Double Displacement: Rex Butler on Queensland Art 1992-2016

Langscape: Langscape Magazine 6, no. 1 (Summer Edition), 2017

The inter-twined narratives and stories of histories, development and environment, and arts are explored here from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives. The paper engages with visual imagery by juxtaposing text with photographs and art works to present a complex weaving of accounts and perspectives on this region and its environment.

Journal of Art Historiography, 2011

2017

This study investigates the construction of the cultural meaning and value of abstract art in Australia during the postwar years of 1847-1961. Its aim is to challenge the conventional historical view that Australian postwar abstract painting was, in the manner of provincial art, 1 ' derivative of overseas ideas which arrived late, and in the fragmented form of magazine and postcard reproductions. It argues that firstly, Australian postwar abstract painting emerged from a distinctive practice of abstraction that had its origins in Sydney and that < ; >. secondly, it was the product of a specific combination of artistic, political and social circumstances which influenced the nature of Australian culture during this period. / The study focuses on Sydney as the centre of abstract painting. It explores the distinctive nature of Sydney's artistic ideology and arts infrastructure, and the manner in which they provided the vital impetus and polemics for the production of abstraction. It looks, in particular, at the New South Wales Contemporary Art Society, and its establishment of a promotional infrastructure and a theoretical discourse, which educated the art world and the public to an appreciation of abstract art as the advanced stream of modernism. The Y meaning and value of abstract art became an issue of intense debate during the 1950s, when the NSW CAS launched an aggressive campaign against the establishment's , < assertion that art should serve society's interests. By defining abstract painting as an autonomous discipline, dedicated to the disruption of social and cultural order, the NSW CAS and Sydney's abstract painters helped to stimulate a national debate about the role of art and its relation to society, which this study contends was instrumental in shaping the >, *, specific ideals and character of Australian postwar abstract painting. 1, Sydney, the city of sun, sea and harbour, occupies a specia! place in Australia's imagination. This much loved cultural stereotype is so pervasive, that it informs even art criticism and art history, including the only extensive study of Sydney modernism in the 1940s and 1950s, Geoffrey Dutton's The Innovators. Dutton's study celebrates Sydney's fortunate geography and climate as the formative influence on its artists and intellectuals. By weaving romantic evocations of Sydney (the city which rtfts 'the spirit as the waves of its surf beaches lift the body 1) with his discussion of art, Dutton builds a picture of a city whose artistic Muse is nature. 6 Sydney's creative genius, it follows, lies not with ideas or society but as the dazzling beauty of the harbour, bridge and Opera House indicate, in its sometimes almost mystical union of man and nature. Dutton's Sydney is a provincial city, a city 'without ideas'; absorbed by the pleasures of nature its citizens and artists are generally happy to let 'Someone else ... make the running out into the wide world of ideas and bring some of them back, safe to be localised'. 7 When these ideas do arrive, Sydney strips them of their radical nature and, as in the case of the Opera House, offers the public a compromised version of the original; a superficial shell of the idea. This study argues that the image of Sydney as a city without ideas and innovation dominates our histories of contemporary art and has contributed to the largely negative treatment of postwar abstraction. The pattern for this historical perspective, explained in Chapters 5 & 6, was set largely by Bernard Smith and Robert Hughes, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they contested the definition of Australian art and the criteria for its evaluation. 8 For Bernard Smith, the creation of a national school of figurative painting by Melbourne's 'Angry Penguins' circle and the Antipodeans was evidence not only of Australian artistic maturity, but also of a colony's ability to create new visions of humanity from the uniqueness of its experience. He asserted that contemporary art practice in Melbourne was distinguished by its radicalism; that is by its commitment to artistic activism and innovation. Its radicals, inspired by socialism, personal rage and the war, had established the Contemporary Art Society in opposition to Robert Menzies 1 conservative Academy of Australian Art, and had grasped the potential of figurative modernism to create a national art form which was critical and innovative. In the 1950s, these foundations were developed by Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker and the Antipodean group into a distinctive, regional school of painting which won international praise for the fresh, critical edge that it brought to the practice of modernism. Thus Melbourne was the centre of Australian art's critical practice of modernism. In contrast, Sydney is depicted by Smith and later historians, including Dutton and Richard Haese, as the centre of a romantic and cosmopolitan version of modernism known as 'charm' school art since the late 1950s. 9 They assert that the inspiration for Sydney's contemporary 3rt did not come from the uniqueness of the Australian experience but from a tradition of following the latest art trends from London and Paris. In a similar manner, the founding initiative for the New South Wales Contemporary Art Society did not come from within in Sydney. It came from the Melbourne branch whose politics dominated the CAS during the war years injecting Sydney art with an uncharacteristic element of artistic activism. When the Melbourne CAS lapsed into inactivity during the immediate postwar years, Sydney art lost its critical edge as its contemporary artists, exemplified by the Merioola Group, turned to the production of a poetic and stylish version of modernism. While the NSW CAS continued to function, the conventional view of historians is, that it did r so merely as an exhibiting society. 10 When the NSW CAS did come to life again as an anti-establishment force in the mid-1950s, promoting abstract expressionism as a challenge to Sydney's contemporary art establishment's 'charm' school modernism, its efforts at radicalism, according to Hughes and Smith, were doomed. 11 While Australia's regional isolation offered creative inspiration for Melbourne's contemporary artists, it brought unsurmountable problems for Sydney's artists, who were intent on joining the 'Internationale of modern painting without being able, unless they ... [travelled], to see it'. 12 Isolated from the centres of the abstract expressionist movement, they were reliant on secondhand ideas that arrived late from overseas. Consequently, they lacked the genuine understanding of the movement's ideological intent that was essential for their work to be innovative and challenging. Sydney's abstract I of modernism. 'Geometric abstraction' is used to describe the work of the first generation of NSW CAS abstractionists, who drew their inspiration from surrealism and constructivism. This study seeks to avoid the tendency of art historical writing to level out variation and difference by presenting an image of cohesive and homogeneous art movement. Instead, the aim is to draw attention to difference, by investigating how abstract expressionism as an international movement was debated and theorised, promoted and consumed according to Australia's specific cultural requirements. The concern of this study is not the identification of abstract expressionism as a stylistic movement, nor is it the iconographic interpretation of art works. Its focus is on the production of the meaning and value of abstract expressionism, which Pierre Bourdieu has identified as the symbolic production of art. 15 Abstract expressionism, therefore, within this study is viewed from within the critical and popular discourse of the day, as it was reviewed and debated in newspapers and journals and the expanding world of art historical and theoretical publications. The NSW Broadsheet, which is the most significant and cohesive body of information pertaining to Sydney's avant-garde production of abstract expressionism, forms the core of the disparate body of material which informs this study. The NSW Broadsheet is particularly significant, not only because of the informed nature of its contents, but also because there were no specialist publications for Australian contemporary art during the 1950s. Accordingly, the NSW Broadsheet piayed a crucial role in disseminating information and creating debate. Art was largely reviewed and debated within cuiturai arena provided by intellectual journals such as Meanjin and Quadrant, and more topical magazines such as Voice and Observer.

