he Art Gallery (WAG) celebrates its 130th anniversary in 2016 and we are truly delighted to mark this occasion through the exhibition of exquisite paintings by Hobie Porter and the acquisition of his meticulously crafted Tower HillT landscape to the WAG collection. The latter is with support from the Robert Salzer Foundation. WAG holds a major collection of artworks featuring the South-West region and a significant collection of artworks made over time at the Tower Hill site, the State’s first national park and most remarkable geological formation, near Warrnambool.

ower Hill is an enormous Porter’s paintings are similarly centre is managed by the Worn volcanic crater edged with beds precision-crafted to achieve a high Gundidj Aboriginal Cooperative. ofT volcanic ash. The swampy floor of degree of verisimilitude. While his the crater is marked by cone-shaped canvasses are recognisable and carefully We extend our warm thanks to hills which after rain, become islands delineated towards an accurate Hobie who has been both generous surrounded by a shallow lake. Its account, the Tower Hill Project is a and enthusiastic in presenting formation is known as a ‘nested ’ construction; based on photographic this exhibition, along with his and it is the largest example of its references of a place, which is itself representative gallery, Arthouse type in Victoria. In the early years of a recreated landscape, based on a Gallery, private lenders and Ruth European settlement much of Tower painting. Porter introduces a second Pullin who has contributed a scholarly Hill’s natural vegetation was cleared visual plane; superimposing images of essay. WAG exhibitions are a team and the land was used for farming and flora, feathers and artefacts collected effort: The professional curatorial team quarrying. Destructive uses continued on-site. Intriguingly, while deliberately of Murray Bowes and Gareth Colliton, until the 1960s when a major re- placed in surreal formations, these focussed education program by vegetation program began. overlayed remnants are the ‘natural’ Agostina Hawkins and front of house aspect. This process acknowledges the administrators, Oksana Khaidurova This program was largely guided by a more complex relationship between and Mirjam van Berge are vital to our majestic vista of Tower Hill created by us and our natural environment success. We are appreciative of the Eugene von Guérard in 1855 which is and also modes of representation assistance from volunteers: Valerie held at the Warrnambool Art Gallery*. and understanding that have been Cameron, Jessica Meggs, Megan Von Guérard’s painting was executed transformed since von Guérard’s Punch, and Phillip Ward. As always in fastidious detail and its scientific time. The passing of time allows us to we are grateful for ongoing support accuracy enabled botanists to identify speculate on accretions of meaning specific plants: grass and ferns on from the WAG Foundation, donors, the island, wattles, sheoaks, banksias and histories both at Tower Hill benefactors and Warrnambool City on the cones and reeds and tussocks and in these two connected works. Council which enables the Gallery in the marshes (Brady, A. 1992:6). Particularly the complexities and and the passionate arts culture of Today its ecosystem has been largely changing perspectives and the coming Warrnambool to thrive. re-established. Porter attributes much of the European gaze onto a rich of his influence to von Guérard. In terrain with its own encoding through Vanessa Gerrans - Director particular, the Tower Hill painting has its first inhabitants. Traditional owners played a major role in his thinking and continue to have a close relationship is the basis for his Tower Hill Project with the land and the beautiful 1962 and subsequent exhibition. Robin Boyd-designed interpretive

