Margaret Olley paints a room filled with her personality

 

Australian artist Margaret Olley (1923-2011) worked extensively within the tradition of still life and interior subjects during the second half of the twentieth century, and made them uniquely her own. She established her reputation both locally and nationally with her colourful and vibrant paintings.

Margaret Olley in the garden at ‘Farndon’ Brisbane c.1950s / Courtesy: Margaret Olley Archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales Archive

In 1942 Olley moved from Brisbane to Sydney and enrolled at the East Sydney Technical College (later the National Art School) where she graduated with first-class honours. Olley then spent her time travelling abroad and in 1953, she returned to Brisbane and lived at the family home, ‘Farndon’, at 15 Morry Street, Hill End (now West End), just a short walk to Orleigh Park and the Brisbane River. After time spent abroad engaging with a wider art world, Brisbane no longer seemed quite as stifling.

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Margaret Olley painting at ‘Farndon’ Brisbane 1966 / Photographs: Bob Millar / Courtesy: State Library of Queensland / Reproduced with the permission of Bauer Media Pty Limited

Olley had honed her drawing skills while travelling in Europe, but her return to the tropical light and vegetation of Brisbane rekindled her love of colour, with which she was enthralled as a child living in Tully and Murwillumbah.

The streets and gardens of the Brisbane of Olley’s youth had changed little in her absence — the city was still the same large country town on the banks of the meandering Brisbane River. In Meg Stewart’s biography Far From a Still Life: Margaret Olley (2005), Olley states:

I’d liked Brisbane ever since I was a child, so really I was quite happy to be back there. Farndon was just a street back from the river. From my bedroom I could see little bits of its greeny-coloured water. At night the river cruise would come past. It used to go about as far as Lone Pine and there was dancing on board. You’d hear faint chugging; the music would be slowly swelling as the boat came closer then fade away. Then just as we were about to fall asleep, the faint sound of music would drift off the water again as it came back down.1

The calm presence of Farndon, with its high-ceilings, generous rooms and lush subtropical garden, is captured in a series of Olley’s first interiors created in 1970. 

Interior IV

Margaret Olley, Australia 1923-2011 / Interior IV 1970 / Oil on composition board / 121.5 x 91.5cm / Gift of the Margaret Olley Art Trust through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2002 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Marget Olley Art Trust

The sitting room of ‘Farndon’ was described by a close friend, Pam Bell, as one of the most beautiful she had ever seen. It was comfortable and unpretentious, the chintzes were worn and mended, and the furniture came from family collections and Olley’s years in the antique business. There Olley displayed New Guinea artefacts as well as her own paintings and those of her friends. It was a well-loved room.

The paintings depicted in the room are by the artist or selected from friends and are carefully placed in a prominent position; the New Guinea masks and ceramics were chosen by the artist on one of her three trips to New Guinea; a chair covered with old chintz has known the contours of the artist’s body; and the chairs are upholstered in velvet with bright fabric-covered cushions. We talk of ‘rooms with personality’, but not all representations of interiors have such an intimate relationship with their occupier.

‘Farndon’ was destroyed by fire in 1980, precipitating Olley’s move to Sydney. The fact that Olley had difficulty talking about the destruction of her home is a clear expression of her very substantial emotional investment in it, its objects and its memories. The legacy we have of ‘Farndon’ is Interior IV.

Edited extracts from ‘Margaret Olley’s generous life in art’, Margaret Olley: A Generous Life, QAGOMA, 2019 by Michael Hawker, Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA; and research by Glenn R. Cooke, former Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, QAGOMA.

Endnote
1 Meg Stewart, Margaret Olley: Far from a Still Life, rev. and updated edn, Vintage, Sydney, 2012, pp. 273-4.

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Featured image detail: Interior IV 1970
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Jonathan Jones creates spectacular installations

 

Jonathan Jones’s untitled (giran) 2018 is reminiscent of a map of intersecting wind currents, evoking birds in flight; and knowledge, change and new ideas circling above our heads.

