive quantities of various fluids. For Roman orgies perhaps. Not only hot and cold, but also ass's rosewater, honey. David Jones' Japan- ese Screens and Lacquer is the best Christmas present show. The screen paintings at $300 to $9600 are not at all expensive considering the pleasure they can g i v e. The domestic objects made of lacquer range up to $1500 from as low as $4, Rudy Komon doesn't stoop to low-priced art at Christmas time. Though the gorgeous - as -usual watercolor by Robertson - Swann is probably not expensive, I'm sure the paintings by French, Williams (a superb one) and Dobell There's a small early painting by David She- ehan 1938, which must be when he was at the George Bell School in Melbourne. John Brack's still life of peonies looked very desirable; I suppose he and David Strachan have recently been the best still - life flower painters in Australia. The Macquarie Gal- leries show old and new work by their artists, often at their best, as are Ian Fairweather, Jeffrey Smart and Jean Bellette. Prices up to $5500. The Sydney Print- makers, at HolJsworth Galleries must have been planned as a Christmas show; 34 artists with woodcuts, screenprints, etchings, lithographs, etc., at prices from $20 to t60. They are excellent value. I especially like d David Rose for work with an impersonal con- temporary look, Sue Buckley for highly im- personal markings that connect remotely with the Japanese woodcut tradition. Of course, the majority of the work is tactile, cosy and crafts - manlike; only a few sereenprints make a virtue of the opposite qualities of coolness and impersonality. "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. 13 DEC 1970