References: Parks Victoria Park Notes, ‘Tower Hill Reserve’; Brady, A. A Centenary History of Tower Hill, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, 1992. Ducks Down *Von Guérard was commissioned in 1855 by James Dawson, owner of a pastoral property near Mount Eccles to the west, to create a large-scale oil painting that would capture the vegetation before 2015 the intervention of European settlers. In 1966, Mrs E. Thornton, the granddaughter of James Dawson, presented the painting to the Victorian Fisheries and Wildlife Division (now known as the Oil on polyester canvas Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) and since 1978 it has been on loan to the Warrnambool Art Gallery. 100 x 120cm rt and nature have interacted in the story of Tower Hill in a way rarely, if ever, replicated anywhere in the world. The representation of the spectacular nested caldera – a cluster of scoria cones surrounded by a shallow lake and nestled within theA crater of a larger extinct – began, post European settlement, with Eugene von Guérard’s Tower Hill 1855. on Guérard’s defining image of detail and as elements in an integrated natural order of an ecosystem could the subject played a seminal role whole. His work is a celebration of the be catastrophic: such was the case at Vin the physical restoration of the site miraculous diversity of vegetation and Tower Hill. in the 1960s and it has informed the birdlife that flourished in this fertile responses of succeeding generations volcanic and coastal ecosystem. The Von Guérard’s painting was of Tower Hill artists in a multitude of interconnectedness of all phenomena commissioned in 1855 by James ways. Artists, along with the thousands at the site is expressed compositionally Dawson, an informed and of visitors who have stood at ‘Von in the unifying, circular movement environmentally sensitive pastoralist, as Guérard Lookout’, have seen this established by the rain clouds moving a record of ‘one of the most beautiful landscape as through a ‘von Guérard in from the coast over the island of and interesting specimens of an extinct glass’. Hobie Porter, in his Tower volcanic cones, across the shallow volcano in all Victoria.’ Thirty-six Hill series, has engaged with the lake and on to the clear blue skies years later, in 1891, Dawson wrote environmental and aesthetic legacy of on the left. to the Camperdown Chronicle of his von Guérard’s painting to create works dismay at the devastation of Tower that once again reveal the power of art In his ability to see the environmental Hill, the result of the combined to focus attention on the critical issues interconnectedness of phenomena effects of fire, clearing, grazing and that confront this rare and fragile at Tower Hill von Guérard reflected quarrying for scoria, introduced species ecosystem. the influence of one of the greatest – boxweed, thistle and rabbits – the thinkers of the nineteenth century, damming of the lake and its use as an On August 6, 1855, when von Guérard the natural scientist, Alexander von outlet for urban waste. Prophetically stood on the north-eastern side of Humboldt 1769-1859. Although he foresaw the value of von Guérard’s Tower Hill, the site had suffered eclipsed by Darwin in the English- ‘beautifully and faithfully’ executed none of the interventions that would speaking world Humboldt’s painting for ‘future generations’. devastate it over the subsequent influence on his generation cannot century. In his topographically and be overestimated. His vision of the In the 1960s, in a project led by Max geologically accurate oil painting, interconnectedness of every aspect Downes, von Guérard’s Tower Hill, completed in his studio just of the natural world, a commonplace supplemented by James Bonwick’s over seven weeks later, von Guérard today, was groundbreaking in his day. 1857 descriptive account of its depicted everything he saw on that day, As early as the 1830s Humboldt saw southwestern slopes, became the model Eugene von Guérard both individually and in microscopic that disruptions or interventions to the for the environmental restoration of Tower Hill 1855 oil on canvas 68.1 x 122 cm On loan from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Presented by Miss Effie Thornton, 1966 09/027 Tower Hill. It was an unprecedented burning off to encourage young grass Tower Hill Lament, Not all Boomerangs and shards of glass – over the surface and unparalleled attempt to restore a and to attract game. Come Back and White Fella Midden of the landscapes, elements that bring landscape on the basis of a painting. draw on the language of the Romantic the environmental challenges faced Von Guérard’s painting became an Observation in the field, the Sublime. In Bleeding Manna Pattern, by Tower Hill into sharp focus. The authoritative document in a way in foundation of both Humboldtian Tower Hill the accelerated movement perspectival illusionism established which the artist could never have science and of von Guérard’s artistic into distance, the result of effects in each landscape is contradicted by envisaged. The detail and accuracy of practice, is also the starting point for similar to those seen in time-lapse the emphatic assertion of the flatness his observations provided invaluable Hobie Porter. His series of Tower Hill photography, dramatically intensifies of the picture plane. And while the information but von Guérard was not paintings is the result of successive the sense of vast space. Compositions, fall of light on passages of water, the a botanical artist: concerns expressed, visits and unhurried time spent at in keeping with traditional practice, flurries of water birds and areas of at the time and subsequently, over the site, and of observation that is are framed and shadowed foregrounds massed