FOREWORD This 2009 Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne, the Fourth in the Modern Era After Chicago

FOREWORD This 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, the fourth in the modern era after Chicago (1993), Cape Town (1999) and Barcelona (2004), would be incomplete without a quality art exhibition. This exhibition of fifteen works brings together some of the religious traditions that comprise multifaith Australia. It begins in the mists of time with the recognition of the Aboriginal contribution to Australian religious art. It is indicative of the neglect of the religious strand in the history of Australian art that in the recently published The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia there is no entry on Australian religious art. In fact, the word art does not even make it into the index. Yet the strand is there, stifled by Australia’s Enlightenment secularism which is now on the wane in the emergence of multifaith Australia. It is often forgotten that one third of all paintings in the National Gallery in London are of religious subjects - the proportion would not be too different in Australian state galleries. This blind spot is remarkable. This exhibition in a small way addresses this blind spot. All art in united in the sense that it is a manifestation of the human spirit; it allows us to address the universal questions through the intelligence of the heart. A Chinese proverb says, True beauty is eternal and cannot be destroyed. The journey of Australian art over the next century will be to incorporate the Buddhist, the Confucian, the Hindu and the Muslim, and perhaps the African, into the mainstream mosaic that is multicultural and interfaith Australia. This exhibition is one small step forward. Art is capable, often with a struggle, to move us beyond our family and cultural inheritance, beyond the prison of our own time and place. There is another Chinese proverb, Opportunity is like catching the sun’s rays. This exhibition will help us catch those rays that gives life to this planet but whose warmth is in danger of destroying it. Each of these works is a shrine, uncovering events and ideas that matter. The Parliament is especially indebted to the generosity of Dame Elizabeth Murdoch. This exhibition could not have occurred without the indefatigable Helen Summers whose commitment to interfaith and art is without parallel. She has been helped immeasurably by Rosemary Crumlin and Helen Light and the Parliament’s Art Committee. We owe them all a great debt. Desmond Cahill (Prof), Melbourne Parliament Program Director. IntroductIOn Between these walls lies the calm certainty of two Aboriginal traditional elders. Ginger Riley Munduwalawala and Eubena Nampitjin are secure about their place in life. Both know that they belong to a particular part ‘Art makes the intangible, tangible’ of the country where their spirit ancestors still dwell; both know that their spirit will return there at death to – Victor Majzner be reborn once more. Both are convinced that all they have to do is paint their story and we, who came here more than 40,000 years after them, will know that theirs is the centre of creation. Michael Riley was an urban Aborigine of a different generation. He died too young. Death, black history and suffering are never far away for him. The bird wing against the hot blue sky smells of death as Riley stretches ‘Religious art is like the kiss of death for an artist. Dealers and galleries just don’t want to know you,’ out its wing to photograph it. Victor Majzner’s dove of peace is not dead but trapped; he places it in Noah’s the young artist said to me some years ago. And so it was, then. Australia and the art world were self- Ark by the fertile edges of the Sea of Galilee. It rests on a wedding ring. His symbolism is also multi-layered consciously secular. Unlike the USA, Australia was not founded on a religious dream. Nor was it on any but always subservient to the pictorial demands of his canvas. The work is political but calm and nonviolent. search for a nirvana. The first settlers were Caucasian, often ill-educated, sometimes convicts who, along with their minders, were serving out their term in a hot, hostile and inhospitable climate. They thought the Others have moved with both politics and contemplation. Their images too reward reflection for they speak country empty, belonging to nobody, and acted as if this were so. with a quiet voice. Fatima Killeen’s colleograph with its graceful Arabic calligraphy says ‘No to war’. Phillip George’s white surfboard is ready for the waves, its prayer of submission written underfoot – ‘Inshallah’ This exhibition is about a different Australia. Its artists are unafraid to speak aloud in these works about (God willing). The same