A still sunny winter’s morning seemed the perfect opportunity to motor into the local countryside for a squizz at the Archibald losers and one winner, this year displayed at the Tarrawarra Gallery deep in the Yarra Valley wine-tasting region - presumably so that two birds can be killed with one stone; (I would literally like to see how it’s done, it sounds very clever.) Yes! what a brilliant way to spend the day, we congratulated ourselves, me and my three artist friends who know what they’re on about - whereas I, like the opinionated Python pope who doesn’t know much about art, know what I like. To be fair, I’ve looked at plenty of art that I’ve liked very much that other people also think is pretty good. Once, I fortuitously went into a gallery in Ballarat and was made emotional by an Arthur Boyd landscape, don’t know why; I’m quite a fan of the Assyrian artefacts at the Louvre and the Chagall ceiling in the Opera Garnier; and another time, amused by rooms of Baroque nonsense on a rainy day in Salzburg, thought I’d become a Baroque expert, after that spotting them everywhere; and, of course, Blue Poles is genius and Gough was smart to buy it. Like many Australians, I make an effort every now and then to go to a place where art is kept, usually pay some money up front, and then gander at most of the art-things for as long as it takes to feel I’ve got my money’s worth. For your information, it only costs $10 to see the Archibald finalists, and judging by the numbers of bargain hunters leaving already as we were arriving at 11am we were in for a good value show.
Tarrawarra is a super gallery to show off paintings; it has expanses of tall wall in good-sized rooms. (Although I saw a Robert Baines exhibition there of relatively smallish pieces of sculpture/jewellery in a corridor gallery and the walls were quite menacing.) On this day, despite the fullness of the carpark, not too many people were crowding up the gallery, so it was possible to see the paintings from all angles, up close and far off, and read their blurbs without too much of a wait for spectators to shuffle off sideways. There was a friendly vibe of folks looking at pictures before going to lunch, and you can vote for your favourite one at the end so it’s a comfortable egalitarian experience. Talking of which, the Packers’ prize was awarded to a realistic depiction of Matt Moran posing self-consciously in a milieu of meat and hacking happily into a haunch, not a metaphor for Masterchef I hope. Other recognisable celebrities are Gemma Ward looking like a supermodel, Cathy Freeman looking like she has a beard, Jessica Watson looking off into the distance, (planning her next watery conquest perhaps,) Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh just looking, Quentin Bryce looking toffy, and Waleed Aly looking a tad downcast although I don’t know what for; he can’t be broke, I even saw him on the ABC 24 hour news channel recently. Since the public already own these people because we’ve seen them talking and running and posing all over the place and time, we feel qualified to judge how closely the artist has come to hitting the mark for us. What can I say? The aforesaid portraits were nice. Better for me was Lucy Culliton’s fat, big-nosed old boozer snap of art dealer Ray Hughes with his big meaty hand coming out of the canvas at us. And Christopher McVinish’s Robin Nevin: what a formidable look she has! I saw her in The Trojan Women not long ago; I’d be terrified to meet her. And Del Kathryn Barton’s portrait of Cate Blanchett looking like an illustration of a witch from a children’s tale about to eat one of her three juicy young boys; it’s a highly detailed painting including waratahs and starlings and a galaxy of dots. It’s beautiful and bewitching and I’d like to have it on my wall so I could look at it for years; and so would you I reckon. I also liked the Ken Done self-portrait in two shades of yellow, with black strokes to distinguish Ken’s presence in all this sunny paint. You don’t have to be so self-effacing, Ken.
And then there was some cleverness that didn’t appeal to me: a miniature for instance, some of it apparently done with a pin rather than a brush by Natasha Bieniek. On the blurb it said something about the space between the viewer and portrait being forcibly narrowed – yes, yes, but we still had to stand behind the yellow line; how about a magnifying glass? My artist friends loved Rodney Pople’s Artist and Family (after Caravaggio) which showed the artist being beheaded by his wife with his two sons attending, only the artist showing upset at this gory domestic retribution. It was a bit like a reconfigured Neighbours episode. I wonder does Pople want to sell it; or will it be hung for fun in the family home? Giles Alexander’s Space or Bust I found silly: a Roman-style bust of artist Stan Leach stuck in space with Earth in the background; I’m not clever enough to appreciate this one. And more gimmickry, in my opinion, in Amanda Marburg’s portrait of David Astle, which was a claymation style head and torso with a gridded bookshelf background to indicate David’s dealings with words as a cryptic crossword maker; this one was Highly Commended by the people in charge of the Highly Commending department.
And then the winner: Margaret Olley painted by Ben Quilty. We’d seen it in photographs and judged it to be worthwhile seeing the real thing. And you know what? – It really was; and surely the stand-out winner. What can I say? It was painterly. Marg’s face in the middle was white canvas, and all around this pale centre her hair and her clothes and all the background were made out of delicious creamy slathers of paint, like a chocolaty, berry mousse dessert. On her canvas face, Quilty had made her eyes and mouth out of thick twisty dabs of paint. Up close, her left eye is wild, her right tame, her lips collapsed, her look defiant. Back up a bit and you see the apprehensive, even frightened face of a woman at a vulnerable age. I don’t know Margaret Olley; she hasn’t been on the telly or in the movies as far as I know, but I do know she is an artist of standing who paints colourful generous scenes of flowers and common objects and places. What a treasure of a subject and a painting she is! This one I could hang on my wall, to watch each other as I grow old and older, like a portrait of a sister to keep me company.
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