Claiming Ground: twenty-five years of Tasmania`s Art

Claiming Ground:
twenty-five years
of Tasmania’s
Art for Public
Buildings Scheme
Claiming Ground
Featured artworks
photography
Peter Angus Robinson
commentary
Diana Klaosen
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Designer-maker Kevin Perkins was chosen as
one member of a group to create furniture and
a crucifix for the chapel at Launceston General
Hospital — the first commission in the Art for
Public Buildings Scheme.
The chapel was to replace a functioning church
and also be an inter-denominational chapel and
a haven for patients and their relatives. Perkins
and wood craftsman Merv Gray worked in Huon
pine, Tasmania’s famous, rich, rare softwood,
salvaged from Lake Pedder. His sculptural
thinking is manifest in pews, chairs, a font,
a pulpit or lectern and an altar.
†
Noel Frankham
The pews use no metal fastenings and each row
bears a carved symbolic animal. Perkins calls his
style ‘near contemporary colonial’ and his rural
background is evident in the tractor seat shapes
in the pews. The font, made from a thousandyear-old log, emphasises the natural beauty of
the wood.
Peter Taylor’s striking, life-sized crucifix, with its
anguished face and tense musculature, created
controversy. Some, considering it too graphic,
called for a plain cross instead. Others had it
moved from its position in the chapel courtyard,
as it could be seen through a glass wall.
Supporters finally saw it reinstated in 1989.
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Oliffe Richmond is a major but largely
unacknowledged figure. At Hobart Technical
College he developed a passion for sculpture
and after serving in World War II, won a NSW
Government scholarship and went to Britain.
He never returned.
After studying at the Royal College of Art,
he travelled Europe to study historic and
contemporary sculpture. From 1949 to 1950
he was Henry Moore’s assistant and worked
with him occasionally after that.
By 1962 he was working in cast bronze and
London’s Molton Gallery offered him a oneman show. Critics were positive, ‘few other
sculptors in this century can manage this’
and ‘remarkable results’.
After experimenting with abstraction in
aluminium he returned to monumental
anthropomorphic forms in bronze. Despite the
lack of critical attention, he enjoyed the praise
of his peers.
Minos (1964) was purchased in 1980 by the
then Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board. A heavily
textured, quasi-abstract form, it stands like a
malevolent mythic creature, at once compelling
and disquieting.
Richmond left no personal commentary about
his work. While alive, he gained only limited
recognition, but time has somewhat redressed
the balance.
Oliffe Richmond died in 1977.
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As the brochure The Launceston General Hospital
— Artworks 1980–1990 observes, ‘There are more
than forty two-dimensional works which adorn
the walls of the LGH… The majority of the smaller
works are the result of an art competition and
exhibition entitled Talent Tasmania held in 1980
especially for this purpose.
‘…the judges…chose those which were Tasmanianoriented and which would help to reduce the
clinical atmosphere of the hospital interior. It was
felt that local scenes might provide a feeling of
familiarity for patients and their families alike.’
Among them is Alan McIntyre’s Sober Reflection
no. 1. McIntyre, was an important watercolourist,
painter, critic and teacher who studied at
Launceston Technical College in the 1930s. He
subsequently worked in Sydney and Melbourne
as a cartoonist and portrait painter.
While in the RAAF in World War II, he produced
drawings for semi-official publications. After
the war, he studied under Jack Carington Smith
at Hobart Technical College. He produced a
limited edition poetry book in 1954, and lectured
in painting and drawing at the School of Art,
Launceston Technical College between 1962 and
1972, within the Tasmanian College of Advanced
Education, 1972–1978, and again within the
Tasmanian State Institute of Technology in
1982–83. McIntyre was art critic for The
Examiner from 1962 to 1977. He is represented
in major national collections.
Alan McIntyre died in 2002.
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Holzner was born in Austria and studied theatre
design prior to migrating to Australia in 1955.
He taught drawing and sculpture at the South
Australian School of Art until 1969. From 1971
to 1978 he was Senior Lecturer in Painting at the
then Tasmanian College of Advanced Education
and now paints full-time.
Holzner has pursued abstraction with
determination. Fellow artist Udo Sellbach observes
that, ‘Holzner’s abstract world is firmly based on
experience in which nature and the feeling for
its moods and elements plays a dominant part…
Such a romantic stance may be regarded as out
of touch with our time. But then, Holzner’s sense
of time has never been confined to the now.’
Mosaic (1980), is a large oil on canvas and
a prime example of Holzner’s style. A random
pattern of abstract shapes is painted on a pale
grey-blue background, predominantly in deeper
blue, yellow, grey and ochre, with detailing in
many brighter colours; it recalls a mosaic or,
perhaps, a palimpsest. Mosaic was purchased
in 1981.
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Sculptor Peter Taylor has completed many works
in the Art for Public Buildings Scheme.
Dolly Dalrymple, a brave and respected Aboriginal
woman, was said to have been the first child born
of a European man and a Tasmanian Aboriginal
mother. She married convict Thomas Briggs.
She was described as ‘remarkably handsome,
of a light copper colour, with rosy cheeks, large
black eyes, the whites of which are tinged with
blue, and long, well formed eyelashes; with the
teeth uncommonly white and the limbs admirably
formed’. When tribal Aborigines attacked her
home, she defended her children until Briggs’
return drove them away.
1
For Taylor and the Mersey Regional Library
Advisory Committee she was the ideal subject.
The committee found the sculpture to be ‘near
life size, completely non-threatening…its
rounded skirt form and curves drawing people
to it…accessible and touchable, the hand and
bird inviting closer inspection and the plaque
containing just enough information to stimulate
further enquiry [about] her background from
the Library.’
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Using plywood laminates, King Billy pine and
myrtle, the freestanding figure skilfully replicates
period clothing — full skirt and high collar
— ‘combining physical strength with lightness’.
The carved bird replacing a hand symbolises her
Aboriginal life and culture, while the hinged eye
shield depicts the Port Dalrymple region.
JM Richardson, London, 1820 – quoted
in a brochure, author un-attributed,
prepared by the Mersey Regional Library,
Dolly Dalrymple, a Sculpture by Peter
Taylor, Tasmanian Government
Printer, 1983
1 Jeffreys, Charles, Van Dieman’s Land,
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Taken from notes in
Collection Opening Exhibition,
The Geeveston Print Project,
Focal printing, Hobart, 1986
Betsy Gamble’s contribution is part of a series
called Codpieces. Gamble was selected to
contribute to The Geeveston Print Project,
along with 13 other leading printmakers. The
project, novel in terms of a public art programme,
resulted in an exhibition, with a significant
catalogue, and an impressive collection of
prints for the Geeveston District High School.
The collection has been described as ‘a comprehensive, important collection of works, unique
in its conception for Tasmania’ and fulfilled the
aim of ‘[stimulating] a continuing interest in
the art of printmaking within the school and the
broader Geeveston community’.
2
Printmaker Betsy Gamble insisted, ‘It doesn’t
matter how little or how much of the meanings
you find…art should be “felt” rather than
“thought” first.’
Gamble was fascinated by the connotations of
the word ‘cod’, particularly in archaic language,
including its religious symbolism.
A large, strikingly realistic codfish, with vacant
eye and open mouth, swims through opalescent,
bubbling waters; the marbled waters ‘frame’
the somewhat confronting fish in ways at once
seductive and unexpected, alluring and grotesque.
Betsy Gamble died in 2001.
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Ruth Frost graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts
from the Tasmanian School of Art in the 1980s,
when photography was at its most prominent as
an art form. Following completion of a Master of
Fine Arts in 1988, she lectured in photography at
the Canberra School of Art, returning to Tasmania
in 1996 for postgraduate study, completing a PhD
in 2003. Frost currently lectures in photography
at the Tasmanian School of Art.
Black and white silver bromide photographs
on the three-panel work concentrate on the
children and their activities – the school social,
the swimming carnival, athletic events, and the
writers’ weekend and so on.
They incorporate historical and contemporary
photographs of the school, class groups and
historic events, borrowed from the school and its
community. Frost explains, ‘[this] adds another
element of time, providing a good foil for the
contemporary images as well as preventing the
work from dating by being associated with the
children from one specific year’.
The dreamlike feel of the piece unifies elements
which might otherwise seem out of context;
it combines text written by the children with
elaborate drawing, blocking and selective rephotographing to maintain continuity, exploiting
the manifold capacities of photography to create
complex images.
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His subject matter, musical instruments, made
Garry Greenwood — widely known for his
distinctive, witty and superbly crafted sculpture
in leather — readily accessible and entertaining
to children and adults alike.
He was chosen to create a wall work for Sorell
District High School and Piano Piece was
installed in 1986. The site, a prosaic grey block
wall in a corridor, limited the depth of the piece.
Greenwood applied his trademark musical theme
with great ingenuity, creating a fantastical
keyboard instrument which seems to have been
pushed through the wall.
The shapes are made from vegetable-tanned split
and un-split leathers, wet-formed, moulded and
carved; dyes, stains and natural hide combine in
a harmonious colour scheme.
With Greenwood’s typically whimsical approach to
music, the piano is not configured conventionally;
the keyboard is curved and the keys are set out in
an obviously ‘incorrect’ arrangement, symbolising
the variety of musical forms.
Garry Greenwood died in 2005.
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Jim Marwood, a medical practitioner, is also
a photographic artist. In 1985 he undertook a
substantial commission for New Norfolk Branch
Library — a set of hand-coloured panels depicting
the life and history of the Derwent Valley and
a series of black and white portraits of local
identities.
Marwood had already completed two successful
photo-documentary publications, Valley People
and Ways of Working, featuring sensitive,
poignant portraits of the colourful characters
and lifestyles of two Tasmanian communities.
He produced a series of nine large photographic
collages, using old photographs and documents
depicting Derwent Valley people and traditions,
both past and current.
The panels cover key Derwent Valley subjects:
the apple, berry fruit, hop and timber industries,
the Salmon Ponds Hatchery, the Royal Derwent
Hospital, the Australian Newspaper Mills at Boyer,
the old Bush Inn and the New Norfolk Regatta.
Each panel was compiled as a collage and then
photographed as a single print, hand-coloured
and installed in the high central skylight of
the library.
The medium-scale black and white prints,
idiosyncratic and engaging portraits of local
personalities, labelled with pertinent details
about each, are installed around the library.
The two bodies of work combine to create an
entertaining and attractive environment.
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Paul Zika’s work reflects the way his painting
practice ‘relates to a range of questions
exploring the relationship between actual
and illusionary space’.
The site was a high, shallow space intersected by
passageways, which would not give viewers the
normal, comfortable eye-level interaction with
the work. Instead, the viewpoint would be from
below or up and down on one side or the other.
This challenge suited Zika’s approach, ‘employing
geometric planes and the interaction of colour in
[a] “game of magic”’.
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John Farrow
The piece is on a grey block wall, which influenced
its use of grey. The work was designed as sitespecific, making use of every approach to and
movement past it. Its bright colours were chosen
with its young audience in mind.
Paul Zika explained at the time, ‘As the viewer
moves past the work, the weights and proportions
of the various colours change; surfaces become
objects, flatness gains depth and edges become
lines. Hence, the measurements are continually
changing, in contrast to the fixed calibrations
of a surveyor’s rod’.
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Glass artist and dedicated surfer Graham
Mace has achieved fame in glass-art circles by
recreating in a stained glass panel, the view from
within a hollow-breaking ocean wave. Instead of
lead-soldering, he uses copper foil and small
glass tiles to create stunningly detailed scenes.
