We all call Queensland home

Wed 20 Sep 2017

By telling the story of Australian Art, we can observe the changing nature of portraiture — the shift from democratic modes such as the nineteenth-century photograph, to oil paintings produced after a number of sittings and preparatory sketches. These portraits tell stories of contact between cultures, including colonial and immigrant experiences. Many of these stories connect to the history of Queensland, through the artists and their chosen subjects.

Swedish-born artist Oscar Friström, a professional artist working in Queensland in the late nineteenth century, was known for his portraiture, including those of Aboriginal subjects. Friström’s Duramboi 1893 depicts James Davis, a young convict sent from Scotland to Australia. Davis escaped from a Moreton Bay penal colony in 1829 and lived with several Indigenous groups in the area, particularly on Fraser Island (where he was known as Duramboi), until he was found in 1842. During this time, Davis learned many languages and customs, and was treated as an honoured guest.

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Portraiture was a major artistic genre in Australia during the nineteenth century. Portrait of Richard Edwards is a typical colonial portrait, however documented works by Queensland colonial artists are of exceptional rarity. This painting is of even greater interest as it is the first work by Auschar Chauncy to be identified. The subject of this portrait is Richard Edwards who was the Queensland Member of Parliament for Oxley between 1901-13. This portrait must have been one of Chauncy’s first commissions in Brisbane as it depicts Edwards as a vigorous young man in his thirties, presumably painted shortly after the Edwards family arrived in Brisbane.

Besides nineteenth-century portraits of European settlers, those from the twenty-first century include William Yang’s ‘About my mother’ portfolio, from 2003, which accounts for the life of this second-generation, Chinese–Australian woman, who raised the artist in Dimbulah, in far north Queensland.

The text with Mother driving car reads: I ran Bessie’s household. I did all the running around. I learned to drive a car. Bessie never learned to drive a car. She never wanted to. The text with Me and Alan, living room. Graceville reads: At Dimbulah we all learned the piano. It was part of our social life. I was the one who advanced the furthest. I got to sixth grade. None of us play the piano now. My mother had dreams of me being a concert pianist.

In his ‘About my mother’ portfolio, Yang has assembled a suite of photographs of his mother Emma. Some are his own, while others have been re-photographed from images found and collected from family albums over the years. Yang described his process of collecting the photographs as ‘partly being a researcher, like a historian in some way.’ Yang began the ‘About my mother’ series following his mother’s death. The handwritten, reflective text, similar to a spoken narrative, includes the artist’s memories, conversations and anecdotes. The text in Mother driving car. Cairns 1930’s 2003 refers to his mother’s sister Bessie, whom she was close to and assisted during ill health. Through the text and images, Yang gives us a sense of Emma as a strong and proud woman, but we also experience the artist’s struggle to find, in a photograph, his mother’s true essence.

Brisbane artist Michael Zavros’s self-portrait Bad dad 2013 in which the artist — the son of a Greek Cypriot father and Australian mother — floats idly in a backyard pool, Zavros makes playful reference to the mythical Greek Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection.

Dr Kyla McFarlane is former Head of Australian Art, QAGOMA

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Feature image detail: Auschar Chauncy Portrait of Richard Edwards 1874