calm underpins James Powditch’s Cathedral. He sticks on pages from the Odyssey their deepest concerns and their personal search for meaning. Although many come from Christian cultures, as he builds a self-portrait in the same way as 13th century architects built theirs. The shapes soar and they turn for inspiration to a variety of traditions and sacred writings, including those of Islam, Buddhism, balance each other in their verticality. They are buttressed with pages from a child’s storybook. Claudia Hinduism, Judaism, as well as of Christianity. Terstappen has a stranger’s (she came here late) understanding of the terror of the Australian bushfire. In her photographer’s hands it becomes metaphor and tool. Arthur Boyd, the elder of the artists represented here, was never afraid of public opinion. Over his lifetime he probed Australian myths and became himself a myth to others. His Half-Caste series (1950s) explored the Marianne Baillieu and Louise Rippert acknowledge a debt to ancient Hindu philosophy. Both works, so state of outback Aborigines, particularly those who stood between cultures because they were different of physically beautiful, are born in the soul and never stray far from the attention and hand of their makers. skin and colour. Over and over he returned to the Bible and its stories as a starting point for understanding Baillieu’s Prana Portrait 111 captures the rhythm and energy outside and within. Rippert’s Dance is an and revealing the Australian psyche. His Nebuchadnezzar series saw the king consumed by his greed for invitation to share in her wonder and contemplation in the face of all life. The serenity of Kim Hoa Tram’s gold; his many images of the Prodigal Son showed the father (his own father in his old chair) as he reached Zen Buddhist imagery and poetry reaches out to the viewer in similar ways. It too has a sense of both out his hand in tenderness to the prodigal. journey and arrival, and an awareness of the fragility or even the illusion behind the question in Buddhism ‘who am I?’. The bird is asking the question of its reflection – or is it the other way round? In one way Boyd, with his two Crucifixions, anchors this entire exhibition with its questions and expression of the spirit. They are relatively late works of the 1960s, when Boyd was to turn 50. Both Crucifixions stand in The youngest artist in the exhibition, Shoufay Derz, also asks this question. She builds a boat. The boat is the Shoalhaven. They are hardly distinguishable from the river and the hill behind. A woman crucified, a man not going anywhere that we know. It would sink in water. Derz doesn’t mind for she is interested in journeys crucified, a landscape suffering. which are cloaked in mystery. She seeks to know what her life will bring. Echoes of Boyd’s insight can be seen across the exhibition. On the opposite wall is Euan Macleod’s reflection This is an exhibition to savour. Spirit within. on his relationship with his own father. (‘But I hope others will see themselves there.’) They are together in a little dinghy but distant from each other. Fathers and sons. Macleod does not turn to the sacred books but Rosemary Crumlin uses his life’s journey as his source. 02 03 ARTHUR BOYD Boyd loved the drama of the ARTHUR BOYD ‘I do not believe it is enough to say he Shoalhaven landscape. ‘Wagner’, represented us all’, Arthur Boyd said Crucifixion and Rose 1979 – 1980 he said, ‘could have been born here.’ Crucifixion Shoalhaven 1979 – 1980 in 1987. ‘I do not wish to separate the Oil on canvas The rose of England could never Oil on canvas idea of suffering by just allowing for 158.5 x 128.5 cm 189.5 x 182 cm Bundanon Trust Collection survive its ruggedness. Here the the male to be seen. There has been Bundanon Trust Collection English rose floats by the crucified an awakening of the potential and male figure nailed to a cross, which force of women in our time.’ It is the stands upright in the now calm, spare viewer who is challenged to cope with landscape. All is in drought, thirsty, the dislocation and confrontation of suffering. tradition. 04 05 MARIANNE BAILLIEU Prana Portrait III 1998 Mixed media on plywood 240 x 120cm Collection of the artist ‘This work has the feeling of a human being – the form of a body held together by inner energy, not evil or bad but divine. Its title comes from the Sanskrit pra ana (breathing forth). The real gold sparkles with life’s energy, an energy which is around you as well as within you. Such energy, I believe, continues after death as spirit.’ Marianne Baillieu SHOUFAY DERZ ‘Linking Back forms part of a series of work exploring notions of identity Linking Back (Dreamboat) 2003 and place, the search for connections Plywood and a sense of direction.

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