He is very much in demand. In 1987, for example,
he made stained glass windows for the Wynyard
High School, copper foil windows for the Whitemark
Branch Library and two circular stained glass
windows for the Sheffield District High School
(formerly Sheffield Infant School).
A master of the painstaking process of glass
etching, he describes his work as ‘decorations for
windows or open spaces’ and is intrigued by the
response of glass to light. They ‘change with the
light cycle of the day, as well as remaining highly
visual in low light, even moonlight. I like looking
through parts of the image to the view behind,
be it the garden outside or whatever’.
The windows are a fantasy on local flora and
fauna, contrasting brightly coloured parrots,
frogs, native hens, Tasmanian flowers and trees
in the foreground with cooler background shades
for rocks, water and sky. Clear, textured glass
allows light in and adds extra detail. Although
they are separated by regular windows, they are
linked by a shared horizon line.
Mace responds keenly to nature. Each day he
scans the ocean and the sky to decide whether
he spends the day surfing, fishing, gardening
or working with glass.
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In 1987, when in Hobart, Janice Hunter —
a graduate of the Tasmanian School of Art,
now living in Victoria — was commissioned
to produce twenty-eight handmade dolls.
The dolls start as pieces of weathered driftwood
found on Rosetta’s beaches; she shapes, paints
and dresses them in rich fabrics.
Hunter is also a printmaker and says, ‘I believe
that my concerns are important and that visual
art is a powerful and often beautiful means of
expressing ideas’. Her themes are love, respect,
responsibility, conflict between male and female,
as well as environmental issues. She explains,
‘I make dolls which attempt to explore, in a
light-hearted way, similar concerns to those
in my prints’.
†
Peter Whyte
Hunter makes her dolls as aids to storytelling
and for creative children’s play. Their simple
construction encourages children to make their
own dolls from recycled or found objects, using
elementary methods and imagination.
They are unpretentious but influential
alternatives to stereotypical commercial dolls and
their names reflect this: Bogey Men, Bushwalkers,
Queen Elizabeth and Suitors, and Barbie and Ken
in Mid-Life Crisis.
The dolls appeal immediately to children and
stimulate learning; teachers see in them an
unending variety of expression, emotions and
anxieties, problems, joys and pleasures.
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Ceramic sculptor and Tasmanian School of
Art lecturer Lorraine Jenyns created a suite
of ceramic pieces for the Royal Hobart Hospital.
The four carved bas-relief wall sculptures,
installed between signs and air-conditioning
vents, are — appropriately for a hospital
— colourful and spirit-enhancing.
In a busy hospital ward, the work had to be easily
removable and able to be sterilised. It could not
be free-standing, but it had to be eye-catching
and appeal to adults and children.
Jenyns chose a mix of myths and legends, dealing
with the sun and the moon, the cycle of life
and death, magic, the animal kingdom and the
universal elements of fire, water, earth and air.
Moon, the second image in the series, displays
aspects of the moon’s influence on woman, water,
sleep and death and explains the waxing and
waning of the moon through a South American
legend of a celestial green tiger that eats it.
Each piece has a jewel-like quality: small, delicate,
carved detail with intense, pure colours creating
light, joyous, hopeful images for patients and
staff in this stressful clinical environment.
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David Stephenson moved to Australia from the
USA in 1982 to lecture in photography at the
Tasmanian School of Art.
His work reflects the cycles of the elements
through time-lapse photography and in 1988
he was commissioned to provide a large work
for the Taroona High School, revealing the natural
forces of water, wind, cloud and star formations
which are important aspects of the school’s
riverside setting.
Stephenson’s work recalls the Romantic tradition
of the sublime and transcendent, as exemplified
by Caspar David Friedrich’s depictions of untamed
nature. He portrays empty Antarctic vistas, ‘selfportraits’ with the artist as a tiny detail among
cliffs, forests and rock faces, European mountain
studies and reductionist images of night skies.
Derwent Nights is a group of large black
and white composite photographs — vertical
panoramas — made around the Derwent
estuary in both day and night. Framed in timber
and Perspex and suspended by wires from the
top of the curved foyer wall, the curve adds to
the dramatic impact of the work.
The distant shoreline runs through all the images
of sky, horizon, water and foreshore, connecting a
‘wave’ or ‘scan’ of discontinuous ‘visual sections’,
as Stephenson calls them.
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Of painting, Tasmanian artist George Davis
says, ‘Occasionally there is a primal response so
overpowering that co-ordination between brain
and stylus is imperative and spontaneous.
‘I am concise and specific in the use of a palette.
Sometimes I discover what it was that attracted
me and am agreeably surprised’.
Portraits predominated in Davis’s later work, but
he is also acclaimed for his landscape painting.
Dr Curtis, the first woman to head a department
at the University of Tasmania, is regarded as
an outstanding science teacher and botanical
researcher, particularly in Tasmanian flora,
and fought for the advancement of women
in education.
Her portrait, an oil on canvas, commissioned
by the Art for Public Buildings Scheme in 1987,
is a fine example of George Davis’s powers of
observation and his innate draftsmanship.
He is fastidious in his consideration of colour,
proportion and resemblance.
He employs yellows, reds, blues, purples and
whites — vibrant and unlikely colours which
nevertheless work strikingly well. The pose, light
and colour suggest an independent and intelligent
woman, a good, serious and unassuming person,
as Dr Curtis has been described.
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Designer-maker weaver Jenny Turner came to
Tasmania in the late 1960s. The opening of the
Secheron Textile Centre in Battery Point in the mid1970s gave her the chance to pursue a fascination
with weaving.
In 1987 Turner was commissioned to create a
one-off wall piece for the light well in the new
Burnie Police Station — a huge work, designed
as four joined panels encompassing the entire
Burnie region.
Today she creates large-scale wall-hangings
for homes, government and private buildings.
In 2004 she won the textiles section of the City
of Hobart Art Prize.
Colours are, ‘taken from the landscape and tie in
with the colours of the building’s interior. Like the
design they merge and flow from one area to the
other. Areas of change are softened with the pull
of threads that occurs in the weaving. Large areas
of the design are very lively, lots of subtle colour
and tone changes. Silver is used in parts of the
sea area’.
Early on, Turner embraced computer design and
finds it enormously helpful — but she still values
the handcrafted look and feels it is a mistake to
try to emulate machine-made finishes.
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Milan Milojevic is Senior Lecturer in the
Printmaking Studio at the Tasmanian School
of Art. Much of his work explores ideas and
motifs around the notion of family and his
father’s wartime experiences and assimilation
into Australia.
Milojevic was selected to supply screen-printed
metal panels for the swimming pool and
gymnasium at the refurbished Launceston
College campus.
The figures are characteristic of Milojevic’s work;
the human presence is strong and the pared-down
style is palpably masculine. Colours reflect the
subject: cool green-grey backgrounds, blues and
yellow-golds for the foreground figures.
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In the gymnasium, more realistic and figurative
panels depict a runner, a swimmer taking a
breath, a gymnast on the rings and basketballers.
He based the pool design on a swimmer, using
vivid colours and deliberately quasi-figurative
forms to suggest the indistinct and half-captured
view a spectator has of a swiftly moving swimmer.
Photography: Milan Milojevic
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Photographer Phillip Barratt was asked to make
a suite of works for the Legal Practice Division
of the (then) Tasmanian State Institute of
Technology in Hobart.
3 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida,
Barratt produced ten large silver gelatin (black
and white) prints, choosing as his subjects six
lawyers, two High Court judges and two Risdon
Prison inmates, each a composite of studio
portrait and panorama. The series is placed in
seminar rooms and mock legal practice offices
in the Centre for Legal Studies, Hunter Street.
Reflections on Photography,
tr. Richard Howard, Hill and Wang,
New York, 1981, 13
Barratt aimed to question stereotypical
perceptions of the law and to look at the social
facade, such as costume — the suit versus court
attire — and the character of the places where
legal people work.
He considered the dichotomy of the portrait
photograph, quoting theorist Roland Barthes,
‘In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the
one I think I am, the one I want others to think
I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and
the one he makes use of to exhibit his art.’ He
included prisoners’ photographs to convey the
physiognomical stereotyping that reinforces
preconceptions.
3
The featured reproduction shows one of the
portraits of Risdon Prison inmates, a stark
contrast with the assured, theatrical formality
of the portraits of elegantly attired, bewigged
barristers. Wiry, shirtless and scruffily attired,
the unidentified prisoner poses, embarrassed and
semi-reluctant. He laughs self-consciously into
his hand at the unaccustomed attention of being
photographed, of being ‘someone’, if only briefly.
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An acrylic triptych on canvas panels, Flights of
Fantasy was installed in 1988. This large work is
executed in Robyn McKinnon’s faux-naif style;
she is known for her seemingly childlike imagery
and technique and the boldness of her palette.
The brief was for a two-dimensional piece, based
on familiar Launceston images amid a bright and
busy townscape, to be hung in a busy area where
students queue for the canteen.
Riverside is easily recognisable in the aerial
perspective she uses to simultaneously create
both ‘wholescale’ and detailed views — hence the
title of the work. Viewers can imagine themselves
in one place or in many at the same time,
experiencing, says one observer, ‘the dream-like
effect of astral travel’.
Skewed perspective and bright, cheerful colours
are immediately attractive to children. Local
buildings and landmarks, the river with its
bridges and boats, streets and hills, can all
be easily identified. There is a vast amount of
detail which children especially enjoy finding.
They become even more involved as they discover
cleverly concealed animals, placed randomly
throughout the work.
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David Hamilton is a sculptor who has lectured
for over 30 years. He was Head of Sculpture in
the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the
Launceston campus of the University of Tasmania
until 2002.
‘Eventually the knot or the twist of the line itself
took on an abbreviated meaning that, although
in a way different, still references this beginning
point of the binding and wrapping of those logs
from the bush.’
His works, in metal and wood, often imitate
everyday objects — hence titles like Knot, Thread,
Torque, Twist, Whip and Buoy.
The sculpture exemplifies these concerns. Two
conical wooden shafts taper to tall, elegant
pointed tops. They are partly clad with steel and
there is a fin-like decorative steel feature down
the sides. Between the poles, just above ground
level, are three tall, slim, anthropomorphic metal
figures with gently rounded ‘heads’.
Hamilton says of a strong theme in his work,
‘I saw the demise of the forests in Tasmania in
many ways as a metaphor for my own mortality.
I started to use bent logs and branches scavenged
from clear-felling sites in the bush and began
wrapping these logs with steel rods. The rods were
heated to white hot in the bronze melt furnace
and then bent in twists and turns around the
logs, wrapping and binding.
With its contrasting elements — wood and steel;
sharp, pointed lines and circular shapes; soaring
height and cast details at ground level — it is
arresting in its open courtyard setting.
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The selection panel for this work chose Philip
Wolfhagen as an artist who could portray not only
the grandeur of Queenstown’s unique landscape
but also its social and environmental history.
Of this work Wolfhagen says, ‘I sought images
that derive from the landscape surrounding
Queenstown, and particularly the processes
involved in the transformation of the landscape.
The proposal is comprised of four images — each
is an “emblem” of the landscape. I have rendered
these ideas in an idealised way to maintain the
graphic power of the images, such as the physical
power the landscape possesses, yet to retain the
character, colours and forms of the landscape.
