PRESS RELEASES

Sydney art collector Reg Richardson last night officially opened the latest exhibition by Tracey Moffat, the Aboriginal photographer who is making a splash in the art galleries of the world.

An article appeared on Tracey Moffat in the Sydney Morning Herald last week that told us how the world’s major museums were "fighting to get her work" – well Orange has it first – thanks to Reg Richardson.

Reg Richardson and his wife Sally were making something of a sentimental journey to Orange, as Sally was born here, and Reg was born in Broken Hill. As a result, Reg has also lent the exhibition to Broken Hill Regional Gallery, and helped Tracey Moffat with connections and locations when she was shooting the exhibition in the Broken Hill area.

Indeed, although Tracey Moffat is now one of our truly international artists, the exhibition is notably regional – it was shot around Broken Hill (in Moffat’s well known "documentary filmic" style), using some notable Broken Hill cultural types as extra’s, including the director of the regional gallery, and the regional ABC manager.

It also uses professional actors, female body builders and various characters from Sydney and other parts, but nonetheless captures something of real life on the margins of rural society – the events of this exhibition are certainly identifiable to all country people, and the subjects seem to come direct from Moffat’s own experience of marginalisation.

Tracey Moffat was born in 1960 in Brisbane of mixed European and Aboriginal parentage. After graduating from the Queensland College of Art in 1982, she moved to Sydney, where she began exhibiting her work in 1984. Moffat first gained critical acclaim for her short film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1989), which competed in the Cannes Film festival in 1990.

She is currently enjoying an eight month run of her work at the DIA Center for the Arts in New York, which offers viewers a major introduction to her work. The Dia exhibition contains four components using her film, video and still photography.

The April issue of New York’s Interview Magazine contains a fairly solid chat with the artist, the introduction to the interview says of the exhibition being shown in Orange "Up in the Sky is a series of twenty five black and white photographs, mostly of Aboriginal people in the outback , and is perhaps the most impressive example of why Moffat is emerging as an artist of both high ambition and steadily increasing achievement: It’s been a long time since you’ve seen anything quite like these photos."

This is terrific attention for the artist to receive, and I have a sheaf of clippings from other world art journals that say similar complementary things about her work. Note that in the section I quoted above the writer says the exhibition is of "mostly Aboriginal people" – well in fact it is not. There are far more Europeans in the exhibition. This is I suppose an example of a tendency that Moffat always fights against – that of seeing her as solely an "Aboriginal artist" concerned with Aboriginal social issues. While it is true that Aboriginal issues do occupy a big part of her work, she is equally concerned with the politics of the wider society, and also with an almost surrealist exploration of her own psyche. Naturally her aboriginal background is important to her, but so is the white society in which her vision was formed.

Moffat wants to be seen as an international artist – an artist of universal concerns. Her ambition, and her talent, are great, and I think she will likely succeed in whatever project she undertakes.

In the interview Moffat complains that all anybody ever writes about her work is its "exotic" nature – I must say that I do not see it as exotic at all – she has made a series of images which, although they are far more general than particular, speak strongly for the underclasses on the margins of affluent society – such people are to be found in every rural community, and also in the cities.

The photographs make no particular moral point, that I can discern, but present people subject to poverty, violence and alcoholism without "editorial comment". Such is the force of her staged compositions and carefully chosen subject types, that all rural people will identify with the tragic and frightening alienation in her work.

This fine exhibition of photography over 50 years continues in the large Gallery one space until 31 May. In Orange Regional Gallery we have without a doubt, two of the finest exhibitions of photography around.

Last night Peter Gibson, Teacher in Charge of Arts and Media at Orange TAFE, had the difficult task of Officially Opening three major exhibitions at once! Fortunately, Peter Gibson is both artist and educator, and he was able to perform this role with alacrity.

The Gallery is hosting some remarkable art at the moment, and as Peter pointed out, it is terrific to be able to boast even one international exhibition of quality – let alone two!

The first of the international artists is Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who is very famous indeed.

The second is Bill Davis, a young photographer from Cincinnati, who we believe may well ascend the heights of fame one day. The third exhibition is Object of Ideas, a show of fine Australian craft work in various media.

The Paolozzi show runs only until 11 October, with the other two shows closing a week later on the 19 October.

Eduardo Paolozzi:Artificial Horizons and Eccentric Ladders-Works on Paper 1946-1995 comes to us as a touring exhibition organised by New England Regional Art Museum and sponsored by the British Council and newImages with assistance from the NSW Ministry for the Arts. It is a rare collection of superb works on paper by the internationally renowned artist Eduardo Paolozzi, one of Britain’s greatest living artists.

Paolozzi is regarded as one of the originators of the Pop Art movement, making many innovations that preceded the American members of this movement .

He created collages and prints presenting a wonderfully surreal fusion inspired by the modern art of the day (including Surrealism): from German geometry to foundries, shipyards, factories, and engineering, from medicine to French sheet music, from Greek antiquities to modern opera.

The exhibition traces the development of Paolozzi’s ideas through the reworking of constant themes and motifs. It begins with a group of collages made in 1946 and concludes with collages and screenprints made during 1995.

It includes examples of collages from the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the early use of screenprinting and monotype in the 1950’s, collages for the elaborate multicoloured screenprints and lithographs of the 1960’s and 70’s, and studies for major public commissions such as the mosaics for Tottenham Court Road Underground Station.

The exhibition includes 66 works in total, 22 drawn from the British Council Collection, but 44 on loan from Paolozzi’s own collection – these of course have rarely been seen before, and hold special meaning for the artist.

Portraits of Rite is a fine exhibition of black and white photography organised by Orange Regional Gallery from works made over the last four years by a young American photographer.

Bill Davis flew out for the opening last night, and impressed those who met him with his sincerity and dedication to his artform. Many of the rich black and white studies in the exhibition were made while he was artist in residence in Prague, Czech Republic, and reflect a strong handling of light and contrast borne out of the mastery of considerable technical difficulties experienced at the time.

I hope that this exhibition and catalogue will be widely seen, as I think the work of Bill Davis will be appreciated by most people. Portraits of Rite is an impressive exhibition not only because of the excellent aesthetic eye of the artist, but also for theoretical and technical reasons.

When first I saw his work, I was immediately drawn to what may be called the "fine art" genre pieces, the surrealistic works and beautifully composed still life and landscape. While clearly owing a postmodernist debt to a number of painters, Davis renders these painterly subjects using a finely tuned range of tonal values a part of his vision as a black and white photographer.

Davis brings us some of the richest velvety blacks, I have seen for a while, and I greatly enjoy the "formalist" works in the exhibition, which all make good use of the photographic possibilities of contrast and chiaroscuro. In many of these works there is an homage to the international pioneers of formalist photography, as there is also a strong relationship to the traditions of artist printmaking. Davis values the visible presence of the "hand of the artist"

This exhibition comes from the Crafts Council of Queensland, where it was originally put together in order to introduce the work of some of Australia’s most "cerebral" craftspeople to remote and deprived deep north audiences. The exhibition tour has fortunately been expanded to include the sophisticated big cities of the enlightened south such as Orange.

The exhibition has the aim of bringing together ten craft artists who create work about ideas, yet who embrace the traditional qualities of their craft. The catalogue essay by curator Jacquelyn Murphy tells us that "While each demonstrates an individual approach to making, their commonality lies in their dedication to the knowledge and development of their medium, which in turn informs the conceptual content of their work".

While the stated theme does not seem to embrace all the included works equally, it is true that the works by the included artists contain a bit more "meaning" than most craft, (which is often purely utilitarian, and not intended to be other than useful or decorative).

The exhibition contains works by Morley Grainger, Marion Gaemers, Brian Hirst, Ben Trupperbaumer, Helmut Lueckenhausen, Marion Marshall, Sheridan Kennedy, Warren Langley, Susan Ostling and Gwyn Hanssen Pigott. This Gallery has shown works by quite a few of these notable Australian craftsworkers in other group exhibitions, including one show that we organised, so it is good to see our judgement echoed by other curators.

My only reservations are that the works in the exhibition are pretty small. This is no doubt so that remote venues can be accommodated, but as a number of these artists are known for their work on a larger scale, it is a pity that some of these are not included. Helmut Lueckenhausen for instance, makes some of the most convoluted, impressive large pieces of wooden furniture in Australia, yet his presence is restricted to three small boxes (beautifully conceived and crafted however).

Also, the exhibition seems to be trying to revive an argument that I thought had expired - the old chestnut of the difference between art and craft. This is particularly apparent in the catalogue, but also I think in the choice of works. The overall presentation, in a rather heavy handed way, seems to be trying to shock the ignorant into a realisation something like - "Yes Hortense, Craft can carry meanings just like Art, and may even be considered to be Art!"

While the northern rednecks may not realise that fibre, ceramics, glass and wood carving can carry intellectual weight just like paintings do, most people in New South Wales have known this for years and couldn't care less about the alleged differences between art and craft.

Here the historical derivations of the words "art and craft" seems to have created an illusory philosophical problem. Ludwig Wittgenstein might have said of this exhibition "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." And that is of course, what the artists are doing - their works do the "talking" for them. Not so alas for curators and people like me!

Occasionally some researcher with infinite patience undertakes a scientific statistical survey of paintings in the world’s museums. Recently an analysis of over 700 famous portraits has discovered that most are centred not symmetrically but on one or the other eye. A neuroscientist called Christopher Tyler made this claim, which intrigued art historians all over the world.

Indeed, the findings seem to be correct, and even though most artists are probably not aware of it, they very slightly turn the head of the sitter and centre the painting on one eye. In so doing, they seem to gain greater "engagement" with the gaze of the sitter. Apparently it is a signal of increased attention to look at someone with head slightly turned and one eye making a "penetrating" gaze.

It would be interesting to do a similar survey on the number of smiling faces in German art – not very many I think. German Art is generally serious and high minded, and it has been taken very seriously by its audience for many hundreds of years. Hitler (who was a bit of a painter himself) took art so seriously that he imprisoned many artists and banned most modern art as "degenerate".

Likewise the Communist rulers of the former East Germany, who expelled over 600 artists and persecuted many more between the end of the second world war and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

Those of us whose business does not lie in self expression can not know how soul destroying it is to be officially forbidden from telling the truth as you see it. It is no wonder that so many artists chose or were forced to leave their homeland.

So there is something admirable, even noble, in the efforts of some of these seven artists to "speak their minds", to retain their artistic integrity.

Eberhard Havekost (b 1967) is the youngest artist of the seven. His works focus on an important materialistic aspect of the new life – housing. His unpeopled and alienating suburban houses (can one say Jerry Built?) have something of the lonely emptiness of metaphysical art, and imply a crushing disappointment with the expected benefits of capitalism.

Angel Hampel (b.1956) is a high profile artist who has some works on paper made with ash and charcoal. These are beautiful and powerful works peopled with the composite creatures of mythology. Her human figures seem to be sprouting extra heads and limbs, are in the process of becoming a new being, but are captured in a phase of monstrosity.

This idea of "twinning" of a incomplete joining process also informs the next two artists Jean Kirsten and Yana Milev.

Kirsten has made some very fine screen prints on fine rice paper, which are printed on both sides, and are meant to be suspended in free space so that they can be seen from both sides. Each side of the print is different, and transmits light differently, so from either side we see a different aspect of the "Gestalt". Kirsten has made these excellent works, which I find very lovely, with something of the constructivist spirit and vision that can be found in Germanic baroque music. As in the Constructivist art of the early century, he has used simple geometric forms in grey black tonalities, but these forms gain an added tension, almost a freneticism, when combined in a fugal manner with the other side of the work.

Yana Milev (who was selected to participate in one of the worlds most prestigious art exhibitions, Kassel Documenta 1997) has submitted six large photo-mechanical screenprints in which the massive re-building works in East Berlin (is it Potsdammer Platz?) are shown. I understand that there are many billions of dollars worth of building works going on in this square mile or so. Certainly the skyline of her photographs are forested with builder’s cranes looking rather like mad birds pecking into gaping wounds in the earth.

However, as one follows through the six works in the series, these building works are progressively obscured by collaged elements reminiscent of the Constructivist works of Kirsten, yet also reminiscent of the characters of Hebrew script. Perhaps the artist is making a comment about the return of Jewish influence through the influx of international capital? Whatever her motives, these are striking and memorable works which again make use of these notions of fracture and forceful re-joining.

Maix Mayer is a very interesting photographer, whose very large prints show his early training as an academic natural scientist. He has shown also shown six works, brooding black and white close ups of a barren grassy field under an oppressive sky. There is something highly unsettling about these works in themselves, a feeling that is explained when one comes across the small words "Commandants Cottage" and we realise that the subject is a ruined and obliterated Nazi extermination camp. This is not the only work in the exhibition that makes oblique comment about the rise of neo-Nazism.

Mayer is a photographer of distinction..it is difficult to precisely pin down the reason for the palpable power in his images..partly I think their success lies in the fact that, like the work of Tracey Moffat, he does not tell us too much.

Go East also features powerful works by Jan Morgenstern and Maren Rollof. The former gives us a series of small spontaneous drawings of a mother and child that are reminiscent of the work of Ian Fairweather – with some of the same evocations. Maren Roloff has gained a world wide reputation for innovative and poetic use of humble materials, particularly rubber car tubes. These remind us of the deprivations suffered by East Berliners, as well as the power of an art whose mother is necessity. The artist has made a quite amazing sculptural piece with a beautiful presence which extends to over twenty feet in length, and yet is cut in one piece from about a two by one metre section of truck inner tube.

Right throughout the Christmas period until 24 January Orange Regional Gallery is hosting the magnificent war paintings of Ivor Hele, Official WW2 War artist and five times Archibald Prize Winner.

This is a major touring exhibition from the Australian War Memorial, only suitable for quite large exhibiting spaces. Normally such a show remains the province of the big State galleries, so we are grateful to the Australian War memorial for making it available to Orange.

The exhibition was opened by Orange ex-pat Helen Withnell, who is now Assistant Director of Public Programmes at the War Memorial. This orange connection reinforces the good relationship we have with the War memorial that began with our collaboration on the very popular Still Action Damien Parer exhibition.

As it happens, Parer and Hele met during the war, and I think there is evidence that the work of each influenced the other.

A Floor talk prior to the opening was given by the exhibition Curator Lola Wilkins. She deserves congratulations for an excellently researched exhibition, and for the publication of a very good catalogue, fully illustrating in colour the exhibition. This is really one to keep for posterity.

Ivor Hele was the first official war artist appointed in the Second world war, serving in diverse battle theatres as Nth Africa and new Guinea as well as in Australia. His success in the appointment led to a further commission in the Korean war with the rank of major, the highest held by an Australian war Artist. As well as being Australia’s longest serving official war artist, Hele five times won the Archibald Prize for portraiture and was an extremely accomplished figure and landscape painter. Hele’s wartime work is the pinnacle of his achievements and carries on the great tradition of George Lambert who set the standard for Australian war art during the first World War.

This travelling exhibition is funded by the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs Commemorative Program entitled "Their Service –Our Heritage", and it is good to see so many representatives of the local service and ex-service organisations present at the Opening.

The Australian war Memorial has Australia’s largest collection of the paintings and drawings by Ivor Hele. The collection includes a recent donation from the artist’s estate of 80 drawings and sketches covering all periods of his career, this augments the over one hundred oil paintings (some truly huge) in the collection.

Ivor Hele was born in Adelaide in 1912. Showing an early artistic ability, he travelled to Paris at the age of sixteen to gain a solid academic training in life drawing, figure studies and portraiture. He was inspired by Rodin and the old masters at the Louvre, and went on to study anatomy at Munich, where he concentrated on musculature when drawing from the nude model. Hele was essentially a studio painter, drawing his subjects on the spot but preferring to finish the works in the comfort of his studio. After his appointment as an official war artist, Hele sought the tranquillity of his studio to recuperate from his war experiences.

I must say that I was surprised to discover his reliance on the studio…as the works we are showing have an immediacy and presence that usually dissipates somewhat in studio work. I guess Hele was profoundly impressed by his experiences, and of course he was in possession of his excellent on the spot sketches, and was able to recreate the atmosphere so well.

Hele’s style changed dramatically throughout his career as official war artist. In North Africa he painted with a soft, pink palette: his paintings from New Guinea became dark and sombre, conveying a sense of gloom and despair. Hele was unable to complete a series of paintings of soldiers in Lae because the experience of working in New Guinea had affected his health. Featuring dramatic orange and greens, his paintings from the Korean War reflect concern and a heightened sense of physical fatigue.

After his war service, Ivor Hele lived a long and interesting life (as artists so often do) as one of Australia’s foremost portrait painters. He died in 1993.

Speaking of successful exhibition tours, our own Desert Journey has begun a five venue tour. It is currently showing in Griffith, then moves on to Dubbo, Wollongong, Broken Hill and Moree Regional Galleries.

Kerry Creecy, Director at Griffith, tells us that the exhibition is being very well received, with people saying it is an excellent balance of the traditional and the contemporary and that it conveys the enjoyable atmosphere of the Journey very well.

Although many of the visitors had not seen work by these artists before, they had heard of some of them, and knew that the Central West was becoming a hub of arts activity in Australia. A number said that they would visit Orange Regional Gallery to follow up on the exhibition.

Artists featured are all from the Central West - Ros Auld, Loretta Blake, Michael Carroll, Marianne Courtenay, Robert Crombie, Eris Fleming, John Winch, Madeleine Winch, Lynn Winters and Tim Winters.

Another tour of an Orange Regional Gallery show is currently being developed, with two venues including the new Mosman Regional Gallery in Sydney signing on so far. This is the excellent Bill Davis photography exhibition Portraits of Rite. We expect that this show will tour throughout the eastern states in 1999/2000.

Fibre Imprints, the Shibori exhibition curated by Margaret Barnett is also on tour, having been seen in Canberra and Melbourne already. It is currently in Toowoomba with two other northern venues to go before it ends.

Still Action, the war photography of Damien Parer is now up to its thirteenth or so venue, including showings in Sydney and Melbourne. It opens next in Bundaberg. This exhibition was seen by over 50,000 people in Sydney alone.

All in all, I estimate that around 225,000 people will have seen a current Orange Regional Gallery touring exhibition by the end of 1999.

Local sponsors interested in future touring productions of this Gallery should ring me on 0263615136.

A lovely exhibition by a little known expatriate painter Agnes Goodsir ( 1864 - 1939) has opened in Gallery One. The large exhibition of oil paintings and watercolours was opened by the exhibition’s curator Karen Quinlan, of Bendigo Regional Gallery.

Karen has done terrific work in putting together what is a very fine show of works by Goodsir, I think the first time that this has been done in Australia since two selling exhibitions in 1927.

It is appropriate that the exhibition was prepared under the aegis of Bendigo Gallery, as it was in that city that Agnes Goodsir received her first formal art training, having moved there from the country town of Portland to study at the Bendigo School of Mines. Many of the works in this large show are sourced from Victorian Regional Galleries and family of the artist.

Goodsir was in some ways the typical artistic expatriate, being fascinated from her youth by art, artists and what she thought the spiritual home of art - Paris. Although she did not begin formal studies until she was in her thirties, once decided upon an artistic career, she pursued her dream with a single mindedness, that saw her moving to Paris in 1899 where she continued to study for a further five years at the famous Academies of Colarossi and Julian.

Fortunately she came from a wealthy family, and her studies in Europe were (as was often the case for female artists) financed by her father - although after about six years she was selling enough work to become independent. Indeed, she did very well, sharing with Rupert Bunny, E Phillips Fox and Bessie Davidson the rare honour of election to the Salon Nationale des Beaux Arts.

She returned to Australia only once, in 1927, aged 63. She came in some triumph, having just been elected to the Salon and with numerous showings at the Royal Academy in London under her belt. Local newspapers reported that she had achieved fame as a portraitist and painter of still lifes, and that she had painted Ellen Terry, Lady Russell, The Baron Avonza and Count Leo Tolstoy. While in Australia she received numerous portrait commissions as a result of this favourable publicity - notable in this exhibition is a very fine portrait of Banjo Paterson - which is I think one of the best in existence of the famous Orange "ex-patriate".

However, following her final return to Europe, she faded from public memory, being admired only by a small band of scholars and collectors, as well as by family members - many of whom inherited pictures after her death.

Agnes Goodsir was however, unusual as an ex-patriate artist in that she never returned again, and certainly did not rely upon Australian buyers. The majority of our artists that I can think of who have chosen to be domiciled overseas have sold most of their work to Australians.

We do not really know her reasons for choosing to remain abroad, but it is clear that her personal inclinations deprived this country of her considerable talent, and deprived her likewise (until now) of deserved fame in her country of birth.

Anyone who sees this exhibition will be immediately impressed with the penetration of her characterisation in portraiture as well as by her delicate skill as a colourist. Although she chose to live surrounded by the innovations of the avant garde, she remained a conservative painter. She admired many modernists, but not much has impressed itself on her work. For instance she expressed admiration for the Japanese Parisian Tsugoharu Foujita (1886 - 1968), but any traces in her own work of the modernist "Japonissme" have come via Whistler and the academics such as Bougereau. There is not a trace to be seen in her work of contemporaries such as Picasso and Matisse.

Agnes Goodsir "In a Picture Land Over the Sea" is a most enjoyable exhibition - allowing the visitor a rare thrill of pleasant discovery, elegant beauty and a touch of the sort of pan-continental sophistication that makes me think of lines such as Eliot’s 1922 "April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain" and "In the room the women come and go, speaking of Michelangelo".

The marvellous fashions worn by Goodsir’s society subjects is another fascination, making the ugly and tasteless clothes of the 1990’s look very sick in comparison.

The exhibition is accompanied by a very good colour catalogue by Karen Quinlan that contains delightful insights and the fruits of good research. Her contemporary quotations reveal much about Australian attitudes and tantalise us as to the real reasons Goodsir stayed away for so long.

Also opened last night is an interesting local show featuring paintings, drawings, photography and sculpture by Chris Anderson, Anthony Fitzsimon, Kel Gleeson, Loretta Goodacre, Trevor Hood, Mark Lovick, Tavia Lyons, Alf Manciagli and Duncan McRobert.

These people are all better known as commercial artist’s and graphic designers - artist’s whose work you see around town each day of your life without necessarily knowing who did it.

However, we are not showing their commercial work, but rather the fine art works that they have made for themselves for their own pleasure, without expectation of reward. Some of the artist’s were quite surprised when curator Mark Lovick approached them to put together this sort of show, as although many had been trained in formal art schools, they had not thought of exhibiting their work for years.

I believe that some of these artists are uncommonly good at their commercial work – indeed we are lucky to have their skills in Orange. It is interesting to see their talents applied to fine art, and to recall that originally there was little separation of the notions of "advertising" and "art" – they closely resembled each other because as the advertising industry grew in the nineteenth century fine artists were enlisted to illustrate and promote products. Occasionally we see a return to this notion – as in the "psychedelic" posters of the sixties.

The work in "Artisans of Industry" is all very different, ranging from witty character studies to landscape. I am sure that visitors will enjoy the show, and will enjoy having their "doors of perception" opened to the wealth of talent that exists largely unnoticed.

The gallery has mounted a special exhibition designed as a part of the forthcoming festivities for the Food of Orange District. The exhibition is now open to the public, although its formal Opening will coincide with the launch of the F.O.O.D Festival on 9 April.

Entitled An Affair with FOOD, the exhibition features paintings by two Sydney artists, one from Queensland, and five from the Central West. All the artists have worked around the theme of food, and as might be expected, they have concentrated on the tactile, decorative and sensual qualities of fruit, vegetables and prepared meals.

All the work is for sale, and my thanks are due to Art House Gallery and Australian Galleries of Sydney for making this possible, and also to Jane Arnott of F.O.O.D for drawing my attention to the works of Trebilcock and Ryan.

It would be easy for such an exhibition to slip into a neat predictable mould where "safe and slick" still life paintings ruled. But this is not the case with An Affair with FOOD.

Although there are indeed decorative still life works in the show - Stephen Trebilcock from Sydney is one of the best in the country in this genre - I have also included fellow Sydney- sider Selina Snow, whose faux - naif paintings of chefs like Neil Perry and Christine Mansfield add a human presence, and remind us of the great pleasures of the table when man transforms, through his art, the original ingredients (which are God’s art).

Selina Snow is a unique and witty artist whose dog lying on a bed of sausages is the quirkiest work in the show.

The textural and formal sensuality of food is emphasised by Trebilcock through his elegant composition and careful paint handling while Orange artist Prue Hawke and Errol Smith of Millthorpe express sensuality through other means.

Both juxtapose fruit and human anatomy in ways which remind me of Eliot’s classic line "Do I dare to eat a Peach?". These artists revel in the looks of sensual bliss (that so easily merge into lust) of people eating, and they also delight in the erotic forms of fruit and vegetables and their resemblance to body parts (Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense!).

But these artists are devoid of the misanthropic vision of say, Fred Cress, and they manage to subtly imply the hovering presence of the seven deadly sins without delving into a sort of illustrated Dr Faustus.

I am a great admirer of the subtlety of their work, and although most people would not associate the new electric colour palette being used by Prue Hawke with "subtlety" I always find her colours original, harmonious and expressive, not merely decorative.

Her subtlety lies in an ability to express quite powerful, even shocking, feeling - yet the work is still attractive and appealing to the eye. Errol Smith has a gift for understatement and the transmission of his unique way of seeing with economy of means and quirky line.

Kate Ryan from Queensland has some lovely still life pictures that combine a certain freedom of handling with a very sure vision that is reminiscent of some of the still life work by Donald Friend. Kate Ryan is gaining a strong reputation for her water colours and when I was compiling this exhibition her work was admiringly mentioned by a number of art dealers.

Stuart Town artist Lyn Winters has a number of very closely observed and beautifully drawn coloured pencil works of fruit and vegetables. These are small glowing works where the form of the fruit is perfectly melded with harmonious colour so that the light source seems to emanate from within the fruit like a peaceful spiritual emanation. Understatement is also a strength of this artist, who seems to me to have hit a new peak with these fine little drawings.

