Brown Art Consultants
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Brown Art Consultants.
To read our regular reviews on the Perth Art Scene go to Reviews page on left.
Brown Art Consultants emerged in 1998. When David Bromfield left UWA we needed a vehicle to use for the production of books and various other projects, and also as a hands-off entity for fundraising for various projects.
We aim to produce at least one major project a year, either a book, an exhibition, or a series of events, and in addition other minor projects. So far we have maintained that average for the most part without the need for grant support of any kind.
Brown Art also offers a range of services connected with the visual arts and publishing -
They include:
- Researching and developing exhibitions and books and catalogues concerning art related topics.
- Writing on all topics related to the visual arts.
- Editing of all kinds.
- Design and typesetting of all kinds especially material related to art.
- Publishing.
- Advice on buying art and forming a collection.
- Reviewing of all kinds.
- Art photography - performance/video
Brown Art Consultants are Dr David Bromfield and Dr Pippa Tandy.
Select details of their c.v.s are available on the About Us page.
To contact us, please use our email
OUR NEW PROJECT
NOW THE HARD PART
Sponsors Needed!!!
NOW THE HARD PART 1994
I always try as hard as I can never to repeat something I have seen.
I would rather be a sequel, a sequel to Joseph Beuys perhaps.
Martin Heine, 2010
Learning to Dance 2010
In late 2010 Brown Art Consultants will publish Now the Hard Part: the Work of Martin Heine 1982-2010 by David Bromfield, a major 200 page study of the work of one of the most exciting and original artists to have worked in Perth in the last two decades. Dr Bromfield has collaborated closely with Dr Heine on a number of the artist’s major projects and installations. He is therefore in an ideal position to offer a delightfully detailed and insightful account of the work and its significance. He is also admirably equipped to provide an accessible account of the critical and theoretical positions which Heine brought to his art and which in a sense made him an artist. At a time when so many ill-digested intellectual clichés pass through the gut of the Perth art world every day, Heine’s cheerful, well-informed reticence on such matters and the outrageous spontaneity of his performances and paintings is far more than delightfully refreshing
Form Follows Function KURB Gallery 2010
Heine hails from Villingen in the Black Forest. He began his artistic career in Germany and Switzerland in the 1980’s during the last dark days of the Cold War. In 1987 he migrated to Perth because houses were cheap and began an unbroken sequence of exhibitions and performances in Australia and Europe.The shock impact of West Australian expectations of art on his critical approach to art making produced a unique artist. Much of his work is concerned with the hilarious dissonance between the European vision of art as means to liberation, part of the human struggle for freedom and the far too frequent acceptance of second-hand formulae, clichés and polite under-achievement that makes up the local art scene.
MELBOURNE ART FAIR 2008
Heine began as a cartoonist in the savage, satirical European manner, hoping that he could contribute to the ongoing European debate about politics and society, without resorting to terrorism. Instead he took on Dadaism, the shape and shade of brain destiny. Later he learned to paint with his head, which was a better use for it, and then to paint from the back of the canvas which was even better. Now The Hard Part follows his work from the early dada-designed objects first shown at Delaney Galleries to the magnificent sequence of performances at the KURB gallery that have crowned his career for over twenty years. Along the way it traces his adoption of visual strategies from cartooning to clowning, even painting, for his own high energy requirements. It concludes with a virtuosic critical analysis of the ‘reverse paintings’ and their significance.
KURB GALLERY 2006
Heine’s work has always contained an element of ‘politics by other means.’ Bromfield traces this in both performance and painting He rediscovers the almost forgotten libertarian perspectives so cunningly concealed in the shifting energies of art here over the last 25 years.
Through Heine’s career he presents his own compelling view of that period with all its gains and losses and warns that art in Perth seems headed for terminal boredom if there are to be no more artists of Heine’s calibre, dedication and resilience.
This book is essential reading for everyone concerned with the past, present and future of Art here.