‘The images represent fire, mountain and mine
and a crater-like form containing a burning
tree, which represents one of the processes which
transformed the landscape. Fire is the central
theme of the work, for it was the principal agent
in this transformation.’
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Photography: Raymond Arnold
Printmaker Raymond Arnold produced a suite of
seven prints and a large collection of paintings
for the Launceston General Hospital.
Arnold’s extraordinary screen prints feature
intricate and delicate patterning and create the
impression of texture and three-dimensionality.
In recent times he has spent time each year
in Paris at one of the most venerable French
printmaking studios.
His paintings at the Launceston General Hospital
represent several years of work and, he explains,
‘a panoply of sites’. They were mainly done during
residencies, particularly on Tasmania’s west
coast. He sees them as ‘an inventory of sorts’.
In the paintings, unspoiled nature vies with
degraded landscape for our attention; machinery
and factories are contrasted with sunsets
and forests.
The hospital collection is a selection from
hundreds of small paintings Arnold made through
the 1980s; initially they were ‘plein air’ and, says
Arnold, ‘as a consequence of my impressions
and responses to the sites were subject to both
a literal and metaphoric weathering.
‘I installed the group of works in the hospital to
imaginatively draw the patient/spectator into
an environment that had the potential to be both
familiar and difficult.’
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Tony Stuart currently operates FORM Architecture
Furniture, in Coburg, Victoria, in partnership with
Polly Bastow. In 1990, while living in Tasmania,
he was commissioned to provide three decorative
arches for the entry court of Claremont College,
then known as Claremont Education Park.
The free-standing pre-cast concrete arches are
a strong feature of the College’s exterior. With
their variety of form, angle and detail, they use
shadows as an integral part of the design; their
shapes are picked out in brightly coloured
re-assembled broken tiles.
The arches represent three styles: high-tech,
modern and post-modern. The post-modern
arch plays with design and juxtaposes unlikely
features, just as in post-modern architecture.
The timber base is painted emerald green;
columns are of PVC pipe over timber, painted pink
inside and black and white outside; on the outer
side of the column is a zigzag shape in purple and
yellow. The lintel is painted black on white and on
top are two steel circles powder-coated pink.
The high-tech arch, by contrast, has sleek, clean
lines and uses materials such as braced steel
framing, galvanised corrugated iron and whitepainted metal. The modernist arch references
the grid in a ladder formation, chrome-plated
and bolted to the structure.
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Teacher and sculptor Chris Beecroft, who
completed a number of projects for the Art for
Public Buildings Scheme, was chosen to create
an outdoor installation for Don College in 1991.
Working with Tasmanian pine, steel and bronze,
Beecroft was inspired by Don McLean’s 1970s
ballad, American Pie. He made a suite of figures
for the school courtyard, designed to echo the
relationship between the school building and
the people who use it, ‘the harmony between
architecture and environment spiced with the
colour and individual presence of people, in
this case supplemented by sculpture’.
The semi-abstract figures are human-scale
and suggest chess pieces. Imaginatively
and unexpectedly shaped, they combine
sharp geometric forms, organic lines and
intricate carving.
Brightly coloured, they have something theatrical
about them. Bright primary colours — especially
red and blue — are interspersed with strong
pastel shades, while the smaller works are stark
white. The suite works well as a group; shape and
colour are repeated from one work to the other,
giving unity to the collection.
The timbers Beecroft wanted for the project were
hard to find, but persistence and detective work
eventually paid off.
Chris Beecroft died in 2004.
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Ian Munday, a graduate of the Tasmanian School
of Art, has worked in the sculpture studio at the
School of Art since 1990. At the 1998 Canberra
National Sculpture Forum his work was described
by the judges as, ‘intensely personal and
eloquent’, noting its, ‘particularly subtle colour,
resonating with delicate and complex harmonies’.
In responding to this 1991 commission,
Munday commented he wanted to mirror the
almost classical rural feel of the town while
acknowledging the influence of the modern
– seeing Glenora as part of a ‘gentle, tranquil,
secluded’ region, ‘with a strongly English
feeling in the formal gardens and rolling hills’.
His sculpture is a post-modern response to the
classical. A large, Grecian-style column, its
capital decorated with hops instead of the
traditional acanthus leaves, is adorned with the
likeness of Glenora Fenton, who gave the town
her name. Slightly skewed, it is embellished
with tall, sleek, banner-like blue-grey forms and
the sculpture gains its effect from the contrast
between the traditional column and the swirling
pennants.
Set in front of the school building, the sculpture
hints at the history of Glenora, and by combining
historic motifs with contemporary detail makes a
witty allusion to the history of art.
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Full of black humour from the lives of ambulance
drivers, this mural must be one of the state’s
best-known works of public art.
Tom Samek has painstakingly filled the dreary
ambulance bay with minutiae from ambulance
work. His distinctive whimsical imagery, which he
has perfected in prints, paintings and sculptures,
creates a game for people to play as they name
and identify elements in the mural.
Designed to be cheerful, uplifting and distracting,
it achieves much of its effect by creating humour
in a place not normally associated with fun.
Samek, who has completed many Art for Public
Buildings Scheme commissions, notes that,
‘In the space of a year, I would work with oils,
watercolours, print media, timber and metal
sculpture, theatre set designs, murals, animations
and book illustrations.
‘In which order and when depends on the weather,
deadlines, demands and mood. I do like variety.
Basically, I work seven days a week and think
at night.
‘I am self-taught except for a few months
with an Austrian printmaker. My influences
are Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rousseau,
Duchamp and Whiteley, among others. My motto
is stick with it — eventually it will happen.’
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Chantale Delrue came to Tasmania in 1980
because a friend told her it was, ‘the most
beautiful place in the world’. She studied
ceramics in Launceston with the aim of becoming
a production potter – but she soon felt the need
to be more creative.
This ceramic mural for the Nixon Street Primary
School is mounted on a large external wall
and uses handmade individual ceramic tiles
to portray a landscape and seascape with a
thematic patterned border of Australian fauna
and flora.
Colourful and full of movement, it shows a beach
scene in the middle distance, with swimmers,
figures playing in rock-pools, boats, a lighthouse,
sparking blue sea and a benign yellow sun-face.
Seaside sands lead up to cliffs where more
children and adults are playing or relaxing among
the gum trees. Its realist child’s picture book style
is particularly suited to the setting.
In the foreground, a young girl clutches a baby
— or a doll — and her figure seems to represent
hope, optimism and the future as she gazes,
wide-eyed, at the viewer.
†
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Innovative Tasmanian artist Gregor Bell’s work
is noted for its humour, powerful socio-political
awareness and the way, ‘its oblique vision cuts
across the mainstream’.
He uses a variety of techniques, materials
and found objects, and chose metal for the
Launceston College mural project, creating large
grids filled with realistic silhouettes of subjects
he knew would appeal to senior school students.
The symbols are charged with meaning: hands
clasped in a handshake; a key, a potent symbol
on many levels; an unfurled and knotted
‘old school tie’; a snakes and ladders design
suggesting the vicissitudes of adolescent life;
and a question mark symbolising personal and
academic dilemmas.
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As well as the images in the grids, Bell created
individual motifs to decorate the wall. For
instance the His Master’s Voice phonograph
and faithful dog logo are reproduced in
metal silhouette.
† Lynne Uptin
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† David Stephenson
and Anne MacDonald
†
Anne MacDonald, head of photography at the
Tasmanian School of Art, is known for her
rich, colour-saturated depictions of flowers,
luxuriant fabrics, artificial funeral wreaths,
religious artefacts and details from extravagant
European palaces such as Versailles. Most of
her subjects have feminine connotations but her
bold, powerful style removes any suggestion of
the delicate and decorative — yet the works are
strikingly beautiful.
MacDonald and Stephenson have collaborated
since the 1990s, bringing elements of their solo
work to their artistic partnership.
They depict, in relative close-up, the details of
an old forest with a tangle of trees all bathed in
beautiful green-toned light. In one image, rich
green moss and lichen cover trees, their roots
and the ground; in the other, an uprooted, mosscovered tree forms a cave-like space.
David Stephenson, also a photography lecturer,
has travelled the world to capture the sublime
in vast mountain spaces and skies, infinite
Antarctic vistas, the cupolas of European
churches, mosques and synagogues, depicted
almost as mandalas.
Like Stephenson’s explorations of the sublime,
they provoke wonderment and awe; they feature
MacDonald’s jewel-like, saturated colour and a
striking depiction of the natural world and its
grandeur. The works evoke the power of life and
nature but also speak of death and decay.
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Penny Mason is head of painting at the School
of Visual and Performing Arts, University of
Tasmania, Launceston. David Marsden has
lectured in Printmaking, Painting and Drawing
in Launceston since the early 1980s.
The brief for this sculpture was to reflect the
purpose of the building, asking for a focus on
innovation, technology and precision. It had to
combine a timeless quality and express the openended and flexible philosophy of the Centre and
its place at the leading edge of new technologies.
Mason and Marsden designed a spiral with
vertical panels and rods supporting a light, airy
net structure which drapes and falls gently to
suggest something flowing and organic.
Modern materials, streamlined form and cool
colours create a sense of constantly renewed
modernity in this decidedly site-specific work.
The structure also serves as an enormous canvas
for a large scroll painting which runs along the
curved sides.
Unlike a conventional wall-based work, it can
be seen from both sides. One side is painted in
abstract, cloud-like blue and white patterns;
the reverse side is again abstract and predominantly black.
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4 Taken from an un-attributed
short WWW piece on Dyer:
http://www.artequity.com.au/
ArtistDetails.aspx?artist=41
Geoff Dyer, winner of the 2003 Archibald Prize
and a finalist in both the prestigious Sulman
and Wynne prizes at the Art Gallery of New South
Wales, is renowned for his evocative oil paintings
of Tasmanian landscapes. He has spent much of
his career painting the Australian bush, especially
the Tasmanian wilderness.
In 1995, the Forensic Science Services Laboratories
in New Town commissioned a series of works in a
range of media by several prominent Tasmanian
artists; the director of the laboratories chose this
painting directly from the collection of Dyer’s
agent, Dick Bett, who was consultant for the
Laboratory’s acquisition project.
He manages, ‘…to create works that merge 19th
century traditions and artists, such as Turner,
with a more contemporary vision that owes much
to Australian Modernists such as Fred Williams’.
The powerful cascades and craggy rocks of Russell
Falls have attracted landscape painters since
their discovery by Europeans.
4
Dyer, however, says, ‘The landscape is purely
a prop — I’m simply interested in the process
of painting.’ His work has been called ‘gothic’,
referring to the dark nature of his paintings,
which are becoming increasingly abstract.
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This work helps children to see science as a
vibrant, living thing. On the way to the final
design, Julie Payne considered everything from
alchemy to sound and spectra, from motion
and machines to levers and light.
Eventually, she settled on the solar system: nine
planets positioned around a central one-metre
sun. The work took in the entire school, with the
planets placed in the grounds in exact ratio to
their actual positions in the real solar system.
Some of the planets are designed to move if they
catch the wind.
The work uses several metals — brass, titanium,
copper, steel and bronze — glass and found
objects. Glass explains the principles of refraction,
reflection and prismatic colours, while the metals
used for the planets are linked to alchemical
principles: Venus, for example, is made of copper,
which is associated with the planet of love.
Students helped Payne to create Neptune, Uranus
and Pluto.
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Around the sun, which hangs from the ceiling
of the atrium, are the periodic tables, physics
formulae and the names of prominent scientists.