Sita Cooray has some highly coloured and pleasing decorative works making good use of contrasting textures. She combines still lifes of fruit and vegetables (and chillies - not only her bright colours are reminiscent of her native Sri Lanka) with the Orange landscape that produced such an array of fine food. Some of these landscape vignettes are really drenched in light, and hint at new directions for her work.

Finally we are showing some new paintings by Kay Greenhill, very strong formal works in almost pure monochromes with just hints here and there of bright colour. Each has as a putative subject foodstuffs of some sort arranged on table or bureau, and to my eye these works reference both Paul Cezanne and the late John Brack, almost as an hommage. These are good paintings, where pure form is allowed its aesthetic significance without undue distraction. As with the highly formal work of Brack and Cezanne there is a sort of biological importance about the form (not merely linked to the food subject matter).

Also showing is the large show of works we have borrowed from our neighbours in Bathurst Regional Gallery. We hope that this exchange (they showed some of our collection a year or so ago) will signal a new era in collaboration, perhaps with other jointly curated exhibitions that will enlarge our individual presences in the region.

This exhibition will come as a surprise to all our visitors, even those familiar with the collections of Bathurst. We are showing works that are very recent acquisitions as well as many that have not been shown for decades, and of course the choices and favourites of Brenda Gray and myself are probably quite different from what the Bathurst Gallery staff may have chosen. There are benefits in seeing with another’s eyes - indeed this is the whole point of art.

Until 8 August only, we are showing in our large space an interesting show of artworks made using the latest computer technologies.

Unlike many of the alleged artworks one sees made on computer, these are made by professional trained artists, and the works are aesthetically pleasing as well as making excellent use of the new possibilities opened by digitisation.

We are showing two separate exhibitions – one is Lightfingered, featuring wall works by six artists curated by RMIT curator and printmaker Lesley Duxbury. The other is a show of paintings by Melbourne artist Tim Ralph which provide background to a computer video he has made in which he animates one of the surrealistic and visceral paintings for which he is known.

The artists involved in Lightfingered, Sarah Winfrey, Louise Weaver, Fran van Riemsdyk, Megan McPherson, David Harley and Lesley Duxbury are clearly fascinated by the new opportunities of digital manipulation, but they have not let the medium dictate the form.

I think it would have been possible to achieve the effects seen in their works without the computer, but it would have taken a very much longer time – particularly in the works where three dimensional paper forms are fitted together.

I have recently returned from viewing Frank Gehry’s architectural masterpiece in Spain – the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. This magnificent building is composed of structures that were literally drawn freehand into a computer, which then calculated the engineering details and generated templates for computerised steel and stone cutting machines.

The travertine and titanium clad walls are in very few places regular or symmetrical in both diameter and width, being based on undulating and widening organic forms. Literally, the planet has never seen anything like this before – although there were and still are stone masons capable of cutting the cladding as exactly, it has been estimated that it would have taken around 70 years – the time it used to take to build Gothic cathedrals (and Gaudi’s cathedral in Barcelona will take 170 years!). The computer programme used by Gehry, originally developed for the aerospace industry, allowed him to complete the project in just seven years.

This seems to me to be the best use of computers in art – the ability to simplify the technical processes, to allow the vision of the artist the most complete and rapid emergence. Of course, the medium will in many ways influence the "message", just as the use of differing thicknesses of brushes or types of paper will help determine the final product.

This does not mean that computers will end up "dominating" art like some Terminator robot in a beret. As can be seen from Bilbao, and from the works now at the Gallery in Orange, the important thing is always the artist’s way of seeing.

Too much "computer art" has been made by cybergeeks without artistic training, and ends up resembling an overproduced website, or the proverbial dog’s breakfast.

The works on show in Orange are made by artists, and that is the essential point. Anyone interested in the use of new technologies in art should see Lightfingered and Tim Ralph.

Curator of Lightfingered – Lesley Duxbury, will give a lunchtime lecture on Monday 2 August, between 1 and 2pm in the Gallery. This will hopefully be a good chance to learn some cutting edge techniques.

Orange painter Neil Cuthbert’s exhibition of paintings on the theme of migration by sea continues to delight, even astonish our visitors.

I have even heard the culturally cringing comment "this guy is too good to be a local artist".

Of course I immediately told this visitor that nothing is too good for Orange, and that we are blessed with some excellent artists in the Central West. It became clear that the visitor had simply meant she had not seen artists of this quality in other parts of regional Australia.

There is no doubt that Neil has put together a first rate exhibition that is being very well received.

Made over four years as part of a thesis for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts, this is a singularly well crafted and thought provoking show. Not only has the artist succeeded in terms of the traditional verities of composition, figuration and colouristic design but his subject matter treats of considerable layers of meaning and emotional response.

And all of this made with enough rare confidence to also add humour and nostalgic charm!

It is a delight to see art, that although clearly transmitting some serious ideas, is also not embarrassed to be good humoured, making many sly witticisms about all sorts of things from art history to naval lore to Blackpool "I’ve lost my little Willy" postcards.

Part of the success of the exhibition stems from the fact that the artist does know what he paints – Neil was a seaman for 14 years in the British and Australian merchant navies before going to art school. It is so important for artists to have actual experience of their subject if they want realism and depth of meaning.

Every time I look at these pictures I see something new in them, far too much for this column to recount.

If you want to find out more (and you will if you have seen the pictures) come to Neil’s Public Floortalk on Monday 30^th August at 1.00pm in gallery 3 amidst the exhibition.

This too is an excellent show – in my opinion the best general Australian group touring show in ten years.

The exhibition Curator’s, Belinda Allen and Tony Geddes give this exhibition rationale "Cinderella’s Gems illustrates the relationship between art and the intellectual mission of ten universities in New South Wales and the ACT. As such, the exhibition constitutes a powerful and compelling public statement about university art museums and collections and the contribution they make to the visual arts.

"Tucked away on university campuses around NSW and the ACT are some 8,000 works of art. Most of them live in offices, meeting rooms, public foyers and corridors only to be seen by staff and students. Collectively these works represent a substantial historical and cultural record of achievement by more than 1500 artists including painters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, multi-media artists and a range of craft practitioners. Eminent names like Lloyd Rees, Grace Cossington Smith, Sydney Nolan, Margaret Preston, Brett Whiteley, Emily Kingwarreye and Rover Thomas share space with innovative, although less familiar, contemporary artists such as Peter Aitken, Gordon Bennett, Gloria Petyarre, Bronwyn Oliver and David Jensz.

"Universities collect art for a variety of reasons defined in acquisition policies. Foremost among these are enhancing the physical environment in which students and staff work and study, serving teaching and research needs and illustrating particular dimensions of the Universities’ research work."

There are many impressive works in Cinderella’s Gems, and it has been very well chosen to hang together. The only odd thing is that the important Sydney University Collection is not drawn upon – something remarked by a number of visitors.

This fine exhibition by the well known artist who died just four weeks ago continues in Gallery 2 until 22 August.

The Opening last week attracted over 100 people from out of town, mostly from Sydney, and the high profile art scene people who attended was evidence of the very high esteem in which he is held. This is a fine show, towards which the artist worked in the knowledge that he was dying.

Wright was aware that he was working in a tradition of Hill End painting pioneered by Drysdale, Friend, Whiteley, Bellette and many other leading artists in our history.

This exhibition is a fitting continuation of an important tradition in the Central West.

From Turon to Tambaroora has been a very well received exhibition with many people from Sydney and beyond making the trip to see the show. Many people have left comments in the visitor’s book addressed to the artist, a way of paying their last respects to a much loved artist and friend.

Peter Wright died of cancer just three week before the show opened, in late June 1999. He had the disease for a couple of years, but his habitual cheerfulness and good temper sustained him to the end. He was a very funny and witty man, and was able to make jokes about his imminent demise.

From Turon to Tambaroora: Contemporary Hill End Landscape Painting by Peter Wright was curated by Brenda Gray in close consultation with the artist. Brenda has selected the show into thematic groups that cover the range of work he made in Hill End. These works are unlike many of the works he has made throughout his career, and reflect his sense of history as well as his vision of beauty in a strange landscape.

About half of the works in the exhibition were made after Peter discovered he was dying, and it is possible to read symbolism into some of the works that may not have been intended by the artist. Peter Wright was most conscious that he was working within a special tradition that holds an honoured place in Australian painting. The title he chose for his show –"Hill End Landscape Painting" is I think more relevant to the look and feel of this exhibition than his illness.

Certainly Peter has made some works that prefigure notions of death and pain, most notably the powerful group of small clay sculptures, but mostly, the works are best seen as an artist working within a local tradition established by masters like Friend, Drysdale, Whiteley, Bellette, Firth Smith and others who have painted and lived at Hill End.

No doubt he wished this to be his best show, not only because it would be his last complete body of work, but also because of the stature of the others who have gone before and established a vital tradition in this area.

Thus, I am inclined to see even the works whose subjects are wrecked cars as emblematic more of the nature of Hill End than of Peter’s own travails. Peter was far too clever not to have been aware of the symbolism, but don’t forget that Drysdale and Friend had made images of desolation and decay at Hill End while they were both in rude health. Hill End is, after all basically a ghost town kept alive by the skin of its teeth.

Even if Peter intended these images to reflect his own condition, his essential charm and good humour shines through, and there is not a hint of depression or anguish anywhere. It is a remarkably direct and unpretentious landscape show that reflects so well the artist’s own character to those who knew him.

It is this, I think that is the most moving thing about this show. Lesser creators would perhaps have battled with their angst and pain, but Peter Wright the consummate professional, the artist who has been associated with many of the major happenings in the Sydney art scene for over three decades, chooses to make a lovely and descriptive art that honours the tradition of Hill End itself. In doing so he revealed more about his own essential nature than he may have if he had chosen the expressionist route.

A series of Whiteley and Rees influenced undulating hillsides with road catch the eye for their accurate and dizzying perspective, yet the roads that figure in many of this series are clearly going somewhere interesting, and also have come from somewhere interesting.

All of his colours are soft, even muted, yet all are pleasing, making good use of the bleached earth colours of Hill End. Another series of orchards and vegetable gardens are painted in a charming fresh manner, in a faux naïve style with a strong vein of humour.

Wright made good use of his media, his monotypes taking advantage of the element of chance in this medium to lead in spontaneous directions. Most of these the artist has reworked with additional markings to emphasise some of these accidents of chance. Others, as his friend Tim Storrier sadly pointed out, he just did not have enough time to rework.

Only one work does have a gloomy atmosphere - a black heavily worked charcoal drawing of a late afternoon, a dead tree casting a long shadow on a hilly paddock. Another charcoal he has called "Black Infinity", but it is interesting to see that in both works the single tree is surrounded by other trees and that there is no essential tension apparent in the subject or composition. All is as it must be in the nature of life.

Over his career Peter has used a number of quite different styles, some very expressive and deep. However this simple landscape show probably says more than most of his other works.

I feel proud to have been able to help this body of work have its first showing, because it speaks of the alchemical power of art to transform life and bring new ways of seeing at even the most desperate times. Art can not cure cancer, but those who were with Peter Wright at his worst moments speak of the sustaining nature of his work and how it gave meaning and more ease to those times.

Critics of art prizes, who are usually artists themselves, say that there is a basic logical fault in attempting to compare things that are very different in both subject matter, intent, and style. These people say that art is the attempt to see with new eyes, and to lead others to see in this new way. They say that comparing ways of seeing, is a bit like comparing languages, and giving the prize to Russian because it is a more beautiful and expressive language than English.

They point out that the beauty and power of any language rather depends on what is actually said, and in any case, speakers will usually prefer their own native language, and experience other languages in its terms. Likewise, they say, for art judges, who are often accused of bias towards one style or another..

It is also alleged that it is a bit odd to award prizes for something that is essentially not a competitive activity.

Detractors of prizes say that making artists compete, demeans the product to the level of something essentially brainless, like a running race. Artists do not like to see themselves as Forrest Gump.

They allege that art is not about entertainment, or about trying to do something better than anyone else, so why give prizes and make a competition where there is none?

Well, although there is much truth in all of these arguments, the fact is that art competitions are a very well established and accepted part of the art scene. They are awarded I think in the majority of the world’s countries, certainly in all European countries, and I guess art prizes can be traced as far back as the ancient Druidic and Celtic bardic poetry Festivals from which sprang the modern Eisteddfods. Or to the equally ancient Chinese examinations for the Imperial beaurocracy, which involved an art and calligraphy competition.

The ability to win some prizes and some media attention have become an established stepping stone into the "big time". Brett Whiteley, for instance, won a Travelling Scholarship when he was a young artist that really set his feet upon the path to fame and fortune. Ditto for Tim Storrier and for the majority of successful artists in this country.

There would be very few professional artists who have not entered say the Archibald Prize at least once in their careers. Very few of these countless artists have even managed to be hung in the show, and just a tiny number have actually won the Archibald.

Just the same, the Archibald, and other art prizes, have become a rite of passage for artists in Australia. They provide a benchmark of public approbation to test one’s work against, and they also provide a jolly good reason for producing your best work.

When all is said and done the possibility of winning cold hard cash and basking in public adulation is pretty good motivation for knuckling down and doing your damnedest to make great art.

Now, the cavilling critic will say that there is no guarantee that this does in fact happen, and that many of the well known prizes actually contain second rate work painted just to win the money according to the known taste of the judges.

Most people however, think otherwise, and regard art prizes as being great motivators and a source of encouragement, to the winners as well as to all the entrants who are able to judge their own work on just about as level a playing field as they are ever going to get.

This latter approach is held by our own Friends of the Orange Regional Gallery , who offer an annual award to district school students doing primary year six, and secondary year eleven. They put up cash prizes of $300 for each of these winners, which is we think one of the most generous cash awards in the country for school art at this level.

The FORG art award has been running now for enough years to see past winners go on to be selected for ARTEXPRESS and other major shows, and to begin promising careers in art and design. There is no reason why some of these past winners will not go on to great things in their chosen field of art.

Certainly, these winners talk about the great feeling of encouragement they received when they found that others shared their own belief and vision, and recognised their talent, (and of course, that the cash was the most money they had ever won before or since)!

This years FORG Art Award is currently on show in Gallery two until 14 November, opening last night with the concurrent Pack Age exhibition of professional contemporary art.

Although at the time of writing we have still not completed the hanging of the FORG award, and it has not been judged, I think that those works I have seen are of a high standard indeed, this year particularly the secondary works, which have sometimes been a bit weak in the past.

It really does look as though this may be the best FORG Award to date, and my congratulations go to FORG, to the students, and to the art teachers from the ten or so district schools who have chosen to allow their students to compete.

John Berger (b. 1926) is an English writer and critic who has won the Booker prize for literature and also wrote the important books and television series on art and photography Ways of Seeing (1972) and About Looking (1983)

The bible tells us that The prophet is never honoured in his own land, a truth of which I have been reminded forcibly while preparing for this article on our current show "What John Berger saw", which runs in Gallery One until February 27.

For despite John Berger’s great popularity with artists and the general public, my 1994 CD rom of the (English) Penguin Reference Library does not mention him at all – no quotations, yet the comparable American product, the 1994 Microsoft Bookshelf gives over 40 quotations from Berger’s writings – even more quotes than it gives the much quoted Dorothy Parker.

This seems to me to be an interesting disparity, and is further highlighted by the fact that What John Berger Saw, a fascinating look at the influence of this powerful thinker and writer, a world first, is in fact an Australian exhibition, curated by Merryn Gates of Canberra School of Art. As in Berger’s writings, the periphery is often the source of the most important happenings.

The exhibition What John Berger Saw features paintings and photography by eight Australian artists who claim to have been influenced by his writings, which are easily applicable to the making of art.

The exhibition also has a collaborative work in progress by Berger with John Christie.

The Australians are Robert Boynes, Susan Fereday, Elizabeth Gersakis, Dean Golija, Paul Hoban, John Hughes, Tim Johnson, Peter Kennedy, Peter Lyssiotis, Polixeni Papapetrou, Gregory Pryor, Anne Zahalka and Constance Zikos. It is interesting that so many of the artists were born in other countries, reflecting I suppose Berger’s preoccupation with the themes of migration and dislocation.

Because of the wide range of Berger’s thought, and also because of the rather fragmentary and "unclosed" style of his didactic presentations, I thought it would sensible to present a series of quotations from his writings, so that visitors to the exhibition could have his ideas resonating in their minds as they saw the show.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. . . . The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.

Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.

Ours is the century of enforced travel . . . of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this—as in other ways—they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen . . . But to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied . . . but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.

John Berger’s popular writings have been prescribed texts in Universities, Schools and Art Schools throughout the world since their publication in the early seventies.

Curator Merryn Gates, of Canberra School of Art, feeling that an appraisal of his influence was overdue, advertised in the art press for artists who have been influenced by John Berger’s ideas, and the selection we have is the result of rigorous paring down of very many submissions from artists all over Australia. The exhibition also includes a poetic and beautiful correspondence between Berger and his filmmaker friend John Christie.

The appreciation of the works on show is greatly enhanced by a knowledge of Berger’s ideas, as each of the artists has submitted works that elucidate one of Berger’s ideas, or rather have been made in response to his writings.

While there is an academic slant to the show, this does not mean that the exhibition is desiccated, distanced or dull. Rather, as is constantly stressed by Berger, the presented works of art are closely bound up with the everyday real life and beliefs of the artists and for the most part the works are vital and accessible - although the viewer benefits greatly from knowledge of Berger’s ideas, as have the artists.

Berger is one theorist whose ideas are capable of direct use by artists. His clarity is renowned, and his frequent use of images with textual explanation approximates the natural way that artists assimilate knowledge.

To make familiarisation with Berger easy, we are constantly running video programmes of his two famous BBC television programmes Ways of Seeing (1972) and About Looking, both of which had a huge impact at the time, not only for what was said, but particularly for the way in which it was said – using images and words in novel and unexpected conjunctions to make various points about ownership, about the context dependent meaning of artworks, and about the differences between drawings, paintings and photographs among many other discourses.

The Australian artists in What Berger Saw are Robert Boynes, Susan Fereday, Elizabeth Gersakis, Dean Golija, Paul Hoban, John Hughes, Tim Johnson, Peter Kennedy, Peter Lyssiotis, Polixeni Papapetrou, Gregory Pryor, Anne Zahalka and Constance Zikos. It is interesting that so many of the artists were born in other countries, reflecting I suppose Berger’s preoccupation with the themes of migration and dislocation.

Each artist has given the show work of consequence, with perhaps the most outstanding being Peter Kennedy’s huge wall of superb drawings.

Kennedy is known these days mostly for his film and video work, so it is a surprise to see these really excellent drawings, which seem to reveal far more of the artist than his other work. Berger says " A drawing is an autobiographical record of ones discovery of an event – seen, remembered or imagined… In front of a painting or statue (the viewer) tends to identify himself with the subject; in front of a drawing he identifies with the artist, using the images to gain the conscious experience of seeing as though through the artists own eyes".

So Kennedy has chosen drawing for the important autobiographical moment when he became disillusioned with socialism as practiced by the four "patriarchs" Stalin, Mao, Lenin and Marx.

The smeared and monstrous faces of these four, like the living dead, reflect their horrible fascination for, and the profound disillusionment of the artist. I say "living" dead because the accompanying series of drawings contains mutated images of the four communists surrounding some very beautiful drawings of Kennedy’s new baby son. As a whole this work seems to imply that although dead and corrupt, the essence of these four men remains floating around in the milieu, ready for take up by another generation – perhaps in a positive and evolved format.

Also running until 27 February is a show from the Historic Houses Trust of NSW concentrating on the great challenges of western NSW agriculture and the ways in which eight families are dealing with these problems. Featuring good black and white photographs of some historic properties like Tubbo, this exhibition is required viewing for anyone interested in the rural crisis and changing agricultural practices.

This important exhibition of photographs by Lindy Kerr documents how eight families on the land in western NSW are dealing with some of the crises of modern agriculture: salination, woody weeds, carp infestation, feral animals.

It was opened by the Chairman of the Historic Houses Trust, the fabulous Jack Mundey, who in his usual style got right to the heart of the matter, explaining the Historic Houses Trust interest in land management "if we don’t do something about conservation of the land and waterways, there won’t be any people left to conserve the grand old properties for future generations".

Jack Mundey has received two honorary doctorates and is honoured by the National Trust as an Australian Living Treasure for his life long commitment to practical conservation. He recently received the Order of Australia.

As is our usual strategy, the Gallery is showing three very different exhibitions at once, with the idea that any visitor, no matter what their preferences in art, will be able to see something that they like, and hopefully, like very much indeed.

The 6^th Festival of Student Art occupies the big Gallery One space. It is a very large exhibition, featuring over 300 works, nearly all of which have been framed and mounted by our Education Officer, Brenda Gray, who also selected the works with the assistance of art teachers in Orange schools.

The show features work from Kindergarten right through to TAFE, so is a terrific way to follow the varying ways of seeing that develop as art is practiced throughout the entire student years. As a number of the TAFE students are already accomplished artists of mature years, we feel that we can be said to be presenting the full range of student work from beginner to professional .

For the first time, this biannual show has a theme – needless to say, it is The Olympics, and for those who can’t get enough of this event, we certainly have the icing on the cake – featuring many different angles on sport as seen by young and not so young artists.Many are truly delightful .

Secret Places, an unusual installation which is a collaboration between artist Sieglinde Karl, photographer Kate Hamilton, musician Ron Nagorcka and poet Hazel Smith.

The four conspirators have formed a work of coherence and power, which has been impressing many visitors with its feminist and ecological standpoint, expressed in an understated, yet provocative manner. The piece incorporates a stunning woven female figure set up on a burial tomb reminiscent of pre Christian burials.

Comments from the visitors book " "Feelings of the sacred and spiritual – the smells of the bush and sounds of poetry and birds and music make this a wonderful experience for all the senses" "The whole experience - smell, sound, seeing, walking in and out, was wonderful". Children have written "It was amazing, and I could not weave a woman out of pine needles" "It was mad and scary and gave me nightmares".

Upstairs, we are showing "As Above So Below" a series of paintings by Ruth le Cheminant.

For an artist domiciled in the Blue Mountains, le Cheminant's vibrant colour is a bit of a surprise…relating perhaps more to the splendid plumage of the mountain parrots than to the eucalypt and sandstone tonalities with blue grey sfumato hues we are used to in "traditional" painting from this area.

Le Cheminant is a dab hand at making striking harmonies with strong colour (made all the stronger perhaps by the blood red colour we have painted the walls), and in many respects this is one of the most striking colouristic exhibitions we have shown in recent years.

The show comprises attractive landscapes, nearly all made with horizontal or diagonal strokes of a one inch or so brush, where strong colour is laid down in stokes of roughly even length. In some works the colours are disparate, melding into bright landscapes of greater or less abstraction.

In others, various subtle hues of the same colour combine to form a study of colour itself, where the impasto of the surface and the slight differences in hue, combine to animate the surface. Depth and luminosity come from well chosen underpainting and the built up layers of brush strokes.

Other works combine decorative contrasting lines and motifs which also serve to add a dynamism to the surface, through making the eye jump a bit. In some, particularly the works of pure abstraction, the applied cross motifs serve a psychological function, evoking an event of strong personal significance in the artist’s life.

It is interesting how the viewer can somehow tell that in these paintings, where a jagged cross is placed on a bare field of colour, the cross does not serve simple decorative purposes, but has some as yet hidden importance..

This is a show that really glows on the walls, not with the subtle inner glow of say, a Mark Rothko, but with a sort of brash attractiveness…more Sydney than Melbourne we might say.

I can now announce that the Friends of the Gallery have just made a number of important purchases for the Gallery. Firstly they have donated the entire series of prints made by Michael Kempson and Matthew Tome of the Prime Ministers of Australia.

This gift was made in celebration of the Federation of Australia, and I must say that I cannot think of a more suitable acquisition for this purpose, as the light hearted works by Kempson and Tome retain a great deal of the true Aussie spirit, and treat their subject with dignity, but with gentle satire.

Michael Kempson is one of Australia’s foremost printmakers, as well as being an Orange ex-pat. The works were purchased from the touring exhibition A Little Respect, which we showed early on this year.

The Friends have also purchased a work by Harry Sherwin of Adelaide, a fine gouache by a notable practitioner of the technique, which celebrates the formal qualities of the aubergine as it also celebrates Australia’s World Cup cricket victory. Not bad for one small painting!

The Friends have also purchased a quality Agfa document and transparency scanner, which the Gallery can use for preparation of catalogues and posters as well as in cataloguing the collection for the World Wide Web.

These are donations which are really useful, and important if the Gallery is to grow and meet the increasing challenges of decline in the funding base.

The Europeans, touring from the National Gallery of Australia, is an important show, which has caused something of a general re-appraisal of the impact of émigré artists on our culture. Although this show focuses on the contribution of just a dozen or so European migrant artists, it causes us to think of many others who also came here in the period 1930 to 1960, and of the particular ways of seeing that their life experience contributed to our own culture.

This exhibition concentrates on Europe, but in years to come we will need a show dedicated to Asian emigres, who are only recently becoming well known in Australia, although there have been artists here for over one hundred and fifty years who came from Asia… their work is almost completely unknown to the wider community.

The Europeans is somewhat brooding in subject matter, and I guess this is to be expected given the traumatic events of the time frame surveyed. This somewhat angst-ridden atmosphere is heightened by the very dark lighting conditions in which we must show the delicate works on paper.

The Europeans contains however, some very beautiful and moving work..including a piece made in the second war internment camp in Orange by Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack…which, by its venomous choice of colours, seems to me to be playing with the name Orange as well as evoking a tortuous mental state.

The Europeans contains a small, but excellent choice of sculpture, jewellery, drawing and printmaking by artists, the extent of whose contribution is now undoubted.