The Limited Sponsors’ Edition of Now The Hard Part
will contain a cloth-bound editioned copy of the book, a reverse painting, a small print folio and a limited edition DVD of some of Heine’s major performance works, including the notorious Cider Press of Eroticism, Smear Talk and some rarely seen gems such as Eierkuchen, together with some odd surprises
If you wish to order a copy of the sponsors’ edition of
Now The Hard Part: the Work of Martin Heine 1982–2010, priced at $1,000,
please pay by BSB or cheque by post as below.
Brown (Art Consultants) No 2 Heine BSB 036001, Account 334947
Please notify us of your payment with your receipt number and address,
by email to brownart@westnet.com.au
If ordering by post, please send your cheque made out to
Brown (Art Consultants) No 2 Heine
with your name and address to:
Brown (Art Consultants) No 2 Heine
122 East Perth East Parade WA 6004
Now The Hard Part: The Work of Martin Heine 1982–2010
is also available in the standard edition price $85.00
It can be ordered as above.
Survey Summit Succeeds
The Regional Art Summit organised by BRAG or 20th March in connection with Survey 2010 has been a tremendous success.
From our point of view the most important part of the day was the panels discussions the various groups of artists who spoke at some length about the various experiences of being an artist in the SouthWest. it became clar that there were many approaches to art making as there were artist but that.nonetheless, the crucial dilemma was as always the degree of compromise that one might choose to accept in order to continue as an artist and make the best work possible on at least some occasions
David's Talk The SURVEY 2010 Experience.
This is an edited version of the key note address i gave to the conference the fifty or so illustrations which supported it cannot be presented here but many can be found i the exhibition catalogue
The Survey 2010 Experience.
David Bromfield.
Thank you all for coming, it’s good to see so many of the artists that we visited here today.
For Pippa and I, Survey 2010 has been a great adventure.It was a pleasure to meet so many artists working in every imaginable way in studio conditions that ranged from luxurious to bare bones minimal. We hope that you will all take the opportunity to talk about your art making in the South West.
We intend this contribution to assist with an ongoing discussion about the future of the Survey. I will talk for around thirty minutes and then Pippa and I will answer questions if you have any.
I will review three topics in this talk,
i) Mapping, Metanarratives and Madness - landscapes of art making.
ii) Have Toyota will travel - how we did it, what we found.
iii) The exhibitionists - wall to wall excitement as the exhibition came together.
i) Mapping, Metanarratives and Madness - landscapes of art making.
A critical basis for our work on SURVEY 2010
About thirty years ago it became widely accepted that the overarching critical histories, the stories that had informed contemporary artists and art making, were finished. In theory the end of the ‘avant garde’ the collapse of the power of all cultural and critical centres should have led to the emancipation of regional art and artists, from local and international power structures and the appearance of far more localised diverse and original art practices, free of the need to look over their shoulder at galleries in Perth, Sydney and London.
It became clear from the beginning of our project, however, that this had not yet happened in the South West. Power influence and authority were still perceived to radiate from some centre even if it was hard to find, even if it was a myth - The need for a centre, an authority of some kind, seemed at first to be hardwired in the work of most South West artists. That is where madness made its first appearance.
I should say that I have always thought that this version of the metanarrative was an undialectical myth and that its demise paradoxically strengthened centralised culture by homogenising it throughout the world. It was always provincial artists - Cezanne, Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, David Hockney who were able to make a difference, that is to say their unique, difference within contemporary art. - Not just improved standards improved opportunities and commodification but originality.
All succesful artists have a coherent story, some point of origin for their artistic concerns. These stories are generally taken up or shared by their audience. Often they are embedded in local memory.
We were interested in the stories about art that were told and taken for granted in the South West.
Were they in fact some localised form of meta-narrative?
To anticipate our discoveries, we did find at least one rather surprising and highly local metanarrative, it was based on the discourse that surrounded nineteenth century romantic landscape painting, but it was rapidly losing its power and relevance.
Before and during our travels we had noted the general absence of dialogue, of any threads of debate that we might use as short cuts to shape our research for the exhibition.
Instead there were rumours and rumours of rumours, concern and conflict, that is to say more madness.