Solar flares spread out from the central structure
with planets orbiting on metal rods.
Photography: Gail Greenwood
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This commission was part of the 1995 redevelopment of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery,
centred on the former Customs House building.
Peter Costello, who completed a PhD in 2003 with
the Tasmanian School of Art, is best known for
his ‘Snap’ range of super-light, immensely strong
domestic and commercial furniture. He produced
these pieces for the main public lecture theatre
and its anteroom.
As well as designing and making a small table,
four chairs and a lectern, Costello used existing
designs for a two-seat sofa and a coffee table,
and adapted an existing hallstand design to
make a sideboard.
All the pieces use golden sassafras veneer;
resolutely contemporary, light and airy, in blond
wood, with slim lines and seemingly delicate
black legs, they contrast with the architecture and
heritage of the Customs House. Much attention
has been paid to proportion and utility and
detailing is elegant and minimal.
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Sara Lindsay’s textiles are known for their strong
design and she welcomed the challenge of working
with commercial tiles to produce a mosaic floor.
Her design recalls the curves of Hobart Rivulet,
echoing those of Murray Gibbs’ non-figurative
sculpture on the stairwell between the first and
second floors.
The work follows the shape of the mezzanine floor:
straight on one side and gently curving on the
other, widening at each end. The main body of
the tiles, in tune with the lightness and openness
of that part of the building, is pale in tone; with
a sinuous wavy line in blue flowing across it,
hinting at a river.
The vibrant, colourful design brightens and
opens up what would otherwise be a dull
institutional corridor.
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This work, part of the observatory at Lake St
Clair Visitors Centre, is by a team of artists led by
Raymond Arnold. He explains, ‘Using a variety of
media, including timber, stone, metal, paint, light
and photographic transparencies, the team of
professional artists developed a public artwork
that forms a focal point within the interpretation
room of the new Lake St Clair Visitors’ Centre.
‘The team has modelled a visual and conceptual
structure to express some fundamental principles
of the Lake St Clair environment. “Observatory”
not only refers to, registers and accounts for
concepts of geology, glaciation and weather,
but also encourages the viewers’ perception
of these concepts.
‘Against a background of well established
interpretation systems, the work is at once a
spectacle of light, colour and symbolic form.
Within the context of the displays, it establishes
a more open and sophisticated questioning of
concepts of phenomena and of our relationship
with the natural world.’
Paintings by David Keeling preface the work, Linda
Fredheim and Stuart Houghton made a vessel from
layers of plywood, framed by a tower supporting
spotlights, a photographic transparency and a
painting, and Torquil Canning drew a planar rock
landscape into the top layers of the structure.
A transparency by Dan Armstrong projects an
image of Lake St Clair on a cloud painting by
Tim Burns in the ceiling; Peter Wilson made the
supporting armature.
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Kit Hiller works with the medium of the lino-cut
and this was a valuable opportunity for her to
create a major set of works about women.
The ambience of the prints is gentle and soothing
— uplifting and reassuring for women and their
families at a potentially uneasy time.
She made fourteen elimination prints, designed
specifically for the Obstetric Unit. The works are
figurative but, as is characteristic of lino-cuts,
simplified and decorative.
The images are printed on Arches paper in oilbased ink, hand-coloured and framed under
glass in dark wooden frames. Their colours are
sympathetic to the decor of the unit.
For this series, Kit Hiller chose deliberately lowkey, non-threatening subjects dealing with the
quieter aspects of childbirth: families with young
children; a father feeding a baby; women bathing
babies; a small boy playing with toys, as well
as images of staff and mothers in the hospital.
Confronting images were deliberately avoided.
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Filomena Coppola and Robyn Daw originally
planned to develop a series combining etching
and screen-printing with fabrics and embroidery.
It was a unique opportunity: the works would
be produced for an intimate and predominantly
female audience. The delivery suite is not open
to the public and women would be spending
a relatively long time in there, so the artists
created organic, rhythmic and tactile works
which sensitively reflect the profound physical
realities of childbirth.
Lace and embroidery recall women’s experiences
of childhood, adolescence and marriage and
are redolent of intimacy and special occasions
without being too specific.
Coppola and Daw decided that actual laces and
fabrics, rather than prints based on them, would
be the better option. They made twenty-one
images based on decorative motifs which parallel
the rhythms of labour; colours were chosen to
complement the corridors and birthing rooms
where they are installed.
The works celebrate women’s lives and
preoccupations, with images of multiculturalism,
women’s work and women’s possessions.
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Kevin Todd was one of the first Australian artists
to work with computer-generated imaging. These
decorative Perspex panels in the Forensic Science
Services Laboratories in Hobart, created in 1996,
are the earliest digital works in the Art for Public
Buildings Scheme.
For the forensic laboratory, these were based on
the ear, the brain and the eye; the images are
gradually reduced from realistic to schematic
forms. They are wry comments on the secretive
nature of forensic science and its darker
implications.
They reflect the activities of the two principal
laboratories: the forensic science section, which
deals with police evidence, and the analytical
laboratory, which is concerned with testing for
contamination in food, water and soil.
For the analytical laboratory, water images were
gradually broken down in the same way that the
content of samples is ultimately expressed in
computer code.
Todd used computer-modified images to reflect
the advanced technology and methods used in
the work of the laboratories.
The images are screen-printed on clear Perspex
and mounted off the wall, so that shadow plays
a vital part in their appearance.
†
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Sculptor Heather B Swann lives and works
in Hobart and is best known for her mobile
sculptures. Visiting the site, she was struck by the
sounds of birds, wind blowing from the water and
the character of the school grounds and buildings.
From these observations, she developed the idea
of a sculptural entrance over the stairs leading
to the playground.
The wind is central to the concept. Four posts
support a compass circle of metal with the
sixteen points of direction indicated by forged
iron curls and metal letters; above each point is a
weathervane in the shape of a bird or an animal.
This flock of weathervanes moves with the breeze,
animating the structure and making it an endless
source of interest.
Swann says, ‘Children love movement in
sculptures. The work is interactive with the
elements and with the minds and imaginations
of the school community’.
The weathervanes are set at a considerable height,
to provide a roof for the structure, draw the eye
to the sky, make them visible from all the school
buildings and limit vandalism.
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Swann used wood and metal for durability
and longevity.
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Sculptor Sharyn Woods is noted for her use
of difficult materials and painstaking method.
Shelley Chick, a past student of Burnie High School,
shares Woods interest in out of the ordinary
materials and processes, often adding colour and
quirky subject matter.
For the renovation of Burnie High School in 1996
Woods and Chick decided on two works: one for
the entrance foyer to appeal to staff and visitors,
and one outdoor work for the students.
The foyer sculpture is a glass piece based on the
school’s surroundings. A laminated blue glass
window forms an image of water and the horizon;
the colour and reflectivity of the glass create
a tranquil atmosphere. A narrow vertical wall
panel of copper and cast resin complements
the window.
The outdoor work, a series of joined panels, is
patterned with emblems of adolescent life, both in
and after school. The materials are steel, coloured
cement and coloured resin, creating visual variety
with the heaviness of the concrete contrasting
with the airy quality of the resin.
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Curtis Hore’s trio of sculptures for the new
Tasmanian Institute of Sport in Launceston
created a mild controversy. The brief had not
emphasised a sporting theme, so to satisfy
concerns raised by some at the Institute, a
fourth piece embodying sports symbols was
commissioned.
The initial work, intended by the Institute to
dramatise its minimalist entrance with its
six-metre galvanised wall, concrete walls and
stainless steel railings, consists of three large
sculptures perforated with abstract shapes
balancing in a reflecting pool. The simple forms
are of 10 mm steel pierced with a delicate, lacelike pattern which enables light to pass through
and reflect changes in the water surface. The
pieces were galvanised to soften this effect.
The design takes the character of the site into
account: typically Australian, planted with
gums and native flora, it faces north-east,
with extremes of sun, wind and rain.
Project consultant Steven Joyce says, ‘I feel this
abstract sculpture is very inspirational and has
a timeless quality. It is of major importance
that the architect feels this piece enhances the
character of the building he designed. Public
sculpture has always attracted controversy;
however, I am sure that, with the passage of
time, this beautifully executed and relatively
conservative piece will come to be appreciated
as the high-quality sculpture that it is’.
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Wayne Z Hudson studied at the Tasmanian
School of Art, graduating with a PhD in 2000.
He currently heads the sculpture studio at the
School of Visual and Performing Arts, University
of Tasmania, Launceston. Hudson has
completed many works for the Art for Public
Buildings Scheme.
Watching students at the school sitting in
clusters with arms or legs entwined reminded
Hudson of curled snakes and the idea for Snake
Seats followed.
He designed three circular seats for the school’s
foyer, choosing the shape so that students could
continue sitting in clusters. There are no sharp
corners and the seats are made of galvanised
steel and plywood for strength and durability.
Snake heads cast in bronze rise from holes in
the centres of the seats.
Hudson explains, ‘The forms project a playful
image where the twisted metal legs and wriggling
grooves on the wood refer to the idea of snakes
basking in the sun’.
Students like the snake seats, ‘The seats are very
different, but extremely clever in presentation
and design. I like the look of the snake reaching
out through the middle. The wood feels really soft
and has great designs carved into [it]. I found the
seats extremely comfortable…’ Another student
comments, ‘The snake seats are really good,
they’re very artistic and imaginative; I really
like them. I wondered who had made them’.
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Painter David Keeling and printmaker Helen
Wright worked together to create these two large
panels for the visitors’ centre at the gardens to
express the idea that ‘plants are the basis of life
on earth; all life depends on plants’.
The panels are coloured with pastel pigments
which are then fixed with an industrial varnish,
giving a finish which is both aesthetically pleasing
and durable; Wright received funding from the
Australia Council to develop this novel technique.
The work reflects the nature and purpose of the
garden: landscape, conservation, the organic,
the scientific and the historical.
The project gave the artists an opportunity to
explore the potential of an innovative technique
beyond the medium scale, but at the same time
they wanted the work to blend sympathetically
with the centre’s architecture; the insets are
placed at different heights so that children and
adults can enjoy it together.
The panels are finished with semi-transparent
colour, showing the wood grain beneath Wright’s
large, stylised drawings of flowers and other
natural elements. Keeling’s close-ups of landscapes, trees and birds are set into the panels
and contrast effectively in size and detail.
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Glen Clarke casts a resolutely Australian eye on
the projects he undertakes and enjoys creating
sculptures from unusual materials. In 1998 he
was commissioned to make a sculpture for the
(then) new Hobart Remand Centre.
He constructed four ‘bricks’ positioned to look as
though they are falling through air, using eight
hundred BHP ‘star pickets’, familiar Australian
fencing materials, to build the bricks. The use of
fencing materials addresses the notion of remand
in an elemental and literal way and the brick
form also harks back to the convict brick.
The works are installed on the front of the remand
building. Each of the outsize bricks comprises
two hundred star pickets and weighs about six
hundred kilograms. Clarke always took into
consideration the physical aspects of the site:
the very high but contained nature of the space
limited by a glass canopy and red brick and
rendered wall.
The nature of the project enabled four inmates
of Risdon Prison to volunteer their time to assist
the sculptor – considered one of the successes
of the venture.
As for the form of the work, the four bricks are
arranged at angles, one above the other, as if they
are indeed toppling. The star pickets create some
very interesting, repeated negative shapes, along
with the more obvious positive forms.
