(What’s so funny ‘bout) peace, love and understanding…?
July 2013
Winter Masterpieces at Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre
Three richly coloured canvases by Judy Watson hang unstretched on the gallery walls. They are large floating works, absorbing and intimate, that invite you in for a closer inspection. Stepping back, the harmony of red, blue and green pigment that has been ground into the canvas forms a bird’s-eye view of land, water and rivers. Watson’s 2011 work Red flood references the devastation of the 2011 Brisbane floods and the catastrophic might of nature, evoking a land stained with blood spreading like an algal bloom. Watson is an artist who weaves the story of Aboriginal Australians and white settlers, often violent and shameful, into works that are responsive and poignant.
While it may sometimes seem a humble offering, art can address historical wrongs by challenging the way the past is understood. It can also seek to shine a confronting light on unhealthy power structures, and display in plain terms abstract issues of human rights and injustice. Eight such artists have been brought together under this very theme. (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding…?, a title taken from Nick Lowe’s 1970s hit song, presents Australian artists who have taken to paint, print or assemblage in response to social, environmental or political issues. Works by contemporary artists Judy Watson, Gordon Bennett, Jon Cattapan and Penny Byrne are installed alongside those by senior artists Noel Counihan, Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan and Clifton Pugh.
The exhibition differentiates between artistic periods and thematic responses to socio-political events and issues. Three small works from Noel Counihan’s The Miner Series (1947) are the earliest works in the exhibition. Counihan travelled into the mines with the workers every day for a month, where he sketched by torchlight. The graphic images that he created record something unseen by most. In contrast to Watson’s expansive canvases, Counihan’s linocuts are exacting and precise. Three small prints in the exhibition show the faces of young men aged by extreme hardship, afflicted with ‘the cough’, clearly illustrating the haunting reality of working in the claustrophobic space of a mine seam.
Russell Drysdale’s depictions of farmers and their families standing on the drought-ravaged land broke with the tradition of the Australian Impressionists’ ‘blue and gold’, and was a long way from the more palatable images of the early settlers’ pioneering spirit. Drysdale, who felt a great affinity with the outback, was commissioned by The Sydney Morning Herald to document the 1944 drought in north-western NSW. The figures that stare ahead to an uncertain future in Family group (date unknown) look as withered and fragile as the land that has failed to provide for them.
Sidney Nolan, who first claimed Ned Kelly as his iconic figure in 1946, saw his as a story that “arises from the bush and ends in the bush”. River (1964) reveals how landscape became an increasingly potent device in his depictions of Kelly, the anti-hero who challenged the status quo. The once augmented helmet is now diminished by the wild Australian bush. Nolan’s paintings of Kelly are not a literal representation of his life but one of contemporary myth – a dramatised hybrid of history and biography.
Contemporary art employs abstraction, appropriation and language, and the contrast between work by Jon Cattapan and Gordon Bennett and the earlier works is striking. Pondering this, an interesting link emerges: Counihan and Bennett used their practices to draw the viewer’s attention to marginalised members of the community, creating discourse on ethnicity and identity and so bringing the issues associated with these topics into the consciousness of the viewer. Two significant works by Bennett are featured, each from a different series. In Abstraction (citizenry) (2011) the artist layers a celebrity portrait over a black face. Bennett’s paintings challenge the ways in which different identities can be represented in the media and in art. Furthermore, citizenship implies inclusion and it brings with it the powerful and ever-present implication of exclusion.
The motif of overlaid figures recurs throughout Cattapan’s series Carbon Group (2003). Cattapan’s figures are clustered and marked with ink blotches and line work. They are both an ad hoc gathering and a collective, reminiscent of street protests and physical confrontation with authorities. The drawings are overlaid with the use of transparencies, on occasion causing those whose body language is one of solitude to overlap with another. It is a reminder of the individuals who make up any community, as well as the power of the collective to form a united front. Conceived and curated by Gallery Supervisor Julie Skate, the preparation for the exhibition inspired a new creation by Cattapan, exhibited here for the first time.
The motif of overlaid figures recurs throughout Cattapan’s series Carbon Group (2003). Cattapan’s figures are clustered and marked with ink blotches and line work. They are both an ad hoc gathering and a collective, reminiscent of street protests and physical confrontation with authorities. The drawings are overlaid with the use of transparencies, on occasion causing those whose body language is one of solitude to overlap with another. It is a reminder of the individuals who make up any community, as well as the power of the collective to form a united front. Conceived and curated by Gallery Supervisor Julie Skate, the preparation for the exhibition inspired a new creation by Cattapan, exhibited here for the first time.
It is also significant to see that the parameters of the exhibition extend beyond the Australian context. Bennett’s Notes to Basquiat (modernity) (1999) pays homage to twentieth century African American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his artistic practice that critiques the politics of race and ethnicity. Watson, who completed a residency at University of Virginia in 2011, delves into the history of Thomas Jefferson and slavery in Charcoal kiln and nailery (2012), while in Penny Byrne’s Gitmo Bay souvenirs (2010) porcelain ladies and gents dressed in frocks and tailcoats stand in a line, with Byrne’s addition of blindfolds and chains. Byrne’s found objects are transformed with the care, knowledge and tools of a qualified restorer. There are no mixed messages in their clear political punch.
The dialogue between different works in (What’s so funny ’bout) peace, love and understanding..? draws out parallels between imagery and themes both past and present across the room, transcending time as much as location. There is a progressive link between the solitude of Counihan’s miner, Drysdale’s family group on the farm, and the collective of Jon Cattapan’s figures. Likewise, Drysdale’s depiction of the drought ties in with Watson’s Red flood; the destructive extremes of nature are recurring themes both for artists and the environmentally aware.
We are able to glean here an insight into a long history of artistic practices in Australia which have been invested with hope, compassion and the belief that art has the potential to bring about change for the better. If the message is communicated in a creative and effective manner and makes an emotional connection with the viewer, then that is an important step towards education, and education can be a significant outcome for works that strive for social commentary. As the exhibition poignantly illustrates, artists who are moved into action make compelling works.
What’s so funny ’bout) peace, love and understanding…? shows at The Gallery at Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre, corner of Carpenter and Wilson Sts, Brighton, until August 18.
bayside.vic.gov.au/Bayside_Arts_and_Cultural_Centre
Images:
1. Jon CATTAPAN, Atonal group (Icy) 2013 © Jon Cattapan – Courtesy KalimanRawlins.
2. Visitors enjoy Jon CATTAPAN’s Atonal Group (Icy) 2013 & Penny BYRNE’s Gitmo Bay Souvenirs, closing down sale, all stock must go! 2010 as part of (What’s so funny ’bout) peace, love & understanding…?
3. Russell DRYSDALE, Shortain (Man in a landscape) © Estate of Russell Drysdale – Private Collection.
4. Gordon BENNETT, Notes to Basquiat – Courtesy of the artist and pARTners.
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