This was partly the reason for our decision to visit any and every artist who expressed an interest. We were even more surprised that there was no register, no overall record of the artists of the South West and their work. We had assumed that, with all the resources of Country Arts, some form of register or archive must have been compiled or that there would at least be a coherent institutional memory but we found nothing.
We also knew nothing about the audience. This is not surprising at a time when information education and dialogue has been replaced by marketing and branding but it was not a good state of affairs.
We would have to discover everything from the beginning, to make a map of completely unknown territory.
Mapping physical and cultural.
A second, more positive reason for doing research at ground level was that we might come to an informed opinion about the details of artistic life here. I have an ongoing interest in the work of the French sociologist Bourdieu the inventor of the much misused term ‘cultural capital’. The radical conclusions of his writings on taste were also based on individual detailed interviews.
If there were unique difficulties or disadvantages, if there were common attitudes, opinions, experiences, patterns, perspectives or stylistic approaches, they would appear in our detailed discussions. We might also be able to map any micro cultures, any physical territories within the South West defined by the presence of particular group of artists, an attitude or an audience.
We were looking for artists or groups of artists whose work was grounded in specific local experience and/or premised on a specific point of view. (from somewhere). Early in the process it became clear that our exhibition would have to be a genuine Survey, an articulate presentation of differences rather than a mere choice of winners like the prize for the biggest and best marrow in the local show. That is why there are 65 artists in the exhibition not 20.
We had begun with a suspicion, a sense that the endless complaints about ‘regional’ disadvantage, the special pleadings that were just about all we knew, were at best a political cliche, at worst the product of an administrative definition of the art of the South West constructed to justify the employment and careers of bureaucrats. In any case it seemed to be making the creative life of many regional artists more difficult. We had also seen the emergence of a bogus, made to order, regionalism that set out, primarily, to meet bureaucratic requirements and middle management, and the pre-scripted imperatives of regional tourism (art first tourism later Venice), in the guise of presenting an authentic abstract regional identity. (Soviet Realism) We prefer detail and difference.
We very nearly did not tender for the Survey job because were concerned about the politics the wilful stupidity and resentment that often appears endemic in provincial art scenes.
As it turned out this concern was unjustified but I think it is worth looking at the kind of texts and statements that gave us concern.
One came up recently, here some short quotations .from the introductory leaflet for Connections 2010 the Regional Arts Australia National Conference.
Footprints
Lets think about our impact and influence, about shaping identity and celebrating distinctiveness, diversity and difference, about where we’ve been and where we want to head and we can make a difference
Resilience
Let’s build our capacity and arm ourselves with the skills knowledge and resources required to ensure an ensure an effective and enterprising future for regional arts.
Momentum
Lets make a difference by committing to maintaining action for change, personally, collectively and our across our sector.
This hollow, patronising rhetoric does nothing for regional artists or their audience and everything for their overpaid gatekeepers. When it appeared we had already completely our research trips we offered to present the results of over 180 interviews at the conference but the gatekeeping criteria made it impossible.
Ii) Have Toyota will travel - how we did it, what we found.
This section describes how we worked so as to learn enough to construct an exhibition to represent the pattern of artistic difference and diversity across the South West. I should stress, once again, that we intended a representative Survey, an informative entertaining exhibition. We did not measure each artist and their work by a single uniform set of criteria.
It is important to understand the speed with which the show came together. Fundraising continued into June/July 2009. We began travelling to see artists in late July.
By the second week of January 2010 everything, the exhibition selection, the catalogue and the installation plan, was about complete. We had travelled over 9000 kilometres and visited, interviewed and photographed over 180 artists and their studios. We had written edited designed and set the catalogue. We had seen between 3 - 7 artists a day, for an average of an hour each.
It was important to see every artist’s studio and the work there.
The normal time for this preparatory work for a major institution would be 12 to 18 months.
The internet was a great help without it we could not have planned our trip or contacted most artists when required. We were also able to maintain a blog describing our travels.
