Mary AbbottBRAG 200 X 200 YEARS 200 200 WORKS 27 MARCH - 14 JUNE 2015 Artists A to Z ELIZABETH CUMMINGS 25 GREG DALY 26 MARY ABBOTT (NEE ROBERTS) 4 LAWRENCE DAWS 27 RICK AMOR 5 ROY DE MAISTRE 28 JEAN APPLETON 6 ROBERT DICKERSON 29 TULLY ARNOT 7 RUSSELL DRYSDALE 30 DAVID ASPDEN 8 RUBY EAVES 31 JOSEPH BACKLER 9 RACHEL ELLIS 32 GEORGE BALDESSIN 10 JOHN FIRTH-SMITH 33 LIONEL BAWDEN 11 EDITH MARY FOX 34 RICHARD BELL 12 DONALD FRIEND 35 JEAN BELLETTE 13 MERRICK FRY 36 CHARLES BLACKMAN 14 HECTOR GILLILAND 37 LES BLACKEBROUGH 15 JAMES GLEESON 38 ARTHUR BOYD 16 GWYN HANSSEN PIGOTT 39 MERRIC BOYD 17 JOHN HARDMAN LISTER 40 JOHN BRACK 18 JESSE JEWHURST HILDER 41 EVELYN CAMPBELL 19 MARGEL HINDER 42 REGINALD EARLE CAMPBELL 20 FIONA HISCOCK 43 JUDY CASSAB 21 DAVID JAMES 44 JOHN COBURN 22 JONATHAN JONES 45 WILL COLES 23 HERBERT KEMBLE 46 MARTIN COYTE 24 PETER KINGSTON 47 ROBERT KLIPPEL 48 PIERRE JOSEPH REDOUTE 71 GEORGE WASHINGTON LAMBERT 49 NORMA REDPATH 72 GEORGE FEATHER LAWRENCE 50 LLOYD REES 73 LIONEL LINDSAY 51 WILLIAM ROBINSON 74 PERCY LINDSAY 52 JO ROSS 75 MATILDA LISTER 53 JOAN ROSS 76 WILLIAM LISTER LISTER 54 ANTHONY DATTILO RUBBO 77 JOANNE LOGUE 55 HUI SELWOOD 78 SIDNEY LONG 56 WENDY SHARPE 79 GRAHAM LUPP 57 ANNEKE SILVER 80 FRANCIS LYMBURNER 58 ERIC SMITH 81 ELWYN LYNN 59 GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH 82 ROSEMARY MADIGAN 60 EUGENIE SOLANOV 83 SHEILA LETHBRIDGE MCDONALD 61 TONY TUCKSON 84 CLEMENT MEADMORE 62 ROSEMARY VALADON 85 FRANK MEDWORTH 63 PRUE VENABLES 86 DANIE MELLOR 64 GREG WEIGHT 87 JOHN OLSEN 65 NICOLE WELCH 88 DESIDERIUS ORBAN 66 BRETT WHITELEY 89 JENNY ORCHARD 67 FRED WILLIAMS 90 ALAN PEASCOD 68 DAVID BRIAN WILSON 91 ADELAIDE PERRY 69 TIM WINTERS 92 THEA PROCTOR 70 ROSWITHA WULFF 93 MARY ABBOTT (NEE ROBERTS) (1916 - 1966) Cocktail Bar Mainly educated at the Sydney Commercial Art School and the Julian Ashton Art School, Mary Abbott’s talents were wide ranging. In addition to teaching, she was highly interested in commercial art and studied fine arts in the areas of painting portraits and landscapes, jewellery and fashion artistry. In 1958 Abbott relocated from Sydney to Bathurst where she became involved in the local art scene through the Bathurst Society of Music and Arts. In “Cocktail Bar”, she has used one model as the basis for the three figures. RICK AMOR (b. 1948) Maquette for “Figure in a Landscape” Rick Amor (born Victoria 1948) has been a quiet presence in the Australian art scene for more than 30 years. In 1965 he completed a Certificate of Art at the Caulfield Institute of Art and from 1966 to 1968 studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. An equally talented painter and sculptor, Amor is perhaps better known for his paintings. Since the early 1990’s, Amor has ‘blown hot and cold with sculpture’, creating mostly bronze figures which he moulds in his studio and then sends to a foundry to finish the process. In 2007 Amor’s sculpture Relic won the prestigious McClelland Award for Sculpture, placing him firmly within the ranks of Australia’s best sculptors. His works all deal with the concepts of mortality and the human condition, many bordering on the edge of melancholy. He favours lone solitary figures usually coupled with stark skeletal trees like those in Man in Landscape (included in this exhibition). Amor shows annually at Niagara Galleries and has had over 50 solo exhibitions to date. Perhaps the most important exhibition of his bronze sculptures was undertaken by Benalla Art Gallery in 2002, including many maquettes never previously exhibited. Rick Amor lives and works in Melbourne. He is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne and Liverpool St Gallery, Sydney. JEAN APPLETON (1911 - 2003) Interior with Figure Jean Appleton, textile designer and painter of landscape and still life, had a distinguished career as an artist and teacher. In 1932 she graduated from East Sydney Technical College where the course was limited to drawing and illustration, but she did a little work in oils for her diploma. She studied at the Westminster School in England for three years under teachers who were important figures in the modern movement in British painting. She went through the stage of being semi-abstract in the 1960’s, when she won the Darcy Morris Prize for Religious Art. A self-portrait won the inaugural Portia Geach Prize in 1965. The painting, “Interior with Figure” (102 x 90) is oil on Masonite. It is a low key tonal work with broken colour. In the design, shapes are repeated for emphasis. The figure of her daughter Libby is in darkness yet the eye is drawn to it. There is a use of complementary colours with accents of rich warm reds and cool darks to balance. Though many of her subjects were