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Patrick Hall is an innovative furniture craftsman
and artist who has created many works for
private and public purchasers, and has exhibited
at Sculpture Objects and Functional Art (SOFA)
in Chicago.
He was commissioned in 1998 to produce a
sculptural artwork for the new ward block at
the Royal Hobart Hospital.
He proposed that the work, in metal mesh and
perforated aluminium, would take the form of
a domestic quilt to inspire feelings of comfort,
care and security, the foundations of healthcare.
He explains, ‘Coupled with these values is the
increasing reliance by modern medicine upon
technology and science. This modernisation is
expressed through the use of “high-tech” materials
such as perforated aluminium and stainless steel
cable to construct the quilt’.
The top section of each square of the patchwork
quilt is made from nine pieces sewn together with
cable, using a cross-stitch pattern. The bottom
section is a solid square.
Each piece is beaten from the inside to form a
dome on the surface. When the two sections are
placed together they create a ‘pillow’ form and
these are built up into a large ‘quilt’ that hangs in
the courtyard of the Department of Psychological
Medicine.
The quilt is suspended parallel to the ground,
so that it can be seen when looking up from
the courtyard or down from the wards above.
It allows sun and light to pass through, creating
a dappled effect, while providing shelter and
privacy for patients.
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Originally from Ireland, Paccy Stronach came
to Tasmania and settled at Bream Creek, where
he established his design studio. His other
commissions include a number of works for
public places. In 2001, he and a partner took
over the slip yard in Dunalley in the state’s
south. Besides being a furniture designer,
Stronach is a sculptor and boat builder.
For this commission Stronach created an area
of outdoor seating in stone, steel, copper and
stringybark, consisting of a pair of Tasmanian
oak seats and matching table, with wrought
iron detailing and with timber mounted on to
sandstone bases. A crescent-shaped dry-stone
wall adds privacy as well as shelter from
the wind.
A related work, a relief sculpture of a traditional
trading ketch in timber, patinated copper and
wrought iron is mounted above the main
entrance of the building.
The design is a reminder of the days of early
settlement, when Tasmania’s hardworking and
versatile trading ketches were the primary link
with the outside world. As Stronach observes,
‘Timber, stonework and blacksmithing reflect both
the past and current industries and heritage of
the Triabunna district’.
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A graduate of the Tasmanian School of Art,
printmaker Michael Schlitz created a design
intended to reflect the human element of the
work undertaken at the laboratories.
Schlitz describes the forensic scientist’s approach
as ‘making present’ the sense of a trace or
memory of a lived moment. ‘That is why’, he
explains, ‘my images are not incomplete despite
the spaces they are depicted in. Perhaps they may
be a little uncomfortable at first, but I believe
that being open to the difficult questions they
present can be a very rewarding experience’.
The distinctive visual style, themes and concerns
of Schlitz’s drypoint prints were inspired by
an 1824 engraving made by the French artist,
Duparc, to illustrate a written account of
French exploration of Tasmania. The engraving
shows ship’s captain, Louis Claude Desaulses de
Freycinet, on a beach, handing beads to a group
of Aborigines with sailors standing behind and
reaching for their guns. The ship’s artist, Arago,
is depicted playing castanets.
Intrigued by the image, Schlitz discovered that,
as was common, ‘the events in the engraving
were separated in historical time, yet condensed
to form a single image’.
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Since completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1995,
Richard Wastell has had several sell-out shows in
Tasmania and interstate.
environment, a realist depiction subtly dissolving
to a less figurative, geometric style within the
one canvas.
He is known for his distinctive, quasi-abstract
landscapes of the Derwent Valley, Central Lakes
District and Styx Valley, areas of Tasmania that
he loves. Stylistically, his seductive landscapes
are worlds away from conventional landscape
painting, displaying his characteristic tenor
and approach.
Of his inspiration, Wastell explains, ‘It’s midsummer and I’m driving through the Derwent
Valley, headed toward the rocky peaks of Mt Field
National Park. The landscape is parched yellow,
the colour of hay bales. Fields patterned by
tussock grass and tangled gorse and blackberry
bushes gently climb to low scrubby hills and
gnarled old gum trees bleached white in the heat.
Lindisfarne North Primary School commissioned
the works Heat Haze…and Technological Fog…
in 2001.
In both works, Wastell explores the rich textures
and patterns to be found in the Derwent Valley
‘The haze transforms the landscape — like seeing
it through liquid. In this vaporous world, the
asphalt road appears like a river and the banks
of the river are the roadside bushes as viewed
from the car, dissolving into patches of
transparent colour.’
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Nicola Smith
Robert Ikin works with ceramics and a range
of other media. He has completed a number
of Art for Public Buildings Scheme commissions,
including in 2000–01, a series of ceramic
installations for Queechy High School in
Launceston.
The main element of this work was Mandala, a
ceramic work 8.5 metres in diameter recessed into
the library courtyard at the school. It took eight
months, used three tonnes of clay made into eight
hundred and eighty-eight tiles, all of which were
hand-rolled, cut, incised, carved and decorated.
This commission called for a paving feature
in four parts: a sunken courtyard to be used
for assemblies and other large gatherings; a
path leading from Queechy Square to an upper
courtyard; a performing arts amphitheatre and
a tiling detail to be mounted on each side of the
main stairway.
Ikin notes that the mandala has a primary
spiritual function, to focus our concentration
in a meditative space. The space in the library
courtyard is circular and, ‘a circle functions
as a meeting place, a social centre and a place
of communication’. His aim was to make an
interactive human space that was also a place
for ‘gentleness and contemplation’ — still
allowing for the fact that the space is part of
a busy, noisy schoolyard.
61J"(&2A(I8/
Roger Murphy began his career as a lithographic
apprentice while studying life drawing at the
Tasmanian School of Art.
In 2001, along with textile artist Rosemary
O’Rourke, photographer David Stephenson, painter
Jock Young and printmaker Helen Wright, Murphy
provided artworks for the Psychiatric Intensive
Care Unit at the Royal Hobart Hospital.
In creating the hospital painting, special
consideration of patient needs called for nonthreatening, non-challenging and low-key work.
There was also some extra emphasis on work that
would be resistant to vandalism. The unit is a
secure facility and Murphy’s site-specific mural
and the other artworks installed go some way
to balance and ameliorate the negative effects
patients might feel as a result of being in a
confined situation.
Acrylic paint was applied directly to a rendered
cement wall, floor to ceiling, only interrupted by
structural columns and the overall image travels
across the various wall panels. The painting
depicts the untamed and very beautiful region
of the Tasmanian wilds around Nicholl’s Peak and
Douglas River in the state’s north-east.
With its generally broad brushstrokes, in a style
that could be described as impressionistic, it
evokes the natural environment. Where before
there was nothing but a long expanse of blank
wall are now native trees, delicately rendered
grasses, water reflecting the surrounding
landscape, mountain peaks, shadows and
cloudy skies.
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Sculptor Tim Edwards is a Fine Arts graduate of
the University of Tasmania, Launceston. In 2004
he was selected to construct a pair of outdoor
sculptures for Don College in Devonport.
The two works, Quill and Quote, are largescale pieces, significantly different, but with
similarities in form and in media used.
The sculpture Quote is made of rolled and forged
steel and explores the circular form. It is a
monumental piece which has been installed in
the school grounds, on a grassed area near the
school buildings.
†
Noel Frankham
The work is constructed with one side curved up
and back over on itself in layers, top and bottom.
This shape is repeated six or seven times, in a
series of leaf-like patterns, some of the curved
‘leaves’ facing the sky, some facing down. The
piece presents very different views according to
whether it is seen side-on or from directly in front
of the curved, opened layers. It has a particular
dynamism and sense of movement when seen
from this vantage point.
Quote’s partner Quill is a wall-based sculpture,
based on the idea of a simple, curled line; the
piece simply takes a length of metal and twists
it round on itself. One end of the metal length is
pointed, recalling an old-fashioned pointed quill
or a spear and this, along with the robust shape
of the work and its prominent location on an
external feature wall, gives it a powerful impact.
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In 2002, Anne Morrison, a Scottish painter now
resident in Tasmania, completed a large body
of works for installation in three dental clinics
state-wide — in Devonport, Scottsdale and
Kings Meadows.
The painted works were developed from an
already existing series called Grasslands.
This series depicts a familiar organic form, the
dandelion, to a greater or lesser extent abstracted
and shown at varying stages of its life cycle, in
the process of transition and transformation.
This process of change is visible within and
between each work.
For the Kings Meadows Dental Centre, four
dandelion paintings are hung in pairs, known as
Wish 1 and 2 and Dandelion 1 and 2. The paintings
are medium-scale, oil on canvas.
The works are hung outside one of the dental
surgeries of the clinic where, with their visible
links and definite differences, they succeed in
arousing the curiosity of, and distracting the
mainly young patients visiting the dentist. With
Dandelion 1 and 2 they also visually connect two
different sections of the clinic.
Wish 1, in autumnal, orange tones, is a patterned,
layered work, able to be interpreted in a number
of ways. Wish 2 is more figurative, clearly a
dandelion form, but very much in close-up
and enlarged.
As the artist explains, ‘the form is visible and
familiar within the local everyday environment …
The staff liked the idea of one work being subtly
more recognisable and familiar than its partner.’
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Di Allison is a highly regarded Hobart-based
jeweller who works with furniture designer-maker
Patrick Hall as part of the company Phish Design.
Di Allison was commissioned to create a
sculptural work for the main entry foyer of
the Mount Faulkner Primary School in Hobart’s
northern suburbs.
In the project proposal, Allison noted, ‘Recently
my work has explored the themes of measurement
and language. These themes have taken the
form of jewellery and small-scale 3D wall pieces.
Sometimes incorporating found objects, they
seek to illustrate, in a physical way, intangible
experiences and beliefs using fragments and
remnants. Measurement and language are
ever-present in school and beyond. They provide
a framework for communication and learning’.
The work comprises a wall-mounted ‘cabinet’
which looks like an opened exercise book with
ruled margins. The cabinet contains twenty-six
windows, one for every letter of the alphabet.
Each window contains a resin block in which a
number of toys and miniature items are set. They
all start with that letter of the alphabet, but there
are some visual tricks, too. Under the resin blocks,
the letter is written in Braille, sign language,
handwriting and type.
The bright, predominantly white work is visually
very striking, and in contrast to Allison’s
more usual practice, is large-scale. The school
community and the collaborating architect
consider it most successful and particularly
fascinating for children.
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These sculptures were part of a particularly
significant commission when Reece High School
was being rebuilt following a major fire. Mausz
and Bradley also designed a series of steel,
aluminium and stone sculptures to flank the path
and terraces running through the school grounds.
The new building program involved state-of-theart facilities and incorporated major artworks.
The aim was that the rebuilt school would have
a new project-based curriculum which would be
a model for the rest of the state. Thematically,
Mausz’s and Bradley’s sculptures reflect the
school’s progressive design, aims and approach.
Kieran Bradley is a graphic designer and a
Tasmanian School of Art graduate who has worked
on a wide range of design projects. Gerhard Mausz
is an experienced furniture designer and sculptor
who has completed numerous public and private
commissions. They worked in close collaboration
with architects Glenn Smith and Associates.
The artists intended the sculptures to be
monumental. They added dynamic colour,
animation and texture to the environment
— suggesting the school’s progressive nature
— to attract, motivate and inspire students.
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The media used in the sculptural columns are
cast concrete and aluminium. The four columns
form architectural supports for the roof of a
vibrant entrance area. They feature large etched
aluminium discs inserted into the spaces at their
tops, and symbolise growth and progression.