From the beginning we decided that artists must first express an interest in being a part of Survey 2010. We prepared a description of the curatorial procedure and a set forms which we forwarded to everyone who expressed an interest. This work was mainly done by email. We were determined to be as responsive as possible to all artists throughout the exhibition process. This was extremely important as we wanted it to become as much of a dialogue as possible in contrast to the previous Survey procedure which had discouraged many artists from submitting their work.
We used forms to make sure everyone was very clear about the details of the exhibition and especially about deadlines.This was partly because of short lead time but also because it was essential to have things done on time.
Most artists that we selected for the exhibition were able to make work on time for the show. We were very impressed with this.
We found however that a number had difficulty with deadlines. We wondered if this was a specially regional issue, more of a bad habit than lack of ability. Unfortunately perhaps, as the art world becomes more and more organised, and, dare I say it, competitive, even in Bunbury, it will be imperative to produce work on time.
It is not possible to review the whole of our research process. Over time we were able to map a wide range of associations and intentions by moving between our conversations with artists, their work and particular scenes and sites.
We found that many narratives, many memories overlap in the South West, that physical and cultural maps tend to become congruent. One site can carry many living meanings.
I have chosen the metanarrative of the romantic landscape as an example to show how the pattern of our exhibition and catalogue emerged from our conversations with artists and the discoveries that we made during our travels.
Fairly early in our travels we discovered the site of Mandalay, the small mixed farm run by Trevor Childs, Pippa’s maternal grandfather before he moved into a similar property near New Norcia. The farm was bulldozed when the district was turned into a blue gum plantation but as you can see the kitchen, the chimney and some of the roofing tin has survived. It is an archetypal romantic site, filled with joyous memories and futile hope Turner, Friedrich and others painted scenes like this. It is also however an originary sight (site), a personal memory and an example of corporate distance, greed and disregard for human striving when in pursuit of profit.
Many critics theorists and historians have discussed regional or provincial art practice as a struggle for local authenticity against a master narrative as if it were simply an adaptation or an appropriation of style and substance from elsewhere. In fact, localised master narratives take their structure and strength much more from local reality and memories. This was important for the way we selected artists for the exhibition
As we drove round the South West we were struck by the speed with which new suburbs were being developed. Although only 3% of our land is believed to be built on, it nonetheless seemed that the country was being framed, boxed in by close packed suburbs rather than surrounding them. The very meaning of the landscape was changing being turned inside out before our eyes. It was now principally something to be squinted at through a picture window.
We also came across a number of sites in the landscape, at which memories of all kinds had been inscribed, memorialised, and some whose significance was carried in memory alone. One story lay over another, so to speak, so that the landscape had many interconnected meanings.
The most striking of these congruencies, manifold meanings lodged on the same piece of land involve experiences shared by Aboriginal and European residents. At this suburban site for instance a group of aboriginal children were stolen. There are other similar relationships, connected, for instance, with rainforest clearance. It is often forgotten that aboriginal ceremonial sites are contemporary places part of an immediate, contemporary culture as is the landscape as a whole.
Now contrast these complex, in-folded narrative versions of landscape with the nineteenth century romantic master narrative in which the artist is often conflated with God the creator and painting is presents as a struggle for control over nature. This master narrative once informed much of the creative attitude of European South West artists, though now it has become part of a much more general perspective on art making.
Many of our conversations with artists explored this and other in-folded versions of experience in relation to their work. Some were, of course, less focussed than others.
The patterns of this particular perspective began to emerge towards the end of our travels during our conversation with Tony Windberg in Northcliffe, about the work that eventually became ‘Vanishing Point’. We came to discuss the possibility of using the common romantic analogy between forests and gothic cathedrals as a way of working in the chapel gallery
I’ve always liked the comparison of regrowth to housing flats as compared to the cathedral-like quality of old growth nature with all its differences. It’s interesting, take a walk in almost any direction and you’ll see great rotting stumps and form a mental picture of what the forest was like before. Did you do the Pemberton to Northcliffe road? The illusion is that you are driving through deep forest but it’s just a two-hundred-metre buffer zone. I take the short cut and I just see logging in various stages.