The show is divided up into six sections: "Persecuted peoples in Europe", "Internees", "Dreams and Nightmares", "Art and Life", "Alienation" and "Search for Self". With such titles it is evident that this is not a feel good piece of fluff exhibition, but rather a serious examination of the sort of cultural and emotional baggage that the émigré’s brought with them, and how they translated this into the Australian experience.

I should say here that the free documentation that accompanies the exhibition is surprisingly light on for a NGA show, not too much depth in this at all, but that there is a very good book published for sale to accompany the show, which is very well worth adding to your Australian art library. The essays in this go into the sort of detail that is demanded by the very fine works in the exhibition.

There are no uninteresting works in this how, all have some important aspect or another to offer the viewer, and it is difficult to pick particular works over others to talk about in this column. However, I must mention in particular the sculpture by Inge King and Julius Kane and the fine medallions by Andor Meszaros. All of these artists are better known in Victoria, as they were based in Melbourne, but their work will certainly be known to most Australians, if not by name, as they all achieved success and commissions of national importance.

Andor Meszaros became the most prominent and sought after medal maker and relief sculptor in the country, many of whose works have been scattered across Australia. His Stations of the Cross made between 1942 and 1970 were especially popular, and can be seen in Cathedrals and museums in every state.

Julius Kane and Inge King were founding members of the Melbourne Sculptors group "centre Five Group" which was ahead of its time in promoting the role of monumental sculpture and its close relationship to architecture and to the wider community through public spaces. This group had influence far beyond Melbourne, and we owe them some thanks for the (slowly) emerging role of public art in this country.

Inge King’s work "Flying Form" of 1961, is one of my favourite pieces in the show, welded steel of surprising airy grace. I wonder if it is just the context of this exhibition that causes me to see the ranked horizontals in grey steel as serried bombers? It is a highly original composition that is pleasant in form and texture.

Kane’s Adam and Eve of 1954 has also become a favourite, the looks of almost blissful innocence on their faces, and their odd hermetic gestures, are most charming…although I think I detect a critical cast in the treatment that makes of their fatuous innocence something almost evil – as though they have chosen not to see. I guess that there were very few survivors of the European holocaust who did retain a belief in pure innocence.

This is a show of consequence by four artists associated with Bathurst who have worked to ensure an harmonious and coherent exhibition. The works , paintings and ceramics by Tim Miller, Jeannie Holmes-Littlewood, Peter Marshall and Peter Wilson hang together very well, and have been drawing many appreciative comments from visitors.

Visitors all seem to have a personal favourite artist, which reflects well upon the overall quality of the show, but I suppose most comments relate to the beauty of Peter Wilson’s crystalline glazed ceramic pieces and to Tim Miller’s light dappled landscape paintings,

Certainly Wilson has mastered the intricacies of crystalline glazes, where the firing allows certain metallic constituents of the glaze to grow flower like crystals. This is a tricky enough process to control, as these glazes are notoriously slippery and tend to run off the ceramic body, but they also react with sand or other impurities in the clay to produce unexpected results, so the clay itself needs to be very carefully chosen. And when the potter has all of these variables under control, he still has to make sure that the crystal growth reflects and complements the actual form of the vessel upon which it sits. He also must make sure that the many possible colour combinations of his glaze formula all balance to produce exactly the effect he is after.

Peter Wilson has gained a high degree of control over the process, which really is a remarkable change from his past concentration on earthy raku fired pieces with their much greater reliance on random effects. Certainly crystal glazes are to an extent unpredictable, but Wilson has achieved great control, enabling attractive and decorative flourishes, such as contrasting coloured pooled rims and in most cases, no need to grind the foot of the piece.

Wilson’s forms too, although not dissimilar to those of the last decade, have evolved to mature and pleasing shapes of greater architectonic intent.

Tim Miller’s paintings also speak strongly of professional skill and control, although exercised so well that the viewer does not feel the effort. Rather, he makes free and impressionistic paintings of light and cloud effects that are both relaxing to view and harmonious in colour. His observation of nature is profound, and although he differs from them in many respects of technique and intent, he shares with the impressionist painters a fascination with the effects of local colour upon shadows and the fleeting delights of gentle light.

In the catalogue he says that he gets "a sense of reality or identity in expressing a feeling from natural stimuli". In many respects he is an unusual landscape painter, as he manages to convey more of subtle feeling and inner states than most …I guess he too is a seeker after Cezanne’s "petite sensation".

Some visitors have been asking about the exhibition of fine contemporary Australian prints made by master printer Diana Davidson in her Whaling Road Studio in Sydney. This show is upstairs in Gallery 3, and features beautiful works by Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, Liz Cummings, Kevin Connor, John Firth Smith, Donald Friend, Richard Goodwin and many other leading lights of Australian art.

People are confused about what an artist print is, and how it differs from a photographic reproduction.

Well the first point to make is that an artist print is made carefully by the artist, often in collaboration with a master printer, with the intention of producing a relatively small number of hand made works.

The artist may want to make prints because of their inexpensiveness , so he can reach sections of the market who cannot afford paintings or drawings, or he may just want to achieve certain effects that can only be gained through a print medium. Some artist prints are so beautiful that over time they have achieved prices that rival those of paintings – Rembrandt’s etching Christ Presented to the People for instance sells for over a million dollars US.

Certain textures, edge effects and colour harmonies can be achieved in artist printmaking that cannot be gained by other means. The velvety blacks of a mezzotint or etching just can’t be matched any other way, nor can the expressive lines of a linocut.

In artist limited edition prints, if a camera is used in any part of this process, it will generally have been used as part of the artist’s making of the image, rather than as the means of producing a low cost image. Some artist print making techniques may use a camera…for instance to transfer an image made by the artist to silk screen, but in general, if this is done, it is because the artist has wanted a "photographic edge" to the print. An example of this is Andy Warhol’s famous celebrity prints.

There is a vigorous collectors market for artist prints, enabled by the generally lower cost and high quality of such prints, which are usually made on fine hand made paper and have a lovely texture and matt sheen. The hand made aspect is a very important part of the high prices paid for Warhol’s prints…nobody would pay half a million dollars for an actual Campbells soup label!.

The second important point about artist prints is that although there are many different possible media used for the process, in general each printing block or plate is capable of making only a few first quality images, and then the printing surface begins to wear and image quality is reduced. Therefore, artist prints are usually limited to editions numbering only in the tens. Collector’s pay the highest prices for the lowest numbered prints in an edition.

To produce very large editions, say over one hundred impressions, photo mechanical techniques are generally used which produce long wearing steel printing plates .

Photo mechanical reproduction can reproduce very many identical images, and sometimes companies try to pass these off as limited edition artist prints. However, real artist prints are always marked by convention with the number of prints made in the edition, and they are always signed by the artist.

You will often see prints of well known artist’s works marked with edition numbers in the hundreds. A check with a magnifying glass will reveal the tell tale "dot screen" markings of photographic printed reproduction. Such works do not fetch nearly as much on the market as an artist print., where the highest prices are reserved for the very first satisfactory prints, which are marked by convention as Printers Proof and Artist Proof (PP and AP). The printer and the artist reserve the first one or two copies they are satisfied with, for themselves. And these have the crispest finish.

The third point about artist prints is that the artist must have made or overseen the original design on the printing surface itself. He or she will have drawn the design onto the lithographic stone, or the etching plate, or have gouged and cut the recessions into a lino cut or woodcut. If he has not actually drawn the markings straight onto the printing surface, he will always have drawn the design onto a tracing sheet which the master printmaker will then translate, under his supervision, into the printed medium. Cheap mass reproduction prints are merely photographs of an existing work, which are then translated into an offset or other printing press capable of making thousands of identical images. The artist need not have been any where near the process, and very often is not even aware of the making of such reproductions (as they are often made after an artist’s death).

Having been satisfied with the design, and the colours, format and paper, the artist will often hand the actual printing of the images over to the master printer, who is then responsible for printing the edition so that each resembles as closely as possible the original artist proof copy. The edition number will be decided by printer and artist based upon the possibility of producing a certain number before the image quality degrades too far.

When this number is reached, the printer will score the printing plate or black so that it cannot be used again. In the Gallery at the moment we have examples of printing plates with the cancellation mark made by master printer Diana Davidson evident.

I hope that what I have said here helps explain how delighted we are to receive a donation of Printer’s Proof prints from Diana Davidson, master printer, whose Whaling Road Studio is one of the foremost studios in Australia. The exhibition at the Gallery contains some of the best prints made in this country for twenty years, and has been very well received by most visitors.

Upstairs, Margaret Roberts’ Horizon consists of a number of video screens running concurrent movies of rail journeys. The artist has produced catalogues and various accoutrements for the show that further enhance the metaphors of expansion and travel.

The artist tells us in the catalogue " Horizon is a video installation which has come out of an interest in exploring the effect of our movement on the appearance of what we see. It is also influenced by an interest in locating ourselves in our environment, in a way which helps us understand where we stand, and our relationship to the world surrounding us.

Each video shown in Horizon, was made by pointing a video camera at right angles to the direction of the train, holding the lens against the train window, turning the camera on, holding it level as much as possible, and recording continuously for one hour. The camera records what any traveller sees as they look out of the train window into the passing world. However it records only a selection of it, as the camera lens is fixed at 90 degrees to the train, and records a much narrower band of vision than human eyes can see. A traveller has access to far more information than is provided by the camera's record, so that the moving image collected by the camera, is more concentrated and abstract in comparison with the moving world seen by the traveller.

This selection of visual information means the video-viewer can exert the same amount of concentration on a smaller range of visual information, enabling people to see some things more clearly, or, in practice, to realise that many things we see every day, are actually very confusing. For example, we can see how forms change as we move past or through them, how foreground (e.g. other moving trains) edit the background in and out of what we see, how the moving image tends to separate into segments which move at different speeds against each other, as if someone was pulling strings on a large theatre stage. Presumably we see these same sort of things everyday, or whenever we travel.

We may also see this familiar world in a different way in a video recording, because one of the many things deleted from the world we look at in the video recording, is our own presence in it. This presence is re-inserted here in the video installation, through combining several videos into a large drawing which emphasises the viewer's presence watching them. Viewers can see a map of the continent marked with the locations shown on each video, which, if they so wish, they can use to work out that they are in the centre of this large continental drawing. In Horizon (Orange), the videos document a long line from Perth, through Orange, to Sydney, and another short one from Dubbo to Orange. These lines could be understood as a drawing across the continent which marks, through the juncture of two lines, the spot where the videos are installed and where people are watching them

A cross (juncture) is one of those ambiguous things that does one thing and its opposite - it marks a spot but also deletes something through crossing it out. How we understand the meaning of any particular cross, in practice, is determined by its context and the extent of our knowledge of that context. As I travelled across these rail lines to make the videos, I realised that these lines and all the other elements of settlement- the cleared land, the fences, the roads, the towns etc - mark one way of knowing the landscape and delete another. Yet many of those deleted lines may still be there, if only I had the knowledge to see them. "

Although this may sound somewhat simplistic and documentary, numerous visitors are quite captivated by this piece by an artist with a unique way of seeing. I see her use of the land markings of railway lines, with the attendant mythology of development and corruption, as rather more a journey into Vico’s Sapienza Poetica than an exploration of the banal.

The NSW Ministry for the Arts funded Outreach project featuring the sculpture of Phil Hammial, Janine Hilder and Errol Smith has finished in Canowindra, and has moved into a shop window in the top block in Molong, where it will reside for the next two weeks.

Our Volunteer Gallery Guides, who have been manning the exhibition in Orange, Parkes, and Canowindra report that this is a hugely successful project, that has been very much enjoyed by the large numbers of school children who have attended workshops, and by the many hundreds of other visitors to the exhibition.

From now until Sunday May 7, found object sculptural works by Hammial and Hilder, with further works by Millthorpe artist Errol Smith will be on display in the old Dulux paint shopfront, and then be on show in Parkes for a week before moving on to other Central Western towns, where the sculptures will be displayed in empty shopfronts courtesy of local landlords.

School children will attend workshops in the disused shopfronts where the sculptures will be shown.

Orange Gallery Director Alan Sisley says that perhaps the project may encourage others to think of alternate uses for the many empty shops that are the obvious casualties of the rural crisis. He says that this Outreach Project is the first of a number designed to bring art more directly into the community and to assist schools and adults who are hampered by distance from seeing more art.

The project is funded by the NSW Ministry for the Arts, an active participant in the NSW government’s policies of enlarging cultural possibilities west of the Divide.

Janine Hilder and Phil Hammial are well known artists, capable of making witty, even outrageous sculpture from the most mundane objects. Errol Smith too, has a unique way of seeing that will charm and intrigue passers by to the exhibition.

However, the artists are also fine performers as well as sculptors …Janine Hilder is well known to visitors to Darling Harbour, where she gives regular art performances, and Phil Hammial is well known as a poet..in fact he leaves for South Africa to be guest at a Poetry Festival on Friday.

Last night the President of the Friends of the Gallery Peter McFarland officially opened the new exhibitions for the month.

The Friends of the Gallery have for a number of years offered cash prizes of $300 and $250 to the outstanding student entrant in both years 6 and year 11. They want to encourage students to keep on with their art, and a cash award is definitely a great incentive for young people..and buys quite a bit of art equipment.

This years winners will be announced in this newspaper next week, but I can tell you that many feel this to be one of the best years yet, with much good work to be seen, and there look to be some likely candidates for the year 12 ARTEXPRESS show next year.

This was one of Peter MacFarland’s first official duties as President of the Friends, having taken over from the excellent Bernie Huxtable recently. Peter has plenty of good ideas and enthusiasm for the Gallery, and although it is hard at present to find willing volunteer workers, Peter and the FORG Committee are steering a course towards new activities and a fresh approach for the Friends of the Gallery.

The FORG Art Award is but one of many "quietly achieving" things that the Friends do for the Community, and I do hope that next year, the official Year of the Volunteer, their membership will be boosted and more people who want to work for the Friends will come forward.

Sebastian is an exhibition of contemporary realist painting featuring ten young and middle career artists who specialise in the accurate portrayal of nature and the human figure. The Curator , Alison Kubler from the Gold Coast City Gallery, chose the name Sebastian after her cat. She says she wanted a name that didn’t carry any theoretical connotations...but I reckon she just likes her cat.

Alison’s method of nomenclature has appeal to me: why not name a show after someone I like? I was very fond of my mothers father, so I am going to call the next exhibition I curate Purvis Cornelius Rudolph Augustus Breadpoultice Smith.

Although the name Sebastian may be theory neutral, the works on show are not. There are many hip ultra realist works, including pixilated transcriptions from Quake, hand painted trompe l'oeil knitting patterns and monochromatic portraits visible only under raking light - all of which carry more than a whiff of the obfuscating French perfume beloved of Jean Baudrillard and other woolly Gallic philosophes.

Although Sebastian may be a cat’s name, in this show, the theory of the simulacra is top dog.

Despite my aversion to post structuralist philosophy, I confess that I enjoy this show more than a little. It is like nothing we have shown before, and I suspect that most visitors will share my enjoyment of these small slices of life on our modern planet, which for many people will raise two lovely and important questions - "what on earth is this about?" and "in heaven’s name why would you make a painting of that?"

This year our annual Christmas Selling exhibition features tribal artefacts from respected Sydney dealers Nomadic Rug Traders and Galleries Primitifs.

We have about two hundred intriguing things to choose from, Afghan hats and camel saddle bags, embroidered and sequined conical hats, Trobriand combs, betel mortars, Sepik figurines, Navajo Indian jewellery, Persian Carpet runners, Small Tapa cloths…an Aladdin’s cave of affordable objects d’art with prices around $20 up to over $1000.

The suppliers were asked to keep prices for most objects below $300, and although this is getting pretty hard with the great expansion of the so called tribal art market in recent times, Nomadic Rug Traders and Galleries Primitifs have been generous, and I think collectors will recognise some real bargains to be had.

The Christmas Selling exhibition is designed to provide an opportunity to buy a special present that you certainly will not find anywhere else in the Central West. In combination with the Gallery Shop, with its new range of jewellery and lovely things, the Gallery can provide most of your Christmas gifts.

The Christmas Selling Exhibition – Tribal Arts, will be open until 20 December, the Gallery Shop will be open everyday except Christmas Day. Tues to Sat 11to 5, Sundays 2 to 5.

The damp weather seems to have put a squib on enthusiasm for the Trip to the Edge bus tour to the Mountains planned for 20 November. We only have about half of the bookings necessary for this trip, so we have deferred this exciting journey to the new year..possibly late February. With apologies to those who booked. Watch this space!

"Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred."

Walter Benjamin A Berlin Chronicle (written 1932; repr. in One-Way Street and Other Writings, 1978).

Geoff Levitus, lived for some years in a beautiful place called Repentance Creek, where he and his wife worked in nearby Lismore, raising their children and doing up an old farmhouse. They tried to come to terms with the surrounding landscape through physical labour and by learning about the history of the area and the changes to the land - the gradual denuding, fencing and manicuring of its wild hills and valleys from early cedar getting to dairy farming to macadamia plantations.

They adapted to the feeling of otherness that affects everyone who moves to a country town. Unless you were born there you will remain an outsider for many years indeed. And Levitus is an artist, a profession that must have made him feel all the stranger in this strange land.

A few years ago he moved back to Sydney, his home town, where he now lives, teaches and makes his art.

For Levitus this move has been associated with some terrible luck, not the least of which has been his Sydney studio burning down and his flat being flooded.

However, such a dislocation is rarely painless for anyone, and Levitus realised that his experience mirrors one of the most common experiences of modern times. As John Berger has written, "Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time".

Levitus saw that in some ways his own journey was a metaphor for the migrations of his Jewish forebears, and that voyaging is now an elemental part of the European identity. He understands that the lack of belonging to a place has become a very common state of mind, and that this is probably felt more or less by all Australians whose ancestors have come here over the last two hundred years.

Berger wrote "To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen . . . But to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments. (From Keeping a Rendezvous -Collected Essays 1992)

This exhibition, called "Transitions" concentrates images of dislocation and transience, hiatus and voyaging. Levitus uses his experience as the starting point to explore the poignant losses of migration, a metaphor in turn for the journey of life.

Levitus does not merely document the events of his recent experience. Rather he makes metaphors that will be understood by many people. His theme unifies the exhibition; the elegant welded and painted steel rod sculptures and the expressive oil paintings. These are very different in style, but sit well together due to the potent imagery that links them.

Transitions reminds us of the European experience of Marc Chagall and other artists of the last century, as well as holding echoes of older artists in the Australian tradition such as Arthur Boyd. I think also of works by Kitaj, Baselitz, Tillers and those who have recognised the artist as permanent outsider, in exile.

In these works I have understood why painters use the device of a floating figure hovering above the ground. Levitus explains it as a state of being neither in one place or another, an indeterminate observing position that many artists feel is their place in society. This feeling of otherness is for him intensified by physical dislocation.

This exhibition is bound into unity by certain tensions – the contrast between emotive freely handled oil paintings and spindly, rather elegant sculpture; the contradictory emotions expressed in the works; the stillness of the figures against the dynamic paint surface, are tensions among many. Although the colours of the show are sometimes quite bright, the emotional tone is understated, dealing carefully with emotions of yearning, loss, trepidation, angst. And each seems halted at the very point where it may well become something else: discovery, hope, promise, success.

I believe that the exhibition title "Transitions" may also serve to indicate a shift in the artists own way of seeing, a change of style and subject matter that is a natural result of his experience and reflects the cast of his mind at present.

One thinks of the tarot card..the hanged man. As the book of Kings says "How long halt ye between two opinions?"

A state of reflection and hiatus is a natural point on any journey, metaphorical or literal. There is a time, no matter how brief, when one is neither here nor there, neither one thing nor another. This can be a point of wisdom, of turning, before process meshes into gear. It is also a point of stillness..Be Still and Know that I am God

"Transitions" is also about memory, and its disturbing effect on reality. Walter Benjamin’s words above apply well to this exhibition, which has been entirely painted in the studio, from memory.

The works are theatrical, as is often the case of familiar scenes painted from memory. Memory plays its tricks. Perspective has an edgy unreality, the viewers point of view is raised impossibly, and sightlines are forced together to give the wide view of a stage set. As on stage, disparate loci are blended together, and memory imposes its odd symmetry.

Some symbols are presented as though mounted on plinths with that peculiar unreality of an aspidistra in the corner of the stage. Chekov said, if you show a gun in the first act, you must use it in the last act. Levitus ‘s symbols hold both promise and threat

His theatricality intensifies the feeling of the artist observer, powerless, yet omniscient.

A few of the paintings, and the thin sculptures, remind me of the angst of metaphysical painting. One painting (Title) gives its figure the archetypal long black shadow stretching away before numberless blank windows of the city. The lone figure turns from a naively drawn bush cottage and enters the blank defoliated city, almost stumbling, fainting. Yet the little square bush house too possesses the blank staring eyes of unwelcome.

Another painting merges a memory of King Street Newtown, the Trocadero near his burnt studio, with the floods of Lismore and the orchard studded hills of Repentance Creek. His point is well made that much of the architecture of Sydney can be seen in many a country town, but, as a postmodern real estate agent might say, the three important things now are context, context, context.

Movement is in these paintings not just thematically, but in the active skies, the thick swirling textures of the paint, the fine painting of passages of water. And in many of the paintings there is the motion of the vortex, the eye is somewhat forcefully led by pointing brushmarks like fingers into the centre of the picture, or squeezed between two near objects to rush back to a single point of rest, as happens in (Title) where the forceful textures and colour of the foreground flower vase and orchard seem to propel the boat to the more smoothly painted tranquil background scene.

(Title – the boat heading towards two white buildings) uses a compositional device of two circles swirling against each other, as does (title – the one with the hose with oblong yards and cityscape in the distance). So movement, and its concomitant tensions, is integral to the works themselves.

It is a credit to the skill of the artist, that he has been able to keep the various forces of this exhibition under control, and to make original and harmonious paintings. His colours can be lush or muted, his brushwork, sparse or frenzied..each to achieve a particular effect, yet the overall exhibition has a unity and sense of purposeful wholeness that is not often met with in these superficial times.

One last point..although Levitus is very much a family man, where are the presences of his children, his wife, in these paintings? Where are his neighbours? Upon what journey do we embark and arrive at our destination alone?

"Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred."

Walter Benjamin A Berlin Chronicle (written 1932; reprinted in One-Way Street and Other Writings, 1978).

A Deep Well of Memory is an excellent title for an evocative show of paintings by Geoff Levitus and Paul Miller.

As with most good art, the show deals with imagery that has come from the experience of each artist, in this case, recovered from memory.

Levitus recalls the floods of Lismore, where he formerly lived and raised his family, and Miller the light and the wooden structures of his native Canada. So for each artist the experience of dislocation and fragmentation is more or less present in these works.

As John Berger has written, "Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time. . . to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments. (From Keeping a Rendezvous -Collected Essays 1992)

Each has captured these scenes with that peculiar theatricality that memory brings to events, and each has a singular potency of effect. Because the works are symbolic and poetic in expression, each viewer will read these pieces differently, but it is clear that the artists are using these recalled images for a more universal quest than Proustian recollection.

In fact, this is an exhibition not about what has been remembered - although such factual matters have their own meanings- but is concerned with the metaphorical usage of a limited set of memories. Levitus for instance has seen floods in the country, and some particular images have stayed with him, but the innundations of his paintings, reinforced by titles such as "Apres le temps et la maree", clearly refer to more archetypal deluges.

Miller and Levitus are both artists capable of using symbols to speak in a universal and poetic language. When looking at these paintings I have found myself thinking of famous poems, in particular Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality, and this is not the only romantic note struck by this exhibition.

However, even the solitary Wordsworth peoples his poems with identifiable characters, yet neither Miller nor Levitus populate their works, using only the occasional emblematic figure that certainly does not represent the joy of fellowship with other humans. This is unlike most artworks made following a search of memory.

I would say therefore that it is not memory that is the deep well, but rather that which is just out of reach of memory - which these recovered memories are used to evoke.

As with Wordsworth, it must be a deep well indeed, to have been plumbed so far, and yet to draw up so little that is graspable in a material sense. For this exhibition is not about the material, it is about water and light, and about those fragile barques that both contain and repel these powerful elements. Light, fire, and water are here used in a primary metaphorical sense, of the limitless, the ineffable, and the numinous.

The works resonate with deeply felt emotion, and the viewer suspects that there have been some powerful events in both artists lives in recent times that have led to the creation of works which intimate that most illusive emotion - that of an unknown loss, and a yearning for its recovery.

Both artists paint images that are "ungrounded" …images without a secure anchor, not placed in any particular time, and in fact standing out of time, as exemplified by Levitus’ floating boats, adrift on a lonely sea . The title A Deep Well of Memory implies an inability in fathoming, in grounding, but the attempt must have been made, or else how do they know it is deep?

So this show is not really about the sort of holiday snap memories many of us specialise in, but rather those undifferentiated memories associated with longing, with loss, with desire to regain something precious that has gone so long ago that we have forgotten quite what it was.

It is the light in the works that gives us a clue as to what this may be …and which makes the loneliness bearable. This is a light which transmutes aloneness to a purposeful solitude.

Millers memories of the snow bound glare of light shining through the wooden windbreaks on Canadian farms are potent symbols of a strong protector, of safety from a hostile field. The windbreak is a powerful and striking symbol..we do not have anything like these in Australia, and they must seem quite surreal, wooden structures standing alone in the wide paddocks like abandoned advertising billboards or the buttresses of a forgotten civilisation. .

He has used these wooden boards in his work for some time now; sometimes they form ambulance stretcher like devices, other times they are the walls or doors to barns. Although the form changes, the metaphor of nurture, safety and care has remained constant. The weather-beaten form of these wooden structures is a remembrance of times past, a romantic paradigm, I suppose it could be the Canadian version of the Claudian broken column.