vegetation are registered in the identification of species and the both scientific and experiential. As stage and regulate movement into the broad strokes of pigment in these question as to whether the Xanthorrea a researcher Porter has gathered and distance. The ‘von Guérard glass’ is seductively painterly images, the Australis actually grew at the site must identified data from the Tower Hill palpably present – in Porter’s adoption magnified surface interventions are be considered within the context of site – seeds, flowers, plants, feathers of von Guérard’s vantage point and realised with photographic precision Joseph JORDAN (1841 - 1945) Tower Hill, 1907, silver gelatin photograph ( Left and above) the artist’s intentions. In keeping and artefacts – that speak of its natural elevated perspective in Tower Hill and in microscopic detail. In his Image source: State Library of Victoria with Humboldt’s theory of ‘plant and human histories. This focused, Lament, Not all Boomerangs Come Back early years Porter was struck by the geography’ von Guérard recorded forensic and analytical observation and White Fella Midden and in the unexpected and apparently illogical coexistence of introduced and native care and the mismanagement to the communities of tea trees, wattles, coexists with a more sensory process geometrical underpinning of works interventions in René Magritte’s species at Tower Hill finds emblematic which it has been subjected in the sheoaks, banksias and eucalypts in of immersion, one in which the artist such as Disturbance, in which the otherwise illusionistic work: here the expression in the alternation of relatively brief period of European terms of their distribution, disposition, responds to and absorbs the mood of central ellipse created by the landform interruptions are directed and focused. botanical samples of the introduced settlement. The narrative deepens with their growth patterns and within the the landscape, its light, its seasonal and its reflection is echoed in the Through them the invisible histories Californian native, Monterey Cypress, the incorporation of representations of context of climatic, geographical and changes, its palette, its scale and its vertical ellipse of the formation of of Tower Hill and the environmental and the flowering native manna gum, fragments of Anglo-Celtic ceramics, geological factors. The value of such beauty. feathers above it. threats it continues to face are brought, E.viminalis, across the surface of A found by Porter at the site, into the observations to research is ongoing: literally, to the surface. Foreign Native/A Native Foreigner. boomerang form that appears in the areas of cleared land and juvenile Porter’s portrayals of Tower Hill are Any complacency generated by Tower Hill Lament. Here European tree growth on the island on the framed within the conventions of the traditional language of Porter’s The centrally-placed and ordered The remains of middens close to Tower floral motifs on discarded ceramics right of von Guérard’s painting are the landscape painting traditions of landscapes is shattered by the positioning of the surface elements Hill bear witness to its significance mirror the infiltration, and the legacy, now believed to provide evidence of the eighteenth and early nineteenth intervention of disparate elements on Porter’s landscapes speak of the to the Koroitch Gundidj people, the of foreign plant species at the site, the indigenous practice of rotational centuries. In their panoramic breadth – feathers, leaves, ceramic fragments implacable laws that govern nature, clan of the named for signifying both the cultural aspirations of the ‘the mutual dependence ‘belonging to Koroit’. Von Guérard’s and the ignorance of Indigenous and connection’ that Humboldt portrayal of a Koroitgundidj family heritage and vegetation that, in general, understood to exist between all classes on their country was almost certainly characterised European settlement. of phenomena. The scorched manna based on observations made by James gum leaves that sit like evenly spaced Dawson. Dawson, with whom von Porter’s Tower Hill series is a call to sentinels on the surface of Bleeding Guérard formed a life-long friendship, action, a reminder of the urgent and Manna Pattern, Tower Hill allude to was a staunch advocate for the local sustained vigilance required to manage the failure of the Gippsland manna Aboriginal population and their and protect the dynamic, fragile and gum seedlings that were substituted official Protector; since 1844 he precious ecosystem that is Tower for the then unavailable species and his daughter Isabella had been Hill. In a reversal of the natural order native to Tower Hill. The continuing collecting material for Australian whereby art imitates nature, nature threats faced by Tower Hill’s water Aborigines: the Language and Customs imitated art at Tower Hill in the 1960s: bird populations (captured in lively of the Several Tribes of Aborigines in the perhaps in 2016, in a continuation of a detail in von Guérard’s 1855 painting Western District of Victoria, published remarkable story of exchange between and freshly revealed in the 2011 in 1881. In Of Middens and Dumps art and nature, art may once again play cleaning of the work undertaken by Porter not only recognises the history a role in the future of Tower Hill. NGV Conservator Michael Varcoe- of Aboriginal presence at the site Cocks) are signified in the cluster but draws a stark contrast between Dr Ruth Pullin of feathers drawn into a central, the environmentally sustainable lozenge formation in Disturbance. The management of Koroit under their A Conflation of Acacias A Foreign Native / A Native Foreigner 2015 2015 Oil on polyester canvas Oil on polyester canvas 165 x 110cm 165 x 110cm

