Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

If Sydney has a season, this is it IF Sydney has a season, a time of year when it's good to be in town, it's now. The wet summer I monsoons are usually gone by April, energy has revived and there are long -traditional events like the Easter holiday, the Show and the Sydney Cup. I don't know whether the gal- leries consciously plan their best things for April. If they do it had better be good, for what's on now is quite an art festival. Unfortunately Whiteley's show left the Bonython Gallery last week. IL is followed by three exhibitions; Joel Elenberg, paintings and sculp- tures, Ian Perceval, constructions; and contemporary Australian prints. Gunter Ch ristmarm's paintings at Inhibodress closed yesterday. These were the 18 canvases with which he represented Australia at the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil. L The Human Form No stretchers, no frames, the up- right, canvases were glued direct to the walls, directly above the skirting, and framed with pencil lines drawn on the wall. The environmental effect was stunning: 18 doors lead- ing into radiant paradises. "The Human Form," a show of drawings, watercolors, paintings, and small sculptures, closes at the Mac- quarie Galleries tomorrow. A chance to get something by Rupert Bunny, Theo Proctor, David Strachan, Douglas Dundas, and many others, On Wednesday there will be a memorial exhibition of paintings by Rulaed Wakelin. At Gallery A the splendid new New York paintings by Michael Johnsen finish this week. New York has done hi:n good, finesse is added, ideas are bolder. Somehow this colorist geometry brings Burgoyne Diller to mind. Gallery A also had cloudy veins by Andrew Nott and new explor- aitg angularities by John Pleb- Srirai more unlike his recent trees, like his flags and banners of (can it be?) ten years ago. On Friday Gallery A will have funky wall- hangings by Marleen Creaser. There's still a week or more for the remaining exhibitions. Looks like an abstract Sheila McDonald's memorial ex- hibition at David Jones' shows the textural abstractions of around 1960 and narrow vertical panels of INS that we already knew, and the best still look good, like Ritual Ground Central Australia, or Terra Aus- tralis, What we didn't know was the Lloyd Rees style pen -and -ink draw- ings of the 1920s, the similarly early watercolors of old buildings, and the et*Thhiesengs.showed that all her career was best when dark and tonal, either black and white drawings and etchings, or dark earth -colored paintings. They perhaps show that her textured abstractions came out of the same sensibility as that for picrirresque old stone architecture, and that the painting which looks like an abstract David Davies gets this look from Sheila McDonald, knowingly ar not, being part of a long tradition in Australian art. Robert Brown's four sculptures at Watters include three pop - colored and diffuse environmental pieces, and one "The Bastard from the Bush" in rough timbers and rusty iron which is I think more his nature. It Is monumental, simple, and grand which are unfamiliar qualities 'in a space -invading environmental piece. Ron Robertson-Swann's large painted steel sculptures at Rudy Komon's and at The Sculpture Garden, Woollahra. are major works by a major Australian artist. For all their size they have grace and elegance, for all their abstrac- tion they seem physical and sensu- ous, and they are mostly concerned with the sense of sight and a sense of weight. Working hard at it The best is "Tramontane." The word means a cold wind from across the mountains; certainly something is rushing through space, but I think it is simply the trajec- tory of an artist's sharp gaze across the world - more a matter of sivhtlines than of a real wind. It has the relentless quality that all good art must have. It pushes a formal idea on and on, and resolves it. An earl[ . work from which this develop d was called Homage to Anthony Caro, and the earliest work in the exhibition, a small one of 1962 called First Innocence, also has something of Tramontane in it. This is an artist who has indenti- fled himself, but who is still work- ing hard at it. It's not easy -art, nor pretentious. Michael Galamansky, at the Arts Council Gallery, is of little in- terest, for his paintings are rather closely derived from Morris Louis's, and that of other Amen- ean stain painters. Holdsworth Galleries are snowing a large number of drawings by Imre Szigeti. As usual, one thinks of Feininger's spindly pen and ink, of Viennese art nouveau. These are pleasant thoughts, and Szigeti's drawings are a nicely civilised oddity here In Sydney. LET it be placed on record that Germaine Greer's choice of her own iconography is noticed and admired. The priestess of liberation, gener- osity, openness, love, has literally been wearing hearts on her sleeve. On a television program her outfit was long-sleeved and the sleeves were printed with many hearts. JACK CARINGTON SMITH died in Hobart last Sunday. He was Tasmania's best-known painter, but had been part of the Sydney scene, especially in the 1940s, when he exhibited here a lot. He then painted some Whistlerian, mauve beaches and mists which Clement Greenberg recent I y admired. Carington Smith got the mauve afternoons, the Hashing mornings and the invasive clouds which are Hobart: What more could any city ask of its artists. art by doniel thomas From "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. 2 6 IviA2 1972