Understanding wind is an important part of understanding country.
Winds bring change, knowledge and new ideas to those prepared to listen. Jonathan Jones

Jones works across a range of media to create installations, interventions and public artworks exploring Aboriginal practices, relationships and ideas. These projects are grounded in research and collaboration with local communities and are often site-specific, representing, embodying or engaging with a site. Jones is from the Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri people in New South Wales and researches his culture through early writings and museum collections. 

Made of almost 2000 sculptures and a soundscape, untitled (giran) brings the culture, language and philosophy of the Wiradjuri people of New South Wales to Kurilpa, a longstanding and important meeting place for Indigenous people, on the Maiwar (Brisbane) River. The sounds of wind, bird calls, breathing and Wiradjuri language animate the installation.

Jonathan Jones discusses ‘untitled (giran)’

This is the most recent in a series of collaborations that Jones has undertaken with elder Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr, and draws on the Wiradjuri concept of giran. Giran describes the winds, change, as well as feelings of fear and apprehension. Traditional tools are at the heart of the artwork. Bound to each tool with handmade string is a small bundle of feathers – found treasures – carefully gathered and sent to Jones by people from across the country.

The circling murmuration of flying ‘birds’ is composed of six tool types. Like the winds, Wiradjuri philosophy divides them into male and female groups: bagaay – an emu eggshell spoon, bindu-gaany – a freshwater mussel scraper, waybarra – a weaving start, bingal – a bone awl, dhala-ny – a wooden spear point, and galigal – a stone knife. Each tool has limitless potential.

Jonathan Jones worked with family, Wiradjuri community members and long-time artistic collaborators to make the tools and to craft the feathers into tiny ‘wings’. The process of making – gathering and transforming the raw materials – brings people together, enhances connections to land, culture and language, and strengthens ties to generations who have passed on.

Jonathan Jones ‘untitled (giran)’

Jonathan Jones, Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi peoples, Australia b.1978, with Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM, Wiradjuri people, Australia b.1940 / (untitled) giran (detail) 2018 / Bindu-gaany (freshwater mussel shell), gabudha (rush), gawurra (feathers), marrung dinawan (emu egg), walung (stone), wambuwung dhabal (kangaroo bone), wayu (string), wiiny (wood), 48-channel soundscape / Sound design: Luke Mynott, Sonar Sound / © The artists / Photograh: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA / This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body; the NSW Government through Create NSW; and the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. This project has also been supported by Carriageworks through the Solid Ground program.

Acknowledgment of Country
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution Indigenous people make to the art and culture of this country.

It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name or reproduce photographs of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.

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Museums and memories

 

Museums are places for complex stories for a diverse public. Everywhere, museums are now far more than just cultural institutions. They have moved politically centre-stage, playing a key role in defining and re-defining national and communal identity. 

On International Museums Day, Neil MacGregor while in Australia, shared his wisdom with us. He’s a writer and broadcaster, formerly led London’s National Gallery and the British Museum and founding Director of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum.

In this lecture, MacGregor examines the ways in which museums around the world are attempting to exhibit the past we need to take hold of, in order to confront the future with confidence. Why has this happened?

Listen to Neil MacGregor answer this question

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Neil MacGregor began his career as a lecturer in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Reading in 1975, having studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He was editor of the Burlington Magazine from 1981 until 1987. Then, as Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002, he oversaw the opening of the Sainsbury Wing and a complete rehang of the collection. MacGregor raised the profile of the organisation and became a household name in 2000 when he presented the BBC series with the same title as his exhibition ‘Seeing Salvation’, which examined images of Christ in Western Art. In 2002, MacGregor became Director of the British Museum until 2015. He was then Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin from 2015 to 2018, unifying five independent institutions under its umbrella..

His books, each accompanied by a series of programmes on BBC Radio 4, include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare’s Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation.

In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK’s highest civil honour. In 2015 he was awarded the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize. In 2018 the radio series ‘Living with the Gods’ received the Sandford Saint Martin Award for Religious Broadcasting.

This lecture was presented by QAGOMA in celebration of International Museum Day and supported by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association and the Gordon Darling Foundation.