Tower Hill Lament, Not all Boomerangs Come Back White Fella Midden 2014 2015 Oil on polyester canvas Oil on polyester canvas 110 x 200cm 69 x 122cm Muun Gnamatt, Tower Hill Game Reserve Bleeding Manna Pattern, Tower Hill 2014 2014 Oil on polyester canvas Oil on polyester canvas 110 x 200cm 110 x 200cm Hobie Porter B.A. visual art, Hons., Grad. Dip. Ed. Dr Ruth Pullin Hobie Porter is a contemporary Australian landscape painter based in North- Dr Ruth Pullin was curator (with Michael Varcoe-Cocks) of the National Eastern NSW. His paintings focus on the relationships between grand vistas and Gallery of Victoria’s 2011 touring exhibition, Eugene von Guérard: nature the minutiae found within them. He is interested in pursuing a dialogue about revealed and she is the principal author and editor of the book of the same title, our collective relationship to our environment. His paintings both celebrate and key themes of which were drawn from her PhD research (Melbourne challenge our Australian landscape painting heritage. University, 2007).

Hobie’s visual-arts studies at Southern Cross University, Lismore, and the Pratt She has continued her research with the assistance of fellowships awarded by the Institute, New York City, were assisted with a scholarship, awarded by the Henry Mitchell Library (State Library of New South Wales) and the State Library of Lawson Society. In 2007 his appearance on the ABC television series, Painting Victoria. Her work has been published in Australian and international journals Australia, initiated a national awareness of his work and he has held regular solo and exhibition catalogues. She is currently writing a book on von Guérard’s exhibitions since then in Australia’s eastern states. travels as recorded in his sketchbooks. His work has been featured in recent group exhibitions such as Disassemble | Reassemble, Caboolture Regional Gallery (2015), The New Arcadia, Lismore Regional Gallery (2011), & Exquisite: Small Landscapes, Gold Coast City Art Gallery (2009). He was a recent finalist in the Mosman Art Prize (2015) Kogarah Art Prize (2015), Fleurieu Art Prize (2014), Paddington Art Prize (2014), & Countryscapes (2012).

He is represented by Arthouse Gallery (Sydney), & exhibits with Mossgreen Gallery (Melbourne), Anthea Polson Art (Gold Coast) & Jan Manton Gallery (Brisbane). He teaches painting at the NSW North-Coast institute of TAFE, Murwillumbah & Lismore Campuses.

From Little Things, Big Things Disturbance Of Middens & Dumps 2015 2014 2015 Oil on polyester canvas Oil on polyester canvas Oil on polyester canvas 120 x 200cm 120 x 180cm 110 x 200cm

Page 12-13 Page 14-15 Page 16-17

19 December 2015 – 17 April 2016, Warrnambool Art Gallery

Director: Vanessa Gerrans Curator, Collections: Murray Bowes Curator, Exhibitions & Outreach: Gareth Colliton Education Officer: Agostina Hawkins Installation: Gareth Colliton, Murray Bowes, Francis van der Mark Front of House Coordinator: Oksana Khaidurova Customer Service Officer: Mirjam van Berge WAG Volunteers: Valerie Cameron, Jessica Meggs, Megan Punch, and Phillip Ward.

Catalogue Editor: Vanessa Gerrans Catalogue Design: Josef Gardner Catalogue Photography: Courtesy of the artist Edition: 1000 Catalogue published by WAG, December 2015

Warrnambool Art Gallery 26 Liebig Street, Warrnambool, Victoria 3280 T: +61 3 5559 49 49 E: [email protected] W: www.thewag.com.au

ISBN: 978-0-9942226-5-7

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