The etched disks set into the columns’ tops are
variations on the circle shape — a good example
of diversity within an overriding visual theme.
Photography: Gerhard Mausz
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Hermie Cornelisse is more generally known for her
ingenious, creative ceramics. In undertaking this
commission, a paved courtyard, she undertook
a style of work outside her usual practice with
outstanding results.
The paved courtyard/playground area of the
schoolyard was patterned with abstract designs
in strong colours — black, red, blue and white
— and was decided upon by Cornelisse in
collaboration with the architect working on the
area’s development, so that the paving design,
building colours and shaped concrete decking
of classroom blocks are all effectively integrated.
The pattern was applied to the plain bitumen
with special baked-on paint designed for use in
road markings, plus coloured brick pavers and
red bitumen.
The design covers a large courtyard area between
new classrooms and older buildings and is made
up of a number of straight or curved, whole
or perforated lines, intersecting and crossing
the courtyard. It is a dynamic work that is an
irresistible source of creative play and also links
the two sections of the school very effectively.
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Axiom Furniture is an award-winning partnership
of two of Tasmania’s leading contemporary
furniture designers, Jane Hutchinson and Dan
Whiting, producing contemporary furniture mostly
in Tasmanian native timbers.
The collaboration produced two pairs of long,
curved, silver-blue aluminium benches, providing
seating in a grassed amphitheatre that can
double as a performance area.
The gentle curves of the seating reflect the name
of the school and its location on a riverside. They
are elegant, beautiful sculptural pieces, which,
in addition, cast appealingly curved shadows
in good sun.
To tie in with the school’s motto, ‘Reach for
the Stars’, there is a matching maroon shield,
crowned with stars, on a nearby wall; the
shield, which echoes a strong tradition in
school communities, is laser-cut with a list
of students’ names.
Axiom Furniture’s seating enhances the
environment, is practical and resilient and can
be used and enjoyed by both school children and
adults. Like so many works produced under the
Art for Public Buildings Scheme, these pieces
fulfil both an aesthetic and a practical role.
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John Vella has achieved considerable national
acclaim, and lectures in sculpture at the
Tasmanian School of Art. His work is frequently
installation-based and uses unconventional
media in unexpected ways. His art has a definite
intellectual rigour, even when, as in the work
featured here, it may seem whimsical and playful.
Munch Boxes was commissioned for the Clarence
Dental Clinic whose clientele are primarily
children. The work, presented in two parts,
consists of mixed media, specifically rows of
brightly coloured lunch boxes, installed on the
walls of the dental clinic waiting room.
Munch Boxes (part 1) symbolises different meals
of the day and is installed in the clinic waiting
area. Munch Boxes uses text to draw attention
to foods that are beneficial – or less so – to
dental health. Munch Boxes (parts 2 and 3) are
situated in the corridor leading to the dental
treatment room.
Munch Boxes (part 3) features eight rows of lunch
boxes arranged in two grids as a relief wall-based
sculpture. Most of the shiny, colourful box forms
are decorated with two strategically-placed white
outline depictions of a variety of tooth shapes
– molars, incisors and so on. The white of the
illustrations contrasts effectively with the highly
attractive strong hues of the boxes themselves
– the piece is extremely visually dynamic.
For many, a trip to the dentist is not to be happily
anticipated; the pleasant surroundings created by
Munch Boxes go some way to overcome this.
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Three contemporary artworks by Tasmanian
artist Judith-Rose Thomas were purchased for the
Service Tasmania agency at Rosny, on Hobart’s
eastern shore. After winning several amateur
awards at northern agricultural shows, Thomas
was encouraged to enrol at the University of
Tasmania, Launceston, where she completed
a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts degree with
Honours in 2002 and was included on the Dean’s
Roll of Excellence. She subsequently undertook
a Master’s degree.
Judith-Rose Thomas is the first Tasmanian
Aboriginal artist to have works purchased under
the Art for Public Buildings Scheme. All three
paintings are very richly and thickly textured
using impasto gel modelling compound and
gouache techniques. Tasmanian Aboriginal
symbols from the past are incorporated to
celebrate Aboriginal spirituality, symbolism
and mythology in a contemporary manner.
Symbolic Landscape references Aboriginal
petroglyphs carved on rock formations in
north-west and north-east Tasmania.
The work, while acknowledging the past, is
resolutely contemporary in its form, with its
post-modern reference to a version of the grid.
The colours are rich and highly decorative, with
rich reds, oranges and maroons, aqua blues and
softer tones, all intermingled with an intense
and visually arresting gold.
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Karin Lettau’s water-and-glass installation
is located in an external courtyard at the
Launceston General Hospital; the artist notes
that she was particularly conscious of working
in a hospital setting.
Her artwork reflects the fact that the human body
is 90 percent water. On a three-metre glass wall
is engraved an enlarged image of a lock of hair.
Glass both defines and dissolves the boundary
between inside and outside. It is fragile and
strong, precise, clinical and, in its molten state,
fluid and malleable.
Hair has many connotations. It symbolises change
and the body’s ability to renew itself. Hair reveals
a great deal about our health and can be a
symbol of strength or a pathway to freedom.
Engraved on the glass are the German words
‘Wunde’ and ‘Wunder’, which mean ‘wound’ and
‘wonder’ or ‘miracle’. These words resemble each
other in both spelling and sound.
As Lettau notes, ‘According to how we use them,
and in what context, words are moulded into
meaning. Memory becomes a vital part of this
process. We often let the true meaning of what
is said escape us. Words are supple yet precise.
Words repeatedly spoken like mantras or prayers
can elevate us to higher realms, or expand our
notion of reality, transporting us into a space
of sound…of music which is created from
our bodies’.
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Tasmanian sculptor Matt Calvert has won
many awards including, in 1994, a Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarship to study
for his Master of Arts at Goldsmiths College,
University of London.
Matt Calvert was commissioned to create a
sculptural work for Campbell Street Primary
School, a culturally diverse junior school in
North Hobart.
Calvert decided that he would produce a metal
‘flock’ of mutton birds, to adorn the external wall
of a classroom block, facing an internal courtyard,
a hub of the school for all students, and an
area that was to be refurbished just prior to the
installation of the artworks.
Photography: Rebecca Greenwood
The series of bird-shaped sculptures, in green
along with soft blue and yellow, is based on the
forms of the migrating mutton birds in flight.
The birds have a very strong cultural importance
for many Aboriginal and islander people in
Tasmania and they are intended, in this work,
to symbolise the multiculturalism of Campbell
Street Primary School.
The birds are cut from flat, brushed aluminium
and recycled vinyl road signs. The birds made
from the used signs are worn through and
scratched in places, so as to highlight the
sometimes difficult nature of migration
journeys. (Many of the students at Campbell
Street Primary are migrants.)
Calvert found the long wall to be a challenge
because of the vast expanse of windows, but
installing the flock of birds on that particular
site also enabled them to be seen from the main
entry foyer — a widely encompassing artwork.
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Sculptor Stephen Walker produced a bronze
sculptural fountain, depicting native birds of
the Tasmanian East Coast, for the Centre with its
two general practice surgeries, a small hospital,
specialist services such as physiotherapy and
social work, outreach for the disabled, a childcare
centre and accommodation for nursing and
medical students.
It was felt that the fountain should be sited where
as many people as possible would be able to enjoy
it. After the fountain was installed in a section
of the grounds viewed from the wards and the
waiting areas, the surroundings were landscaped,
for use by the public.
Stephen Walker is a nationally significant artist
who has completed many major commissions
throughout Australia. He is especially known for
his sculptures of birds and animals.
He created a family of bronze native hens for
the fountain, balanced on a bronze log and
surrounded by large boulders surrounding a
fountain. The birds are life-sized and essentially
realistic, with just a hint of stylisation. Their
inquisitive look gives them the character and
personality of real native hens. They stand in
a carefully considered grouping, balanced on
their long legs and fitting very well into their
surroundings.
The fountain has become the focus for clients
and staff of the centre, as well as members of the
wider community. A notable aspect of this Art for
Public Buildings Scheme work was that community
members from St Mary’s and nearby Scamander
volunteered their time to assist in excavating for
the fountain, moving rocks and so on, a handson exercise not always seen in the installing of
public artworks.
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Tracey Cockburn was selected to compile a
photo-media artwork for the school. British-born
Cockburn is a printmaker with degrees in design
and fine art, who has recently completed postgraduate studies at the Tasmanian School of Art.
King Island District High School, which caters
for children from kindergarten to year 10, is now
the only school on the island. The brief was to
create a print-media-based work drawing on
historical material from the original small
schools on the island.
Cockburn utilised images from available archives,
combined with photo imagery from the old and
new school sites, creating sixteen panels in the
old-style oval format.
†
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Tracey Cockburn
Andrew Goelst
She explains, ‘As a community with a rich source
of archival material relating to the history of the
island and the schools, King Island offers a great
deal of scope for the creation of a very exciting
work that is a response to its rich history and
culture, while looking forward to the possibilities
for the future’.
Cockburn’s successful solo show, Unearthed, held
in Canberra and in Dunedin, New Zealand in 2003
was inspired by patterns and sections of images
on shards of old china which Cockburn had found
in her garden. Comparable historical research was
the focus of Cockburn’s King Island project.
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This commission comprises a series of sitespecific photo-based images by Troy Ruffels.
In 2000, Ruffels received a Samstag International
Visual Arts Scholarship for post-graduate study
at the Glasgow School of Art, after which he
completed a PhD at the Tasmanian School of Art.
His work has featured in the New York Digital
Salon and in the Primavera 1997: Exhibition
of Young Australian Artists at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Sydney.
Lights in the Trees is installed in two locations.
The main body of images is found outside and
is a set of forty-two photo-anodised aluminium
plates. A grouping of dye sublimation prints,
studies from the major work, is framed and
mounted inside the school, near the library.
Each individual image is responsive to, and
reflects, the leafy environment around the
primary school. As a group, the images make for
a contemplative visual experience based on the
progression of time. They show the play of wind
and light through the trees, and how the light
changes over several days according to different
weather conditions. The images refer to continuity
and change, growth and form.
Ruffels explains, ‘The experience of place is the
central subject of my work. I am interested in
locating appropriate visual metaphors through
a process of experience and observation…because
it is through reflecting on the forms and patterns
of everyday experience that we are able to develop
a personal sense of place and of belonging to
the world’ .
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German-born photographer Christl Berg came to
Tasmania in the 1980s. She lectures in Print Media
at the University of Tasmania’s School of Visual
and Performing Arts, Launceston. Berg completed
a PhD with the Tasmanian School of Art in 2004.
The images are printed on matt archival paper in
subtle duo — and tri-tones and are individually
mounted. They are installed under Perspex. They
protrude slightly from the wall and can be
assembled in different groupings.
Her work focuses on aspects of the natural world,
specifically the small, overlooked details rather
than the grander vistas — or as she calls them,
‘vast horizons and picturesque scenes’ — which
she leaves to others. Berg spent a lengthy time
photographing on Maria Island, cataloguing and
recording, in minute detail, her botanical and
zoological ‘finds’. This was, she says, ‘an intimate,
contemplative manner of being and working in
a place’.
The images are delicate and beautiful. Berg has
found and photographed a remarkable collection
or cross-section of plant life, shells, seaweeds
and so on and each of these has been cleverly
photographed, so as to be both technically skilled
documentation and, in many cases, fascinating
semi-abstract images complete in themselves.