The lovely light in Millers’ works is seen against, and filtered through a barrier, his symbol of wooden boards. The light glowing through the chinks in these boards is a particularly evocative image, even in the dark night of the soul, there is a glimmer of light, as in the symbol of the Tao – each contains a kernel of its opposite. In most of Millers works however, the generosity of the light is such that it overflows the barricade, and seems to flow through into the viewer’s space.

The application of the paint itself is used to accentuate the form giving function of light – thick impasto catches the light in most works, emphasising the metaphor of light in the paintings, and in Levitus’ case, adding to the effect of movement of the water upon which the boats are strangely still. As with other exhibitions from Levitus I have seen, the works seem to be focussed on a point of stillness, of hiatus, a moment between states of being.

Both artists use some novel and striking colour harmonies in this exhibition, which, with the exaggerated and surreal light and the symbolic counterpoint, speak in tones that seem to directly address the unconscious.

Both artists involve the viewer in their metaphorical quest by raising numerous questions.

Are Levitus’ small buildings hermit’s cells, or perhaps the tops of flooded medieval towers, an Ozymandian romantic conceit indeed, symbolising the futility of man’s Babel like aspirations? Or are they merely surreal bathing pavilions, an ironic reference where the sort of secure spaces of Miller’s works are overrun by the deluge? And why are his floods not threatening…is this a water to be feared, or to be sought, is it indeed "The Water of Life, sufficient for the refreshment and solace of the myriads of God’s saints who have lived from the creation, and will live until the final consummation of all things."? John Bunyan 1688

His painting with the human shadow cast against the wall, is this a joyful warming during a Canadian winter or the flash of a nuclear holocaust? Why is the figure at ease? Is this light a consumation devoutly to be wished?

I congratulate the artists and the curator for making an exhibition that hangs so well together and which deals with deep matter that is uncommon in these superficial times. Congratulations also to the Manly Art Gallery and Museum for bringing these two artists together for a show. There is a fine chemistry in this exhibition.

MCA Unpacked is not to be missed if you are at all interested in recent art. The exhibition features work by Antonio Tapies, Joseph Beuys, Imants Tillers , Sandro Chia, Ben Nicholson, Rebecca Horn and many other international stars of the modernist and post modern periods.

MCA Unpacked has been selected from the collections of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art by four well known individuals, Drusilla Modjeska, Jane Campion, Akira Isogawa and Professor Adrienne Clarke. Their personal choices have added an extra layer of interest to the show, as many of their choices relate to their own professional practice or private life. They explain their choices in the exhibition catalogue.

From a beautiful and extremely simple installation of old enamel pots on faded green fruit cases by Rosalie Gascoigne to Nikolas Laing’s amazing slice of cave wall this exhibition has been capturing the interest of visitors, who seem to be staying in the space for longer than is usual.

I have noticed that visitors are surprised by the length of time they have spent in the show, especially as some of these people say that they really did not like much of the art . I suspect this shows the strange power that some of these objects can exert..they are not necessarily meant to be beautiful, nor meant to be "liked", but they can spin off many ideas in the viewer as we try to figure out what it all means.

In 1967 Roland Barthes wrote his influential article "The Death of the Author" in which he made the profound observation that "a text is not a line of words releasing a single "theological" meaning (the message of the impotent "author-god") but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original blend and clash" . He went on to attack traditional ways of reading where "the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were in the end…the voice of a single person, the author "confiding in us".’ Barthes argued that every word is a product of history and social convention.

A text then, is a constantly shifting maze of associations, because words are culture dependent, their meanings changing over time.

Many artists have applied Barthes ideas, by extension, to images, even to individual brushstrokes, realising the perpetually shifting nature of these associations also.

Barthes went further..he denied the very concept of originality: "The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture…the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original." For Barthes, should the author wish to ‘express himself’, "he ought at least to know that the inner ‘thing’ (himself) he thinks to ‘translate’ is itself only a ready-formed dictionary".

This text proved very influential and it is worth keeping Barthe’s ideas in mind as you wander through this exhibtion, for artists have increasingly looked to ready made images, to ‘appropriate’ existing works. Their subject is no longer nature, but culture itself.

As Barthes denied the possibility (in texts) of ever expressing a truly original notion, some artists now deny the possibility of original images and choose rather to make more or less cogent and pointed ‘remarks’ about art and culture itself, recycling and re-contextualising as one combines words in a text.

This notion is one of the central platforms of post modern art, and often it leads to very dull "one idea" art..often because the notion they have re-cycled was important when first mooted, but over time has become a too often asked, and rather boring question..such as what is art and how important is the museum context?

To the credit of the choosers of MCA Unpacked, there is not much of this dull "one idea" art in the show. Most is replete with associations, even if these are the incestuous associations of post modern culture. For anyone interested in art history there are many in jokes and ironic associations with the art of the past and present.

Crime Scenes, the exhibition of forensic photography from the archives of the Police and Justice Museum will also continue until June 2. This exhibition exerts quite a different fascination to the post modern art, although there are certain similarities, as both are fascinated with the way notions of what art is, have changed.

Crime Scenes concentrates on what may be called the art of crime photography. There are many disturbing and very sad images in this exhibition, but the poignancy of the image is masked as it were behind the technical desire to explain the event of a murder or other crime. There is also nearly as much art in the selection of these works as there is in the actual taking of the photographs.

Not the smallest importance of this show is the discovery and belated recognition of the great skills and artistic qualities of the detective photographers highlighted in Crime Scenes.

The Curators of the exhibition, and the touring body, the Museum of Sydney, deserve our congratulations for putting together this interesting exhibition, which come complete with two interactive computers jam packed with information.

From today, Orange Regional Gallery is presenting an important selection of the work of senior Sydney abstract painter David Aspden.

We have entitled this exhibition A Celebration of Colour, for Aspden has pursued colour and its infinite nuances, its ephemeral but powerful ontology, for nearly forty years, and with perhaps a more single minded purpose than any other Australian painter.

The exhibition has its major focus on what may be called his "torn paper style", although quite a few other works are painted in differing styles, particularly works with neutral backgrounds of ambiguous space upon which dance energetic punctuation of gestural paintmarks.

The exhibition has examples of his work over thirty years, but because David Aspden has throughout his career chased the most subtle variations upon a theme, from the exquisitely lyrical to the bold and brassy – much like the jazz music he loves – these 30 works can only be said to form the bare bones, only a few bars of his unique life’s symphony.

I use musical analogies because the artist is profoundly influenced by music, particularly modern jazz music, and the titles tell us of his unusual sensitivity to the synasthaesic colours of music, for instance his triptych "Black Brown and Beige" with its references to Duke Ellington’s great piece.

The titles are very important to the artist, and I realised why when I discovered the name of a particular painting…Fishing the Hawkesbury. What had previously been a work of interesting colour harmonies and arranged formal markings suddenly became alive with the movements of fish and their glittering scales and sunlight glinting through the turgid water, the broken surface nipped with patches of bright reflected colour…a scene I know well for myself. I cannot think of many other abstract painters whose titles are so important.

Besides music, the other great theme in this exhibition is the painting of landscape. His works have reflected his environment since he first began to make large pictures in his backyard in the early sixties. This exhibition contains work inspired by travels in Australia and Norfolk Island, as well as India.

His first one-man show was with Watters Gallery in 1965 (one of the first exhibitions in that Gallery), and he later took part in the important exhibition The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968.

From the early seventies the hard edges of his colour-field painting began to give way to a more painterly approach with feathered edged forms beginning to congregate and slide apart like ballroom dancers, imparting brisk tensions with always-elegant resolutions. A Celebration of Colour contains works selected from the seventies to the present, each of a somewhat different formal approach.

The majority of these works are abstracted from the landscape, the play of light on hills and trees, the darting quickness of a bird across the air, the slosh of the sea, the falling and rolling autumn leaves. He is able to suggest all of these with remarkable economy and glowing colour. There are in fact a multitude of visual stimuli in these works, and auditory notes as well, forming a synthesis of energy and rhythm. And David Aspden is a master at presenting real depth and spatial effects in his works, the perennial problem for the modernist abstract painter.

In description of a 1975 ABC video series he was described as " perhaps the most single minded of the painters in the Ten Australians series", and judging by the stunning variations on a theme pursued to marvelous effect in this exhibition, this description continues to hold true today.

As winter begins to set in earnest here in Orange, these colour filled paintings will provide some intense relief from the drabness outside, and don’t forget, Orange Regional Gallery is always warm!

The Mary Turner Collection and the Crime Scenes exhibition will continue for another couple of weeks.

The Mary Turner Collection is composed of thirty four works by Australian modern masters such as Grace Cossington Smith and Ian Fairweather, donated to the Gallery around the time of its opening by a past Director of Macquarie Galleries, Mary Turner OAM.

This is a very fine collection, made all the more interesting as it is a personal selection, not originally collected for an institution.

Crime Scenes continues until 16 June, and is a fascinating look at the development of forensic photography between 1946 and 1960. These were seminal years for this branch of criminal detection and the exhibition has discovered some major photographic talents among the men of the Criminal Investigation branch after the war, who had been previously unrecognised.

People are responding well to David Aspden’s large abstract pictures currently showing in Gallery One, curated by Alan Sisley.

Abstract painting is by no means "the flavour of the month" in these post modern times, and it has been a couple of years since this Gallery held a significant one man show by a modernist of Aspden’s stature.

"A Celebration of Colour" then, comes like a breath of fresh air to those of us feeling stifled by the "horror vacuii" of much post modernist art with its obscurantism and theory driven ugliness.

In David Aspden we find an artist not afraid to make large wall pictures, an artist with a personal way of seeing who believes that this is worthy of transmission to others. An artist who believes that his study of colour is both beautiful and important and is willing to put this belief, and his reputation, up for critical analysis.

A lot of post modernist artists, no longer believing in the "grands recits" or humanist hidden agendae underlying modernism (the major one being the importance of the individual way of seeing and its power to change others), have carefully concealed any trace of the individual artist and his or her feelings and motivations. Post modernists have also been careful to eradicate any trace of formalist aesthetics from their work so they cannot be accused of seeking something as elitist and power structure driven as "beauty. They also eschew modernist styles like the derided "flat art" in favour of multi - media installation.

As a result, much of the work seen for instance at the current Sydney Biennale, looks as though some seriously paranoid young bus ticket inspectors were given a corner of Clint’s Crazy Bargains and told to make art.

At such shows we are likely to see record players and umbrellas obsessively jumbled in with cut up photographs pasted on the wall, five hundred cocktail glasses, a television set below droning on about the weather, paint cans set on shelves and glass cases filled with Chinese spectacles all apparently haphazardly placed without regard for any sort of traditional composition. Such work, although it may impart a slight frisson of amusement or puzzlement as one endeavours to make sense of its random associations, is almost completely devoid of meaning and interest to anyone other than an obsessive theoretician of art.

Not so David Aspden’s large abstract pictures. Although some may deride the modernist enterprise as riddled with false assumptions and patriarchal posturings, a Celebration of Colour remains for me and many others a most enjoyable, and understandable exhibition. Understandable in its forms and its goals, and revelatory of a way of seeing that will enlarge the world of those who can share in this vision.

How often does one drive along and see a bit of land and say "now here is a bit of Fred Williams", or see a Sali Herman in a Newtown back lane, a Grace Cossington Smith in a sundappled sofa, or a Russell Drysdale at Sofala? This is the kind of enlargement of our experience I mean, an appreciation of beauty and meaning in things that may well have passed our notice had we not known the artworks.

The work of David Aspden is capable of giving such an experiential enlargement, and many people have been very impressed by this work over the last week since the opening.

Aspden has not had a lot of one man shows over the nineties, and I am glad that this exhibition is providing an opportunity for people who have seen little of his work to see pieces from 1970 to the present, for many of us the first time we have seen a body of work from this senior Sydney artist.

Sleeping Between Whispering Walls – The purpose made Gallery, is an installation by Alan Schacher with a Soundscape by Rik Rue.

The physical part of this work is best described as an architectural intervention, where Alan Schacher has used elements that are already existing as part of the architecture of the Gallery in a radical new way. He uses all 33 of the floor to ceiling screens in Gallery One, and has arranged them to form a strange internal architecture that is reminiscent of a labyrinth, as well as war memorial architecture, in a series of discrete interpenetrating spaces. He has then added further elements that are minimal in themselves, yet serve a radical purpose in architectural terms, acting as punctuation marks to the flow of space, and serving as visual "sounding boards" for the spaces, echoing their shape as a black "negative image".

Schacher deliberately ruptures the "normal" architectonics (flow of space) with blocked corridors, and with tunnel like forms at each end of which is a reflective surface of polished black Perspex or with a high clear screen of transparent Perspex upon which a video projector plays an image of another part of the space. Some people find Sleeping Between Whispering Walls disorienting and confronting, as it is meant to open visitors to the almost infinite possibilities of this space and takes us beyond the spatial "comfort zone" in which we live most of our lives.

The lights are dim, but not too dim to see the hanging black curtains and Perspex accents that literally reflect the way the space has been arranged and inform the dominant feature of the installation..a twenty-foot long trough of sump oil.

This appallingly deep black void is fixed between high cream walls with cream surrounds making a very beautiful yet disturbing reflecting pool that is as untouchable as the infinite void it represents. There is no better reflecting surface than sump oil, and gazing into its evocative depths redolent with paradoxically industrial olfactory reminiscence, is a very strange experience, like a teenager staring into a mirror, there is a temptation to (like Alice) step through into infinite space.

Of course it is the presence of this oil that has caused us to forbid children entry. It is important even for adults they are told not to touch the oil, as it can stain clothing and is difficult to get out.

Reflected in the oil one sees that part of the ceiling has been removed, showing the rafters and fluorescent tubes with their silver foil that had previously given the illusion of daylight.

For Sleeping Between Whispering Walls is not about illusion, it is about revealing what is actually in the space, and adding further actualities to this presence. Another feature, come upon by surprise, is another trough, this time filled with clear water, the very opposite in nearly every way to the viscous impenetrable trough of oil. This is lit by pin spot, revealing just what it is, clear, vapid and pure, transparent, yet more visible in fact than the oil, which is so reflective that one sees not it, but what it is not.

The Soundscape by Rik Rue is presented through eighteen high quality hidden speakers, with four huge hidden amplifiers to generate the purest imaginable sound to three distinct zones. The sound perfectly matches the notions of the space, being derived from simple everyday sounds like fires crackling, water dripping, cars starting, yet isolated in purity and presented as rare holy sounds which sound completely remarkable...mostly because of their new context and the lack of their usual context.

Rue has altered the individual sounds very little. Rather he presents them as Schacher does his minimalist spatial elements, as interpenetrating elements whose interaction is still, metaphorical, and complete. The sounds emerge from darkness calmly, with a leisured procession; there are no startling cheap tricks in this work. Anything that surprises is due to a restrained way of seeing and understanding rather than a Luna Park trompe l’oeil hall of mirrors effect.

The sounds penetrate each other, moving in crisp purity from zone to zone of the installation more like discrete atoms gently striking each other than in swelling waves. This is an installation that reminds one of logical positivism, not romanticism. Yet this is not to say that the installation does not induce fear. The technical precision does not deny spiritual readings of this marvelous installation.

The use of voids, musical and architectonic, in many people, me included, raises that famous "horror vacuii", that spectre of nothingness that is one of the scariest possible notions. No God, No Thing. The smell of oil and its presence signifying the deep underground, the black pressure of not being, the labyrinth at whose heart lies the beast of emptiness, the sea of forgetfulness.

I think of that quintessential Buddhist notion of the Void...what is the Void, is it a stage on a spiritual journey, like the Dark Night of the Soul of St John of the Cross, or is it the atheist end in itself?

For myself, I have always been comforted by the notion that supposedly empty space is actually filled with a dark matter of such utter impenetrability that nothing is known of its nature, and that all space is crossed with billions of varying wavelengths of sound that our miserable ears cannot yet hear. Furthermore, I believe with the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides that by definition, there can be no "not-being". God is too merciful in practice in this life to allow a true void to exist.

This exhibition, in post modernist fashion, is about what is absent, as much as what is included. It is a striking notion to make a space dedicated to the display of art objects, a display in itself without artworks. The sounds too are about absence, space between sound, as much as the sounds themselves. However, this is also a modernist exhibition, in that the main goal is to give the viewer a new way of seeing the familiar, to open up possibilities that can enlarge our experience of life and spirituality.

Featuring over one hundred of his graphics and collage works, many made as book illustrations, this exhibition is an absolute must see for anyone interested in the art of the twentieth century.

The Australian tour of the exhibition is organized by the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Goethe Institut Inter Nationes, Melbourne.

Ernst was a key founding member of two of the most influential movements in world art – Dada and Surrealism, and he was also the inventor of a number of techniques which have become part of the artistic repertoire.

Ernst remains a great inspiration to young artists, not only for his remarkable artistic explorations of the unconscious unfolded over a lifetime, but also because of his steadfast approach to life, in which he would brook no inequality or nationalistic inanity.

Ernst mixed with the artistic and intellectual luminaries of Europe and America throughout his entire life, and won most of the laurels it is possible for an artist to achieve. He is certainly one of the great figures of the last century.

Married three times to powerful, if erratic, artistic figures, Peggy Guggenheim, Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst always seemed to be in a place where creativity was at its peak – although this sometimes meant personal danger to him.

His works were among those confiscated by the Nazis and shown in the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition in 1937, and he was interned (with fellow Dadaist Hans Bellmer) in 1939 and 1940. He escaped from Nazi camps in France twice and was hunted by the Gestapo, eventually being smuggled by influential friends to America where he lived for some years before heading back to Europe.

Ernst made collage and graphics as a major part of his art since 1919 when he founded the Cologne Dada group, with Hans Arp. He also contributed to the famous Dada manifesto with Tristan Tzara in Switzerland, and was a founding member of the Surrealists, at the invitation of Andre Breton, from 1924 to 1938.

Max Ernst made some of the most potent Surrealist images ever, and experimented in many media, including film. He was a collaborator with Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel on the famous surrealist film L’Age Dor.

Max Ernst: Dada and Surrealist Books and Graphics concentrates on his collage, frottage graphics and illustrations for surrealist books – areas of his production which Ernst regarded with the greatest seriousness. He is unparalleled in his ability to make memorable surrealist images from relatively simple methods..some of these are stunning to say the least.

Although he is not quite as famous as the great self-publicist Salvador Dali, Ernst is regarded as having made a greater contribution to the art of the century because of his invention of numerous modes and techniques; he is known to have pioneered collage and frottage drawings and was a ceaseless experimenter and creator, often working with collaborators who were foremost in their own fields such as Man Ray or Stanley William Hayter.

We are expecting visitors from far afield for this show, which is certainly one of the most important exhibitions to be seen west of the “sandstone curtain”.

Foreword to catalogue Fantastic and Visionary Art

Orange Regional Gallery is delighted to be able to present the exhibition Fantastic and Visionary Art for tour.

This exhibition contains work from sixty different artists, from seventeen countries. Most have not been shown in Australia before, and it is certainly the first time that so many contemporary makers of Fantastic and Visionary art have been shown together in this country.

Whilst Fantastic and Visionary Art can be seen as a large category, spanning many centuries, this exhibition concentrates only on artists who emerged since the Second World War. These artists are generally little known in Australia, where exhibitions of the art of the unconscious and mystical realms has tended to concentrate on the work of artists who emerged between the wars, such as the first wave Surrealists.

Visionary Art is a description derived from the great psychiatrist Carl Jung, who believed the Visionary Mode derived from the historical unconscious and pointed to things unknown, hidden and secretive. For Jung such art was a true symbolic expression – an art which could shape the unconscious psychic life of mankind because it had “penetrated to that matrix of life in which all men are embedded, which imparts a common rhythm to all human existence, and allows the individual to communicate his feeling and his striving to mankind as a whole”. J ung said: “Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes him and makes him its instrument”, and the Visionary Artist is “collective man”. [1]

The majority of the artists in this exhibition would probably identify with Jung’s notion of the artist/shaman, the revealer of hidden and healing truths, but others would stress the individuality of their vision and assert that the collectivist aspects of Jungian thought are irrelevant to their art.

It should be said at this point also, that many of the artists in this exhibition are now, or have been in the past, subject to intense visionary experience that they have understood in more or less supernatural and spiritual terms. That is not to say that each work in this exhibition is some sort of “painted hallucination”, indeed visionary art often reveals itself in the process of its making, but it does assert that these artists make art which attempts to remind us of the thin tissue of “conventional reality” cloaking the “real truth” behind appearances. They have been shaken to the core by visionary experience, and can no longer view the mundane world with passive trust.

We are particularly pleased to be able to include works by Ernst Fuchs and HR Giger in the exhibition.

These two artists are very important in the development of post war Visionary art, exerting a wide influence not only through their amazing paintings and prints, but also via their adoption of popular art forms such as movies, television, book publishing and furniture design. To oversimplify things somewhat, Giger and Fuchs are seen as representing the two poles of visionary art, between which many others place themselves.

H.R.Giger represents the “dark side” of the Visionary movement, contrasting with Fuch’s more expansive, spiritual vision. Giger is of course famous particularly for his work designing the Alien movies, but his bleak and claustrophobic vision of androids ruled by demonic unconscious forces has become symbolic of the alienation and rebellion of many young people. His work is sought eagerly by collectors throughout the world. Both Fuchs and Giger have achieved considerable financial success..both own castles, and Giger has a museum devoted solely to his work.

The exhibition includes work by the five most celebrated representatives of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolph Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden, who met in 1945 at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. At this institution the famous Hieronymous Bosch Last Judgement was housed. It is said that the young artists studied this work so much in search of technique and estoric clues that the director of the Academy had the work boarded up for its own safety!

Their experiences of the dissolute remains of the Austro- Hungarian empire and the rise of Nazism, with the subsequent persecution of Jews and non-doctrinaire artists, (among many other groups) helped turn their art towards utopian and anti rationalistic ends.

It is interesting to note that conservative Vienna was not however the place where most of them gained wide critical acclaim, but Paris. The artists were familiar with most of the leading surrealists of the day, but they were not willing to subjugate themselves to “the strict dogma of the unreflected, sub conscious act of painting as espoused and propagated in the form of manifesto’s by Andre Breton”[2] and none identified as Surrealist painters. They were however, helped on the way to fame and fortune by older companions in art such as Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte.

In 1965 the first important touring exhibition of their work was organised, which due to public demand travelled throughout Germany as well as Austria and from then on they began to accumulate prizes in Biennales and other international shows. In Japan alone there were five major exhibitions and retrospectives[3].

By the 1970’s their work had become the virtual trademark of contemporary Austrian culture. Indeed, although the Vienna School artists have since then passed their days of strong individual development, their influence continues to radiate throughout the world, and in Vienna alone there are now three generations of artists proud to be known as Fantastic Realists. This exhibition includes work by some of those succeeding generations of artists; notable among these is Peter Proksch.

Of particular importance to painters has been the Vienna School rediscovery from the old masters, of the famous egg tempera paint mixture and glazing method taught by Ernst Fuchs as the Mische technique. This technique enables great detail and luminosity. Fuchs has been sought out by students from many countries, and Vienna School techniques are now practiced and taught in turn by Brigid Marlin and Robert Venosa among others, although it is a most labour intensive technique.

Many of the works in the exhibition are of small size. This is common for Visionary art of all epochs – because the detail invested in visionary works precludes large-scale pieces, and because the visionary state that accompanies the creation of many of these works, does not allow for prolonged contemplation.

Europe and America have a number of museums devoted to imaginative art of the sort we are showing, museums which include works by most of the artists we present here. It is the wish of the artist, collector and exhibition curator Damien Michaels, that Australia is not left behind, but should have its own strong collection of Visionary Art. Damien Michaels has founded an international art magazine “Art Visionary” from his Melbourne base, and in the pages of his journal we become aware of many of the artists we show in this exhibition and of their sense of community and shared purpose.

Although Fantastic and Visionary Art is not a movement with a committee and a manifesto, when one sees Damian Michael’s correspondence with the artists of this show, one realises that this exhibition is indeed a grouping of like minded souls, which has arisen in an almost “traditional” fin de siecle manner, in the hope of forging something potent and good for the new millennium

Many of the artists emphasise the life affirming and spiritually elevating nature of these works, and some regard this art as vitally important to mankind, believing it provides numerous Jungian keys to consciousness expansion and liberation.

Although many of these artists would see themselves as belonging to a contemporary international Visionary Art movement, others owe their allegiance to Surrealism and Symbolism, and others would deny adherence to any force other than their own imaginations. Some are experimenters with the new generation of psychedelic drugs, and owe as much to Leary and McKenna as they do to Freud and Jung, or Eliaphas Levi and Crowley.

Somewhat paradoxically, given the rather old fashioned stress on realist technique of many of these artists, most take advantage of the latest technology, and are connected via the Internet. Most of the artists who identify as Visionary artists are connected, and constantly exchange ideas with one another, most have web sites, many linking to other artists. As a result there is a strong sense of community among the worldwide visionary art scene, which in turn leads to developments in parallel.

Despite the similarities and differences in motivation and intent, what is clear from this fascinating exhibition, is the dedication of all of the included artists to exploring the limits of the human psyche, and of their intense commitment to creativity and imaginative vision. Many of the artists believe that the making of this visionary art is in itself a spiritual activity that has beneficial effects for the artist, and for all those who come into contact with this art.

Visionary art is not new; indeed, it is as old as art itself. Anthropologists speculate that the very earliest cave painters were intent upon sympathetic magic when they painted their bison and deer under the control of man. It is believed that the art had a shamanic purpose akin to the ceremonial uses of many works of Aboriginal Australia.

Many of the artists of the Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance periods were intent upon elevating the viewer beyond the humdrum of his material plane into an ethereal realm of the spirit. Religious artists have wanted to record the great deeds of Christ and of Christians so that unlettered people would know of these deeds and imitate them. Many Christian artists aimed to transport the viewer into a state of contemplation akin to their subjects.