One idea I had was to acknowledge the trickery by using the blue gums as subject matter. When you drive past you get these walls of trees; sometimes they are stepped up and down; sometimes they are set back so there are a whole lot of formal aspects you can play around with in these blocks of vegetation.
There‘s all these social ramifications as well. I’ve done my green bit, I’ve been to forest blockades and that sort of thing before and, of course, at the time the savior was plantations, plantations, plantations. Living down here you realise it’s a little bit more complicated than that because there’s a lot of dairy farms. It turns into a huge industry run from afar, with no link with the land.
Because it's blue gums I thought I could show them near and far and on the actual pictorial surface; because it’s a floppy piece of lino I don’t have to stick to an actual rigid picture plane, I could play around with a ‘far’ image that is actually closer to the viewer. It would be an assemblage type of thing. In another related piece I could play with the vanishing points so that they come right out into space rather than sitting behind the image.
These spatial contradictions and illusions relate to blue gums and logging and to the fact that it’s not as simple as it first seems. From a distance this might look like wood or a textured surface but close up you’ll go, ‘Hang on this isn’t wood it's lino’. I’m also interested in incorporating some images of logging, but this will depend on the way the project goes.
Vanishing Point is a pun between the vanishing point in perspective and the point at which the native forest is vanishing. This conversation, especially Tony’s description of aims suggested a direction, an eventual shape for the exhibition, selected from works prompted by the romantic landscape narrative. Once this framework was laid out the remainder of the work that we selected could be placed in relation to it, in terms of its thematic concerns.
After Windberg, I remembered the work of Greg White, who had been one of the first artists whose work we saw in Bunbury. Greg also works with the forest but in a very different way. His abstract paintings incorporate gums and other materials that he collects in the forest on his painting trips.
We had discussed this. It was clear that, while their perspectives and artistic influences are very different; Greg is almost a painterly shaman, while Tony is a renaissance visionary of eye and intellect; both work within the meta-narrative of the romantic landscape.While Tony works in the space where forest turns to plantation, Greg lives in a suburban house that backs onto a tree planted remnant, a sliver of bush surviving in the open prison lifestyle of outer Bunbury.
That is why I wanted to place the two works close to each other in the exhibition.
Galliano Fardin also works with the landscape master narrative. Interestingly he and Tony Windberg shared a space at art school. He works with yet another uniquely meditative approach to painting the landscape at Lake Clifton.
I want to make clear that a metanarrative does not necessarily demand a particular subject or any particular style, it is a cluster of shared attitudes and assumptions attached to a specific locality that allow for innovation for the production of difference that is equally localised in origin.(it comes from somewhere)
We chose the sequence of Ludlow landscapes by Phil Berry partly to make that point and partly because he has a unique perspective on the presence of human emotion and memory in nature that is embedded in his paint ,his mark making as much as in his remarkable imagery. Commentary. Even if his remarkable figures are absent, a motif such as the abandoned Ludlow railway bridge recalls the human presence within the landscape.
We were determined to encourage Aboriginal artists to be part of the Survey and with the help of Troy Benell we were succesful. Their works turned out to be very diverse if form and in relationship to Aboriginal and European culture. Nonetheless it often resonated with the master narrative of the romantic landscape.
Kenneth Ninyette, who is a ranger for CALM makes paintings of his dreaming using coloured ochres that he collects during his work so far he has more than 25 different colours from grey blues to an intense red. (symbolic and physical embodiment.)
On the other hand, Clifton Biendurry is interested in what he can do with painting as an extension of his culture and experience into a more general arena . He works with conventional acrylics and exploits their full brilliance.
(Tony Windberg not exact parallel.)
I hung the two opposite Greg White’s work .
The work of Charles Djudin Riley is perhaps the most striking example of the presence of congruent experience and memories within the same master narrative. It is important to understand that neither his fridge nor his car, Djudin’s Artmobile, are simply ‘decorated’ with images from another culture. They are not exotic. Charlie is a very good painter and the objects and images that he paints are and have been a substantial part of his life experience and ours. They are also very witty.
