Australian art: The sixties and beyond
Tony Tuckson | Pink lines (vertical) on red and purple 1970-73 | Purchased 1998. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | © Tony Tuckson, 1970–73. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2009
Gallery 13, QAG
Hard-edge abstraction and ‘The Field’
In hard edge the forms are few and the surface is immaculate. The surface must be immaculate because all the parts composing it must be equivalent. There is no established relationship between the figures and the field . . . What one sees is exactly what there is, although at times that which is seen contains an optical ambiguity. The positive and negative act on one another, united on the same plane.
These comments by North American art critic and curator Lawrence Alloway were reproduced in the catalogue for the seminal exhibition ‘The Field’, which opened the new National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. Alloway summarises ideas that, for a time, dominated art internationally and had a decisive impact in Australia.
‘The Field’ is now recognised as the first and one of the most important exhibitions of the new abstraction held in Australia. It marked a turning point in Australian art, presenting the first significant challenge to the prevailing figurative and gestural traditions. Responding to the 1966 travelling exhibition ‘Two Decades of American Painting’, and also to the ideas of American theorists such as Alloway and Clement Greenberg, ‘Field’ artists sought to engage with contemporary definitions of Modernism, which rejected representation in favour of art that focused on ideas.
Although each artist adopted their own approach to the new style, the paintings are typically inexpressive, relying on simplified patterns, colour and form to create striking effects. The large painting by Tony McGillick that can be seen here was shown in ‘The Field’, and works by Robert Hunter and Peter Booth were also included.
Painting at Papunya
Papunya is a remote community located 250 kilometres west of Alice Springs, just north of the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory. The community’s name is derived from the smaller of two hills in the area. Established in 1959 under the government policy of centralisation and assimilation, and the last settlement formed in the Northern Territory under this policy, Papunya was the resettlement site for many language groups from the desert region. Coincidently, its name translates as a ‘meeting place for all brothers and cousins’.
In February 1971, high school teacher Geoffrey Bardon arrived at Papunya to teach social studies, but soon began teaching art and craft. He met with Papunya elders, who took an interest in his painting projects with the children, and supported a team of seven men in painting a mural on a large wall at the Papunya Special School. The mural represented the Papunya area’s celebrated story of the Honey Ant Dreaming, in which ancestors emerged from the ground and moved across the land, marking their passage before returning underground. Two of the men involved with this project were Shorty Lungkarda Tjungarrayi and Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, and paintings by these artists are displayed here.
By 1972, the Papunya painters had attracted the attention of both national and international audiences. That year, they launched their first commercial exhibition in Sydney, and the company Papunya Tula was conceived. Later in the year, the Papunya Tula artists were introduced to canvas, as an alternative to painting on wooden boards. Now they are among Australia’s most celebrated artists.