Many used similar techniques of luminosity, colour and figural expression as are used in this show. Certain of these great artists from Western art history have influenced most of the artists in our exhibition, and this is as it should be. Isaac Newton is often quoted “If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of Giants”.

One notes that the goal of art as a means to spiritual growth has been shared by many artists who were not figurative painters. I think of the Islamic calligraphic artists and in particular of the great twentieth century abstract artists Kandinsky and Mondrian.

However, most of the artists in this exhibition are figurative artists, and as such have a lot in common with the Surrealists and the Symbolists, both groups intent upon shattering the illusions of mundane existence in the hope of a better world.

In many respects the artists of Fantastic and Visionary Art remind me of the Neo Platonists, rediscovering the elemental and eternal power of the archetypal forms, and, like Plato, convinced of the power of art to change society. Some critics of this art would perhaps agree with Plato that such art can also be dangerous.

The artists of this exhibition may also be compared to the mystical Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, re-discovering and mastering what they understand of the styles of the old masters, not because there is something intrinsically good in the figurative art and techniques of the past, but because they believe that a well drawn human figure is the most universal and potent cypher, capable of unparalleled communication and penetration into the mass consciousness.

In other words, they use the human form because everyone has a body and we can identify more easily with symbols that interact with the human form. Certain of the artists are swept along by their own imaginations, and sometimes a crudity of drawing and of expression creeps in, however, in most cases the overall power of the image overcomes a naive expression, as it did for the famous visionary artists William Blake and Le Douanier Rousseau.

I wish particularly to thank Michael Messner of Vienna for the loan of works by Ernst Fuchs and H.R. Giger. I believe it is important for Australians to be able to see works by these important artists in the flesh, and without Mr Messner’s generous loan the exhibition would have lacked central components.

I wish also to thank James Gleeson and Watters Gallery for the loan of a fine work. It is important to be able to represent Australian artists of the highest calibre in this exhibition, as Australia has a proud Surrealist and Visionary tradition.

My sincere thanks to the individual artists who have lent works, and have worked to make this exhibition a success.

I am grateful to Damien Michaels not only for his curatorial exhibition development, but also for drawing so many of these fine artists to my attention. Damian is indeed an artist of Vision, whose collection, magazine, and eventual museum will surely take their place among the significant art events in this country.

[1] Stephen Polcari p43 Abstract Expressionism and the modern experience

[2] Michael Messner, in Art Visionary magazine Issue 3

[3] Michael Messner, in Art Visionary magazine Issue 3

Keiko Amenomori Schmeisser, John Winch, Colin Beard

With the Flow Against the Grain is a superb exhibition by Keiko Amenomori Schmeisser concentrating on her skill in the ancient Japanese technique of Shibori.

Although this technique is known to many of us as “tie dyeing”, there is almost nothing in common with the restrained beauty of Amenomori-Schmeisser’s wall hangings and the crinkly circles on sixties denim jackets.

Keiko is now recognised internationally as a leading exponent of shibori textile art, and indeed has been invited to show her work in many countries including Japan, where she has gained the favour of some of the most famous practitioners.

The title of the show “Against the Grain” indicates that despite approval from traditional Japanese makers, Keiko’s work breaks new ground by incorporating many new techniques and non-traditional themes.

She has for instance made some huge inkjet prints of the beautiful hand made needles used extensively in Shibori, and has hung some pieces reversed, so that the processes of the making – the stitching, tieing and gathering is revealed. This is strictly non traditional, as is her use of the Shibori technique to depict landscape.

In Japan they say “One lifetime – one Technique” so she would not have been able to combine the numerous techniques in this exhibition had she stayed in her home country. In Australia there is no such expectation – for better or for worse. Suffice it to say however, that Keiko has clearly developed skills that place her right at the pinnacle of her craft, and that the ancient technique could never have grown as it has if it remained purely a local Japanese phenomenon.

Keiko Amenomori –Schmeisser was born in Japan, educated in art in Germany, and lives mostly in Australia, where she is married to the brilliant printmaker Jorg Schmeisser. Her work effectively spans three cultures, and discerning viewers will pick out elements of each culture in her work.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of her style is a singular elegance and restrained sureness of composition. Everything is in exactly the right place, and she has learnt well the Oriental lessons that less is more, and that the void is just as important as fullness. Although she learnt graphic design at art school in Hamburg, it is in her remarkable way of achieving compositional balance that I regard her as exhibiting the most “Japanese” aesthetic.

Colin Beard has embarked on quite a journey since his days in the swinging sixties as a founder of Go-Set magazine and photographer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Playboy magazine.

This latest exhibition by one of Australia’s most respected professional photographers was shaped by a religious experience, or spiritual epiphany, that he experienced, much to his surprise, in a monastic cell once occupied by St Francis of Assisi in Umbria.

Colin Beard had previously not been particularly religious, not even Catholic, but was so moved by the experience and feeling of the living presence of the Saint, that he spent two years researching the life of St Francis, painstakingly retracing the journeys he made 800 years ago.

The result is a beautiful exhibition indeed, where colour photographs are used not merely to depict the actual surroundings, but to suggest the centuries of spiritual endeavour and growth that have accumulated due to the example of the Saint and the countless pilgrims inspired by him.

Colin Beard neither sentimentalises nor overly romanticises – although there is certainly a mystical and hence romantic sensibility at work in this exhibition.

Run Hare Run

This is a terrific exhibition by Stuart Town artist John Winch, who is presenting the original paintings for his latest children’s book Run, Hare, Run along with many other oil paintings which help to show the various sources of his inspiration and give background to the children’s works.

Winch goes from strength to strength in his latest career incarnation as illustrator and author with a number of successful titles under his belt. Run, Hare, Run may well turn out to be his best yet, and I am informed that four international companies were involved in a bidding race for the rights.

It is a very well made colourful exhibition, where Winch demonstrates his skills at appealing to a young audience, whilst refusing to “dumb down”. His inspirational take on the great artist Albrecht Durer (seen from the perspective of the Hare) is a great success, and may well be responsible for generations of budding artists!

We are very fortunate to have artists of the calibre of John Winch (and the other Stuart Town artists) in the Central West. I believe that professional artists are one of the overlooked but important sources of growth in rural areas, and I wish John every success with this excellent new book.

The Gallery looks great at present, with three beautiful shows from artists of the highest professionalism .

John Winch is showing a series of paintings around themes of what used to be called Natural History, as well as the originals that form the illustrations for his latest children’s book “Run, Hare, Run. The animal theme inspires and animates the exhibition.

“Thousands of paintings line the walls of galleries and museums throughout the world. Some portray great battles and heroic deeds, while others depict simple scenes of gentle rolling hills and tranquil villages. Proud kings and queens in regal costumes and peasants eating a midday meal hang side by side for eternity. The only thing these paintings have in common is that each represents an instant of time caught forever by the artist. But hidden in the brushstrokes of each painting is another story, the story of the artist and his subject.

Since I first set eyes on a reproduction of The Hare by Albrecht Durer 1 have been attracted by its simplicity and grace, and wondered about the story behind the drawing... Little is known about the picture -was it drawn from life, or from a museum specimen? -but the artist's love of nature is evident in his simple and economical rendering of the hare. Personally, I am sure it was drawn from life!

The original drawing is in the Albertina Museum in Vienna and, due to its fragility, is only exhibited rarely. 1 was lucky enough to see The Hare in 2003. This book is my attempt, as an author and illustrator, to understand it.

Albrecht Durer was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1471, the son of a goldsmith. By the time he died in 1528, he was one of Nuremberg's richest men and most respected artists.

With the Flow Against the Grain is a stunning show of textile art by Keiko Amenomori Schmeisser. The following excerpts are written by Yoshiko Wada, the esteemed president of the International Shibori Network.

“Keiko Amenomori-Schmeisser's life experience has provided her with a unique mix of Eastern and Western influences. Her father, a Japanese businessman in the textile trade, sold fine cotton yarns and man-made fibres produced in Japan to lace-making countries, such as Switzerland and Belgium. Her childhood and early adulthood were divided between Japan and Germany. She grew up with a keen interest in textiles - a love of the fine, old textiles as well as the newer contemporary cloth and colours. Living and working in Australia since the late 1970s, she continues to explore textile as a primary medium finding expression in a unique hybrid of organic forms and man-made elements.

She began Japanese calligraphy lessons at age 11, after spending her primary school years in Germany. The strict positioning of strokes and dots of a character, the careful, decisive flow of energy in the writing, the importance of negative space and the necessary balance and tension between black and white were a[[ incorporated into her basic design sense. Her ongoing fascination with calligraphy gives her work a strong basis in composition and design with a universal visual syntax.

In the early 1970s, she taught herself katazome, paste-resist stencil dyeing, using natural dyes. In Japan, where the Western dichotomy between craft and art does not exist, katazome is considered a legitimate art form that uses textile as its media. In fact stencil and paste-resist technique, like printmaking, provides a framework of requirements and limitations that strengthen the artistry and creative interpretation of images.

Amenomori returned to Germany in 1974-78 to study at the Academy of Fine Art in Hamburg. Since textile work in craft form was not encouraged, she majored in industrial textile design, which she continues to practice. While interning at a commercial printer where large panels were printed, she realized the potential of working with a series of large-scale prints, individualizing each pane[ by adding painting to the printed image. Her creative exploration of textile art continued in Australia, where she moved with her husband in 1978. She received her first major commission in 1988 - a series of 22 large screen-printed partitions to create spaces of different sizes in the reception ha[[ of Australia's new Parliament House.

She assisted internationally recognized Japanese fibre artist Hiroyuki Shindo in 1995 at a workshop he gave on natural indigo dyeing and shibori where she became fascinated by the process of shaped-resist and its diverse forms. Inspired by the innovative techniques and the perseverance of traditional Japanese craftspeople, she began to incorporate shibori techniques into her work. To produce the pattern and texture she envisions, she varies the stitch, changes the direction of the stitching, and uses different thicknesses of thread.

Much of her work originates from observations and sketches of the natural landscape and its elements, for example, ripples inspired by the texture of a small plant detail or a bird's-eye view of the central Australian landscape. She combines shibori and paint to create works that have both the crispness of a screen print and the soft edge of shibori. The fabric paints add to the structure and colour range of her work and give the cloth rigidity, which allows three-dimensional shaping. Sometimes, painting all over the shibori-tied surface rather than dyeing it, she shapes the textured cloth into an object that demands a space around itself. The shadows in the wrinkled and hardened surfaces, reminiscent of chiseled carved wood, enhance the sculptural quality of the work.”

And finally, some words by Colin Beard, a highly experienced Australian photographer, whose epiphany when visiting a monastic cell once occupied by St Francis inspired his excellent show “In the Footsteps of St Francis”

“There are few in the western world who, if they know little about him, are not aware of Saint Francis of Assisi. He lived eight centuries ago and he died in early middle age. Like a fresh stream springing up in the desert he is the source of so many good things that influence us to this day. In his simplicity, singlemindedness and purity of purpose he drew attention to basic human values at a time when the emergence of material merchant wealth threatened to overwhelm spiritual well-being; circumstances not dissimilar to those prevailing in this modern age.

In his love of nature Francis was the first genuine ecologist. The stories surrounding his conversations with birds, fish and animals, though they may have been distorted into legend, have entered the psyche of people world wide. It is for this, more than for anything else, that Francis is known, loved and revered.

The nature poems which he wrote, such as 'The Canticle of the Sun' are arguably the first great romantic poems to appear in Europe.

The influence of Francis on the culture of western lifestyle goes even deeper. As a humble poor man who chose to tread as closely as he could in the footsteps of Christ he penetrated the mysteries and edifices of the church. He brought the church to the people, into the streets and the homes of the people and in so doing, he ploughed the ground for the renaissance in art that was to follow. As the Francescan order flourished after his death, so did the demand for frescoes to decorate their churches. But instead of the ornate iconography of the Byzantine style, painters like Cimabue, Giotto, Della Francesca, Lorenzetti painted simple realistic narratives - the life of Christ, stories of the saints.

The photographs are not a history or narrative of Francis' life, but an attempt to enter into the spirit of the man through the landscapes that inspired him. As Francis reflects the soul of Italy, so the photographs are an attempt to articulate that soul within the countryside he roamed. They are a celebration of a very intimate side of Italy - the Italy of Saint Francis.”

OCHRE /SAPPHIRE

Ochre/Sapphire combines the colours of the interior of Australia with those of the sea which surrounds our island continent. The national psyche of Australia is dominated by the images and mythology of the outback, the vast red heart of the country, yet the majority of Australians cling to the eastern seaboard and the coastal fringes.

This exhibition of recent work by Barry Gazzard and Marilyn Walters explores through colour and form, these two polarities of Australian experience.

Barry Gazzard has travelled and worked in the interior over many years and his work embraces the saturation of colour, the texture of the land, and the intensity of the sensation of being in the centre. His work recognizes the sanctity of traditional ownership and the unique relationship of indigenous Australians to the land, as well as the awe with which non-indigenous Australians approach the landscape of the central desert.

For Marilyn Walters, water plays a defining role in the national character of Australia. Water signifies the separation, containment and isolation of our colonial past, yet at the same time, water is the essential life force which heals and sustains us. Water is vital to human life and as such it is sacred to all cultures. In Celtic cultures, the water’s edge is a sacred, liminal and rather dangerous place between this world and the next. Australians have their own unique form of water worship expressed in their love of the sea and the beach. Marilyn Walters’ work explores water worship in ancient and contemporary expressions, from pre-Christian Celtic rock engravings to the study of currents and tides in the water surrounding her Sydney home.

Barry Gazzard and Marilyn Walters have worked together in the Department of Visual arts and the School of Contemporary Arts at the University of Western Sydney for 17 years and have exhibited together in group shows in Sydney, the UK and the USA. The work in this exhibition represents recent explorations of these ideas in painting, mixed media and ceramics.

The ceramic pieces have been designed and decorated by Marilyn Walters and made in collaboration with Goulburn ceramic artist, Anne Alexander.

Last week we opened an impressive exhibition of works by contemporary Aboriginal artists from the Central West. About 160 people attended the Opening, including many Kooris from Orange and beyond.

In recognition of Reconciliation Week the show was jointly Opened by the Mayor of Orange Cr John Davis, with Jason French the Chairperson of the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council. Many thanks to these respected local leaders for taking part in the occasion.

The noted Wiradjuri elder Auntie Joyce Williams welcomed guests to Country, and recounted some delightful stories of local families she knew when growing up in Orange in the 1930’s.

A highlight of the Opening was a dance performance led by the highly talented performers Cedric Talbot of Wellington and Steve Moran of Mudgee with a group of enthusiastic children. It was great to see young people so proud of their culture perform with such spirit.

The exhibition has been curated by Jody Chester of Wellington, who has done a good job in selecting artists whose work contains a large amount of originality and which speaks of the real experience of the artist.

The Gallery has published a catalogue, including an essay by Jody, which gives artist statements and brief CV.s including colour images of some of the works. We hope that it will become a useful document for art historians of the future, as this exhibition has brought to prominence a number of emerging artists, as well as including some who have already achieved a degree of fame.

We are grateful to have received funding from the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts, and this has enabled us to show works by major artists like the late Michael Riley, and from Rea, and James Simon and Harry Wedge. The exhibition also includes work by Joanna Parker, Georgina Moran, Bob Sutor, Nyree Reynolds, Beverly Coe, Paul Taylor, Wayne Krause, Evelyn Powell and Tricia Freeman.

Most of the works are paintings, but there is also some photography and video, including works by Michael Riley and Rea.

"Movin’ Round" joining the circle, forever evolving as life has a way of finding a connection. We spin out of control and regain momentum as this show reclaims who we want to be. Taking Aboriginal art into a new millennium, defined by living in a forever changing society.

Even though many of these artists are living out of their traditional country, we still find a connection with each other.

‘Metamorphosis’, something only evolution has control over, as our connection to mother earth will forever reconnect our cultural existence. "Country" is the key to our cultural existence today and here we see a number of mobs coming together like their ancestors did before European invasion.

The representation of Aboriginal cultural existence in the central west of New South Wales, has had limited exposure in Australian Society. The commercial promotion of the desert paintings from central Australia and the cross hatching bark paintings from Arnhemland, have flooded the market. This in turn has reinforced stereotypical ideals nationally and internationally, over the past few decades.

The ramifications of this result in the ongoing denial of Australian Society to acknowledge the cultural existence of Aboriginal Australians from the southern regions of Australia. The continual need for Aboriginal Australians to legitimise their identity in an ignorant Australian society is still an ongoing concern today in 2005.

"Movin’ Round" exhibition attempts to rebut the myths and stereotypical idealisms of Aboriginal culture and explores the change and reconnection of our people. It’s time to move forward and reconcile as a nation, as this exhibition marks the anniversary of the "Mabo" judgement which saw the terra nullius myth, to be just that. It is also during reconciliation week we attempt to heal old wounds and walk together with the acceptance and acknowledgement of past injustices. We attempt to move into a society of tolerance and appreciation of the richness of cultural diversity. Through the expression of art, Aboriginal people will share their stories and their culture, in an attempt to break preconceptions of Aboriginal identity and culture.

We need to regain our connection and identity and determine our existence of who we are today, not what people want to perceive Aboriginal people to be. The impact of colonisation has affected many Aboriginal people in many different ways and we are all being reconnected through our mother country and eternal life.

"Movin Round" is an exhibition derived from the way in which Aboriginal people have been dispersed and displaced. Whether through the forced removals, stolen children or other significant social impacts, each artist has their own connection and narrative, which is expressed through their work. Many of these artists have interrelated connections in the forever revolving cycle of life.

HJ Wedge, affectionately known as HJ, is a Wiradjuri artist who has certainly moved around from Cowra to the city and now returning to his birthplace. HJ has numerous connections, being his relationships in the Wiradjuri nation through his lineage and past relationships, through his time in Sydney where HJ was discovered as an art student at the Eora Centre.

HJ had his first exhibition in 1991 with Ian Abdulla at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative. HJ’s work took off and he has never looked back, being invited to exhibit in the 1993 Australian Perspecta. This saw the floodgates open, as everyone wanted to exhibit or own his work. Being in international, national and local shows the demand was never ending, along with the many commission projects he worked on, including the props for the feature band Porno for Pyros for the "1996 Big Day Out" concert. HJ moved back home to Erambie Aboriginal Reserve at Cowra in 2000 and has been there ever since. He undertook a residency at the Dubbo Regional Gallery in 2001 but has only resumed his work after having some time to recuperate with his family.

It is an honour for Michael Riley’s work to be permitted to be used in the "Movin Round" exhibition, after his recent passing last year. Michael was a founding member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, which was formed by a group of artists in 1989, where he played an active role throughout his career. Michael’s work has left a legacy and it is important to remember the impact his work has made on all levels nationally and internationally and will continue to make with his film and photographic works.

Michael was a Wiradjuri man who grew up at Talbragar Aboriginal Reserve in Dubbo and continued his connection to his country and family through his works portraying the desecration of his motherland and culture. His highly acclaimed film’s such as "Tracker Riley", "Poison", "Empire," "Tent Boxers" etc are just to name a few. His vision and his creative expressions have always spoken for themselves as his work evolved in his later years dealing with the colonial impacts of marginalisation of his culture and race.

R e a is a Gamilaraay woman, born in Coonabarabran. As an adult student she was encouraged by a teacher at the Eora Centre to go to university, which saw Rea graduate from the College of Fine Art. She exhibited her end of year work at the COFA gallery in 1992, where I initially saw the "Look who’s calling the kettle black" series of work. These works provoked a range of interpretations from the audience, but the artist’s intent of the portrayed old images of Aboriginal women that were apprenticed out, digitally captured in kitchen appliances, was to question the colonial genocide of Aboriginal women and the impact of that today. The work resurfaced many emotions of the historical changes that have evolved as a result of the NSW Aborigines Protection Act implemented at the turn of the century. R e a ‘s work capsulated the Aboriginal arts industry in 1993 with her digital work being showcased at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in the inaugural NSW invitation exhibition "Sayin’ Something". Rea was also awarded first prize in the "The Mabo Art award" sponsored by the Botany Council, with a work being part of her "Resistance" series.

Like HJ, Rea made an instant impact, and the demand for her works gained ground, while she struggled economically and physically to create her works at the time. This was due to the expense of productions, which is now a little easier as technology improves. Rea saw herself moving into video a few years ago where she was exploring new avenues of expressing herself artistically. I have continued to stand back in awe of R e a as she has explored subject matter that pushes social boundaries, always on the cutting edge of the arts industry and is looked upon in high regard by her counterparts within the industry.

James P Simon is a Wiradjuri man born and raised in Wellington, who moved to Sydney for better opportunities as a young man. James has been practicing art since he was a young fella and even sold tattoo designs for economic survival. He later undertook art classes at the Eora Centre, being one of the inaugural students of this newly established arts college which has seen quite a large number of visual and performing artists graduate since its establishment in 1983. James later became the art teacher there and was selected in a number of exhibitions during this era including "Koori Art 84", which was one of the turning points for the contemporary Aboriginal arts industry. Some of the artists in that show today have been big contributors to the industry such as Michael Riley, Fiona Foley, Jeffrey Samuels, Raymond Arone Meeks and many others.

James has been exhibiting for a number of years with the Hogarth Gallery, Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative and is in quite a large number of major collections. But James is recognised throughout the Redfern area with his many public art pieces from his highly exposed murals in Everleigh St and the public phone boxes. James has also been involved in the public art project with the South Sydney Council in 1996, which resulted in a mosaic project in the Redfern area. James is one of the most prolific artists I have ever had the fortune to work with. James has undertaken quite a few commissioned projects over the years and is forever amazing you with his diverse works.

Trisha Carroll is a Wiradjuri woman, born in Grenfell NSW, who’s family origins is from Cowra, but found herself "movin’ round" continually throughout her life until recently when Trish settled and made her home in Mandurama, where she frequently visits her family in Cowra, including HJ. Trisha is an emerging artist who has been involved in a number of public art projects in the region including the Cowra Bridge project and recently the Orange City Council E.L.F. project.

Trisha has been painting for a few years and has been in a number of group exhibitions, but was fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with acclaimed artist Mandy Martin in an exhibition called "Absence and Presence" which was shown at the Roslyn Oxley Gallery 9 in Paddington, Sydney in 2004. The exhibition was also shown at Christine Abraham’s Gallery, Melbourne, earlier in the year.

Paul Taylor is a Wiradjuri man raised at Talbragar Aboriginal Reserve in Dubbo. Later moving to Sydney where Paul has spent most of his working life to date, playing an integral role in the trade union movement. Six years ago, Paul relocated to Guerie, being part of the Wiradjuri nation, where he has been inspired to pursue his artistic career.

I had heard a lot about Paul’s artwork since I moved to the central west six years ago myself and I had finally got to meet Paul and see his work and was surprised at his style and technique. I was impressed, not to say the least, with his abstract subliminal messages portraying his strong cultural connections to his country. Painting for a number of years now, Paul has had recent exhibitions at the Bathurst Regional Gallery, Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative and a number of local exhibitions.

Evelyn Powell, affectionately known as Aunty Ev, is a Wiradjuri elder currently living on Nanima Aboriginal Reserve in Wellington. Aunty Ev has been creating Aboriginal art since she was eighteen. I’ve known Aunty Ev for over a decade and was unaware of her amazing talents. Aunty Evelyn’s work is strongly influenced by traditional Wiradjuri stick work. As a Wiradjuri artworker, I am excited to showcase Aunty Ev’s work. The necessity to ensure that our Wiradjuri children learn from our elders and be proud of our traditional art practices is an important part of cultural renaissance.

Her works depict contemporary life influenced by traditional designs and techniques, which were everywhere when she grew up. As the impact of colonisation has resulted in the removal of many of our sites such as our carved trees, this opportunity to envisage her work in this show is important and I believe a privilege for everyone.

Johanna Parker is a Murriwarri woman who was born in Paddington in 1971, where she was adopted out and partly raised in Frenchs Forest, Killarney Heights and Toongabbie. At sixteen Joanne discovered she was having a baby and was forced to adopt her child out. This led her on her journey to find her natural family which she found living in Lightning Ridge at the age of seventeen. Johanna was married at twenty and lived in the Richmond area with her husband and three children, but her family life was not as picturesque as her creative artworks. Johanna became actively involved in her artwork in 2001 and this gave her the strength to escape and find peace within herself.

Johanna has since changed her name to her mother’s maiden name, and has relocated to Lightning Ridge. Johanna is also currently undertaking a visual arts course at Deacon University in Victoria. I recently came across Johanna at her recent exhibition "You fellas speak up" hosted by the Dubbo Regional Gallery/Library and was so impressed with her diversity of styles and techniques that I invited Johanna to be in the show and her work speaks for itself.

Beverley Coe is a Wiradjuri woman who was born and raised in Condobolin, NSW. Beverley has been a practicing artist for a number of years participating in regional exhibitions and in recent years becoming a member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative and exhibiting in a number of exhibitions in Sydney. Her techniques are diverse and she works in different mediums such as ceramics, painting, weaving etc.

Beverley is a quiet achiever, who has made significant contribution in her local community, not only through her artwork but her influences and teaching through her work at TAFE and community workshops.

Georgina Moran is a Wiradjuri woman who currently lives in Mudgee with her husband and two boys. Georgie is a descendant of the Dabee clan, from the Rylstone area, being part of the Wiradjuri nation. Georgie’s had a number of influences in her life but her mother has been her biggest inspiration. Georgina has been practicing for a number of years and has been developing her own style for a number of years and has finally found her niche. Georgie’s decision to pursue her career as an artist now she has her boys in school, is a great opportunity for Georgie to share her multiple talents with her peers and audiences I’m sure she will attract, as her cousin Nikki McCarthy already has.