I should point out that Charlie is not the only artist in the show to paint on an unusual object, to bring together different assumptions and experiences, one wrapped around the other. Genevieve Daley’s piece is a repetition of one of her favourite landscape subjects on the sides of huge piece of timber that she and her husband found on the foreshore.
There are a number of works in the lower gallery which engage with other versions of multiple narratives. Marina Troitsky’s work concerns the history of a migrant who was sponsored by her father after the second war. It is essentially a piece of cultural archaeology, a life as a displaced archive. Yet once again the landscape is central to the story. The man’s travelling crate is now white anted and decayed. Troitsky’s work clings to edge of another minor master narrative in which a cluster of objects image and domestic practices are clues to the fullness of a former life
iii) The Exhibitionists -
Wall to Wall excitement and Catalogue Hell as the exhibition came together.
The third part of this talk is about the business of getting the work into the exhibition.
There are always difficulties in planning the way in which an exhibition is to be hung.because any gallery has a specific size and form
Major state and national galleries have the ability to create spaces to order by using massive mobile partitions which can be shifted around to the exact dimensions required by the exhibition designer and painted to the best available colour.
Bunbury Galleries not only have no such luxuries, also they are a rather badly converted nunnery in which the architect has failed to use most of the advantages offered by the building. The spaces that one has to work with as a curator have walls with switches pipes temperature controls and columns all over them at odd places.
Over the years south west artists have come to understand that there are only three places in the gallery that can function as neutral empty containers for their work. They are the right hand alcove in the chapel gallery, most of gallery four, and the left hand alcove in the lower gallery.
We know this because a number of artists made a bid for these spaces for their work.
No-one bid for any other space in the building.
Every other wall has difficulties.
Therefore it is very important to plan the exhibition as accurately as possible beforehand,to sure that the work will fit the walls in a way that allows the viewer to see all of it as clearly as possible.
The size and shape of the walls and floor area therefore limit the number of works that it was possible to show.
In addition we had the goal of presenting a coherent exhibition in which the relationships between various works were as important as their individual impact.
The catalogue presented similar problems to the exhibition hang, chiefly misunderstandings over deadlines titles and relative space.
Given the heterogenous nature of a survey exhibition we had to find a way of controlling the size and position of each work in the show ahead of time. Our solution was to use the measured plans of the building, to state quite clearly the width of wall available for each two dimensional work and a precise floor area for each sculpture in the acceptance letters for each artists. These numbers had, of course, to add up to less than the available space.
This was generally succesful and enabled me to make a detailed preliminary exhibition plan as early as late November 2009. The final installation in February was about 90% the same as this plan. Some changes were negotiated when artists misunderstood the brief. Some artists were simply inexcusably late. Others were excusably late. One artist simply refused to supply any accurate information or dimensions for the work until everything else was in place then made impossible physical and technical demands. The work was accommodated but in my view at considerable cost of time and money. I was persuaded that this was learned behaviour. In my opinion it will not be as succesful in the future
In constructing the exhibition plan my principle consideration was to provide as many open sight lines as possible. The optimal viewing point for any work is further away for larger works. For instance it is important to be able to view the scrolls by Katherine Hall across almost the entire width of the chapel gallery.
Simon Long and I made final adjustments to the position of each work on the floor of each gallery before he hung the work He did a fantastic job I was very grateful for his knowledge of the building and its eccentricities.
In the rest of this talk I discussed specific difficulties with examples from the exhibition hang.
The discussion that followed was very constructive and developed many of the points that I raised
February 20th
Survey A SUCCESS !!!
The opening on Saturday 13th was a great success more than a 1000 people attended
Congratulations to everyone especially Sonya Dye and the BRAG Staff for making this fun night possible
Thanks for all your congratulations we will write soon (promise)
Here are some of our happy snaps
How many artists can you spot? 
If you any flattering snaps of us or Sonya or David Forrest we'd love to put them up we have none not one
We would specially like to thank David Forrest for his excellent opening speech which we reprint here minus the acknowledgements
This is a very important exhibition in the history of art in the South West region of WA. An unprecedented amount of work, of effort and resources have been put into it. I very much hope that my opening remarks will fully honour that, as well as the excellence of the work. But we have already heard distinguished contributions from earlier speakers and I am very conscious of your comfort, the audience, so I shall try to be brief.