Finds is an extensive series of installation
groupings of digital images — 187 images ranging
in size from 12 x 12 cm to 29 x 40 cm.
The works are installed in the Anne O’Byrne
Building of the hospital, complementing its
comprehensive collection of Tasmanian art.
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Deborah Edwards is a Tasmanian sculptor
who graduated from the School of Visual and
Performing Arts, University of Tasmania at
Inveresk. Her work has been widely exhibited,
including as part of 10 Days on the Island
in 2003.
The screen could, ‘refer to historical or contemporary attributes of Nubeena, particularly to
its spectacular natural environs’ and/or could
reflect the fact that the school teaches Japanese
as its modern language.
She created the decorative external steel screen,
thalassic dream sequence for the Tasman District
School at Nubeena. The School’s building program
had just seen construction of a new kindergarten
building and alterations to other classrooms. It
sought a decorative screen to create a strong and
welcoming visual focus to the entrance of the
new kindergarten.
In keeping with these ideas, Edwards used large
sheets of steel with a combination of circular
Japanese designs cut from them. This creates
a visual screen, she explains, ‘that enables
children, teachers and visitors to “see beyond”
the boundaries of the screen to the environment
outside the kindergarten. The screens create
a visual focus that encourages privacy whilst
maintaining openness to the world outside’.
As the school is also the centre for a range of
activities and services such as the local library
and the community radio, the proposed screen
was to be ‘highly visible to the general public’.
The steel panels are slightly curved and give
a flowing effect, like that of a gentle wave –
a reference to the coastline that is an integral
part of life on the Tasman Peninsula.
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@"8#F#B"8#>: of Fine Arts from the Tasmanian School of Art; he
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has a particularly strong connection to Thailand,
where he has undertaken five residencies.
The brief for this project called for ‘a wallmounted artwork comprising multiple components
installed to create a patterned effect’ on the front
exterior rendered wall. After considering ‘apple’
imagery, because of the connection with the Huon
Valley, Bonde settled on the motif of the gum leaf,
cast in bronze and attached in such a way that it
appears to ‘float’ on the wall.
†
Rebecca Greenwood
The arrangement of the gum leaf ‘multiples’ is in
an essentially random order; the subtly shining,
curved bronze gum leaf forms are distributed
over the pale blue-green wall in an aesthetically
pleasing pattern, but not in regular lines or
groupings. The spaces between the leaves can be
seen as a visual metaphor for the journey of life,
with its many twists, turns and dead-ends. The
work is a vibrant embellishment to an otherwise
dull wall and is very engaging.
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Ebb and Flow are two series of digital prints
produced by Jean Svoboda and Jessica Ball in
2003 utilising photo-media, acrylic and light.
Both artists are graduates of the Tasmanian
School of art; Ball completed a PhD in 2000.
These are subtly shimmering works, their lush
colours and organic forms indeed suggesting
the surface and flow of waters as the artists
intended. There is something almost hypnotic
about the images.
The two artists created an illuminated twodimensional image on a viewing surface, by
passing light through layers of translucent
materials and photographic media sandwiched
between the light source and Perspex.
The series of works Flow, along with the related
series Ebb, is installed in a heavy-traffic area
of the Huon Valley Community and Health Centre,
so that it has a large audience. The works are
complemented by a series of wall-based drawings
in conte, charcoal and graphite and an external
feature wall in bronze and steel by artist
Ian Bonde.
The artists drew inspiration from the natural
environment of the Huon Valley, focusing on
the visual and symbolic aspects of water, its
undulating, reflective surfaces and its flow
and movement.
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Linda Fredheim came to design-in-wood as
a mature-age student and graduated with a
Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Furniture
Design at the Tasmanian School of Art.
She says, ‘…what I really like doing is making
cabinets. I enjoy making drawers, which is a bit
crazy as they are so time-consuming, but I really
love the process of opening them and knowing
that everything isn’t obvious from the outside
of a piece of furniture…I really love the process
of cataloguing and storage’.
These comments apply well to the reception
counter and display case Fredheim created for
Montagu Bay Primary School. Made of blackwood,
eucalypt, MDF, plywood, brass and Perspex, the
reception counter and display case enhance the
school’s foyer. The display case is a grid grouping
of eight wall-mounted minimalist cabinets of
varying dimensions to allow a range of interesting
items to fit within.
The reception counter evolved in design to
resemble a ship seen in profile, with ‘portholes’
each containing a visually stimulating item,
painting or drawing, at child height so as to
engage the primary school students as well as
adult viewers.
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Martin Walch is a graduate of the Tasmanian
School of Art who utilises computer-based
digital art, photography, video, sculpture and
installation. He has completed several significant
projects based on or in the mines of Tasmania’s
west coast. He is also a keen rock climber.
Walch developed a functional artwork for
the senior secondary college at Claremont
— a visually interesting climbing wall for the
new gymnasium.
Walch’s work covers a corner of two walls. The
lower section is constructed of block work and the
upper part is unclad building substructure. The
artist faced a number of structural and logistical
challenges. He was assisted by the Australian
Climbing Gyms Association and by access to
a number of industry publications on safe
operating procedures and standards.
He designed a wall which becomes more
challenging as the climber progresses from the
slope on the left to the steep and overhanging
sections on the right.
The climbing wall is covered with computer-routed
plywood and textured paint. The painted surface
of the wall is a minimalist, circle-patterned
design with a jagged line at about quarter-height
to suggest hills and mountains, and a circular
‘reflecting lake’ form below.
There is an optical illusion in the work, as the
design breaks up or comes together depending
on the viewer’s position. When it comes together,
the circles and lake float in space, creating a
powerful three-dimensional illusion reminiscent
of Walch’s stereoscopic photographic works.
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Peter Prasil is an experienced and highly original
furniture designer-maker who completed a PhD at
the Tasmanian School of Art in 2001. His work is
held in the collection of the Smithsonian Institute
of Technology, in the USA. He was a finalist in the
City of Hobart Art Prize in 1999.
The bench features an oval-shaped black leather
seat, generously upholstered, with a curved
timber trim and two supports, each consisting of
four legs and detailed feet. These supports form
truncated triangles or rather skewed four-sided
shapes, as the two sets of four legs are contained.
Prasil designed and made innovative seating
and a large coffee table for Prospect High School.
The seating comprises four matching chairs and
a spectacularly striking bench in leather, timber
veneer and metal.
The back of the bench is composed of a relatively
slim panel of light-coloured timber, gently curved
in a convex formation. The overall effect is of
elegance, simplicity and individual, original
design, making the work a far cry from the
traditional notion of school furniture.
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Simon Ancher is a furniture designer who has
collaborated with many architectural firms and
practitioners. He has adopted the industrialised
form of furniture-making, using specialist
equipment to create larger-scale, distinctly
architectural forms. Nevertheless, the furniture
pieces still require considerable hand-finishing.
Ancher was chosen to design and make a
sculptural outdoor bench seat for the campus of
the Clarence TAFE College, Warrane. The Clarence
TAFE provides a range of courses in art and design,
Aboriginal studies, carpentry, child and aged care
and Adult Education, among others.
The college wanted the work to feature colour
and texture and to reflect the educational role
of the facility.
The artists who provided works for the campus,
Ancher, Gerhard Mausz and Kieran Bradley,
worked co-operatively to ensure that their
artworks were complementary. Ancher created
the steel and aluminium bench seat Conversation
Raft as a centrepiece to a large grouping of tables
and seating located outside the cafeteria. Mausz
and Bradley created a wall design of sand blasted
concrete that forms a back drop to the furniture.
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The seat is a large, modernist work, in smoothly
textured polished aluminium and with gently
curved edges. It is approximately oval in shape
and is made up of over two dozen ‘slats’ joined
along the length of the work. The seat has no
back support, so can be used from either side
and can accommodate a large group of people
sitting together.
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A recent work in the Art for Public Buildings
Scheme is Toy Box by designer-maker Adrian Read,
a set of furniture for the new outdoor learning
area at the school.
Read has researched the concepts of play, fun
and playground design, looking at how these ideas
can be related back to furniture for both indoors
and outdoors.
He built seating that is a mix of the functional
and the creative, with a strong sculptural focus,
but remaining accessible and in tune with the
surrounding environment.
The seats are made from plywood, aluminium
and painted fibreglass. They utilise simple,
recognisable geometric shapes — triangles,
circles, rectangles and squares — in a variety
of strong colours, with some colours repeated
to create coherence and balance. The individual
shapes are joined to provide seating for a
considerable number of children and to create
intriguing shapes.
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These contemporary works are a collaboration
between Rebecca Coote, James Newitt and Fin
Seccombe, who created the freestanding screen,
reception desk and suspended ceiling artwork
for the Tasman Multi-Purpose Service Centre at
Nubeena on the Tasman Peninsula.
As they describe their concept in their proposal,
‘part of the identity of Nubeena is its proximity to
the ocean. The location of the town on the edge
of the sea places it between rugged cliffs and
the ever-moving sea — setting up a dichotomy
between solidness and flux, stillness and
movement’.
The layers of the Nubeena inhabitants collective
memories are portrayed through glass and
wood. The Tasmanian timber used refers to the
landscape. The ephemeral qualities of glass
— transient reflections — create a sense of
movement or flux, evoking the ever-moving sea.
The three-dimensional suspended artwork hangs
in the clerestory roof area, parallel to the floor.
Its patterned, textured layers of glass and acrylic
change and interact as the viewer looks at them
from below. The work has a feeling of lightness
and the patterning creates constantly changing
shadows on the floor below, a subtle play of light
and shadow that is integral to the work.
The reception counter shares motifs and materials
with the more intentionally decorative art pieces.
Blackheart sassafras veneer is used horizontally
with small glass features suggesting the landscape of the peninsula and its surrounding waters.
The freestanding screen, in strips of timber and
layered glass, displays mappings, tracings of
man’s inhabitation of the region and suggestions
of constantly changing weather patterns.
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Painter Lorraine Biggs is an artist who also works
in other media, such as mosaic, animation and
three-dimensional work. Her work is represented
in numerous important collections including
Artbank, the University of Tasmania and the Art
Gallery of Western Australia.
Her work tends to concentrate on the natural
environment, especially clouds, the forest, land
and sea. For the corridor adjacent to the main
foyer and waiting area in the New Norfolk District
Hospital, Biggs painted close-up, detailed images
of hops on the vine. (Hops are widely considered
to be a symbol for the New Norfolk/Derwent Valley
region and are still grown in abundance there
today.) The images are large-scale and in acrylic
on pine panels.
The hops, in their varying tones of green, from
deepest forest green through to yellowish lime,
make up a striking pattern, with some elements —
shapes, colour, tone and size — repeated but with
yet more of these elements subtly varied across
the works. There is an unending variety in the
portrayal of each hop, flower and leaf, the result
of much detailed observation and painstaking
work and giving a richness and sense of depth
which adds to their photo-realist style.
2.(7A*&-.,,1%
Sculptor, furniture designer and specialist
drum-maker Marcus Tatton was selected to build
a freestanding sculpture for Taroona High School,
south of Hobart.
Tatton graduated with a major in Furniture
Design from the Tasmanian School of Art. His
carved sculptural works have been exhibited at
the prestigious Sculpture Objects and Functional
Art (SOFA) exhibitions in Chicago and New York
and at del Mano Gallery in Los Angeles. His work
is represented in the Tasmanian Wood Design
Collection and the Tasmanian Museum and
Art Gallery.
