After strolling the sculptures of the Heide Museum’s gardens, I then ventured indoors to see which Australian artists were lurking inside. To my delight I was served a combination of history and modern Australian art from Albert Tucker, Stephen Benwell and Luke Pither.
My favorite was Luke Pither’s ‘Reverse Garden’ a collection of garden images on recycled shade cloth, loved it!
Albert Tucker
29 December 1914 – 23 October 1999
I loved this era of Australian modernist artists who were hell-bent in capturing the infamy, news and excitement of the day during the exploration of Australia. It was poignant phase in our history but one seeded with racial blight and environmental destruction .. just my opinion though.
Curator Sue Cramer explains:
“This exhibition traces Albert Tucker’s persistent fascination with outsiders, here conveyed through his haunting depictions of explorers and intruders, tragic and often menacing figures who trespass upon the Australian bush.”
Of course I couldn’t take photos inside the gallery so below is collection of online images of Albert Tuckers: Explorers and Intruders.
Stephen Benwell
Melbourne 1953
Over 40 years of ceramics were collected and displayed of Melbourne ceramist Stephen Benwell. What I loved about his work was how it remained truly untainted, a personal exploration of a very personal art-form and fascination of the artist … the male nude.
Stephen’s pottery is almost like a canvas of snapshots created in a simplistic, almost naive manner yet depicting the imagination of a man obsessed.
Curator Jason Smith overview echoes my observation: “Stephen Benwell is one of Australia’s most significant, critically acclaimed contemporary ceramicists whose work has developed from its earliest phase as a direct challenge to local and international pottery traditions and art-craft context.”
Below is a selection of online images for Stephen Benwell: Beauty, Anarchy, Desire. A Retrospective.
Stephen Benwell at the Heide, image from Sydney Morning Herald.
Luke Pither
Australian 1975
From the Heide catalogue:
Luke Pither is both a painter and a gardener. In Reverse Garden he brings together aspects of his chosen disciplines in an experimental way, exploring connections between them and challenging preconceptions of what paintings about gardens can be.
Reverse Garden interrogates the physical and sensory experience of traversing a garden, through the act of painting. Artist Luke Pither transforms the gallery space into a profuse landscape by planting a network of paintings as free-standing panels that create a series of pathways, vistas, contours and elevations.
Presenting images on recycled shade-cloth draped over rural-style timber fences, he investigates the nature of viewer experience and encourages us to reflect on the environment beyond the gallery walls.
Hope you enjoyed my day at the Heide!
ALWAYS THE ARTIST
Dina
