Australian Serendipity II - A Constable in the lunch break
Remember the scenario from the last post? Well, now the author is more or less over her jet lag and ready to travel interstate. Have you ever travelled with Australians in their own country? So you'd know how they convey distances: if something is 'just up the road' or 'in the next suburb' it is never less than an hour's drive. If it's 'not far really', expect to spend 2-3 hours in the car.
To be fair, I was told that the trip to visit relatives will take us a whole day to get there - and we were only going across the state border to NSW. Still, it meant a lot of hours on the highway. One interesting thing about Australian highways is that they don't go around towns, they lead right through them, often seamlessly morphing from highway to High Street. It is a curious feeling to suddenly having to slow down from a steady cruising speed to let shoppers cross the road.
So on our way from Melbourne to Tathra in NSW we passed through a town called Sale when it was time for lunch. We had already decided on a restaurant and were following Google's instructions to get to it. And suddenly I caught a glimpse of a banner outside a big modern building advertising an Odilon Redon exhibition. It made me wonder if I had seen right. Odilon Redon - a celebrated French symbolist painter - in the middle of rural Australia? Not really what one does expect.
And yet, when we went to investigate, there it was, a superb exhibition of Redon's master prints. The exhibition comprised a collection of lithographs depicting a world of dreams and monsters - Redon's surreal inner world of strange plants, floating heads and monstrous creatures. The exhibition space was the Gippsland Art Gallery, one of the most important art and culture centres of the region. Amazingly, entrance was free and detailed catalogues were also supplied free of charge for all ongoing exhibitions.
The catalogue accompanying "The Enchanted, Odilon Redon: Master Prints" show informed us that the exhibition was made possible by the generosity of Theodore Whong, an Australian entrepreneur and art collector who owns one of the most significant private collections of Redon's 'Noirs' in the world.
Odilon Redon, despite being a contemporary of the Impressionists, shunned the bright visual effects of that movement. Instead he produced works that would put him closer to Goya, an artist he held in high esteem. This becomes immediately apparent when you look at Redon's works, especially the series he called "Les Noirs", where he explores fantasy and the irrational.
Redon was often inspired by literature - just look at the titles of his works I put in the picture gallery below. He also liked to remain vague and indeterminate, asking his viewers to answer the questions he posed with his work; thereby making them participate in his creative process. The lithographs in this exhibition were sombre and awe inspiring, celebrating the colour black - of which Redon said "it is the most essential colour and must be respected".
Very much a contrast to these works were the pieces in the adjoining room. They contained works by local artist (albeit of international repute), Lesley Duxbury. Duxbury explores her fascination with clouds and other sky-borne phenomena through painting, printmaking and photography. The exhibition contained some amazing works that investigate the nature of colour, light and atmosphere. The focus was on the representation of light, also by observing passages of darkness, and a particular exploration of any imaginable shade of blue.
Duxbury shares her love of the skies with Constable who remarked that "it will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note". Both Constable and Duxbury look at the sky with the eyes of a scientist - dissecting its tones and analysing cloud formations and colours. As it says in the catalogue, Constable echoes throughout the art of Duxbury; and this concordance led to the serendipitous appearance of an original Constable - on loan from the National Gallery of Victoria - on the Gippsland Art Gallery wall.
In addition to temporary exhibitions the Gallery also displays a noteworthy permanent collection with a focus on the natural environment and crafts. You don't find a lot of works by the big names of art history; yet, the collection contains little gems like an etching by Jacob van Ruisdeal, an engraving by Turner and some amazing works by Australian contemporary artists, like surrealist Peter Booth and realist painter Tony Loyd. One hall is dedicated to the enchanting works of a local artist, Annemieke Mein, a Dutch-born Australian textile artist whose speciality is the depiction of wildlife.
Another part of the exhibition space is taken up by the Esso Collection - a donation by Esso Australia who operates oil and gas platforms in the Bass Strait, the sea just off the Victoria (here: Gippsland) coast. The Gippsland Gallery is a fitting choice for the 40 Australian paintings from the Esso collection as it was founded in 1965, just a few months before oil was discovered in the Bass Strait off the area's shore.
The gallery also displays some remarkable artworks by Aboriginal artists; and even in the park around the building it becomes apparent how much effort is being put into acknowledging the indigenous peoples of Australia and their culture.
We wished we had had more time to spend exploring the gallery or one of the Aboriginal heritage trails in the area. But basically we were only on an extended lunch break and it was time to get on the road again and reach our destination but I will tell you more about that in my next post.
In the meantime enjoy looking at the photographs below and read some more about Gippsland Art Gallery and the artists mentioned, or about Aboriginal heritage trails in the links provided in the text above.
