From this island, we look out across the sea

Mon 25 Sep 2017

‏Telling the Story of Australian Art

Your reimagined Australian Collection brings together art from different times and across cultures. After 120 years of building the Collection, there are many stories to tell of traversal and encounter, we focus on this theme as we continue with our series on Australian art.

Scottish-born artist Ian Fairweather’s Lights, Darwin Harbour 1957, generously on loan from a private collection, recalls the moment he left Australia in 1952 on a homemade raft. The journey — after 16 days on the open sea — ended on a beach on Indonesia’s Roti Island and inspired New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson to create The gift (from Argonauts of the Timor Sea) 2004–06, a ‘replica’ of the raft based on various accounts, including written descriptions.

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In the Argonauts of the Timor Sea installation, Michael Stevenson addresses notions of the origins and movement of humans, and the gift exchange economies that continue to exist in certain parts of the world. Stevenson has created a collection of nine objects pertaining to Ian Fairweather’s extraordinary expedition. The central piece, is a replica of Fairweather’s raft made from discarded driftwood, a reconfigured old parachute sail and fuel tanks – remnants from the bombing of Darwin. Fairweather rudimentarily crafted these together with knowledge gained from reading Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition account. Having gained a general idea of the different ocean currents and their seasonal movements, the artist set off at nightfall from a beach in Darwin, shipwrecking 16 days later on the island of Roti.

Fairweather’s goal was to return to Britain, which he eventually did, but in 1953 he came back to Australia, finally settling on Bribie Island. There, he completed some of his greatest works, including the religious painting Gethsemane 1958, recently gifted to the Collection by Philip Bacon AM. Stevenson’s raft is a touchstone for the many journeys and encounters in this display. It resonates not only with Fairweather’s singular mission, but also with Australia’s place in the world, and the complex, continuing history of those who have arrived on and departed from its shores.

In his lifetime, Ian Fairweather created two masterworks relating to stories of Christ’s life – the occasion of Christ’s birth which he painted in 1962, titled Epiphany, purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery the year it was painted and Gethsemane painted earlier in 1958, which depicts Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion. Importantly, both these major paintings were created while Fairweather was living on Bribie Island.

Mrs Fraser and convict 1962-64 is set on Great Sandy Island (after Captain James Cook’s naming of Great Sandy Cape in 1770), now known as Fraser Island. In 1947 Sidney Nolan spent an extended period in Queensland, including several weeks in Brisbane and on Fraser Island, little had changed since the wreck of the ‘Stirling Castle’ off the south-east Queensland coast in 1836. Nolan was intrigued by the story of Mrs Eliza Frasers survival after the wreck, her captivity by local Aborigines and her controversial return to England.

Connections across the water date back further than colonisation. For hundreds of years, Macassan traders from Sulawesi, Indonesia, travelled to Australia over the Timor Sea to trade and share knowledge with northern Australian Aboriginal people. The influence of this exchange can be seen in works such as Ngaymil/Dathiwuy artist Larrtjanga Ganambarr’s Balirlira and the Macassans c.1958, and Anindilyakwa artist Gulpitja’s Bara, the north-west wind 1948.

Dr Kyla McFarlane, Australian Art, QAGOMA

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The reimagining of the Australian Collection captures major historical moments from first contact to colonisation, and exploration to immigration. Bringing the Indigenous and contemporary Australian collections together with the Gallery’s historical holdings, the display emphasises stories about Queensland and Brisbane from the region’s own perspective. Bringing together art from different times and across cultures, we trace narratives of geography — as country, as landscape, as the place we live and work — and we share stories of traversal and encounter, of immigration, colonisation and the expatriate experience. There are many stories to tell; in doing so, we acknowledge that we live in a country with a complex history. And then we let the works speak for themselves.

Feature image detail: Larrtjanga Ganambarr Balirlira and the Macassans c.1958