Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

Daniel Thomas reports from Adelaide Yes -no blooms in a festival garden ALEKSANDER DANKO is the best news from Adelaide. For this year's Festival, instead of traditional banners with names of Festival exhibitions on a row of poles at the entrance to the Art Gallery of South AustrAlia, the space w as given to this young sculptor to do what he liked with. He came up with what he calls "Yes/No Installation," and I think it's a very thoughtful response to the particular site. The Art Gallery of South Aus- tralia fronts on to North Terrace, a busy main artery. 40-Business and commerce and vul- garity and all the big department stores are the opposite side. On the culture side, besides the Art Gallery, there are the library. some science museums, the univer- sity, a hospital, the shrine for World War I servicemen (a masterpiece of Art Deco by Rayner Hoff), and the Governor's residence. Along the whole extent of the Culture side is a beautiful walk under splendid trees: there is grass and some flowerbecis. For example, between the grass and the art gallery porch is a dense barrier of rather tired zinnias. The zinnia is a vulgar flower, or more charitably a pop art flower: so already the division between vulgar commerce and high culture Is eroded. Further, the most important cul- tural event for the largest number 'al participants that ever happens on the culture side of North Ter- race is a decidedly low -culture pop art event. It is called Flower Day, and it is held on the first Saturday of the festival. Thousands of people cover the whole extent of the lawns with flowers. Now, I think Danko's "Yesibro Installations," which might have seemed a brief interruption to the mile of flowers, was, in fact, a con- tribution to the event. On the left some wide -spaced up- right timbers were connected with cons of twine, Surely this was a- arellis waiting for sweet Peas or climbing beans. Beside the trellis was a plot filled with short stakes, labelled Yes or No: and these were surely stakes to tell you not whet seeds had been _planted, but instead which seeds 1-Twould germinate, and which not. It was a reminder that all seeds. all Ideas have only partial success; some live, some die. The yes 'no signs. which are on grass, are the same size and shape es the usual, world-wide "keep off the grass" signs. So they are aLso. by their multiplication. a conversion of something negative and bad ("keep off the grass") into some- thing positive and good (a bed of flowers 1. Further. the Yes,'No garden prob- ably struck a cord among all the vic. .1t.rs who might have been head- ing up the Path to the porch of a temple Qj culture for the very first time. Will we enloy It? Will we understand It? Will we make the --siorrect responses? Art is not easy the first time, and It stays hard for ever. So it .was IQod. t9.1unte state,af permanent art (byrdaniel thomat, doubt, dramatically expressed at the entrance to an art museum. Is It even certain that the two sides of North Terrace - commerce and culture - are really so separ- ate? The confrontation is unden- iable, but perhaps it Ls more sig- nificant that the confrontation is unusually close and intimate. Is there anywhere else In the world where the department stores and the museums are separated by only one street? So the third element in Danka's piece, a grove of tall timbers painted in diagonal stripes in the three primary colors, stands for the basic elements of high-art, the color of paintings and flowers; but at the same time the diagonals refer to painted traffic signals on roads, or to the nostalgia of old barber -shop poles, both of which belong in the world of pop-culture and commerce. The gaudy primaries, red, yellow and blue, must have been intended as statements about vulgarity -can - be -beautiful. My companion. just back from London, was wearing seemingly ugly but in fact very smart clothes: "The color is called Tart Red," she ex- plained. Standing within a grove of colored Danko poles she and they both gained meaning, and beauty. Danko's piece a perfect bridge be- tween the two sides of North Ter- race. the Myerside, and the Art Gallery side. It is a very Adelaide work of art. Sydney will see painting history THE best exhibition in Adelaide could be one I helped to organ- ise, a history of Australian land- scape painting. It will be in Sydney in November. The Bonython Gallery had a mixed show. for a Sidney Nolan exhibit- ion had fallen through, The Contemporary Art Society of South Australia as usual had the best show of new art: More Danko - trees, Bill Clements, Margaret Dodd, Hugo Haigh. Robin Wallace-Crabbe and others made one pleased that art lives: In Sydney, excellent sculptures by Ron Robertson -Swann and Robert Brown, excellent paintings by Gun- ter Christmann and Michael John- son also demonstrate that art lives and thrives. pree "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. 11 9 tiAii 1972