Feature image: David Wilkie, 1785-1841 / George IV 1829 / Collection: Royal Collection Trust

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The mysteries of forgotten cities and atmospheric compositions

 

Ali Kazim creates highly crafted works that experiment with painterly techniques to create atmospheric, dream-like qualities. In precise detail, Kazim captures the stillness of a deserted landscape or a sudden transformation as a storm tears through parched terrain. His paintings are based on the Punjab region of Pakistan – once home to a large part of the Indus Valley Civilisation and now scattered with ancient ruins.

Kazim is interested in the history of Pakistan’s landscapes and the ancient civilizations that once inhabited the region, particularly imagining the stories hidden in unexcavated remains, regularly visiting these ruins, studying the mounds that form the contours of the landscape, and searching the sites of long-abandoned cities, which are partly exposed or still buried.

Mound in Punjab, Pakistan, 2018 / Photographs courtesy: Ali Kazim

Ali Kazim discusses his work

Ali Kazim, Pakistan b.1979 / Untitled (ruins series) 2018 / Watercolour pigments on paper / Four sheets: 206 x 456cm (overall) / Purchased 2018 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Purchased 2018 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Ali Kazim

Working in a range of techniques, styles and scales, he draws on a repertoire of techniques and materials to access these emotive surroundings and conjure the mysteries of forgotten cities. The large landscape is informed by Siyah Qalam, a fleetingly popular form of Persian painting influenced by the ink painting traditions of East Asia, whereby multiple layers of ink were applied with a fine brush.

Ali Kazim, Pakistan b.1979 / Untitled (storm series) 2018 / Pigments on mylar / 32 x 42cm / Purchased 2018 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Ali Kazim
Ali Kazim, Pakistan b.1979 / Untitled (cloud series) 2018 / Pigments on mylar / 32 x 42cm / Purchased 2018 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Ali Kazim

Kazim also creates atmospheric compositions on polyester film rendered in pigment with cotton or soft brushes, delicate paintings that capture a sudden moment of transformation as severe weather tears through parched terrain. Stencils and erasers are used to detail bolts of lightning, and storm and dust clouds, elements that momentarily bring the landscapes to life.

Kazim is also interested in how pottery shards have transformed over centuries from practical objects to remnants of deserted and forgotten places, and the blackened ceramics bear organic lines or veins to resemble both rocks and organs.

Installation view Cloud Series 2018; Storm Series 2018; Lightning Series 2018; Ruin Series 2017 on display in APT9, GOMA

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APT9 has been assisted by our Founding Supporter Queensland Government and Principal Partner the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Featured image detail: Ali Kazim’s Untitled (ruins series) 2018
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Vale: Monir Sharoudy Farmanfarmaian

 

We are deeply saddened to learn of the recent passing of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1924–2019) on Saturday 20 April. Over a career of six decades, Farmanfarmaian created art that was at once radical and deeply invested in tradition. She drew from Iranian architecture, the traditions of Islamic geometry and pattern, as well as techniques such as reverse glass painting, mirror mosaic and relief sculpture. Farmanfarmaian revived and adapted these forms to make startlingly original and compelling works.

The geometric patterns began to infiltrate my own art. I used them not quite faithfully but with a minimalist twist, relishing the clean modern lines that appeared when the mathematical logic was distilled from the traditional designs Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian in Brisbane at the opening of ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT6) in 2009 / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA

QAGOMA is privileged to hold in its Collection her largest and most-spectacular work, Lightning for Neda 2009. Through this huge 6-panel mosaic work, Farmanfarmaian commemorated a young woman who died in a pro-democracy protest in Tehran following the presidential elections on 12 June 2009. In the reflective shards of glass, we see ourselves drawn into a universe of perfect forms and shifting vanishing points.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Iran 1924-2019 / Lightning for Neda 2009 / Mirror mosaic, reverse-glass painting, plaster on wood / The artist dedicates this work to the loving memory of her late husband Dr Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian. Purchased 2009. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA

The characteristic mirror mosaic of Farmanfarmaian’s work references an Iranian decorative form known as aineh-kari.  In each panel of Lightning for Neda, Farmanfarmaian used more than 4000 mirror shards to create myriad patterns across a sublime, glittering surface. The technique dates back to the sixteenth century, when glass was imported from Europe and would often arrive broken.

