Re-discovered Nolan images include a second 1947 “Mrs Fraser”
ABSTRACT. Sidney Nolan’s 1947 painting Mrs Fraser, now in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, is one of his best known works. I recently discovered an image of a companion work, along with images of several other hitherto unreported works from the February 1948 exhibition of twelve Fraser Island paintings at Moreton Galleries in Brisbane. There now remains just one of the dozen with no known image. BACKGROUND Sidney Nolan turned 30 on 22 April 1947. His...
Read MoreSidney Nolan interviewed by Michael Heyward, London, 5 April 1991
Interviewed endlessly, Sidney Nolan became the consumate interviewee. Apparently relaxed and in his element, he deftly handled questions to reveal as much or as little of himself as he chose, or to cast on events and people alike the emphasis he wished. Listening to the tapes, reading the transcripts – it is he who sets the pace, the interviewer who follows. This trend is much less evident in a late interview with Michael Heyward in May 1991 just eighteen months before he died –...
Read More‘Am and Tripe: The Turners in Adelaide
‘Am and Tripe coincides with the visit to Adelaide of a major exhibition of Turner paintings from their London home at the Tate Britain. Two Adelaide children enter Turner’s world and there discover new connections between people, places, events and paintings. But beware – some of the discoveries come from the wonderful world of their imagination. It seems appropriate that this story should center on Adelaide where, 70 years ago this October, Max Harris received a letter...
Read MoreBeyond is Anything
The book Beyond is Anything by David Malley purports to tell the story of a “real” Ern Malley – although Malley was not his real surname – who had a “real” sister Ethel, and who with his “real” wife Lois had a son David who perhaps wrote the book. The story goes that Ern grew up with Jim McAuley and that the poems published in Angry Penguins were actually written by Ern, who left them with Lois during the war asking her to give them to McAuley to get...
Read More“Autumn Laing” – an appreciation
Seldom, I suspect, has an Australian novel met with the rapturous critical acclaim showered on Autumn Laing, Alex Miller’s latest and seemingly greatest offering. When it appeared late last year there were accolades aplenty: ‘a novel of bravura intensity and insight,’ …. ‘inhabited by characters whose reality challenges our own.’ …. ‘a novel in which facts are forever being bent to the service of ideas,’ …. ‘a...
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