Wayne Krauss is a Wiradjuri/Nyampaa man who was born at Hillston NSW near Griffith, apparently during a storm and he is not one to do things quietly. Wayne has actively been involved in Aboriginal visual and performing arts for over a decade. Wayne has graduated from both the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills and Dance Association and he also graduated as a visual arts student at the Eora Centre in 1996. That is where I first saw Wayne’s work and was drawn to his extraordinary work in the end of year show. His work was mesmerising then and still is today, as he continues to explore two worlds, forcing the audience to look beyond the layers.

Nyree Reynolds is a Gamilaraay woman who has a connection to Burra Bee Dee at Coonabarabran. Nyree undertook art training in the 1960’s at St George Technical College. But returned to her practices in 1998 and has participated in a number of exhibitions. Nyree has also joined Boomalli and has participated in a number of exhibitions there in the past few years. Nyree undertakes commissioned projects painting pet portraits for people.

Nyree’s work has extended into workshop facilitation, curating and teaching. This has all been a result of Nyree’s hard work and commitment to her local community in Blayney.

Bob Sutor, a Bundjalung man who was raised in Lithgow, the east of the Wiradjuri nation, where his family relocated for work as his father is a coalminer. Bob’s family originate from Cabbagetree Island near Lismore NSW and coincidently is related to my husband.

Bob is currently teaching Aboriginal arts and crafts and cultural practices at TAFE and has been both performing and pursuing his visual arts career for a number of years, participating in a number of local exhibitions. Bob was working in the early nineties at Aboriginal Nations, in Sydney, which is an agency that employed Aboriginal artists to create animations. This was a stepping stone for a number of practicing artists and has partially been an inspiration to pursue his art career.

Each of the artists in the show all have their own cultural connections with country, culture and each other in one way or another "Movin’ Round" will depict the circle of life and explore the diversity.

Diversifying Aboriginal identity, reclaiming our cultural identity and redefining the stereotypical idealisms of Australian Society. These are some of the many objectives portrayed by the artists in this exhibition. Why should Aboriginal Australians continue to allow the marginalisation of their cultural identity and existence?

"Hence most of his paintings are untitled, leaving the viewer to form their own interpretations"2

The real question being, why is it, that this is perceived this way? Why do we feel the need to reclaim our place in society? How do you interpret these artists? Who have been "Movin’ Round" for many generations?

Australian Outsiders Opens

Orange Regional Gallery is mounting the largest exhibition of Outsider artists for sixteen years. The exhibition opens on Friday, and we expect a lot of interest in this show, not only because it is of national importance, but because it has originated in Orange.

The first large Australian show of Outsiders was also curated from here, in 1990. That exhibition was also curated by Phillip Hammial, a poet and sculptor who has endeavoured to promote the interest of Outsider artists for nearly twenty years, being associated with over seventeen exhibitions throughout the world.

In this exhibition he has been assisted by Damian Michaels of Melbourne, a freelance curator and publisher of Art Visionary Magazine. Between them they have put together work by a selection of outstanding artists from the Eastern States, including not only the well-known artists in this genre like Tony Mannix, Gunther Deix and Silvia Convey but also twenty other artists.

The complete list of artists is: MARC BOUR, CLAIRE ST. CLAIRE, STEPHEN CONVEY, SYLVIA CONVEY, TONY CONVEY, JAMES DADDO, GUNTER DEIX, STAVROULA FELEGGAKIS, PHILIP HAMMIAL, PHILLIP HECKENBERG, JANINE HILDER, GEORGE KARNIKOWSKI, RICHARD CONLEY KNOTT, JAVIER LARA-GOMEZ, ANTHONY MANNIX, DAMIAN MICHAELS, TRAVIS MITCHELL, DAVID MORGAN, LIZ PARKINSON, ROBERT POLLARD, ANDREW RIZGALLA, MAY STEARN, JUKE WYAT

The exhibition has received a grant from the NSW Ministry for the Arts, is travelling to other venues in Australia, and may even be travelling to France. The Director of the Outsider museum Halle St Pierre in Paris is flying out to have a look at the show.

Australian Outsiders includes around 200 artworks, mostly paintings and drawings, but also ceramics, sculpture and the amazing miniature houses of the late Javier Lara Gomez.

Orange Regional Gallery has recently had an outstanding success with an exhibition, Australian Outsiders, curated for Orange by artist and poet Phil Hammial (Sydney) and Damian Michaels, publisher of Art Visionary Magazine (Melbourne). The exhibition was commissioned by Alan Sisley for Orange Regional Gallery.

This exhibition was requested for showing in Halle St Pierre, Paris, where it Opened on September 19 2006 and will run until March 10 2007.

Halle St Pierre is one of the best Art Brut and Outsider gallery spaces in the world, and attracts annual attendances of up to half a million people. It is patronised not only by Parisians, but also by tourists. It is located in the old Montmartre markets designed in steel by a student of Gustave Eiffel, and remade as a spacious art gallery, bookshop and bistro by the City of Paris.

The exhibition in Paris is a notable achievement, as it is very rare indeed that exhibitions from the regions gets much recognition in Australia, let alone internationally.

The artists shown were: MARC BOUR, CLAIRE ST. CLAIRE, STEPHEN CONVEY, SYLVIA CONVEY, TONY CONVEY, JAMES DADDO, GUNTER DEIX, STAVROULA FELEGGAKIS, PHILIP HAMMIAL, PHILLIP HECKENBERG, JANINE HILDER, GEORGE KARNIKOWSKI, RICHARD CONLEY KNOTT, JAVIER LARA-GOMEZ, ANTHONY MANNIX, DAMIAN MICHAELS, TRAVIS MITCHELL, DAVID MORGAN, LIZ PARKINSON, ROBERT POLLARD, ANDREW RIZGALLA, MAY STEARN, JUKE WYAT

Many of the works in the exhibition are fragile, as is often the case with Outsider works, and the cost of conserving, crating and freighting the works to Paris and back is $58,430.00 AUD.

Orange agreed to find the lions share of this amount, with Halle St Pierre contributing mostly towards the printing of a colour catalogue and colour posters to be strategically placed around Paris, notably with good coverage on the Metro stations. All other promotions in Paris were also their responsibility.

Because there was only a few months between notification that Halle St Pierre wanted the show and its projected Opening, Alan Sisley, Orange Gallery Director, was obliged to begin seeking funding from many possible avenues, threatened by the looming deadline.

Although the Australia Council is the usual provider of grants for Australian exhibitions touring internationally, in this case they did not help at all, not a cracker, not a brass razoo…despite having the funds in hand in an "out of time" funding round used for important applications with short notice.

Their failure to contribute has further cemented their reputation as an out of touch body with a profound bias against the regions. If you can be bothered battling through their obsucrantist website…just download the last few years of Grants given out, you will see what I mean.

In one of the stupidest decisions among very many stupid decisions in recent years, they preferred to fund six already " emerged" artists to attend a Biennale in Korea that is so obscure that its website was not discoverable in English until the last couple of weeks, and then only with the greatest difficulty can any information about the artists be gleaned.

The Australia Council preferred to fund Hani Armanious, Susan Norrie, Callum Morton, Shaun Gladwell, and Ricky Maynard - all high profile artists with many successful shows behind them. Alicia Frankovich is the only artist in this list without a high profile. No information can be found about their works at the Busan Biennale anywhere on line.

When I finally tracked down the Busan Biennale webpage listing, the artists sent by the Australia Council (not listed on the OzCo webpages and published it seems on the day the Biennale ended, I found that Armanious is listed as an Egyptian artist, Calum Norton as Canadian, and Alicia Frankovich as a New Zealander. One wonders why the Australia Council is so keen to give money to promote artists from foreign countries !

The Australia Council has also decided to send some of these same artists – Norrie and Morton, to the Venice Biennale.

Now this favouritism would be reprehensible on its own, but when one discovers that both Gladwell and Morton have also been recipients this year of $90,000 fellowships I begin to feel physically ill, and I wonder if the Minister has ever taken the trouble to track through the website?

I can’t find any statistics broken down into grant/by artist anywhere, but I reckon it would be pretty inflammatory reading.

All of this favouritism, helping to promote six artists who, relatively speaking are far better off than most, has been directly at the expense of the 15 emerging Australian artists in Australian Outsiders showing in the hub of tourism in the world for six months!

Of course, it is beneath the dignity of the grand panjandrums at the OzCo to actually provide answers to simple questions about motivation. Rather, one beaurocrat was deputised to ring Alan Sisley, and, in an attempt to placate Sisley’s anger, said "well we know that there are three or four Regional Gallery ‘hot spots’, and Orange is one of them".

By this he seemed to be implying that they knew that Orange would find the money whether or not The Australia Council provided it! Well, so would Armanious et al!

And of course Orange did find the money: With great difficultly and at the expense of other projects that had to be neglected. Orange Regional Gallery has only 3 full time staff!

And by the way, having just done a very large international show that would easily fill the Australian Pavillion, I can’t believe that it is costing $1.5 million to do the Venice Biennale…what the hell are they spending our money on…. $1.5 million? Ridiculous!

Australian Outsiders presents 15 artists of high quality, but many have had very difficult careers, in some cases afflicted with mental illness, and generally ignored by the artscene in Australia. None are well off, and many indeed are living in poverty.

Possibly because of the large Australian contributions to the new Quai Branly museum in Paris, all Federal departments approached were unwilling to help. Despite the NSW Government’s avowed intent to do more for those suffering a mental illness, neither the NSW Minister for the Arts nor the NSW Health Minister was willing to contribute funding. To be fair, the funding of international exhibitions is not generally in their purview.

Despite these major commitments, a shortfall of $8,000 still remains that is being addressed by a number of Friends of the Orange Regional Gallery fundraising activities before the works are returned in March.

Most importantly, the funding shortfall has meant that we were unable to subsidise the fares of the curators and artists who had been invited to Paris. However, such was the general delight at being shown in Halle St Pierre, that six of the artists in Australian Outsiders decided to pay their own way, as did Phillip Hammial, the senior curator. If the Orange Regional Gallery fundraising efforts are successful and raise a surplus over the projected costs of bringing the works back to Australia, then this will be applied to subsidising the curator and artists.

Phillip Hammial and six of the exhibiting artists joined Alan Sisley on 18 September.

Alan and Caro Sisley with Penelope Wensley AO, Ambassador to France, and curator Phillip Hammial

Halle St Pierre estimated that about 500 people came, and we were told that the crowd remained for much longer in the show than is usual.

from left: Gunther Deix, Alan Sisley, Liz Parkinson, Phil Hammial at the Preview

Most gallery professionals see their role in contemporary art as primarily one of assisting artists, in helping them to develop their practice and to reach a wide audience. In this sense, it was particularly gratifying for Alan Sisley, as:

This exhibition, and its successful international reception, has been the highlight of Alan Sisley’s professional life, as it has been for many of the artists. A lot of the artists have "done it tough" during their careers, with very little recognition in Australia. It has been marvellous to bring their talent before an appreciative audience who have long recognised the aesthetic value of Outsider Art, and who are willing to pay prices undreamed of in Australia.

The Orange Regional Gallery Exhibition Catalogue contains an essay by the scholar who coined the term Outsider Art, Professor Roger Cardinal. This provides excellent further information. The catalogue also contains full colour illustrations and artist biographies.

Earthly Encounters

The exhibition has been curated for tour by Alan Sisley, and displayed magnificently by Brenda Gray in the upstairs space. I venture to suggest that it will be one of the most impressive ceramics shows you have seen for years.

The show includes all of the well-known ceramicists of the Central West, as well as some new talent beginning to make their mark. Fifteen artists are included, and only one or two artists of those invited were not able to go into the show because they were not currently making ceramics but are concentrating on other artforms.

The exhibition follows on from a seminar held a few years ago in Bathurst called Central West Ceramics Focus. This was organised by Bathurst Regional Gallery and ArtsOutwest, where at one of the workshop sessions it was realised that there were now enough skilled ceramicists working in our region to justify a well-curated and funded exhibition.

Fortunately, Visions of Australia saw fit to make a grant to the show, and it has come together well for the Opening.

I suspect that the Central West region of New South Wales is possessed of more fine ceramicists than any other region of Australia.

Over the last fifteen years or so, ceramics in the Central West has really “boomed”, with ceramicists moving to the district attracted by the presence of peers who share certain philosophies and aesthetics. There are also some good deposits of natural clays, and plentiful supplies of high burning native timbers for wood firers.

It is obvious from this exhibition that the quality of ceramics in the Central West is very high indeed, with all of the artists in the show, even those senior artists with wide reputations, continuing to improve aspects of their practice and master their art through an ongoing round of experiment and innovation tempered by increasing knowledge of materials and techniques.

A highlight of Earthly Encounters are the collaborative works by local ceramicists Ros Auld (Borenore), Lino Alvarez (Hill End) and Peter Wilson (Bathurst) with well known painters John Olsen, Gary Shead and Tim Winters.

Lino Alvarez is one of the few potters in this country who can handle genuinely huge ceramic bodies, and his pieces in particular are spectacular objects, with subtle decoration by Archibald Prize winner Gary Shead. John Olsen is of course the most recent winner of an Archibald Prize so we are delighted to be able to include these eminent painters. The exhibition includes work by Lino Alvarez , Ros Auld, Caroline Briggs, Anna Chicos, Greg Daly, Rebecca Dowling, Lise Edwards, Margaret Ling , Janet Mansfield, Susie McMeekin, Chester Nealie, John Olsen, Alan Peascod Louise Ranshaw, Marjo Roberts, Garry Shead, Emily Stackman, Valerie Stuart, Pauline Welfare, Peter Wilson and Tim Winters. These are the best artists working in the ceramic medium from the Central West of NSW. We are fortunate to have many well-known ceramicists living in the region, as well as good emerging artists encouraged by the active local scene.

Ceramics may be somewhat depressed in the metropolitan market, but I reckon we have a very lively group of ceramicists in the region Lithgow to Dubbo to Mudgee. Maybe this exhibition may help to remind buyers of the wealth of creative ceramic design in this country, as ceramics have not kept pace with the increasing value of other artforms like painting or, particularly, glass or metal and plastic “designed” objects.

We call the show Earthly Encounters for good reason; there is a terrific link to the earth in ceramic objects. They are formed by similar processes as the very ground upon which we walk, and reflect the beauties of nature in their intrinsic substance. If you are of a Jungian bent you might say that they contribute to the collective unconscious archetypes going back to the dawn of man’s inhabitancy of the planet.

In this post modern era it is alleged that humans are losing contact with the real, as they are continually bombarded by the artificial in the form of mass media advertising and television and films.

Some theorists (notably woolly Gallic thinkers) say that we have gone so far in this process that we only know and recognise the world through other images. They say we are thus completely lost in artifice without hope of contact with the real.

Well, were Samuel Johnson alive today I think he might well simply hold aloft one of Janet Mansfield’s woodfired pots, or a Ros Auld crackle glaze, and say “ I refute them thus”. (It would also be less painful than kicking a stone with his gouty foot, as he did in refutation of Bishop Berkeley’s idealism.)

The exhibition looks really very good, if I do say so myself (I curated it), and has been funded by Visions of Australia, the Federal Governments Art Touring agency. It is touring to a number of venues in other states over the next two years.

Tomorrow afternoon, at five for 5.50pm we will open an exhibition by the world famous master printmaker Jorg Schmeisser.

Professor Schmeisser was asked to exhibit a selection of his work to complement the Central West Print Focus event “Pressing Issues” which has attracted professionals and students from around the country to our region for a weekend of lectures and workshops.

Pressing Issues is the first major print event to take place in our region, and has involved collaboration between Bathurst, Orange and Cowra regional Galleries. The seminar and exhibition series has attracted major sponsorship from Country Energy, the NSW Ministry for the Arts, and the Australia Council.

Starting on Friday morning 13 January in Bathurst and finishing on Saturday at Orange Regional Gallery a range of expert practitioners will give lectures and workshops. These people include two international visitors of note, Jorg Schmeisser and Tim McGuire as well as Roger Butler, senior curator at the ANG, Dianne Fogwell of the ANYU Artist Book Studio, Anne Virgo, Director of the Australian Print Workshop and well known printmaker GW Bot.

Local artists Tim Winters and Greg Hyde are also giving workshops as well as exhibiting their works including Winters prints at Lolli Redini restaurant in Orange.

Tim Maguire has the distinction of being the most successful living Australian artist, with works straight off his easel selling for up to $300,000. He is domiciled mostly in London and the Loire valley, so we are delighted that he is able to be a part of Pressing Issues. He also has an exhibition of beautiful large prints in one of the terrific new spaces of the Sommerville Fossil museum in Bathurst.

Maguire regards his printmaking as a very important part of his oeuvre, having made over 30 editions at the Australian Printworkshop in his early career. He told me that he is pleased to have an opportunity to focus on his prints in this way, because that side of his production is not well known in Australia, especially since he has been using a brilliant third generation printer in Paris.

The Maguire prints alone are well worth a visit to Bathurst believe me, a fantastic body of work, that to my eye surpass his paintings in interest.

They use his customary subject matter of large, even huge, floral close-ups, but use a digital technique utilising four separate paintings scanned and superimposed in cmyk registers. This technique has given Maguire an opportunity to focus on the sort of peculiar light effects to be seen at the edges of subjects, and in dewdrops on leaves, an interest he has had at least since his early paintings of light shining between rural water tanks.

They are lusciously colourful works, that tell us huge amounts about the nature of light and perception. Recommended viewing for any art student, I predict that these prints will also be hugely popular with the collectors, as they are full of interest, not the least being the way that they look completely different when viewed close-up, where the colours seem very bright, with almost psychedelic intensity, but merge into much more restrained tonalities of lush calm as one walks back. The prints are a great example of colour theory in practice. They refer to the great tradition of impressionist and divisionist techniques of colour mixing, but retain Maguire's ultra cool and post modern manner, being a strange amalgam of the traditional and the digital.

Jorg Schmeisser’s exhibition is entitled Elsewhere, reflecting the sources of inspiration the artist has gathered in his extensive travels worldwide. Some of his travels have involved an element of danger, such as getting into Cambodia to study Angkor Watt during the fighting in 1969, or negotiating a minefield to “capture” an ancient Middle Eastern fort.

So, in many respects the exhibition can be seen as “documentary print making”, but unlike photography, printmaking includes an element of time, as it is a slow process involving a good deal of patience and discipline. Some of the Elsewhere prints were actually made on the spot, necessitating a whole day noting the changing conditions of light and atmosphere and subject. As a result these “documentary” works have a quality of ‘aide memoire’ with small details scattered over the surface and architecture viewed from numerous angles. One of Schmeisser’s great skills is in his ability to make an harmonious composition from the fragmentary images, which give this aspect of his work something of the nature of a natural history catalogue.

Other works by Schmeisser strip down the imagery and focus more on image making and less on natural history, and in the exhibition we have examples of just about every type of print making technique, except wood block engraving and screen printing.

The omission of these two is somewhat paradoxical, these being the two forms most associated with Japan, where Schmeisser is currently Professor of Print Making at Kyoto University. Schmeisser certainly is also skilled in these media, having taught these techniques for many years.

In fact his latest Japanese works may well represent a turning point in his work, being very beautiful meditative works with lots of blank space where the elements of composition are very finely balanced indeed. Perhaps we are the first audience privileged to see the emergence of a new Schmeisser style?

“Elsewhere” is a remarkable exhibition indeed, featuring around thirty years of print making and travel from a career where the artist has been privileged to do the things he loves most in some of the best places in the world..printmaking and teaching.

Th e honest Crooke

Ray Crooke is one of Australia’s most popular artists. Now aged 84 he has built a loyal following for his work over a long career, which began just after the second war. Orange Regional Gallery is currently showing a major survey of his landscape works, containing around 70 pictures from most phases of his career.

Ray Crooke :Encounters with Country was curated by Gavin Wilson for Cairns Regional Gallery and is toured with the aid of a grant from Visions of Australia. Exhibitions curated by Gavin Wilson are well known to regional audiences, as he lives part time in Hill End, and specialises in the work of artists who have strong regional affiliations, like Ray Crooke, who for many years has lived in north Queensland.

Gavin has been commissioned by Orange Regional Gallery to develop a major show entitled Cuisine and Country for the next Food of Orange District festival in April next year. This will be developed with his usual good eye for historical and modernist painting and photography, and has received some seeding funding from the FOOD Committee and a major grant from Visions of Australia.

The Ray Crooke exhibition is a typical Wilson production, choosing works that are not the best known of the artist’s oeuvre, works that may reveal a unexpected side to an artist, or on works made in unexpected parts of the country. Hence a Ray Crooke show that concentrates entirely on landscape painting, where he is best known to the public for his Islander paintings resulting from his fascination with the lifestyle on Mornington Island, to which he was first introduced by Dick Roughsey many years ago.

It should be remembered however that Ray Crooke was awarded his 1993 Order of Australia for services to painting, particualrly landscape painting, and I am inclined to think, that paintings with a large landscape component have, after one has spent sufficient time with them, more “legs” than the Islander paintings. These latter paintings concentrate only on a specific moment that indicates a usually very relaxed side of the Islander life, and sometimes, these feel a bit like pot boilers, produced for a market that likes the bright splash of colours and the Gauguin like primitivism because it is unchallenging and goes well with the decor.

These landscape paintings are definitely not of this variety, mostly being quite sun bleached, and lacking in bright colour – although there are quite a few examples of wide colourist range in the show. They are quite challenging in the honest and unadorned presentation of some fairly harsh and rugged country, and are not as immediately accessible as the Island works. Indeed even his figurative works in this show, have to my eye a more direct and honest presentation of his often Aboriginal subjects. These are not the idealised figures of the decorative works, but are accurate portrayals of people going about their daily toil, often bowed down by work and harsh circumstance.

All in all, this is a very interesting exhibition that is certainly attracting good numbers of visitors.

I just received some very sad news. Bronwyn Oliver, the creator of the much-loved Seed Fountain in the Gallery/Library forecourt, has died at the age of 47. According to the Sydney Morning Herald she took her own life, which always seems such a tragic waste, particularly I suppose when it is a choice made by creative people who have a lot to contribute to society.

Bronwyn had become one the top sculptors in Australia, receiving some of the most important public commissions, such as her huge piece in the Hilton Hotel foyer in Sydney. Her work was eagerly sought after, and on the surface it would appear that she was beginning a fantastic new phase in her working life.

I had met Bronwyn many times, including at least one weekend at a house party on the Colo River with her partner Huon Hooke the wine writer.

I liked her very much, and did not find her as intensely private as some would have it. She was a most serious artist, but not as finicky and self important as other successful artists. Indeed, when we were working to put her Seed Fountain in place she was by no means unwilling to make some compromises in the design to accommodate safety and environmental issues. I know many other artists who would have hit the roof at such a suggestion.

I mention this to show that she was not aloof from the mundane tide of existence, not living in the ivory tower that some imagine artists inhabit, particularly the artists themselves! However, it was true that Bronwyn lived a relatively hermitic existence; certainly she did not have anything to do with the trendy artscene, and did not attend many openings, cocktail parties and that sort of thing. Perhaps she was withdrawing more in recent years.

I think it is very sad that she is dead, and I think of the suicide of Anders Ousback, who was also a good friend to Orange Regional Gallery. I can only imagine that Bronwyn, like Anders, was a victim of the black dog of depression.

Her work in Orange is called ”Seed”, her first, and now her only fountain. I can be sure of one thing, that this Seed will germinate in the imaginations of future generations of artists, and that through their art, her legacy will continue.

The gallery is a very lively place at the moment, and the splashing sound of Bronwyn’s Seed Fountain always seems to add to that liveliness.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted. Ecclesiastes 3:1.

A steady stream of visitors has been delighted by the show Threads of Life, which is showing in Gallery One until Sunday 19 November.

We have seen the audience for this show steadily develop, usually beginning with a small group of women who have heard about the show; then they often return individually with their partners. The men presumably at first reluctant to go to a textile show, in the end become so enthusiastic we have seen them return with other male friends!

The most common comment we are receiving is “This is a superb exhibition, the artists are just so clever!”

And indeed this is the case, for most of the over two hundred pieces in the show demonstrate a fabulous ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary; to make, from oddments of fabric, vibrant landscapes, iridescent insects, or in the case of Helen Lancaster’s installation, evoke a magnificent undersea world.

This is just half of the cleverness though, for the show contains just about every technique of needle and thread that exists, from quilting to embroidery. All are used in unexpected and imaginative ways. Some of the artists begin by making their own fabrics and then set to work with various constructive and applied techniques.

The exhibition features a wide range of work from the Australian Textile Arts and Surface Design Association, a group which includes many of the well known fibre artists in Australia.

A component of the exhibition also features works made by the Fibrearts Guild of Pittsburgh USA, who invited ATASDA to submit works exactly 12 inches square for a group exhibition that would be shown in both countries. The resulting show “Up Over and Down Under” forms about one half of the show.

This is supplemented by a series of fibre art CD covers, which was a real challenge to ATASDA members, but one unlikely to be adopted soon by the record companies!

The other half of the exhibition is devoted to the work of ATASDA member Helen Lancaster. Her installation “Coral Forest” is in many people’s estimation, a masterpiece of fibre art which should be purchased by a public institution. It would have to be a well funded public institution though, because of the years of work that have gone into it. Surely it would need to be priced well over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I reckon that Coral Forest would have been purchased by the National Gallery in the days when the so called Craft Arts like ceramics and textiles were sought by the powers that be. Nowadays the focus is on “the Object” by which they mean trendy Design for business offices and rich people’s houses.

Helen Lancaster’s work is outstanding, and we have a range of styles from her hand..the magnificent Coral Forest, some brilliant art clothes on mannequins, and some glowing wall works, all united by a theme of undersea aquatic life.

Helen Lancaster Talk Wednesday 15^th November at the Gallery

The improbably named Melbourne artist Godwin Bradbeer has an excellent one-man exhibition on show at the Gallery until 18 February.

