May 12
The Index
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- Ocean to Outback - National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Ocean to Outback celebrates the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery in Canberra, which is orchestrating an impressive demonstration with this exhibition of many masterworks from its collection. Ocean to Outback is also a logistic tour-de-force, since the show is achieving a two-year journey throughout Australia - literally, from the ocean to the outback, the word used to refer to arid rural regions, the desert plains that spread beyond the bush.
The NGA Canberra is thereby fulfilling its function: promoting Australian art among Australians, some of whom live a continent away from this important part of their heritage.
Ocean to Outback is important, too, in terms of content. The dozens of exhibited works belong to a central genre within the realm of Autralian art: landscape painting. It's more crucial than anywhere else in this country of gigantic proportions, whose land changed status as it changed hands: holy for the Aborigines, it became exploited by the settlers.
The century separating 1850 from 1950 saw the full bloom of landscape pictures. Their evolution marks the changes in the Australian people's relationship to their territory. These images also interested the masses enough to get them to visit their museums, in order to discover works born from their own culture. That habit had to be taught in a country full of recent immigrants.
We're invited to follow the progress of pioneers, such as Thomas Baines on an 1850's exploration raid in the north-west during which he drew the first sketch for his monumental Gouty stem tree (1868). We meet the first settlers lunching on the grass the European way for A Sunday Afternoon Picnic by Tom Roberts (c. 1886). And we discover the land from the air inside Margaret Preston's plane. Her Flying over the Shaolhaven River (1942), inspired by her woodblock work and traditional Aboriginal techniques, reminds us of the importance of the exploration topos within XXth- century Australian imagination.
One also picks out correspondances between the march of painting in Australia and in the Western world. Thomas Baines' naturalism fades before Tom Roberts' impressionism, which in turn yields before symbolism, as displayed in Elioth Gruner's ethereal Autumn Morning (c. 1916). Later on, such work as Clarice Beckett's Sandringham Beach (c. 1933) has obviously drawn the lessons of post-impressionism and assimilated the influence of photography. Finally, Jeffrey Smart's Wallaroo (1951) is saturated with the dream-like, metaphysical quality of Italian surrealism.
Top to bottom:
Thomas Baines, Gouty stem tree, Adansonia Gregorii, 58 feet circumference, near a creek south east of Stokes Range, Victoria River, 1868, oil on canvas, 45.2 x 66.5 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased in 1973
Tom Roberts, A Sunday afternoon, c. 1886, oil on canvas, 41 x 30.8 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased in 1984
Elioth Gruner, Autumn morning, c. 1916, oil on canvas mounted on cardboard, 34.5 x 44.4 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, The Oscar Paul Collection, Gift of Henriette von Dallwitz and of Richard Paul in honor of his father, 1965
Clarice Beckett, Sandringham Beach, c. 1933, oil on canvas, 55.8 x 50.9 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased in 1971
Margaret Preston, Flying over the Shoalhaven River, 1942, oil on canvas, 50.6 x 50.6 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased in 1973, © Margaret Preston, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007
Jeffrey Smart, Wallaroo, 1951, oil on plywood, 68.4 x 107 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased in 1959, © Jeffrey Smart
Ocean to Outback: Australian Landscape Painting 1850–1950
The National Gallery of Australia's 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition
August 3, 07 through May 3, 09