Cutting glass at Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s studio / Photograph: Ellie Buttrose

The artist’s intricate mirror mosaic and reverse-glass painting expands the hexagon into multiple geometric possibilities. These complex tessellations were the fascination of Arab scholars in the ninth century, who sought mathematical expression of the complex shapes. Over centuries, Islamic architecture and design have drawn on this knowledge to produce intricate patterns embellishing facades and interiors. In Lightning for Neda, Farmanfarmaian returns to this long Persian tradition to form an elegy for contemporary Iran.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Iran 1924-2019 / Lightning for Neda (details) 2009 / Mirror mosaic, reverse-glass painting, plaster on wood / The artist dedicates this work to the loving memory of her late husband Dr Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian. Purchased 2009. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Farmanfarmaian’s life was marked by political turmoil. After studying Fine Arts at Tehran University from 1943 to 1944 she left for New York where, she attended Cornell University and later studied fashion illustration at Parsons School of Design in 1949. During these years in New York (1945–57), she was one of many artists turning to the emotional potential of abstraction and she socialised with Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman and Andy Warhol.

In 1957, she returned to Iran and developed her interest in Islamic geometry and philosophy, aineh-kari and Sufi symbolism, travelling frequently between Iran and Europe. In the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, however, she found she was unable to return to her country. Almost all of her artwork and vast collection of decorative objects were confiscated. After living in New York for a further 24 years, the artist went home to Iran in 2003, where she remained until her death last Saturday.

Farmanfarmaian sought to recover a material culture that was rapidly disappearing while pushing the boundaries of modernist geometry. Her death, at age 97, marks a great loss. She was one of the most important contemporary figures of Iranian art and twentieth-century abstraction at large.

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Feature image: Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian standing in front of her work Lightning for Neda 2009 / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA

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Bona Park gets inspiration from those she collaborates with

 

Beyond the sea 2018 continues South Korean artist Bona Park’s exploration of themes of extinction and redundancy brought about by human activity, technological development and economic imperatives. Its three channels each focus on an individual working behind the scenes in Korea’s film and television industry — a voice actor, a lighting operator and a stunt performer – whose roles have become precarious with shifts in cinematic fashion and financing.

Bona Park discusses her work

Bona Park, South Korea b.1977 / Beyond the sea 2018 / Three-channel FHD video: 16:58 minutes, colour, sound Director and Editor: Bona Park / Camera: Daegyeon Kim; Light: Woohyung Lee; Voice: Sohee Kim; Stunt: Young Yoon Hwang; Text excerpted from Marguerite Duras The Atlantic Man 1981 and Jean-Luc Godard Alphaville 1965 / Commissioned for APT9. Purchased 2018. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Bona Park

The work’s central monologue, read by the voice actor, is drawn from French playwright Marguerite Duras’s experimental 1981 film The Atlantic Man — an ode to a departed lover. The ‘you’ addressed by the central monologue is directed toward film and television workers, and the profession of voice acting in particular. Once popular for dubbing foreign films, many voice actors were made redundant after the global financial crisis of 2008, their function replaced by subtitling.

Abstracted from their workaday context and framed by Bona Park’s videography, the actions of all three professionals take on a poetic resonance. Deeper readings are also possible — both of the oblique cinematic references inherent in each action, and of the broader conditions of labour in jobs that are vulnerable to obsolescence, the workforce equivalents of endangered species in the natural world.

Bona Park’s Beyond the sea (still) 2018

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First exhibited in ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) from 24 November 2018 – 28 April 2019

APT9 has been assisted by our Founding Supporter Queensland Government and Principal Partner the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.
Bona Park is supported by Arts Council Korea

Featured image detail: Bona Park’s Beyond the sea (still) 2018
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