Bradbeer is one of many artists with a well-established reputation in Victoria (the exhibition is toured by Shepparton Regional Gallery) who are not well known in New South Wales. An exhibition such as this reminds us that even in these days of instantaneous global connections, the artscene in Australia remains quite parochial.

But there is nothing parochial about Bradbeer’s art, indeed, because he focuses closely on using the body as the indicator for psychological states, his work is situated firmly in the long and venerable tradition of figurative expressionism.

However, the psychical states that he seems to be interested in, are rather subtle and uncommon in art, yet have that quality of universalism which modernists regard as essential to a good work of art.

One or two works from his hand have been shown in Orange previously as part of mixed shows, and they have always raised the interest of the public, so we jumped at the chance to show what amounts to a small survey show of his work since 1974.

Bradbeer is not only strikingly named, but also striking to look at, and this is a good thing for his art, as a number of the works use his own body. The entire exhibition is figurative, very large works, so large in fact that not many venues can show them. Most of these are works on paper, his favourite medium being chinagraph pastel and graphite.

Bradbeer seems quite early in his career to have developed a style which he has stuck to, and despite his work attaining success, his style remains unique in the artscene today.

I have not yet had a chance to read the very good colour catalogue which has come with the show and has been written by the curator Kirsten Lacy. This no doubt covers his influences, training and various purposes, but to my eye Bradbeer’s body of work seems to have much in common with the discoveries of early photographers from the earliest days of photography, with a large debt owing to pioneers of the human body in movement such as Muybridge and others who used photography for forensic and other scientific research.

If you can imagine this, the works of Bradbeer resemble nothing so much as huge x-rays taken by Nicola Tesla. This "pathological" quality acts as an ongoing memento- mori throughout this exhibition, but one knows that this is definitely art and not science, because Bradbeer is a very good draughtsman indeed.

His line is sinuous and sensuous, and this is the source of the sometimes exquisite tensions he delivers between the body as material object, and the body as site of desire, as sensorium and ultimately as transcendental vehicle.

The exhibition is entitled "The Metaphysical Body", and this is a good title for this exhibition, which is ultimately concerned with psychical states of subtle meaning that are best understood in terms of the romance of mysticism.

The exhibition features 35 years worth of works of remarkable steadfastness in the face of the various foes, these being primarily the advocates of abstraction and post modernist disbelief.

The Godwin Bradbeer show The Metaphysical Body has been well received, with visitor numbers growing since the news spread of his excellent talk ten days ago.

Bradbeer is a figurative artist with a unique style involving the burnishing of pigments and the chinagraph pencil, a technique which produces a remarkable patina on the surface of the works and can give some three dimensional depth to black which is probably not attainable by other methods. His technique also wears out many silver plated spoons…the means of the burnishing.

The exhibition includes works from thirty years of his career, and as such is really a Survey show. Curated for Shepparton Regional Gallery by Kirsten Lacey, it provides excellent examples of the work of a fine Melbourne artist whose work evokes internal states not commonly addressed.

Just about the only Survey shows done these days come from the Regional Galleries, because the large institutions are trapped in the blockbuster round – needing to get "bums on seats" to make up for reduced Government funding and pay for the increasingly authoritarian and numerous beaurocracy of conservators and registrars they wrongly regard as necessary to manage artworks these days.

One man and survey shows of modernist figures like Bradbeer are increasingly left to the Regions to mount. This is good insofar as we are able to see touring shows of high quality from senior figures, but is a real strain for the organising gallery, which usually does not have the time to devote a curator to the intense scholarly work required. Despite the pressures no doubt attendant upon the production of the Bradbeer exhibition, the Curator and the essayist Dr Neil Overton have done excellent work, but which of necessity is a fairly slim catalogue for thirty years of work.

Curator Elizabeth Sarks did the Tim Storrier Survey for Orange Regional Gallery some years ago, and again we were obliged to present a fairly slim catalogue. It too was an excellent show, which toured widely, but the fact is that our resources could not do a Survey show with the thick illustrated catalogues that used to come from the State Galleries. Curators like Elizabeth Sarks and Kirsty Lacey deserve our congratulations for keeping alive a scholarly commitment to senior artistic figures, despite the reduced funding now available and the lack of interest from the dumbed down State and National Galleries. I use the term dumbed down advisedly...I have spoken off the record to many of the senior curators at the big instititions.

We are proud to now claim him as a local, or at any rate, a Central Western artist, since he has for the last few years lived in Mudgee, having left his long term teaching, scientific ( he was once a Conservator at the Art Gallery of NSW) and critical pursuits in Sydney behind.

This exhibition features works from 1968 to the present, and hence forms something of an outline of a singular painting career.

The exhibition is a wonderful immersion in a rare modality that results following contemplative regard of the blank page, and which then, relatively quickly, accepts the notion of simple beauty and allows it to flow from the brush like the drifting skeins of a tidal estuary or leap out in the illimitable arabesques of subatomic particles.

If I make it sound like this art occurs naturally and without prolonged study, this is only because these fine works give an impression of spontaneous "rightness". Nearly all of the eminent practitioners of gesturalist abstraction are in fact, highly studious and highly trained, even if some of the training includes the rejection of all previous training!

Royston Harpur is Australia’s, and I believe, one of the contemporary world’s, best exponents of the genre known as gesturalist abstraction.

This is a genre which has attracted many notable exponents of Zen Buddhism, including some of the most exquisite poets, precisely because it seems to fix the fleeting in a constant state of becoming something else. It is thus an art as much about what it is not, as what it is.

Harpur’s work is primarily about rhythm, the rhythms of the Australian landscape as much as the cycles of warm breath, about the iterative songlines of his own rhythm as an individual sentient creature, about humanity’s ever renewing blood dimmed tides, and about the lilting weight of the rolling air which wears down mountains. Interior and exterior are fused in this art by the thin skin of the paint surface as our skin is a stretched cover of all that is.

This is an art of Being and Becoming, all embracing notions which can obviously occupy a sensitive soul for a lifetime of action.

Royston Harpur is Australia’s senior exponent of a genre very much associated with the East, and particularly with C’han or Zen Buddhism. We are showing a remarkable exhibition of works from his hand painted over forty years.

Brush painting and calligraphy, where the artist’s gesture is taken to represent a "slice of existence at that precise instant" is associated with the transmission of spiritual states of being, and has been used in China and Japan by the most famous poets and painters. As with the traditional Eastern examples of this genre, Harpur works in just black on white, but of course allows his black to gain a myriad of tones by the pooling or thinning of the stroke on the white ground.

Harpur is well familiar with his famous predecessors and reads Chinese calligraphy as an ongoing study into both Asian art and Buddhism. He is a very serious painter, and I must say his work on the whole gives an impression of equanimity that somewhat belies a rather wild reputation he had as a younger artist.

It takes a fair bit of looking to be able to distinguish which works came from which decade, I guess demonstrating that Harpur has approached the making of these works in the traditional way, allowing his unconscious mind to express itself irrespective of what his conscious mind may be feeling. One imagines that he, as a personality, must have changed quite a bit over the decades, and certainly the events around him changed dramatically, but this is not obvious to the casual visitor to the show.

Dreaming with the Brush comes across as a singularly coherent body of work and the fact that it was made over forty years comes as a surprise. A special note for fans of Harpur’s work; quite a number of people who have followed his work for decades have seen this exhibition, and many have said that it looks better on our red walls than any show he has had elsewhere.

Dreaming with The Brush is in my not so humble opinion, one of the most enjoyable and meaningful abstract exhibitions we have shown for some years. It may not be as immediately accessible as works that rely on colour for effect, but if you take the time to allow the rhythms of the artist’s gestures to infiltrate your way of seeing, you will be richly rewarded. I guess, to misquote Mandrake, a cartoon character famous in my youth, you might say "Harpur Gestures Hypnotically…."

Opening tonight are three shows highlighting senior modernist artists in Australia. All are artists who have refined their experience and their practice for many years and are masters of their craft.

We are particularly pleased to show these exhibitions because Australian society seems to be suffering from a rather dumbed down thirst for the new at present, where artists only a few years out of Art School are selling for big bikkies, and dominate the exhibitions put on by the large institutions.

Post modernism has no "avant garde", but there is currently a strong thirst for the sensational and the bizarre among the buyers of contemporary art, many of whom are relatively young themselves and flush with cash they are willing to spend.

In most cases these buyers are not at all well educated about art history, with some recent surveys highlighting an appalling lack of knowledge among new buyers of contemporary art.

Of course, most could not care less, being confident enough to purchase from their own taste, or rather, the advice of trendy young "gallerists" who speak in such jargon that nobody at all understands them. If it is incomprehensible, it must be right!

Huge amounts of disposable cash have always given people the notion that their own opinions are valuable. The bourgeois "I know what I like" syndrome is even stronger among people who are newly rich. If they do not understand something, they will pretend that they do!

Of course, this means that these buyers, being ignorant of history, will invariably purchase many inferior works derived from works that have been done better before, and the buyer will have no idea that he has bought something "recycled" and intellectually bankrupt in comparison to the original.

Anyway, the upshot of the current sensationalist genre bending, (an English artist has become famous for making a pyramid of mummified dead rats) is that many senior artists, with a mature and experienced world view and superb technique, get very little exposure in the press, and some even find it hard to get an exhibition.

So, we are delighted to present Drawn Together, Dreaming with the Brush, and Luminaries to bring a much more considered elegance and maturity to our hectic and fragmented lives .

Drawn Together features drawings and paintings by Judy Cassab, the late Nora Heysen and Margaret Woodward, artists united by their excellent draughtsmanship and the strong traditional training they received in their youth. These qualities are stressed in the exhibition, curated by Gay Hedriksen for Parramatta Heritage Centre.

They are further united by their membership of a well known sketching club in Sydney, and the bonds they formed through sketching together provided the impetus to the curator to develop the show.

These are artists who never ceased to refine and practice their technique, artists who did not rest on the laurels of success, but have experimented and developed their work ever since. The exhibition shows works from most periods of their long careers.

Dreaming with the Brush is an exhibition of gesturalist abstract paintings by Royston Harpur. Born in 1938, he has been painting and exhibition for almost 50 years. As a young man he first exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society in Sydney in 1957. Regular exhibitions throughout Australia continued until 1963 when he travelled to UK and Europe and he embarked on a series of very large minimalist works on canvas with reduced colour influenced by the American painter Barnett Newman.

However whilst living in Malta in 1964 he had begun a series of ink drawings in which he had begun to examine both America abstract expressionists and Chinese classical monochrome ink paintings and these were to lead him to the work that he does today.

In 1968 he had two large shows of the new paintings at Gallery A in Sydney and Melbourne and these were to establish his reputation.

It was these two exhibitions that were seen by a number of Japanese artists and this lead to Royston being invited to work with them in Kyoto in the early 1970s. Here he participated in the cultural life of Kyoto where he met and worked with many potters, painters, poets and Buddhist monks. He was included in a number of group exhibitions and had a large solo exhibition.

Ever since then his work has included a strong component of Zen Buddhist philosophy, as well as influence from the calligraphic tradition of China. Harpur has studied Chinese calligraphy and knows many of the characters…to the point that Asians find it hard to believe his work is made by a westerner.

His exhibition includes work from 1968 to the present. We are very pleased that such an eminent artist has decided to leave teaching and now lives in the Central West, at Mudgee.

Luminaries is an exhibition of work by eminent Australian jewellery designers. Most of these artists too are senior in their field, with international reputations. The artists are Warwick Freeman, Barbara Heath, Marian Hosking, Carlier Makigawa, Catherine Truman and Margaret West.

The exhibition was an idea of Karin Findeis, and has come to fruition through grants from ARTS/NSW, Visions of Australia and the Australia Council.

The title "Luminaries" is apt, for these artists shed light through their inspirational work and through their teaching. Their collective thinking and making has shifted how we read, wear and think about jewellery in this part of the world.

The exhibition has been very well curated to contain a range of work that gives a good idea of not only the strength of jewellery design in Australia, but also the ceaseless exploration and refinement of technique to be found in these artist’s work.

There is nothing "academic" about Luminaries, the works have been selected to be fresh and exciting.

All in all, the Gallery is currently a place of homage to some of the figures who have shaped our way of seeing, and have made significant contribution to our cultural life.

John’s old friend Joe Eisenberg OAM, who is currently Director of Cultural Services at Maitland City Council, opened this exhibition on Friday evening. Many thanks to Joe for his insightful words and for his excellent catalogue essay, published in the full colour catalogue that accompanies the show. This catalogue is available for $10 plus postage from Orange Regional Gallery.

A Personal Odyssey is a retrospective exhibition of the late John Winch showing work from all stages of a long and varied career. It has been curated by John’s wife Madelaine Winch with advice from the artist.

I invited John to show a major exhibition in the Gallery when we both knew that he was dying. It is certainly fitting to honour a great local artist, but we also wanted to let John know that he had made a superb contribution to this district and to art in Australia.We hoped that developing the exhibition would enable the artist to constructively occupy himself in his last weeks, as John was the sort of person for whom it was essential to be always creating, and he was no longer able to make art.

Tragically, John has not lived long enough to see the show come to fruition, but I am sure that he would be pleased to see this excellent body of work gathered together again from many different parts of Australia, in tribute to a lifetime of dedicated art making.

John Winch was a very important artist in Orange and Australia, skilled in so many techniques of art so that it is not a cliché to call him something of a Renaissance man.

Like many of the 15^th century old masters, John was inspired by Myth and Legend and like the Renaissance masters he had a great knowledge of these arcane areas of human history and intellectual development. John loved the "Sapienza Poetica" of myth, and one of the distinguishing characteristics of his work, both abstract and naturalistic, is his use of what Jung would call "archetypal" form and metaphor.

He also shared with the Renaissance masters a fantastic skill as a draughtsman, the result of a great deal of native talent ordered by the discipline of dedicated training and practice. John could, if he wished, draw like an Old Master, but he was also one of Australia’s best abstract painter’s and printmakers, earning peer recognition for his achievements and for his never ceasing exploration of media and technique.

His draughtsmanship has that rare quality of looking effortless whilst still being exceedingly detailed.

John returned to abstract art throughout his career, but the exhibition shows an artist concentrating on more naturalistic styles as his career progressed. I suspect that John, like Keats, regarded Truth and Beauty as synonyms, and so he could move from exacting description of the animal and human forms of natural history to an abstract series inspired by Byzantine churches seen on his travels, and back to naturalistic work. This provoked no inner struggle..for each modality was for him another way of telling the same story of the harmony of beauty and truth.

The last part of the exhibition focuses on his work writing and illustrating books, primarily children’s books. These books always stressed the importance of art in everyday life, and, with John’s own example as erudite artist/craftsman, have surely inspired many a young person in Australia and overseas to follow the life of creativity.

The exhibition also includes sculpture in ceramic and bronze from all stages of his career. Many of these are truly superb creations that I delight in seeing for the first time gathered together.

I wish to thank Madelaine Winch and their daughter Jessie Winch for their work on the exhibition and the catalogue, and I also want to thank the Orange Regional Art Foundation for making the funds available to produce a catalogue that is fitting for a lifetime of achievement.

Had we more time, both the catalogue and the exhibition would have been bigger and in the large space…as it is, John made such varied and high quality work that our Gallery Two space is positively filled to overflowing.

It is certainly crowded, but we believe that this reflects the busy creative life of the artist. We wanted to put the show on relatively quickly in the hope that the artist would be able to see it, and only a smaller space was available.I hope that this exhibition will form a valuable basis to an eventual large scale retrospective some years down the track, when a large institution decides to reassess the contribution John Winch made to Australia’s cultural life.

In the meantime, we simply say Vale John Winch; you were a great Australian artist, and an important and memorable contributor to life in the Central West. Thank you for everything.

Out of the Blue Into the Void is an exhibition in which twenty professional local artists are asked to contribute works which draw inspiration from the great French artist Yves Klein's artistic legacy.

The exhibition is curated by Stuart Town artist and teacher Tim Winters, whose brief to the artists was quite open ended, asking only for work which could be read as an "homage" to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Klein's proclamation of "L'Epoque Bleue".

The exhibition features a selection of the most adventurous artists in our region.

(UPDATE…Out of the Blue will be showing in Sydney in September 2008 at Bondi Pavilion as part of the Taste of Orange promotion)

Yves Klein worked in Paris at the end of the Modernist period from 1950 to 1962. He was internationally recognized for painting with fire, and for performances in which he asked naked women to paint themselves and then make impressions of their paint covered bodies on canvas.

Klein is also well known for patenting a type of ultramarine pigment as International Klein Blue (I.K.B) in his search for colours that best represented his concept of "The Void".

Klein had studied martial arts in Japan, and had become a black belt in jiu-jitsu. He became interested in the Buddhist notion of the void at this time, and sought throughout his career for ways of representing this concept.

He was able to mix his various artistic pursuits with running a martial arts school in Paris. Everything he did, he did with an intensity that possibly led to his very short life, as he died of a heart attack in 1962, aged only 34.

Klein's personality seemed to be composed of equal amounts of ascetic and showman. He contributed to the development of minimalism and conceptual art, and these days his works are eagerly sought by all of the world's museums.

The Art Gallery of NSW has one or two excellent Klein works, one in his famous International Klein Blue pigment.

Each work in Out of the Blue relates in one way or another to Klein's theories. Klein had many ideas about colour, about art, and also about being and nothingness. Large themes indeed, which was able to get across to the public through a sometimes bizarre combination of elegant showmanship and one pointed asceticism.

Klein has achieved cult status with young people, and I am pleased to say that this exhibition in homage to Klein also attracted an unusual number of young people, who are continuing to visit in good numbers. Yves Klein was ultra hip in a European way, as say, Miles Davis was in America. Both can be said to have contributed greatly to the Birth of the Cool.

Gallery Director Alan Sisley says "I cannot think of any other region in Australia whose artists would take up the challenge of honouring Yves Klein, and if they did, I doubt that they would produce the stunning results we see in this exhibition.

There is no doubt that Orange and district has developed a passion for excellence, which can be seen in many of our cultural pursuits from wine making and food to fine art and music. Many other businesses seek excellence in all they do. "

This is a show where the artists have sought excellence as their goal, as did Klein, who once did a piece where he sold an artwork to a merchant banker. The work was paid for in gold coins, and then Klein simply threw the coins into the Seine.

Congratulations to the Curator of the show Tim Winters, who recently won the Country Energy Art Award with a painting not dissimilar to the two he has in Out of the Blue.

The artists have responded fabulously to Tim's difficult challenge to honour the fiftieth anniversary of Yves Klein's declaration of L'Epoque Bleue. The result has been a show in which visitors stay for some time and take the trouble to understand something about Klein, whilst admiring the way the artists have used his ideas as a springboard.

The local artists were asked to respond in any way they liked to Klein's life and works, and they could make poems, music, installations, paintings or sculpture, as did Klein himself.

I am knocked out by the quality of the work these local professionals have made. Not a single one of their works could be mistaken for a Klein. Rather they have used his influence as a springboard to make their own challenging works, which all resonate with Klein's theories.

These are artists who relish the possibility of getting out of their comfort zones and stretching their artistic and intellectual wings. This is exactly why art is so fascinating, and why it is unlike other popular media, where pressures exist to "dumb down" and take the safe route.

The artists in Out of the Blue are Ros Auld, Jaq Davies, Mary Douglas and Kym Hammond, Tonya Graham, Kay Greenhill, Prue Hawke, Gabriella Hegyes, Phil Heckenberg, Trevor Hood, Heidi Lefebvre, Ian Marr, Ian Percival, Heather Pike, Les Quick, Errol Smith, Nicole Welch, Madeleine Winch, Lynn Winters, Tim Winters.

Because the brilliant Frenchman Klein was such an eclectic creator, making music, poetry, sculpture, prints, paintings and conceptual art, local artists have chosen to register the influence Klein had on them in differing ways.

Phillip Heckenberg is one of Australia's best-known Outsider artists, and he has responded with some typically eccentric approaches to the Klein challenge. He has written two hundred and fifty hymns, of which we are able to display around one hundred, but not only this massive amount of work, but also he has done three paintings for the show.

Phil explained what at first looks like a densely concentrated and un-void like painting by saying "Where Klein was a minimalist artist, I responded by making Maximalist Art". Perhaps Phil has invented a new genre!

There has been a lot of co-incidence involved in this show, and one is found in one of Heckenberg's paintings, where the colours Gold, Pink and Blue are mingled in a painting about procreation. Phil told me that although he was familiar with Klein's Blue works, he did not know that Klein earlier in his career had also used Pink and Gold.

The first paintings you see as you enter the Gallery are by Kay Greenhill, geometric abstract pieces that work very well indeed, evoking a serene mood with squares of delicate blue cream and grey offset by some striking red to add a frisson of tension to the hip mix of tones.

These paintings are ultra cool, and would make a beaut cover for a Miles Davis compilation. Built around a grid, Kay has placed her tones in fine balance, and although there is something a bit retro about them, they are good examples of the sort of abstraction that is becoming sought after by younger buyers.

Kay says that the works are inspired by a miniature Klein she saw in Melbourne at the Guggenheim exhibition, and that this little gem of a painting caused her to revisit her stitched canvases of the 1960's.

Nicole Welch has included an excellent example of her pierced work, where she makes pinholes in Hahnemuhle paper, and then lights this from behind.

She makes striking use of the patterns of old French lace transcribed to the paper and incorporates these patterns as an integral part of the nude female she has pierced into the paper. Her inclusion of the nude, reminds us of Klein's living brushes, but Nicole tells us "here, the living brush, pricked into being from the void, is not the void of the immaterial that Klein spoke of but the void of being a novelty for the male gaze".

So her piece, entitled "Faking it for Yves Klein", operates on a critical feminist level, analysing those sexist images that Klein, in the fifties and sixties probably did not think twice about. Nicole Welch is a consistently interesting artist, and I think some people regard her work as the highlight of the show.

Trevor Hood has made a large work, that seems the most Kleinian of all in the show, in that it is monochromatic in IKB. However, reflecting the fact that Trevor works in a rural area, he has chosen to incorporate landscape elements that are, I think, entirely absent from Klein's work.

Trevor has achieved a terrific deep blue, and has framed this within a sort of aluminium shop window display case. It is an object you could conceivably encounter in a Kubrick film floating in deep space, with fragments of the artist's life fixed to the surface of the blue void like objects frozen around the event horizon of a black hole.

An evocative tribute to Klein, which links all artists in the one project of self-realisation. Trevor says " searching for the creative impulse, artists endeavour to understand and so bring meaning to the void and the ultimate ephemeral nature of time and existence."

Ian Marr is a noted artist/wordsmith, and he has offered a text only response to the theme.

Ian poses a typical whimsical challenge with a punning take on the notion of Synaesthesia, that rare ability possessed by some people to see sounds, hear colours, and otherwise experience phenomena in a sort of sensory cross over. It is devoutly to be wished for musicians, as it makes learning tunes much easier if you always experience b flat as olive green.

Anyway, Ian wittily implies that Klein must have experienced colours this way, and in so doing pays tribute to Klein's own literary aspirations.

There are many works in this show that have obviously taken a terrific amount of time and skill to make. Mary Douglas and Kim Hammond deserve special mention for their stunning installation of floating transparent figures each reflecting the brilliant ultramarine cast by a large plasma screen showing a video loop of the sea. The figures were made from live models wrapped in packing tape, and seem to include most of the artists in Canowindra. Thus Douglas and Hammond tip their collective lid to Klein, who famously used nude models as his "living brushes".

Their work "The Dogma of Convention" resembles a flight of souls at the last judgement ascending into heaven, and can be read as an interesting take on Klein's Buddhist ideas about the "Void". Many thanks to Harvey Norman for sponsoring this piece by the loan of the plasma screen.

Jaq Davies has also made a large work with a wonderful presence, which looks great sited before Tim Winters predominantly brown paintings.

Her work, is entitled Into the Void, and consists of four wonderfully rickety ladders made from twisted branches which wind their way up to the ceiling, disappearing into a flock of blue birds, symbolic perhaps of the Kleinian happiness allegedly to be grasped by a leap into the void.

I suppose you could say that her take, like Douglas and Hammond also approaches the eastern notion of the Void from a western biblical perspective, this time one thinks of metaphors like Jacobs Ladder.

It is also great to see Stuart Town artist Ian Percival making a return to fine art, having been occupied with creative photography for some years now. His five small works are each made with the meticulous skill and perfectionist joinery for which he is well known, and these make gorgeous objects singularly or as a group.

His works are entitled Music 1 and 2, Flag, Paris and Indigo. Each in a subtle way addresses aspects of Klein's life and art. As with much of Percival's art, the works are dense with allusions that would take an essay to reveal. Suffice it to say here, that these are among his best made works, and I think contain possibly the most penetrating analyses of Klein in the show. They are minimal, constructivist and elegant, but unlike many minimalist works, fortunately the depth of Percival's thought does not allow for simple one idea art.

Errol Smith is another artist who has done a lot of work for this show. We are still pleased to call Errol a local artist, for he lived for years in Molong and Millthorpe, despite moving somewhere less salubrious in recent years.

Errol too has addressed different aspects of Klein through printmaking, sculpture and painting. He has included a large portrait of Klein, surrounded by transparent birds, perhaps unfinished, or perhaps suggestive of Klein's notion that what is not there is actually more important than what is seen.

His sculpture of a Klein Blue form surmounted with a gold ball is wonderful, an elegant rejoinder to the French master.

There are a number of coincidences in this show, but most striking are Errol's prints of human figures, for many of these figures strongly resemble the forms in the Douglas and Hammond work. These prints are humorous and witty, one of the few works in the show to stress this aspect of Klein.

Ros Auld is always an artist who is willing to take on new challenges in her chosen medium of ceramic sculpture. Her series of five square ceramic forms, each textured differently, but each containing some Kleinian ultramarine, are made themselves to appear to float in front of the wall.

Each is mounted on steel supports of differing length. The supports are painted the colour of the Gallery walls and all but disappear under the lights.So, we have five Kleinian voids floating before us like the after images you see if you press your eyeballs. A very clever and attractive work.