similar to Grace Cossington Smith’s, the method of work was completely different. Cossington Smith worked continuously with blobs of colour, from the top left hand corner right through the painting, with no painting over. Appleton started with a few shapes right through the picture, working and reworking until satisfied. Appleton was very interested in the study of light – light on surfaces, light reflecting and permeating the subject. This trend started after a trip to England in 1966-69, when she became more conscious of the difference of light in Australia and England. An exhibition of her work at the Painters’ Gallery in 1986 showed pictures flooded with light, the white light of summer. Always in the foreground is a still life, then a background landscape. They are scenes of domesticity with a scale larger than most. You feel you can walk into the room. The paintings of flowers are looser than in her earlier paintings. Appleton was always interested in still life with a view through the window. She had a good visual memory for shapes and colours, and though she had many items from her room in her pictures, the works were completed from memory. TULLY ARNOT Jurassic Cup At first glance the work titled “Jurassic Cup”, by Tully Arnot seems out of place in an art gallery, it seems to simply be a disposable plastic cup. This playful work on further inspection is more complex, perhaps its title gives it away. The inspiration for the work is the 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. The film centres on the fictional Isla Nublar near Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, where a billionaire philanthropist and a small team of genetic scientists have created a wildlife park of cloned dinosaurs. Arnot’s “Jurassic Cup” refers to a scene in the film where water in a cup starts to vibrate as a massive cloned Tyrannosaurus rex (the largest of the dinosaurs) approaches. If you stand for a while you will observe that the cup has a hidden mechanism that causes the water to vibrate for a certain time frequency. In a sophisticated way Arnot has transcribed the virtual world of film into tangible reality. The magic of this rather simple object is that it conjures questions regarding the boundaries between fact and fiction and how film has come to inform our everyday lives. Robina Booth, Acting Curator, BRAG DAVID ASPDEN (1935 - 2005) Australia II David Aspden was a self-taught painter and teacher who migrated to Australia with his family in 1950. He began his working life as an apprentice painter and sign writer in Port Kembla. At 16 he joined a group of friends from the Wollongong Art Society and began experimenting with oils on canvas. It was through this group that he met painter, Bill Peascod, who became a close friend. Determined to one day become a full-time painter Aspden set himself a rigorous programme of self-education. In 1963 judge Wallace Thornton awarded him both the Prize for Drawing and the prize for a Local Artist’s Painting in the Greater Wollongong Art Competition. At about this time Aspden met Colin Lanceley who encouraged him to move to Sydney and set up a studio in Paddington. Aspden became interested in the work of American colour-field artists Mark Rothko and Jules Olitski, seeing their work as a move towards clarity, purity and simplicity. Two of his works were included in The Field exhibition of 1968, arranged by the National Gallery of Victoria to mark the opening of its new building. It was in this year that Aspden began lecturing in freehand drawing in the School of Architecture at the University of NSW. In November 1969 David Aspden joined the Rudy Komon Gallery in Paddington. This connection gave Aspden a degree of financial security. After a brief visit to England, Aspden returned to Sydney. He was creating compositions of ‘torn’ shapes and leaf-like images scattered over primed canvas, balancing emptiness with shape and colour. These works, gifts to Gwen from David, were produced at this time. Following Gwen Frolich’s bequest, David Aspden and his wife Karen Coote donated two major works by David, “Mediation Red” (1977) and “Meditation Blue” (1977) to our collection. They are a perfect compliment to Gwen’s vision. David Aspden passed away on Sunday, 26 June 2005. Margaret Linton, Gallery Guide JOSEPH BACKLER (1813 - 1895) Edward Austin & Mary Jane Austin Backler was born in London in 1813, the son of an artist, with whom he trained. In June 1831, aged about 18, he was convicted of passing forged orders and sentenced to transportation. After number of offences, for which he was in Port Macquarie, and a few petitions later, he secured his ticket of leave in 1840, and by 1843, he was advertising himself as an artist.