Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

'RECENT Australian Art," at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is, I think, the most important Australian show offered the Sydney pub- lic in years; but then I could hardly think otherwise, for it has been prepared by me and Frances McCarthy, my as- sistant curator, Surprisingly, it turns out to be the first time the Art Gal- lery has prepared a survey of the contemporary Australian scene specifically for the local public, and in any case it is eight to 10 years since the Art Gallery showed two surveys prepared for European and Japanese tours. Thus the highly parochial aspects of Sydney's knowledge have been deliberately cor- rected by conspicuously show- ing, for the first time in Syd- ney, some of Melbourne's leading contemporaries, mostly from the Pinacotheca Gallery. Although commercial sala- bility is neither a good nor bad quality in a work of art, it cannot help but influence what a dealer's gallery chooses to exhibit. An art museum on the other hand can easily exhibit the good work which happens to be unsalable yet excellent, the unsalability usually due to large size or awkward shape, like Ti Parks' ground sprawl of chains, ropes and garments, or Guy Stuart's suspended nets. Ephemeral work is, of course, by its very nature un- salable, for example the min- imal super -cool piece by Rob- ert Hunter, painted directly on to the Art Gallery wall, just right for that particular archi- tectural space; or the TV piece by Tim Burns, where two people are locked into a large 01- box all day, visible and au- dible to the spectator by closed circuit television; or . Ross Grounds' mountain of sandbags, which when climbed reveals a doomsday well to peer into, fumes rising, red lights, bubbling and ticking sounds, rocks suspended above, in midair; or Tony Coleing's suburban dream garden filled with broken glass, live budgerigars and plastic vegetables. All these are at the Art Gallery, along with process and conceptual pieces by Tony Kirkman, Robert Rooney, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsdcn, real- ist paintings by William Delafield Cook and others, and, more familiar, lyrical abstractions like David Aspden's (even the relatively familiar looks surprisingly dif- ferent in a museum setting). Another innovation is the use of film as an integral part of the exhibition in a specially partitioned area: twice daily, at 12 noon and 2.30, there will he short films by Tint Johnson, Mike Brown and Victor K, plus the 40-minute Idea Demonstrations which documents body art and sim- ilar pieces by Mike Parr and Peter Kennedy. We know that we have se- lected too much for the space available (one always does), yet we know that there are other artists who could well have been i icluded (there always are). The cAnibition was devised chiefly as a supplement to the A't Gallery's permanent col- lection, so that visitors to Syd- ney this month get a good idea of the entire history of Australian art under one roof. Given this policy, we are aware that neither the per- manent collection nor the exhibition properly shows Australian art of the mid and late sixties, the precise, hard- edge work of Reinhard, Kitch- ing, Ball, Jordan, Ostoja. They were pioneers in 1965, but that-luitirious style is so alien to the informal, casual style of 1973 that its present-day sur- vivors would probably have looked too out of place in a show of "Recent Australian Art." Some credits. The exhi- bition, which is not a big - budget job, is financed by Wood Hall Ltd, whose Horn- ibrook Division was the chief building contractor for the Opera House. A great deal of TV equipment for Tim Burns's piece is lent by Sony; a month's food for the live performers in that piece is do- nated by Margaret and Terry O'Neill of the Art Gallery Cafe, and sack chairs for the performers are lent by Sue Tamplin. And a big thank you for all those who helped with supplies or labour at difficult times, like late nights, or Sun- ' days. The fully illustrated catalogue is financed by the Peter Stuyvesant Trust. Wood Hall and the Peter Stuyvesant Trust have sim- ilarly sponsored a second exhi- bition in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a show of Aboriginal and Melanesian art which inaugurates a newly remodelled gallery for prim- itive art. From "MdiNlistb HERALD "° Sydney, N.S.W. 11 9 0 C 1973 A history of Australian art