You can tell from my enthusiastic response to this show that I reckon you should take the time to see it, it really is unique, and a terrific credit to the artists and curator. We also have a video of Klein's work, which will help to provide context.
We are running a continuous video on Yves Klein, which certainly helps to place some of the startling works in the exhibition in context.

This exhibition continues to draw a range of interested comments. In fact it is one of those shows which divide our audience into the love it or hate it camps; which means generally that it is cutting edge art and is imparting a new way of seeing the familiar.

There is always some initial resistance to new artforms, with many people feeling that the art is something of a “con” because they do not yet understand the motivations and serious purpose of the art.

A certain population on the contrary are attuned to new things and new sensations, and actively seek novelty. These people tend to like art that is ahead of the times, and some of this group actually take the time to try to understand exactly what it is that the artist is imparting.

Of course, in these vacuous post modern times, one often discovers that the artist has nothing to say beyond the initial “shock value” of using unfamiliar, genre bending materials or unusual subject matter. An example – I saw in Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art a ceramic suite of exactly cast Tupperware containers made in pastel coloured matt porcelain. Then as now, I was staggered at the sheer pointlessness and vacuity of the exercise. It looked exactly like matt ceramic tupperware. Why bother and who cares? Not me anyway.

A lot of these “ultra realist” and genre bending artists, Patricia Piccinini for instance, say they are trying to show us the beauty in apparently ugly mutant forms. Well, why don’t they make beautiful forms in the first place? Cloning and Mutation can just as easily lead to forms we already recognise as beautiful!

I suspect that the real reason is that making new beautiful forms from scratch is much more difficult, and even more, it has little shock value.

When, as in the case of Piccinini, you have just one science fiction idea and a good model maker, then you have to arrest attention in the old avant-garde strategy of “épater les bourgeois”. I do not deny that Piccinini’s work has a remarkable fascination. It is like a glimpse into an undesired future, a consummation of possibilities we hope does not eventuate.

But I find her a science fiction creator, not an artist. And I must say that I don’t think she even does good science fiction, because the best in that genre is laden with ideas, whereas she seems to stick to the same one idea she had years ago, and makes variations on the theme.

I get bored with art in ten minutes unless I learn something new, and because Piccinini’s art is realist and does not involve distortion or artistic licence of any sort, there is nothing revealed over time. It is only what you see at once, without even the inherent mystery of a photograph, which Roland Barthes points out, always includes the mysterious presence of death.

But Piccinini’s art is already dead, because it does not have the illusory skills of an artist, just the verisimilitude of the model maker. It cannot appear therefore to live and breathe like, say a Bernini sculpture, unless she actually gets the model maker to insert inflating cellulose lungs with mechanical moving parts. I suspect that even then her work would be stillborn.

Fortunately, there is not much one idea art in the Tamworth Biennale. Although there is lots of genre bending in the show, this is not done solely for its own sake, and the show is message laden, in most cases, layered with meanings. Although these various meanings uncannily resemble the political agenda of a government funding agency.

Having said this, I enjoy much of the work in the Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennale, and I have met plenty of people who absolutely love it, including most of the gallery director colleagues I met this week in Sydney . Come and check it out for yourselves!

A pictorial tribute to the great winemaker Maurice O’Shea (1897-1956) by his nephew, Garry Shead (b. 1942) has opened in Gallery 2 at Orange Regional Gallery.

We have mounted this excellent exhibition to accompany the festivities of Orange Wine Week.

Love on Mt Pleasant has been curated for us by Hill End curator Gavin Wilson, who has collaborated with Orange Regional Gallery in many a project over the years, most recently Cuisine and Country which was generally regarded as the best touring exhibition of the last three years.

Garry Shead also has connections with Hill End, a unique place which has attracted artists since the late 1940’s, and it was fortuitous that Gavin noticed some of the Maurice O’Shea works in Garry’s studio and suggested that he curate an exhibition featuring this series of work.

Maurice O’Shea was certainly the first great winemaker in Australia’s history, producing numerous great wines, but one in particular, the 1937 Mountain “A” Dry Red has been described by wine luminary James Halliday (who tasted it sometime in the 80s) as a “perfect wine…a wine that will live with me for the rest of my life”.

Maurice O’Shea had an influential involvement with the art scene in

Australia

, not only as the mentor and inspiration of his Archibald Prize Winning nephew, but also attracting to his winery art scene leaders like Hal Missingham and Rudy Komon, the latter being credited with introducing good wines to many Sydneysiders. Many other artists made their way to Pokolbin to sample the fine wine (and food) that Maurice O’Shea produced, a pilgrimage not unexpected given the ancient conjunction of wine with art. O’Shea was a cultured and educated man, having lived in France for nearly eleven years studying chemistry and viticulture and sampling the great vintages of Europe .

In the first half of this century there was not a lot of good wine produced in New South Wales , and the market for fine wine was developing only slowly. For the few in the know, Maurice O’Shea was a legendary genius.

Demand grew after the second war, boosted by the more sophisticated tastes of the many European migrants and those returning from the grand tour, but aided also by the gregarious types in the art scene who by now insisted upon good wines as essential to their lifestyle.

This exhibition is not however a history of Maurice O’Shea or the growth of an industry, but rather a poetic account of O’Shea’s working methods and his love affair and marriage to the young Marcia Fuller. This marriage of a young Methodist girl from Melbourne to the dedicated Roman Catholic winemaker O’Shea was star crossed from the start in those conservative times, and O’Shea was threatened with excommunication, but the exhibition is not about the breakdown of a marriage, but rather the potency of love, which even in its grievous deprivation can act as a stimulus to great things.

It was the very year of his marriage break up, 1937, that Maurice produced his greatest wine. He said “That wine is my heart and soul in a bottle”.

Garry Shead, in his inimitable poetic style, has painted significant events in this romantic story, and the exhibition is a moving tribute to a man who inspired many, as well as to the powerful influence of love. It is also a record of O’Shea’s terrific old tin winery, later controversially demolished by McWilliams as “an unsafe workplace”.

The exhibition features paintings from 1953 to the present, as well as some recorded interviews with people who knew the winemaker. A colour catalogue has been produced with an essay by Gavin Wilson.

If Wine Week activities are meant to generate tourism to the Orange region, the Gallery’s contribution has been a notable success.

In Gallery 2 we are currently showing a pictorial tribute to the great winemaker Maurice O’Shea (1897-1956) by his nephew, Garry Shead (b. 1942).This Opened last week as a wine week activity, but will run until 22 November.

The exhibition attracted many people from Sydney and other parts of the state to the Opening, and is still bringing people to Orange aided by word of mouth and a bit of publicity in the Sydney press.

The Opening was conducted by the famous Sydney restaurateur Lucio Galletto. Lucio is becoming a regular at our events, having spoken to a crowd here on the occasion of the auction of local artworks a few months ago. He is known not only for the excellence of his restaurant, but also for his art collecting and his willingness to swap a month’s meals for a painting from a rising artist.

His speech was extremely funny, combining anecdotes of his own youth in rural winemaking

Italy

with praise for Australian art and artists and of course, for Garry Shead. Lucio remarked on the coincidence of there being a painting in the show of Maurice O’Shea helping a boy out of a large empty wine barrel. Lucio said his own winemaker uncle would get him to do the barrel cleaning from inside, and how proud it would make him feel to be the only one able to fit inside the barrel. He also said he would squeeze out of the barrel with his knees wobbling and his eyes crossed, a state he later recognised as being drunk!

The exhibition drew many artists from far and near, many from Hill End, as well as the distinguished artist John Olsen, who said a few words after Lucio about the exhibition.

This is indeed a lovely and poetic exhibition, which I believe is the best work from Garry Shead for quite a few years. In honouring and documenting his late Uncle’s contributions to Australian viticulture and gastronomy he has made an exhibition which is I believe straight from the heart…there is no sense of him searching for a subject. Garry has brought Maurice O’ Shea to life in this exhibition, with his eccentricity and cultured manner. Garry was only fourteen when Maurice died, but knew him very well from holidays on the vineyard and farm and regards him as his mentor. Like Garry and other notable creators, Maurice O’Shea was in search of excellence…not money or material possessions, which were the least of his motivations.

The exhibition plumbs his motivations, so we know that his muse was firstly a passionate love for his young wife, but also a passionate love of discovery and the craft of winemaking.

“I am not a ‘political’ artist, but rather an observer of human nature…I like to note the foibles of the human condition, saving little quotes and ideas for some time before I eventually use them. I like to think of my paintings as ‘parallel worlds’, which allow for the concentrated narratives I like to develop”.

Neil Cuthbert is almost alone in today’s art scene in his determination to make large narrative pictures which tell socially incisive stories.

His market success reflects not only his talents as an observer and painter, but also the desire of the art market for works that are not inane productions of post modern posturing, but works that encourage thought and discussion because of their manifold meanings. Some of Cuthbert’s works are sensational indeed, but sensation is by no means the sole purpose of the work.

Each of his large narrative works is a concentrated tour de force with reminisces of Hogarth as well as to Stanley Spencer and other great figurative painters in the narrative tradition.

His works are the result of dedicated study, and he has acute observational powers that were developed in his 14 years as a radio officer at sea, and through his initial paintings of birds.

The 2009 Cuthbert survey exhibition “The Painters Progress” is proof of the old painterly dogma that good art derives from the hand of a skilled observer who has lived and experienced the subject matter at first hand. Cuthbert’s entire oeuvre is a constant development that mirrors his developing life experiences.

Not only does the artist succeed in terms of composition, figuration and colouristic design but his subject matter is layered with meaning and emotional response. Cuthbert is an artist who can give us a new way of seeing the familiar, but he can also convey, through strikingly original imagery, something of the emotional experience of living in a segmented and media saturated contemporary society.

And all of this made with enough rare confidence to also add humour and nostalgic charm!

It is a delight to see art, that although clearly transmitting some serious ideas, is also not embarrassed to be good humoured, and where appropriate, makes sly witticisms about all sorts of things: from Renaissance art history to naval lore to Australian landscape painting to British pub signs to Blackpool “I’ve lost my little Willy” postcards.

Part of the success of Cuthbert’s oeuvre stems from the fact that the artist does know what he paints. It is so important for artists to have actual experience of their subject if they want depth of meaning.

For instance his earlier series strongly reflect his mariner background and his experience of migrating to

Australia

. The work is packed with realist incident and lively figures, yet the central themes of yearning, trepidation and embarkation are never lost sight of in the dynamic events of these paintings. In these works I am reminded of the famous Ford Maddox Brown painting 'The Last of England', as Cuthbert’s works too are often frontal, close focused and dense with incident and allusion; yet unlike some of the Pre-Raphaelite’s, and Hogarth on occasion, they are never overwhelmed by 'business'. Cuthbert is a fine colourist and draughtsman, and his colours, influenced by the theories of Max Doerner, are very well balanced with strong formal placements to lead the eye smoothly through what could be claustrophobic compositions in the hands of a lesser artist. His strong sense of graphic composition, influenced I think by Japanese design principles as much as Renaissance composition, does not allow too much distraction.

I mention predecessors, but of course, Cuthbert is a modern painter, and his style is well suited to the incidents of contemporary life. Although he frequently contrasts our era with that of earlier periods, this is to point out the similarities rather than the differences.

Although Cuthbert’s practice is grounded in the traditional skills of composition and drawing, and narrative painting is surely a rather "old fashioned' approach, this is balanced in his work by a postmodernist mixing of period and style. Some of his figures seem of the 1950s, others look like central European refugees of the 1940s, others again are clearly of today.

This chronological sampling adds interesting nuances to the work, reinforcing the echoes of "Ship of Fools” paintings and the notions of "Everyman” which recur throughout his oeuvre. The technique brings focus onto the generally human rather than the individual, and his frequent use of what appears to be tribal ritual disguise accentuates this universality, as indeed it was meant to do in tribal times.

The other underpinning and unifying factor in all Cuthbert’s work is theatricality, which may be seen to have come to him via Hogarth, who in turn is said to have got it from Fielding. But Cuthbert’s theatricality is more akin to the Brechtian theatre than Hogarth’s hidden proscenium. Cuthbert is a master of perspective, and he uses this painterly and theatrical tool in a highly original manner, skewing space and time to suit his dramatic purposes.

Cuthbert will not allow us to be seduced by his skills into the comfort zone of aesthetic pleasure. Rather each of his works contains the equivalent of Brecht’s loaded gun fired into the ceiling. He wants us to think his art, and to feel it, not to merely bask in the various pleasures of his work.

Orange Regional Gallery has had a fruitful association with Neil Cuthbert since he came here in 1996 to head the Arts and Media Department at Central West Campus of TAFE, Orange .

We have shown three of his exhibitions here, and a number of individual works, and the artist has also presented lectures and workshops to delighted audiences at Orange Regional Gallery over the years.

There are two of his major works in the gallery permanent collection, and I sincerely hope that others will follow through the good offices of his dedicated collectors and supporters.

His teaching is renowned, and he can, I think, be credited with a large measure of the healthy status of art practice in Orange and district.

I believe that Neil Cuthbert is one of the most important artists in

Australia

, and I hope that that this book will advance his reputation beyond the close circle of collectors who have kept him to themselves to this point.

I was delighted to find that my Cuthbert enthusiasm is shared by the remarkable scholar Dr Andrew Flatau, who has written the text of this book on a voluntary basis to help Orange Regional Gallery. He is my co-curator of the first Survey Exhibition of Cuthbert’s The Painters Progress shown at Orange Regional Gallery in 2009.

Dr Flatau has devoted a great amount of time to research, and I thank and congratulate him on producing an excellent and readable text full of interest and lively humour akin to the artist’s packed compositions. He has not lost sight of Cuthbert’s very serious purposes, and he has, like the artist, never overcrowded his narrative with anecdote and incident.

I also congratulate the Cuthbert aficionados who have had the foresight to collect his work. Many have more than one work, one or two have almost covered their walls with his pieces. I thank them for their generosity in lending to the Survey exhibition and the subsequent tour, and I thank them for helping to keep alive the flame of real art in a time when much art has lost its way into pointless decoration or sensationalist dross.

I want also to thank Neil Cuthbert for his assistance to Andrew Flatau, to myself and to Orange Regional Gallery over the years. It is always a pleasure to work with Neil Cuthbert.

And finally I wish to express the gratitude of everyone associated with this project, to the Gordon Darling Foundation, the Orange Regional Arts Foundation and the Friends of Orange Regional Gallery and to Orange City Council. Without the financial assistance of these organisations we would not have been able to produce this book.

On March 6 in the big space we open what we suspect will be the most popular exhibition of the year.

Borenore artist Neil Cuthbert has gathered a great following as both a painter and a teacher since he came here fifteen years ago to head the Arts and Media section of Orange TAFE. He still teaches there, but is no longer the head of the school so he could devote more time to his own work, which was progressing in unexpected ways both aesthetically and in the market.

Just about every exhibition Neil has had with his dealers Artarmon Galleries in Sydney was a sell out, with multiple works selling to the same collectors. He has since moved to Australian Galleries who can offer representation in both Sydney and Melbourne and overseas.

This is quite rare for an artist with a regional base who has never lived in Sydney or Melbourne and does not have a lot of personal contacts.

In other words, he had to rely entirely on the quality and attractive powers of his work, as he did not have any kind of network to sell to. But sell he did, his large pictures go for around $25,000 each, which puts him near the “big league” of Australian artists as far as the market is concerned.

But of course, he could not have had this market success without creating some of the most remarkable works of art to be seen in

Australia

for quite a long time.

Remarkable, because Cuthbert goes against just about every trend in the art scene.

Firstly, he is a figurative painter who can really draw the human figure. He is skilled in anatomy and has made many studies in the anatomy departments of Sydney University .

Secondly he paints narrative pictures, that tell a story, a few with a more or less important moral implication, although most are more accurately described as amoral pictures in that they simply record the mores of today without making judgement.

Whether or not he makes judgement, he always chooses important themes, themes of universal human importance. This word “Universal” is also really out of fashion with the art scene today, who argue that everything is context dependent, and that there are no universals.

You will recall the works of Hogarth, Rowlandson, Stanley Spencer and other artists of the English narrative traditions; well Cuthbert came from

England

and is seen as continuing this genre, although he does not regard himself as a disciple of those masters but rather as someone who is able to update this tradition to contemporary times.

Thirdly, Cuthbert is a master of the painterly skill of perspective, a skill that is also essential to theatre designers and art directors. Cuthbert is able to merge these disciplines by incorporating very theatrical perspectives and “stage settings’ into his narratives.

Again, there are elements of this theatrical style in English work deriving originally from the eighteenth century, but Cuthbert presents his theatrical and dramatic narratives in a manner more akin to the theories of Brecht and Artaud than the traditional proscenium arch theatre.

There is, to my knowledge, nobody in

Australia

painting anything like the work of Neil Cuthbert, and very few possess his skill set. What all of us in Orange know however, is that Neil Cuthbert has made some of the most remarkable and spectacular works of art seen in this country, and we expect his show to be a knockout!

There are many other things that distinguish Neil Cuthbert’s work, but there is not much point in my telling you all these in this newspaper when we are about to publish a full colour scholarly monograph on the artist, to launch at the Opening of the exhibition.

I am pleased to say that this book is a fully local production, written by Dr Andrew Flatau of Orange , and designed by Sauce Design of Orange. It is published by Orange Regional Gallery.

It is funded locally as well, with special thanks to the Orange Regional Arts Foundation, who also contributed in a major way to the new Chris Fox sculpture.

Andrew Flatau is a remarkable scholar, gaining a PhD and the University Medal in two almost completely distinct disciplines - English Literature and Dentistry. Andrew has been interested in art all his life, and is a member of the famous Pens and Pencils art group in Sydney . He has written a very readable and enjoyable text that is a delight to read..a breath of fresh air free of the turgid artspeak that makes some art catalogues a real chore to read.

The book is fully illustrated with great Cuthbert pictures, and will include every work that is in the Painters Progress exhibition, which is a very big Survey Exhibition including works from all stages of the artists career.

In the large space until April 19^th we have one of the most impressive Australian contemporary painting exhibitions we have shown. That this exhibition features the work of a local artist is wonderful.

I refer of course to Neil Cuthbert, a remarkable painter indeed, whose work is the subject of a Survey exhibition, covering his whole painting career.

The occasion also marks the publication of the first monograph written about the artist. This too is a local production, written by Dr Andrew Flatau and designed by Sauce Design of Orange. It is published by Orange Regional Gallery with financial assistance from the Orange Regional Arts Foundation and the Friends of the Gallery.

I can find nothing else written about Cuthbert except what I have previously written in this newspaper, so I hope for Neil’s sake that the books sells well and we can get good distribution.

It marks the first time that the Gallery has published a substantial monograph on a local artist, although we have published a number on nationally known artists, and so the whole is a very special enterprise.

Many thanks to the Orange Regional Arts Foundation and the Friends of the Gallery for sharing our enthusiasm for this artist and helping to make the book possible.

The 65 works in the exhibition have been borrowed from three states of Australia , from private collectors mostly, but also from the University of Wollongong and our own collection. I expect that Cuthbert will become represented in more museums as his unique skill set and way of seeing become better known following this exhibition and tour to Manning Regional Gallery and Shoalhaven Arts Centre, and particularly the books distribution.

I can do no better now than reproduce Andrew Flatau’s wall text for the exhibition which will give visitors to town a handle on what we have been keeping to ourselves until now.

“Born and raised in Northamptonshire, Neil Cuthbert served in the British Merchant Navy before migrating to Australia in 1980. During the next decade, while serving on Lighthouse Tenders along the east coast, Cuthbert became increasingly interested in pursuing a life in art. He studied art formally in Wollongong , but in 1996 he relocated from Nowra to Orange to take up a position in the Arts and Media Department at Orange TAFE, where he continues to teach painting and drawing. Between 1996 and 2000 Cuthbert completed a Master of Fine Arts degree (by research) at the College of Fine Arts , The University of New South Wales. Although he has been influenced by the narrative and figurative traditions within British art, Cuthbert's work has developed in response to his own life experiences as a mariner and a migrant. His pictures are engaging in part because the compositions are thoughtfully constructed, with a recognisable visual language, and the narratives are expressed with an assured and idiosyncratic wit. They also convey deep layers of meaning and have a strong emotional content.

Much of Cuthbert's work is set in what he calls a parallel world. Its imaginary figures and landscapes are not bound by any fixed rules of narrative and perspective and present him with unlimited possibilities to explore universal issues: the need to belong, the need for stability and the anxieties of change. But set against these apprehensions, Cuthbert taps into the wellsprings of the human spirit: our resilience, our hopes and dreams, our need for love and fulfillment, and the need to expand our horizons. Indeed, Cuthbert's artistic output represents a sustained, powerful and imaginative exploration of the human condition itself. This, the first survey exhibition of his work, highlights the vast depth of experience informing his art as well as the evolving technical and conceptual elements of his practice”.

Although Cuthbert's paintings are dramatic and visually engaging, for those who are interested in studying the work in more depth, most of the paintings in the exhibition are labelled with reference to the appropriate plates and discussions in Andrew Flatau's Cuthbert: the painter's progress.

MAY 98	TRACEY MOFFAT SHOW OPENS
SEP98	EDUARDO PAOLOZZI, BILL DAVIS AND AUSSIES
NOV98	GO EAST -CONTEMPORARY ART FROM EAST GERMANY
DEC 98	A REAL WAR - IVOR HELE THE HEROIC FIGURE
DEC 98	CURRENT ORG TOURING EXHIBITIONS SEEN BY 250,000 PEOPLE
JAN 99	AGNES GOODSIR (1868 - 1939) A NOTABLE EXPATRIATE
MAR 99	AN AFFAIR WITH F.O.O.D
JULY 99	NEW TECHNOLOGIES - LIGHTFINGERED AND TIM RALPH
AUG 99	NEIL CUTHBERT AND CINDERELLA'S GEMS
AUG99	THE LAST EXHIBITION OF THE LATE PETER WRIGHT
NOV99	ON ART PRIZES - THE FORG AWARD
FEB00	WHAT JOHN BERGER SAW
MAY00	MARGARET ROBERTS "HORIZON" AND PHIL HAMMIAL, ERROL SMITH AND JANINE HILDER "OUTREACH"
JULY00	WHAT IS AN "ARTIST PRINT"
JULY00	THE EUROPEANS AND EARTH FORMS LIFE FORMS
AUG00	NEW DONATIONS - HARRY SHERWIN AND KEMPSON / TOME FROM FRIENDS OF THE GALLERY-
SEP00	LE CHEMINANT AND SIEGLINDE KARL
NOV00	SEBASTIAN AND FORG ART AWARD
MAY01	GEOFF LEVITUS TRANSITIONS AT GRAFTON REGIONAL GALLERY
JULY01	THE DEEP WELL OF MEMORY AT MANLY REGIONAL GALLERY
MAY 02	MCA UNPACKED AND THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR
JUN 02	DAVID ASPDEN - A CELEBRATION OF COLOUR
JUNE 02	MODERNIST ABSTRACTION VS POST MODERNIST TEDIUM
SEP 02	BRILLIANT SPATIAL INTERSECTIONS BY ALAN SCHACHER AND RIK RUE - SLEEPING BETWEEN WHISPERING WALLS
JAN 03	DADA AND SURREALIST BOOKS AND GRAPHICS BY THE GREAT MAX ERNST
JUNE 03	FANTASTIC AND VISIONARY ART, AN ORG EXHIBITION TOURING AUSTRALIA
JAN 05	KEIKO AMENOMORI SCHMEISSER, JOHN WINCH, COLIN BEARD
MAR 05	MARILYN WALTERS AND BARRY GAZZARD OPAL/SAPPHIRE
JUN05	MOVIN' ROUND: INDIGENOUS ART OF THE CENTRAL WEST
JUN05B	JODY CHESTER'S ESSAY FROM MOVIN ROUND WITH ARTIST CV'S
DEC 05	WHAT IS OUTSIDER ART? AUSTRALIAN OUTSIDERS OPENS
JAN 06	CERAMICS OF THE CENTRAL WEST - EARTHLY ENCOUNTERS
FEB 06	JORG SCHMEISSER AND TIM MACGUIRE
JUL 06	THE DEATH OF BRONWYN OLIVER, AND RAY CROOKE ENCOUNTERS WITH COUNTRY
OCT 06	HELEN LANCASTER AND ATASDA: THE THREADS OF LIFE
JAN 07	GODWIN BRADBEER : THE METAPHYSICAL SURVEYOR
JAN 07	SCHOLARSHIP INCREASINGLY LEFT TO THE SMALLER GALLERIES, AS WE TAKE OVER THE ONE MAN SURVEY SHOW
FEB 07	ROYSTON HARPUR - A GREAT AUSTRALIAN ARTIST
FEB 07	STUPID POST-MODERNISTS, THE DUMBING DOWN OF CONTEMPORARY COLLECTORS
SEP 07	THE LATE JOHN WINCH - AUSTRALIA'S RENAISSANCE MAN
OCT 07	OUT OF THE BLUE - IN CELEBRATION OF 50 YEARS OF KLEIN'S L'EPOQUE BLEUE
DEC 08	CONTRA THE FIBRE BIENNALE AND PATRICIA PICCININI
NOV 09	GARRY SHEAD'S "LOVE ON MT PLEASANT" TOURING FROM ORANGE
MAR 09	NEIL CUTHBERT - A GREAT ARTIST IN THE DISTRICT!

Foreword to catalogue Fantastic and Visionary Art

Keiko Amenomori Schmeisser, John Winch, Colin Beard

Run Hare Run

OCHRE /SAPPHIRE

Australian Outsiders Opens

Earthly Encounters

Th e honest Crooke

Helen Lancaster Talk Wednesday 15th November at the Gallery

Helen Lancaster Talk Wednesday 15^th November at the Gallery