In her foreword to the excellent catalogue, Sonia Dye expresses the hope that the Survey, which she describes as an informed exploration of contemporary art practice in the South West of Western Australia, will delight, surprise and challenge. Certainly for me, it is all of those things.
The arts are integral to our sense of identity – as individuals, and as communities. Through the arts we learn about ourselves: who we are and where we have come from. It is the creative perspectives of artists and their unique points of view that enrich our lives. In their enlightening & trenchant catalogue essay, David Bromfield & Pippa Tandy refer to the ability of the arts to act as a living history of all sorts and conditions of people. And they speak of their admiration for the energetic commitment of the artists they met and the deeply embedded place their art has in local memory & social networks.
Indeed, the arts invigorate our understanding of the beliefs we hold and the values we share as a community. Moreover, the arts enable us to see the world we live in with fresh eyes. At its best, Art should astonish, delight, transmute, transfix. It may, heaven help us, make us think, or even for a brief moment, transport us into a new territory of understanding.
An artist is someone who can be whoever they want to be and create a world in which they wish to belong. They take on many roles and draw inspiration from everything, whether that be delving into their imaginations or taking on the role of social commentator, or analysing their external environment. And they take us, the viewers into that world.
Lucien Freud, possibly England’s finest living artist is known for his warts-and-all paintings of the human figure; of bunches of flowers, of his pets and of views out of his window. He calls them all portraits; in other words intimate depictions of these various subjects that reveal more than a photo-realistic representation, but something of the inner essence of them. All art at is best does the same, revealing the familiar in an unfamiliar way, or, perhaps simply re-evaluating it—either way, it should be a revelation.
Here, in this exhibition, 65 artists, out of 180 surveyed, do just that. It would be invidious to single out any one or more artist—but let us just note the remarkable and unique work of the women artists, the strengthening engagement of Aboriginal artists and the extraordinary range of the work:
· The most extraordinarily decorated car & fridge,
· a beautifully observed commentary on the mind-numbing plantations of blue gums
· a sublime painting of the shimmering surface of a lake water and surrounding reeds
· a teenager’s bedroom,
· robots, haunting images reviving the experiences of peoples displaced from a war torn Central Europe
· painting, jewellery, sculpture, videos, photography.
In other words, a wealth of first rate contemporary art covering nearly all art forms. Both a wealth of art and a wealth of artists, ranging, amazingly from 13 – 82 years of age. Out of a population of, say, 80,000, the ratio of practising artists is remarkably high. Moreover there is first-rate work here as good as any to be found in Western Australia.
The Survey demonstrates that there is no such thing as a South West school of art—this isn’t St Ives. Indeed, given the area covered, it would be extraordinary if there was one. However, one of the most interesting judgements made in the catalogue by David Bromfield & Pippa Tandy is that the majority of the art made in the region demonstrated a complex ambition and a subtle relationship to local experience.
However, they go on to note that this was largely missing in the art exhibited in the Yallingup/ Margaret River strip. This is, of course, the area where most people from the Perth metropolitan area—many of who never visit a gallery in Perth—will be exposed to the art of the South West. These comments prompt a few observations.
First: as commercial art gallery directors, my partner Janis Nedela (himself a practising artist) and I are only too well aware of the need to balance artistic integrity with financial viability—but a gallery worth its salt should be keen to take risks; to subsidise the cutting edge and to show challenging work of new artists by using the profits of the commercially successful exhibitions. We very much hope that the gallery world in the Margaret River area will dare to be more adventurous and to draw further from the undoubted talent already in the region.
Secondly, to express the hope that this 21st South West Survey will be successful in drawing in significant numbers of people from throughout the State to experience this incredibly wide range of exciting, beautiful, thoughtful, playful, art—all from the South West. To learn, perhaps for the first time, that the art of the SW isn’t confined to land & seascapes, clunky jarrah sculptures, brown ceramic pots and countless representations of the blue wren.
