The works comprise material from more than 80 artists following each decade from Brisbane’s decreasing isolation idiosyncrasies due to its climate and distance from major world cultural centres.
For much of the duration of this exhibition the Queensland Art Gallery is also holding an exhibition of the work of Margaret Olley (1923-2011) albeit with an emphasis as much on her much-applauded role as a philanthropist as that of an artist for which she is arguably over-rated.
From June 15 to October 13 2019 the Gallery of Modern Art in Queensland, which is on the city’s cultural strip (MoB being in the heart of the CBD’s retail trading belt) was hung with 100 works of art in the exhibition Margaret Olley – A Generous Life.
An exhibition of the work of an artist for whom she held a candle – Ben Quilty was being shown in adjacent gallery rooms, not that it was not time for such a show on its own merits. With its own antique French presentation, the heavily fretwork presented designed show delighted Brisbane which turned out in force.
One can now see why the term Queensland Museum of Modern Art was chosen for the building the exhibition occupies rather than appropriating the term “contemporary”, the overflow which Queensland has often seemed to prefer could now be accommodated, although this could confuse patrons about the direction of the institution. It had to date tied itself more firmly to the difficult new contemporary rather than the old.
The exhibition of the work of John Molvig (1923-70) who was far more modern than Olley usually was, has been on view in the Art Gallery of Queensland’s adjacent parent gallery, but this was possibly because of the different sizes of the two exhibition offerings.
Some portraits of Torres Strait people done early in Olley’s early career, shown in a bent corner of the exhibition showed now non-confronting nudity unsuspected by most people of Olley's oeuvre.
The paintings in the New Woman exhibition at MoB are a mixed bunch which might also be the title for some of the inclusions. The early 20th century examples are the work of oppressed women (by today’s standards of society expectations) – obliged by convention to not strive too hard, especially in the state’s conservative environment where women did not attempt to make a serious career outside marriage.
The flowers made them seem harmless as well as helping pay for the artists' paints.
In the Joh Bjelke-Petersen years, a woman who could make tasty pumpkin scones appeared to attract more publicity and appreciation than a woman who painted.
During the hegemony of the WSB in particular, those women who were serious about their art turned away from Queensland, travelling interstate or overseas. Those who stayed remained more conformist although overseas publications provided the occasional insights as to what was happening elsewhere.
By and large their work missed out on the art boom of the 1980s when the Australian art trade was unearthing the “dug ups” – dead artists whose work had gone out of fashion who were being revived to fill the shortage of stock.
As a result at least half a dozen collectable women artists are now candidates for addition to the two who maintained a strong affiliation with Brisbane. They are Vida Lahey (1882-1968) and Daphne Mayo (1895-1982).
(The 1980s art entrepreneurs were more respectful of what South Australia did which surely had something to do with the different ways the two states came into being, South Australia being created by free settlers.
If price were the main issue Queensland women artists have a lot of appeal but few fine examples have come to light in the saleroom outside the contemporary period.
There is a need for an equivalent to South African born Florence Fuller’s Weary Showing a Vagabond acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW for $280,000 at Sotheby’s Australia in 2015, in order to make a serious comparison.
The Queensland women artists found such limited support in their own state that they drifted away from it. Even when they painted topographical works much of what they did failed to enjoy the following normally ascribed to buyers of such pictures.
As a result – and given the new millennium’ s emphasis on contemporary art, works by early to mid 19th century Queensland women artists have been going for a song, sometimes justified as far as the quality and timidity of the works – but more extreme than the discount often given to like works of the same character and vintage from other states. Collectors arrived at them after they had chosen to buy the work of South Australian women artists. Reflecting the origins of the two states or not – the freely settled and one dating from a rougher earlier period – SA was the more artsy of the states.
I cannot recall any South Australian artist of the stature Brisbane’s Caroline Barker (1894–1988) selling in a run of five lots for $1 each but that was what happened at Lawson’s in Sydney in 1986, followed by others at $10 each, in an age when even signatures alone were appreciated and people collected “one of each” of an artist’s work.
The record auction price for the 40 offerings of this artist’s work recorded by the Australian Art Sales Digest is a miserable $588 for Girl in a Plaid Coat at Lawson~Menzies in June 2003. Barker’s Untitled (Life Class) painting from the museum’s own collection is rightly given stand out treatment in the exhibition with an early page plate in the catalogue of the show, which continues until March 15, 2020.
The auction record for Patricia Prentice (born 1923) is a stunning $399! for Dodd’s House helped perhaps by it being a Brisbane subject. The rest of the 10 recorded offerings were all three figure prices. Her 1944 watercolour Beached, from the University of Queensland’s collection shows she was capable of better than that.
When it comes to the modern period the disparity between price and quality lessens but then the artists are not recognized as Brisbane artists, but national if not global ones. June Tuppicoff, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott and Davida Allen have not come across primarily as Queenslanders but that’s not the way artists like to be presented anyway.
The lack of presence of a lively and consistently reliable auction house in Brisbane for any length of time and questioning of authenticity and provenance when promising interstate art came up, may not have helped.
Kathleen Shillam (1916-2002) is mostly identified with Queensland and her work has topped $10,000 at auction. Lillian Daphne Mayo (1895-1982) would surely easily do so if any substantial work popped up, thanks to her talent and connection with public monuments.
Frances Vida Lahey for whom 153 auction sales offerings are available has had little difficulty in making $30,000 paradoxically the record of $36,800 at Davidson’s, Sydney for a Tasmanian view, Salamanca Place Quayside, Hobart’s concentrated fine arts and ceramics zone.
Queensland enjoyed some sheer brilliance in collecting and recruitment of arts administrators that it seems impossible that more finer works by Queenslanders have not come onto the market.
The Queensland Art Gallery managed to attract some precious talent in the shape of Laurie Thomas and Robert Haines as directors and possibly the most important art work in Australia, La Belle Hollandaise by Pablo Picasso.
In giving financial eminence and public support for two sculptors, however, Queenslanders have made waves. Haines liked to tell the story of overhearing two visitors gossiping when he was director of the David Jones Art Gallery in Sydney. As they were entering one said to the other “Oh let’s not bother. It’s only sculpture.” The exhibition featured some of the finest sculpture from the greatest masters and most accomplished civilisations ever seen in Australia.
The Picasso was effectively a tax deduction for Major Hal de Vahl Rubin, a London art dealer turned Australian pastoralist who was able to make a gift in kind of it with a cash payment securing the work at a London auction, well before the Cultural Gifts Program was introduced.
