©WESTWICK-FARROW MEDIA feature REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION

Tough and dedicated

KEN SCARLETT considers the fortitude of three sculptors who have devoted their lives to .

This page: Right: May Barrie, Outcrop, 2009, Angaston pink marble, 30 x 30 x 30cm. Below: May Barrie wearing her favourite colours. Photograph Tori De Mestre.

Opposite page: Top left: May Barrie, Pleiades, 2001, black granite, 160 x 570 x 360cm. Top right: May Barrie in front of her Balnaves Prize award-winning work, Sculpture by the Sea exhibition, Sydney, 2009. Photograph emarkably, three sculptors over ninety years that are both aesthetically pleasing and a delight to Nina van Ewijk. of age are all actively producing work and touch. The angular forms of the materials selected from Centre left: Erwin Fabian, Trigon, 2008, holding exhibitions. Working in stone or the quarry sites frequently lead to more assertive, more welded steel, 80 x 84 x 33cm. Centre right: Erwin Fabian, Omen, 2008, steel, as these artists do, demands a certain aggressive works, while the seams of ironstone in the welded steel, 118 x 73 x 40cm. Rphysical and psychological toughness; there are long local sandstone often suggest concavities, which she Bottom right: Erwin Fabian in his studio. hours in the studio, recognition often comes slowly and exploits. Photograph courtesy Australian Galleries. the income is frequently precarious. As an artist, she is the perfect example of the It takes an inner conviction and a continuing modernist philosophy of truth to material; at times she compulsion to create in order to succeed in this reveals the inner strength of the stone with forms that profession where the drop-out rate of younger sculptors are bursting with energy, at other times she produces is so high. May Barrie, Irwin Fabian and Inge King have works that are quietly contemplative. all lasted the distance. Her works range from small enough to be May Barrie has always been fascinated by stone, held in the hand to large- scale works that relate to the whether it be the rounded water-washed stones from landscape; the smaller and domestic-sized sculptures the south coast of New South Wales, or the stone are displayed in the gallery on her property while the blasted out of quarries — marble from Angaston larger stone carvings sit in the garden around her home and granite from Black Hill in South . For and in the landscape, with the cows, all overlooked by May Barrie, who lives on a country property inland the magnificent towering escarpment. from Wollongong, the stone is the starting point and Downhill from the gallery is the area where she works suggests the forms that will emerge as she uses her — a bench with stone-carving tools and a surrounding pneumatic stone-carving tools. The water-washed clutter of discarded pieces of stone. The space is partly stones invariably lend themselves to rounded forms protected from sun and rain by an overhanging roof,

46 AUSTRALIAN ART REVIEW FEB–APR 2010 WWW.ARTREVIEW.COM.AU ©WESTWICK-FARROW MEDIA feature Tough and dedicated REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION

but otherwise open to the vagaries of the weather. At ninety-one, she still wields her stone-carving tools, though nowadays she is willing to leave the final tedious polishing to an assistant as she, with her daughter Tori de Mestre, prepare for an exhibition of their works at the Stella Downer Gallery in Sydney in 2010. Irwin Fabian, who was born in in 1915, has always chosen steel for the construction of his sculpture; not the industrial materials of beams and girders, rods and tubes as assembled by unstable assemblages which he is reluctant to weld Anthony Caro, but rather, the infinite variety of steel in place until he is convinced of the three-dimensional found at a scrap metal yard. For twenty-five years arrangement. Some collapse with a resounding clang or more, he has been a welcome forager at one of metal on the concrete floor of his studio before he on ’s biggest scrap metal yards, using has finally approved of the composition, others are his station wagon to transfer back to his studio welded together by his assistant; all are susceptible to an astonishing collection of old machine parts, alteration over subsequent weeks. discarded equipment and disparate off-cuts — all Fabian’s approach is intuitive, he works without any worn, rusted and rejected. preconceived plan to produce structures which are From this great heap of abandoned steel daringly inventive and which exude a strong sense outside his studio, he selects and begins to of organic growth. A perfectionist, his works achieve assemble, balancing piece on piece, establishing a convincing unity from apparently disparate parts,

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Back in the early 1960s, Inge King was one of the first Australian sculptors to learn to weld; now, much later in life, she employs a fabricator to assemble the works in bronze or stainless steel. Always with more ideas than time, she has evolved a way of making small maquettes in an easily, quickly manipulated material Above: Inge King at her exhibition, 2009, — balsa wood. Then, selecting the most interesting Australian Galleries, Melbourne. Photograph courtesy Australian Galleries. Photograph of these small models, she passes them on to the Caroline Field. fabricator with instructions as to size and material.

Top right: Series of bronze maquettes of At her recent exhibition at Australian Galleries, birds, 2009, Australian Galleries, Melbourne. Melbourne, she showed a series of small maquettes.

Right: Inge King. Ellipse, 2008–9, welded Rings of Orion, for instance, is only twenty centimetres stainless steel, 73 x 50 x 58cm. high, but is closely related to Rings of Saturn, a major work of four metres in height which dominates the skyline at the entrance to the Heide Museum of Modern Art. Both works were produced in 2006; the maquette in bronze and the larger piece in stainless steel. In the 1960s, Inge King deliberately exploited the textures that can be obtained when using oxyacetylene welding, emphasising the crusty edges of her mild steel structures. Fifty years later, with more sophisticated forms of electric welding, her stainless steel works appear to be miraculously balanced with barely a sign of a weld to be seen. And instead of the black paint needed to prevent rust, her stainless steel is polished and ground to give a brilliantly reflective surface. The changes can be noted in the series of and always there is a harmonious balancing of mass major commissions she has carried out: the much and line, a satisfying and beautiful sense of resolution. loved Forward Surge, 1976, at the Victorian Arts Centre, The twisted and crumpled steel takes on new life, which is painted black, the wonderfully alert bird form sometimes hinting at a human presence, for example, of Shearwater, 1995, at Southbank, painted red and in Watcher, sometimes alluding to a classical past black and the powerful Rings of Jupiter, 2006, on with titles such as Phainos, and at other times evoking display at the National Gallery of Victoria, which is in moods as with Pavane or Epilogue — all titles from his glistening stainless steel. 2009 exhibition at Australian Galleries, Melbourne. These three artists, Inge King, May Barrie and Irwin Inge King also uses steel for her sculpture, but Fabian, are an inspiration. Never short of ideas, they in a completely different manner. Intuition plays a work constantly, thinking and planning towards the next part, as she is always alert to possibilities that occur exhibition. Being tough and dedicated appears to be during the process of building her structures, but her an excellent combination — virtually a guarantee of a approach is more considered, more cerebral. And once long life. she has made an idea visible she often then makes a considerable number of variations on the theme, 1. In the recent publication Inge King, by Judith Trimble whether they be angels, birds or glimpses of planets in and Ken McGregor, Macmillan Mini-Art Series, there are space.1 28 reproductions of maquettes of celestial sculptures.

48 AUSTRALIAN ART REVIEW FEB–APR 2010 WWW.ARTREVIEW.COM.AU