Thirdly, that the nurturing of art in the South West isn’t about tourism. It should not be driven by politics, vested interests or opportunism. No, it is about recognition of excellence. Hopefully, this exhibition, the dissemination of the excellent catalogue, wide publicity & word of mouth will go a long way to establish the reputation of SW artists in their own right and on their own merits.
Finally, to comment on BRAG in all of this. In the rapid development of the South West, BRAG plays an ever increasingly important and crucial role as a centre for the community and artists. This 21st South West Survey is, perhaps, the best demonstration to date of how this involvement could well be the greatest strength of art in the SW.
This is a considerable responsibility for BRAG. As the art being made in the SW continues to develop, expand, & strengthen, so too must this Regional Gallery. It has done a remarkable job in recent years, but it cannot rest on its laurels. For the Board & its senior staff, there is the challenge to showcase the work of an increasing number of first rate contemporary SW artists in a way which both respects and promotes it to an ever wider audience. And to maintain that growing collection in a way which ensures it can be enjoyed by future collections.
Moreover, the Gallery needs to do this in a way which fully reflects the contemporary and challenging nature of the work. May one dare suggest, a purpose-built gallery space, for example? Having said that, of course, one has to add that to do so, the Regional gallery needs to be generously supported by the State, the City of Bunbury & community corporate members. The Sponsors for the Survey provide an exemplary model for the latter.
Congratulations to everyone involved, not least Sonia Dye & the staff of BRAG; the Management Board, Dr David Bromfield & Dr Pippa Tandy & most of all, the artists. All I can say is that this is an exciting exhibition, stuffed full with wonders and the promise of richer things ahead. Everyone involved should feel justifiably proud.
I have much pleasure in declaring the 21st South West Survey open!!
February 11th Thursday
SURVEY 2010 READY TO GO !!!!!!
The final week before the show is on us and so far --- all is well for Saturday.
We have two artists yet to deliver work but Simon Long, the exhibitions manager, is doing a brilliant job of hanging the rest, as you can see in these installation shots.
There are so many bits and pieces to be put in place before a major show like Survey 2010 is ready to go that it would be tedious to go though them all.
With this one there were some special extras. Our biggest worry was the transport of Jdudin’s Artmobile - an old ford station wagon, bright red, that artist Charles Jdudin Riley has lovingly restored. Over three years, he has also painted the interior and the engine space with all kinds of Aboriginal motifs.
It is an intense and brilliant work but very difficult to get into the gallery.
Artmobile Detail
We decided to show it in the central courtyard but this posed its own problems. Fortunately Director Sonya Dye had a solution - a large crane manned by Dogman A.J. and driver Stuart of Halifax Cranes. So on 8.00 Monday we arrived at Jdudin’s place and shortly afterwards a car transporter left with the exquisite polished and detailed vehicle destined for the gallery.
We followed closely behind, but Charlie stayed at home, fingers crossed, waiting to see the event on GWN television that night . Once at the gallery, the car was safely winched over the courtyard wall and deposited exactly as we wished. The media crowded round and we phoned a much relieved Charlie to say that the move had been successful.
Our other great anxiety was, as ever, the large colour catalogue which thanks to the diligent determination of John Hartley at Geon Press is now at the gallery ready for the opening. The printing process is complex and high speed (5 or 6 hours) but the writing, photography design and typesetting can take forever in this case we were checking and cross checking work and information from over 65 artists some of whom had great difficulty with the concept of a deadline. Pippa works with Indesign, which helps, but the process remains the nearest thing we know to designing and flying a Boeing 747.
We cannot show you the catalogue yet as it is a ‘surprise’ on opening night. When it is over we will post some selections here including the catalogue essay alongside what we hope will be some happy snaps of artists and supporters having a good time.
Artists of course are at the centre of this project not just the ones whose work we selected but all the artists that we visited.
We hope everyone will be there on the night to enjoy the show. We have done our best to meet the requirements of each exhibitor.
We think we have not done too badly.
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