Artist Gerard Mausz was commissioned to
fabricate bench seats to complement Tatton’s
work; crossovers in design elements were to be
included in both projects as a collaboration
between the two designer-makers.
Tatton planned a conical aluminium fountain-like
form for the school entrance way. The work, in
gentle greys and grey-blues, is decorated with
motifs of circles and dashes — Tatton’s signature
ornamental designs — which can be read as ‘stick
figures’. Made of welded metals, they permit a
dynamic play of light, especially as the viewer
moves around the sculpture. The glistening effect
resembles the sparkling of sunlight across the
Derwent River.
The circle and dash motifs also represent several
fields of contemporary perception. Besides
stick figures, molecules, digital information in
transit, musical scores and even Morse-coded
messages are implied. Tatton explains, ‘Using
these elements there is scope to impart pictogram
stories for audiences to mull over, ambiguous
readings adding to the visual interest’.
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English-born John Smith, a furniture designermaker, and Penny Smith, a ceramist, furnituredesigner and sculptor are confirmed Tasmanians.
John was originally invited to Tasmania in 1973
to establish the design program at the Tasmanian
School of Art.
Relating to the ‘Meander’ pathway, the sculptures
address the idea of ‘journey’ as a metaphor for an
educational path. An ‘arbour’ over the pathway
creates a sense of passing through and under,
and can be used to grow vines over time, so as
to give a sense of passing through the seasons.
The Hagley Farm Primary School brief was for a
series of three related sculptures, located along a
pathway known as the ‘Meander’. The farm school
is renowned for its curriculum of subjects related
to farming and animal welfare.
Materials used reflect agricultural equipment,
such as farm gates and wire fencing, taken to
a higher level of finish. Made of stainless steel,
Laserlite and rock spalls, the sculptures are based
on arch forms. Each arch truss-frame is partially
clad in weld mesh grid wire and partly filled with
quarried rock.
The works were to provide shelter, to use changes
in colour and/or texture to create a sense of
progression, to play with visual perspective, to
incorporate plants if possible and to integrate
with the landscape design. Also required were
a pair of additional sculptures that would be
simplified versions of the larger three.
The final two sculptures are made from partial
segments of arches to depict ‘the natural process
of decomposition and re-growth, completing the
ecological cycle’.
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Neil Haddon moved to Tasmania in 1996 from
Barcelona where he had worked as an artist and
teacher for six years. In Spain, he worked in a
variety of media, always with an adherence to
abstract geometric painting. Haddon completed
a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Tasmanian
School of Art in 2002 during which he began
to focus on minimalism, and has consistently
worked to open up the rigid, reductive surfaces
of minimalism to make them more approachable.
His concerns include the ordering and sequencing
of colours that are found in our built environment,
the tilting and skewing of planes that relate
to the horizontal and vertical planes of that
environment, and designs that engage viewers
both visually and physically as they negotiate
these perspectives. Pitch 204, an external wallmounted artwork for the Hagley school, continues
these concerns.
The work is energetic and colourful, using a
wide range of hues, in paints bought directly off
the shelf. Not only does it address familiar — if
abstracted and skewed — subject matter, it does
so in the colours and paints that echo the colours
found within the built environment of Oatlands.
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Artist Simone Pfister created the series of
embossed paper works, Monday’s Child, based
on infants’ christening robes.
The works are inspired by the old rhyme;
‘Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go…’
Pfister explains, ‘The work is a set of seven
framed white robes, composed of embossed
paper made from hand-cut lino stencils and
prints made from hand-drawn stone lithography
and photo-transfer processes. Lithography is a
printmaking method whereby an image is drawn
onto a stone with a greasy crayon. It relies on the
principle that oil and water do not mix. A negative
mask is made and the crayon is removed. Ink is
rolled on to the stone and the print is produced by
passing the stone and paper through a press’.
The prints and papers are painstakingly cut out
and sewn into symbolic childhood garments.
Embroidery stitching is used both to join and
decorate the surfaces.
As Handmark Gallery director Pat Cleveland
puts it, ‘Simone’s work explores fantastical
memories of childhood. The repetitive and slow
process allows her time to conjure a delightful
world inspired by childhood desires and dreams.
Hand-drawn lithographic images of flowers,
insects and other garden motifs are carefully
cut out and stitched together to make exquisite
children’s garments. She explores the christening
gown as a metaphor for the cycle of life and
the long, flowing robe is a talisman to protect
the child’.
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Hungarian-born Zsofia Samu migrated to
Tasmania in 2002. She was a finalist in the
2004 City of Hobart Art Prize (textile category).
She explains, ‘My major source of inspiration is
the Tasmanian wilderness. The island’s natural
beauties have had a special impact on me …
Tasmania is a wonderland of ocean waves, rugged
cliff tops, soaring trees and tiny shells, all of
which serve to ignite my imagination. Every walk
in the wild places of Tasmania I find myself
staring at the beauty around me, be it mosscovered gum trees or lichen-encrusted rocks,
wondering how I can reflect these in my textiles’.
Samu uses an ancient technique, double weaving
and in Time Layers uses thin copper and steel
wires in varying colours and diameters. Fishing
line and a range of yarns in varied colours are
also employed.
As hung, the work takes a rectangular shape, but
it is in fact made up of five discernibly different
panels. Text is incorporated into the panels which
all differ in colours, tone and openness of weave.
It has a striking yet subtle beauty in the colours
and delicacy of the wire and threads used and
in the ephemeral effects of light on the work.
Differing details within each of the panels are
intriguing; individual panels contain fragments
of materials of the previous panel to represent
the layering of time and knowledge.
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Illustrator and painter Peter Gouldthorpe is well
known for his extraordinarily life-like trompe
l’oeil murals and childrens book illustrations.
Of the commission for the Oatlands school library,
Gouldthorpe says, ‘I wanted to celebrate books
in all their diversity, from a baby’s alphabet
pop-up book through picture books, comics, novels
and information books to an ancient book whose
content can only be guessed at. I also wanted
to hint at the vast range of book genres and the
different calligraphy and design employed to
convey the essence of each type of book. Finally,
I referred to Oatlands itself by various means,
including the school colours’.
Therefore the work references the adventure comic,
the how-to book, a moving tab book featuring
domestic animals, space illustrations,
a scrapbook featuring Oatlands, a novel,
open with the text legible, an open atlas, a
diagrammatic book, a manual and the ancient
‘mystery’ book.
Gouldthorpe’s aim was that the work would,
‘celebrate a life with books, from young to old,
and also show a little of the breadth of life with
books’ and each book was planned as being,
‘entertaining in its own way’.
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Index of artists
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Allison, Diane
Ancher, Simon
Armstrong, Dan
Arnold, Raymond
Ball, Jessica
Barratt, Phillip
Beecroft, Chris
Bell, Gregor
Berg, Christl
Biggs, Lorraine
Bonde, Ian
Bradley, Kieran
Burns, Tim
Calvert, Matthew
Canning, Torquil
Chick, Shelley
Clarke, Glen
Cockburn, Tracey
Coote, Rebecca
Coppola, Filomena
Cornelisse, Hermie
Costello, Peter
Davis, George
Daw, Robyn
Delrue, Chantale
Dyer, Geoff
Edwards, Deborah
Edwards, Tim
Fredheim, Linda
Frost, Ruth
Gamble, Betsy
Gouldthorpe, Peter
Gray, Merv
Greenwood, Garry
Haddon, Neil
Hall, Patrick
Hamilton, David
Hiller, Christine (Kit)
Holzner, Anton
Hore, Curtis
Houghton, Stuart
Hudson, Wayne Z
Hunter, Janice
Hutchinson, Jane
Ikin, Robert
Jenyns, Lorraine
Keeling, David
Lettau, Karin
Lindsay, Sara
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MacDonald Anne
Mace, Graham
McIntyre, Alan
McKinnon, Robyn
Marsden, David
Marwood, Jim
Mason, Penny
Mausz, Gerhard
Milojevic, Milan
Morrison, Anne
Munday, Ian
Murphy, Roger
Newitt, James
O’Rourke, Rosemary
Payne, Julie
Perkins, Kevin
Pfister, Simone
Prasil, Peter
Read, Adrian
Richmond, Oliffe
Ruffels, Troy
Samek, Tom
Samu, Zsofia
Schlitz, Michael
Seccombe, Dolphin (Fin)
Smith, John
Smith, Penny
Stephenson, David
Stronach, Paccy
Stuart, Tony
Svoboda, Jean
Swann, Heather B
Tatton, Marcus
Taylor, Peter
Thomas, Judith-Rose
Todd, Kevin
Turner, Jenny
Vella, John
Walch, Martin
Walker, Stephen
Wastell, Richard
Whiting, Dan
Wilson, Peter
Wolfhagen, Philip
Woods, Sharyn
Wright, Helen
Young, Jock
Zika, Paul
Biographies
Noel Frankham
Noel Frankham is Professor of Art and Head of School, Tasmanian School of Art, University of
Tasmania. He has, with colleagues, undertaken several significant research and review projects
for government, including a review of South Australia’s public art and design program and
policy; a review of the Biennale of Sydney; an audit of arts and cultural facilities in the Sydney
Local Government Area; and a review of Austrade’s contemporary art export program. Noel
was previously Professor and Head of School with the South Australian School of Art, Director
of Object — Australian Centre for Craft and Design, Director of the Australia Council’s Visual
Arts/Craft Board, a Program Manager with the Australia Council, and commenced professional
life as Extension Services Officer with the Queensland Art Gallery.
Diana Klaosen
Di Klaosen is a freelance arts writer and curator, writing most recently for Art Monthly
Australia, Realtime and Artlink. Klaosen holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Tasmanian
School of Art, University of Tasmania. She was originally trained and worked as a teacher.
In 2002, Klaosen was awarded a Sapin-Jaloustre Scholarship to research curatorial practice
(the subject of her Master’s) in Paris, based at the Cité Internationale des Artes.
Deborah Malor
Dr Deborah Malor coordinates the theory program at the School of Visual and Performing Arts,
University of Tasmania, Launceston. She has written extensively on contemporary art, and art
in public spaces and buildings. Deborah Malor migrated from Sydney to Tasmania in 2000, to
teach at the School of Visual & Performing Arts. She studied at the National Art School, East
Sydney and at the University of Sydney. Her research on a range of aspects of landscape and
the built environment has been published both in Australia and internationally. Before taking
up university teaching in visual culture, design and architecture, she worked in the heritage
industry as a researcher in eco-design, as an academic and a consultant.
Justy Phillips
Justy Phillips is currently Head of Graphic Design at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of
Tasmania. Phillips moved to Tasmania from England in 2003, where she co-founded the design
partnership girlsinflight and spent several years teaching graphic design in institutions such
as the London College of Printing, University of Brighton and Kent Institute of Art & Design.
A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Justy continues to explore ideas through expecting good
weather, a multi-disciplinary arts practice she established in 2004.
Peter Angus Robinson
Peter Angus Robinson is currently studying for a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours degree with
the University of Tasmania; he is majoring in photography. Robinson has had a substantial
career in commercial photography during which he was employed by the National Maritime
Museum and the National Gallery in London and by a number of commercial laboratories.
Robinson has won a number of awards and prizes including the 2004 Hutchins Art Prize,
Artery Student Prize, and in 1997, the (British) Museums Association Photographic Competition.
Robinson is a committed artist who exhibits regularly.
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