Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" 1971 Sydney, N.S.W. Collections on show INHIBODRESS has followed Mike Parr's art -type- writing with Peter Kennedy's art -noises. This gallery in Woolloomooloo is the exciting place this week. But since Peter Kennedy will have a second, simul taneous exhibition at Gal- lery A next Saturday, and since several other avant- garde activities can then be discussed as well, I will now report on several more conventional exhibitions. ART PATID...4S Gallery A. - The three directors of the Gallery A are briefly showing some works from their private collections. Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Osborne, and Mrs. Burrell were all collectors before they be- came involved in Gallery A. Mrs. Lewis has a Sali Herman from her early days, Mrs. Burrell a major painting by Graham Sutherland, paintings, drawings and lithographs by William Gear, Fernand Leger, William Hayter, and Kandinsky. and sculptures from Rhodesia. But Mrs. Burrell isn't the only collector of foreign art; Mrs. Lewis has re- cently acquired hard-edge English painting by Marc Lancaster and (not ex- hibited) work by Bridget Riley. However, there must have come a time when they all found themselves buying more from Gallery A than from anywhere else, and then deciding that they could participate further in the support of the artists they admired by joining the gallery than just by buying. So there are excellent works by Gallery A artists, Janet Dawson, Peter Pow - ditch, Peter Clarke, Guy Stuart, asd by one-time Gallery A artists John Brack and Robert Klippel, or by an artist, Ralph Rai- son, whose estate they handled. Yet they are still collect- ors as much as gallery directors, and work by, other galleries' artists still enter their collections, for example, Russell Drysdale, Jeffrey Smart, and Fred Williams. They are three charming and energetic ladies, and true patrons of art. OBJECTS David Jones' --Stoneware pots by Silo ti Hamada, still alive and working and classified by the Japanese Govenunent is a "Historic Treasure." The pots are always the same vet always different. I .mean, Hatuaia. like many Oriental artists. doesn't care for Originality but only for perfection within an existiag tradi- tion. There are pots here which are simple variations of loots shown in his 1965 Sydney exhibition! The catalogue quotes Hamada's approval of an old potter, who, when she had died at 87, atter painting the same design on perhaps 1000 pots a day, must have painted over five million pots in her lifetime. The hand could do the painting with little or no assistance from the mind. In other words, practise makes perfect. Farmer's - Sepik Masks, a non-profit exhibition to benefit a worthy New Guinea charity. Excellent. PRINTS AND POSTERS Clone Galleries as well as Holdsvvarth have out- standing posters and poster -sized screenprints by contemporary American artists. Even if some of them are printed by photo -mechani- cal processes ins.ead of the older hand processes, such as sereenprinting or lithog- raphy, they are still design- ed and controlled by the artist and have his full approval. This is so even when - they are unsigned; and un- signed examples are much cheaper, though the price difference isn't only be- cause of the signature, it's also because of the higher - quality .paper used for signed prints. Who wouldn't rather ART by daniel !bonus have Iw original poster or an original hand -mint at $6 to $50, by Stella or Johns or Rauschenberg or Al Held or Warhol, than almost any $1000 Austra- lian painting? The cheaper object is certainly the better art in this case. The Rudy Kemon Gal- lery showed six artists in their early twenties, all from East Sydney Techni- cal College. Four are sculptors, and R o n Robertson-Swann's teaching and example is still too close to them for their work to look inter- esting in its own right. One of the four sculptors, Tim GM, has been noticed elsewhere as a promising painter. There is only one painter of colored canvases. David Morrissey. And the most interesting is Gilbert Bur- goyne with set of painted timbers, leaning against the wall. You are meant to re- arrange them. reverse them end Make your own pic- ture within the artist's imposed limits. If the exhibits are not too interesting in them- selves, the exhibition makes an attractive whole. Bonython. Martin Celia- c:Mt, like Joe Rose, and the re c en t Macquarie painters, is neat and deco- rative. I doubt if he ever was smudgy, since he's a very young artist, but at least John Olsen. his presumed source, was. Collocott offers a neater, decorative version of something that was Mngher meetly one -color. That is. they are furniture - pictures, Stephen Skillite, no doubt, depends on many Californian potters. (He's just back after four years in America.) But since abstract - expressionist ceramics were unknown in Australia and funk ceramics have been rare. his exhibition is certainly very interesting, even if one isn't sure yet whether it's very good. He acknow.edges an interest in vegetable forms, and In art nouveau, which is perhaps too fashionable of him. His techniques, using glass with ceramics, look brilliant. Maybe these ornamental objects are too large to survive in the way that Lalique's art -nouveau enamel jewellery w always survive, both physically and as great minor art. Maeguarie Gals:nes: Joe Rase showed neat kaleido- scope -gay Paintings with a touch of op (he used to be smudgier) and similar pen - and -ink drawings. He was preceded by a more rigor- ously abstract op - art painter, Jose Monge. Before that, Ann Taylor showed naively bright and happy semi -psychedelic canvases and. Aart van E'vvijic showed modestly asaftsmanlike d e c orative Paul. Klee subjects. Obviously, op -art and psychedelics have now settled down to being a cheery, rather mindless minor decorative style. Present-day charm school. Next week the Macquarie has Enid Cambridge, an excellent representational painter of landscapes and interiors, L