Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"MORNING HERALD" Sydney, N.S.W. i NOV 1973 ENTERTAINMENT AND THE ARTS Alien art at the Opera By DANIEL THOMAS THE SYDNEY Opera House is a very great work of sculptural and architect- ural art in its own right, so it hardly needs additional works of art to decorate it. However, even though murtls and sculptures were not part of the original architec- tural conception, they would have been taken for granted in any opera house in previous centuries. An obscure, traditional urge to decorate has been pressed on to a perhaps unwilling Opera House, and a number of gifts have come its way. The gifts, so far, haveluckily turned out harmless, and one of them, John Olsen's mural, has been so carefully considered that it is a positive contribution to the space in which it is located. Among the harmless gifts are paintings to hang in foyers. The Drama Theatre, for instance, has a Charles BlackMan and a series of Loudon/ Sainthill costume studies. I Sidney Nolan' "Little Shark," a gift from the artist, in the foyer of I the Music Room, is one of his multiple paintings, and adds a lot to another fairly ,characterless space. The forms of sharks' teeth and fins are pleasingly similar to the Opera House's own architectural forms. Alistair McAlpine, an Eng- lish art patron and friend of Nolan, has given three very important contemporary British sculptures. The large painted metal works by Phillip King and William Tucker are out- doors, by the Harbour Cafe, where children mistake them NEW EXHIBITIONS Macquarie: Paintings by Brian Dunlop. 38 Hargrave Street: Paintings by Gunter Christmann. Arts Council: Paintings by Roderick Shaw. Exhibition Hall, Sydney Opera House: Sydney International Exhibition of Photography; Performing Arts photographs. Reception Hall, Sydney Opera House: "Building the Opera House 1961-1973," drawings by Robert Emerson Curtis. for playground climbing pieces. The smaller bronze by William Turnbull, a fine aloof work, is in the Concert Hall's northern lounge, one level below the Olsen mural. These British works, from a culture different from our own, seem a little alien in their fairly conspicuous locations. The Opera House itself very con- sciously symbolises the spirit of its particular place. And the Olsen mural, as well as the John Coburn curtains, which I have not seen, are products of the same place, Sydney, by artists of the same period as the building, the late 1950s. Therefore, even if the British works were of higher quality than Olsen's and Coburn's, they don't have the same feeling of being at one with the place. Olsen and Coburn both have new one-man shows (Komon and Bonython galleries) to con- tribute to Opera House festivities. Olsen's is his best for about ten years, more lyrical, more delicate than recently, and obviously much exhilarated by his mural commission for a beloved Sydney Harbour sub- ject. Tne spin-off also includes new lithographs, drawings and tapestries. $150415,000. Coburn has quite given up his late-60s excursion into pure abstract hard-edge and returns entirely to biomorphic hard- edge, the plant forms which now look like members of the same family of forms as the artichoke -shaped.Opera House. Tapestries as well as paintings, $800-$6,000. * * * Crafts and pots. Two un- usually excellent exhibitions, handy to the Opera House. At the State Office Block, Phillip and Bent Streets, in the lobby, daily 9 am -9 pm till Saturday, the Craft Association of New South Wales: metalwork, jewel- lery, ceramics and some spec- tacular weavings, a stand-up crochet statue of a woman by Ewa Pachucka, an enormous striped-octopus of a floor tapestry by Mona Hessing. At the new CML Gallery, 55 Macquarie Street, lovely har- bour views, and a round -up by the Potters' Society of all Aus- tralia's best potters; 10.30-5.30 till Saturday. An illustrated Directory of Potters has been put out for the occasion. More ceramics to recom- mend: Thancoupie at Divola, Joy Warren at Gallery 16. More sculptural weaving to recommend: Alison Craig, Australian, at the Shearin House Shed; Tadek Beutlich and Peter Collingwood, Europeans, at Denis Croneen. More jewel- lery: Frank Bauer, very good, at Bonython. * * * Travelodge Art Prize, $7,500, Australia's largest art prize, went to David Aspden's "That Rainy Day," a lyrical, pale abstraction. Fifteen invi- ted artists, two paintings each, apparently with a size limit, for none is very big. On public view Sunday afternoon only, 2- 6 pm, ballroom, Boulevard Hotel. A chance to sec a lot of Mel- bourne artists, older generation Constance Stokes, Edwin Tan- ner, Roger Kemp, the better- known Bilu Jack, Shannon, Tucker, French, Williams and a younger one, William Dela- field Cook, whose refreshingly mysterious super -realism might have earned him the prize if I had been judging. * * * Brian Dunlop, Macquarie, another of our scarce realists, and worth cherishing for that alone. Yet his work, very good when good, often very boring, seems good only by accident, that is by choice of a subject which is already squared-up and frontal. If his calm, light -filled in- teriors, his walls and windows confront the spectator, and if they echo the picture's fram- ing -edge, then they are not only brilliant observation of light and texture but also pro- found images of psychological security, of home. But if they present diagonal views, or in- clude curved forms, like the round table that has entered his house since his last exhibition, then they fizzle out. $400 to $1,200. k.