Northern Exposures, ed Malcolm Gillies, 1997

Acceptance or rejection of the idea of a Queensland ‘difference’ has long characterised discourse about all aspects of Queensland, including — often, indeed, epitomised by — the state’s artistic traditions or perceived lack of them. Although it recurs in a loose and sporadic way, the idea of a Queensland ‘difference’ has provided a consistent focus for organising understandings of the history of the state since colonisation. This paper begins to map Queensland’s artistic heritage as a tradition which, in terms of cultural geography, has usually seen itself — and been seen — as ‘at the edge’ of Australian culture. Firstly, it identifies re-articulations over time of the concepts of ‘the arts’ and ‘culture’ and their place in a ‘Queensland’, understood both as a geographical region and as what Humphrey McQueen has termed a ‘state of mind’. Secondly, it charts key attempts to formulate a tradition out of the discontinuous histories of arts institutions and of arts practices in Queensland.

History Australia 8, no. 1 (2011): 260-62

A review of John Jones, Robert Dowling: Tasmanian Son of Empire

Review of exhibition Australian Impressionists in France, held at National Gallery of Victoria in 2013

2006

Link to published version https://www.griffith.edu.au/arts-education-law/queensland-college-art Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Brad NUNN (b.1964) After completing a Bachelor of Creative Arts in 1990 at the University of Queensland, Brad Nunn continued his studies at the Queensland College of Art, completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts, First Class Honours, in 1995. He completed a Doctorate at the College in 2004. He has been exhibiting both in group and solo exhibitions since1996 and has been the recipient of several awards including the Griffi th University Postgraduate Research Scholarship. Nunn resides just outside Brisbane. Maurice ORTEGA (b.1964) Maurice Ortega was born in Mexico in 1964. He holds a Masters of Visual Arts at the Queensland College of Art and specialises in platinum-palladium works. Ortega lives and works in Brisbane, and, as President of the Queensland Centre for Photography since 2002, is a key fi gure promoting photo-media. Tim PAGE (b.1944) Tim Page was born in Kent, United Kingdom. In 1962, after secondary schooling, Page travelled across Europe. He ended up in Laos in 1963, and became one of the foremost photo-documenters of the Vietnam war, covering the confl ict for major newspapers and magazines such as Look, Life and Time. He was wounded three times in Vietnam, the last resulting in longterm hospitalisation. In the 1970s, he was contract photographer for Time, Life, Rolling Stone and Rolling Stone and Rolling Stone Crawdaddy. In 2000

Craftsman House, 1995

2015

The rise of the Aboriginal Australian art movement in the early 1970s ushered in an artistic revolution. But like any important revolution, it did not stop there. As the twenty-first century approached, Aboriginal artists across the continent began transforming their traditional iconographies into more abstract styles of art making. Speaking across cultures, without sacrificing their distinctive identities, they found new ways to express the power of the ancestral narratives of the Dreaming. Drawn from the collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl, No Boundaries features the work of nine trailblazing artists who were at the forefront of this movement: Paddy Bedford, Jananggoo Butcher Cherel, Prince of Wales (Midpul), Tommy Mitchell, Ngarra, Billy Joongoora Thomas, Boxer Milner Tjampitjin, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, and Tjumpo Tjapanangka. Each one was a respected senior Lawman, knowledgeable in every aspect of Aboriginal ceremonial traditions. Inspired by these ancient cultural practices, they forged one of the most dynamic painting movements of recent times. By exploring the cross-cultural potential of abstract painting, they drew attention to the entangled networks that define the contemporary experience, reminding us that contemporary art comes from every corner of the globe. The art and life of each artist is given in-depth analysis by leading art historians, curators, critics, and anthropologists. The essays shed light on the rich and complex histories behind the artworks, placing them in the context of traditional Indigenous culture, the environment, colonial experience, and the global contemporary art world. In doing so, they reveal nine artists working at the vanguard of contemporary art practice. Includes new essays by Henry F. Skerritt, John Carty, Edwina Circuitt, William L. Fox, Stephen Gilchrist, Jens Hoffmann, Darren Jorgensen, Emily McDaniel, Ian McLean, Fred Myers, Una Rey, Quentin Sprague, and Luke Scholes.