The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia Opens Tomorrow

Along with the new exhibitions, I know many of our visitors are looking forward to being able to connect with NGV Collection favourites, old and new. This week I thought I’d share some of the stories behind a selection of Australian works that you will find on display.

Harden S. Melville was an English painter born in 1824, who explored the coastal regions of Australia in HMS Fly during the 1840s as a shipboard artist. This recently discovered work was produced late in Melville’s life and depicts a scene from a rare aspect of Australia’s nineteenth century maritime colonial frontier that has previously only been known through historical texts and Indigenous oral histories. A group of Torres Strait Islanders in a large double outrigger canoe are seen visiting the Sir Charles Hardy Islands in the northern Great Barrier Reef, located more than 150 km south of their homeland. The canoe is of a form that nineteenth century historical images indicate was unique to Torres Strait. While there are some records of Torres Strait Islanders making these salvaging voyages, images of this activity have not been known to exist.

Painted in his studio at Grosvenor chambers on Collins Street in Melbourne, Roberts’s 1888 painting Mrs L. A. Abrahams was a wedding gift to Louis Abraham and his new wife, Figa Golda Brasch. Roberts was best man at the wedding, and the close and continuous friendship between the three is reflected by the three cups of tea present in the painting. Fascinatingly, at some point in the painting’s life it was modified by an unknown person to remove a bonnet or hat that Mrs Abrahams originally wore. Although this tall and distinct headwear was high fashion in 1888, it seems it was not suitable later, and the picture was modified in a disfiguring way. For the first time since entering the NGV Collection, the painting has been conserved to visually reduce the disfigurement of the adjustment around the sitters head, and to remove a suppressive aged varnish, returning the painting to the artist’s original intent.

Tiwi artist Kutuwulumi Kitty Kantilla was born on the eastern side of Melville Island. She was a founding member of Jilamara Arts & Crafts, where she made ironwood sculptures and paintings on bark, paper and canvas. Other Tiwi called her ‘Dot Dot’ because of her style of many small polychrome dots. Kantilla’s Untitled, her last and largest bark painting is very different. The vigorous ochre jilamara (designs) of flat blocks of colour, circles and bold cross-hatching accentuate the materiality of the stringybark surface and have daringly been left raw in a large border that heightens the painted design in its entirety.

John Brack, the late husband of Maudsley, is renowned for his images that explore the discipline of art and the social rituals and realities of everyday living. His works of urban and suburban Melbourne painted during the 1950s drew attention for their novelty of subject and recognisable references. The bar was John Brack’s most important painting to date. He reflected on the work’s inspiration that ‘One of the great paintings of the nineteenth century is Manet’s ‘Bar at the Folies Bergère’. The life it reflects so vividly and sensuously no longer exists. So it seemed a good idea, almost a century later, to re-state the theme in terms of a life which does exist.’

Dion Lee is known for his exacting tailoring and material explorations. To date, his collections have used light-reflective cycling, heat-bonded and neoprene fabrics in innovative ways. This dress, made entirely of large Swarovski crystals threaded with bright green plastic cord, is from a collection inspired by glass. The refractive qualities of the material work to create a dazzling effect that contrasts with its sheer weight.

This vibrant painting by the late John Nixon features a random arrangement of colours and geometric shapes selected according to specific systems devised by the artist. It forms part of the Experimental Painting Workshop, a career-long project that Nixon began in 1968 and explored contemporary painting in relation to the histories and strategies of Constructivism, Minimalism and the monochrome. It can be seen (from tomorrow!) in a display that honours the art and life of the influential Australian artist on Level 2 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.