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Sydney Morning Herald
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Janet Dawson was told to ‘stick to one' thing. Instead, she broke all the rules
The first thing that strikes you about Janet Dawson is her voice, deep and resonant, a voice from another era. But the artist, aged 90, is not at all stuffy. 'I'm a lucky old bat,' she says by way of introduction when we meet at her home on a sprawling bush property in Ocean Grove on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula. Dawson lives in a low-slung, 1970s modernist home with exposed brick walls and long rows of large windows that look onto eucalypts, shrubs and lawn. Her studio, or 'pod' as she likes to call it, is in a sheltered corner of the garden. Clad in corrugated iron, the studio is crammed with paintings and drawings, some finished, some not, Dawson's art books, and remnants of her former life in rural New South Wales. Above the creative clutter rises an incongruously giant white sculpture of Mickey and Minnie Mouse that Dawson bought from a nearby furniture warehouse. 'We've got to find a home for Mickey and Minnie because I love them so much,' Dawson says, her intensely brown eyes flashing with a hint of mischief, just like the photos of her as a younger artist. I can tell this will be fun. But the interview almost didn't happen. Dawson was in hospital recently after a fall. She's recovered remarkably well and sits comfortably in her armchair, ready to chat about her six-decade-plus career as an artist, print-maker and organic farmer ahead of her times. I visit her on a sunny winter's morning ahead of the first major retrospective of her work, opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on July 19, a recognition long overdue. Dawson made her name in the 1960s as a superstar of abstraction, one of only three women included in the National Gallery of Victoria's landmark 1968 exhibition The Field. One of the key works in that exhibition, Rollascape 2, will be shown in the AGNSW retrospective. It's big, bold and yellow, a series of exuberant curves that unfurl for three luscious metres. 'That's one of my favourite paintings,' Dawson says as I show her an image of it on my laptop. 'I think it works very well, and the fact that it means absolutely nothing is terrific.' Dawson doesn't play by the rules, never has. As a younger artist, she'd often be pressed by critics to explain the 'meaning' of her abstract works. She'd patiently respond, in her cultivated tones, that 'meaning' didn't reside in the story a painting told, but in a painting's shapes and colours, and the emotions and sensations it provoked. When Rollascape 2 was exhibited again at the NGV in The Field Revisited in 2018, Dawson described it as 'an expression of a painting trying to escape from the prison of the square'. That splendidly vigorous image could equally apply to the artist herself. Dawson has escaped categorisation, followed her own artistic instinct, regardless of fashion. When American critic Clement Greenberg visited Australia in the 1960s, he told her to 'stick to one' thing. She ignored the advice. 'One of the great strengths of her work is that she didn't conform,' says exhibition curator Denise Mimmocchi, the AGNSW's acting head of Australian art. That it has taken so long for a state gallery to stage a retrospective of her work may have something to do with Dawson's resistance to neat definition. Her gender, and eventual retreat from the centres of art in Sydney and Melbourne may also have played a part, Mimmocchi says. After coming to prominence as a pioneer of abstraction, Dawson faded from the limelight as she moved towards realism in works inspired by the natural world. The shift coincided with her move to Binalong in regional New South Wales in the 1970s with her late husband Michael Boddy, a Yorkshire-born actor and playwright. Out bush, Dawson didn't for a moment miss the art cliques of Melbourne and Sydney. 'Oh, they were awful,' Dawson tells me, pulling a face. 'It's nothing to do with artists, it's all to do with …' She completes the sentence with a series of comical gestures that indicate the tedious snobbishness of it all, sending me into fits of laughter. We're sitting in a small back room of the rambling house that she shares with her extended family – niece Penny, Penny's partner Lee, and Dawson's sister-in-law Jill, wife of Dawson's late brother Cameron. He'd be pleased to see them all here listening in as Dawson tells stories about her adventure-filled life. It was Cameron's vision to build a house with enough rooms for several generations to live comfortably together. Dawson's works are scattered throughout. In the room where we sit, there's a buoyant still life of a leafy, broken-off branch of a loquat tree brimming with velvety-yellow fruit that spill across a bustling domestic table. At the bottom right of the composition, we glimpse the artist's hand capturing the moment. The pastel work was created at Binalong, at Dawson and Boddy's rural property, Scribble Rock, where the couple lived for almost 40 years. In style, the loquat painting couldn't be more different to Rollascape 2, and yet both works share a sense of energy, motion and light. Mimmocchi tells me that even when Dawson was 'meant to be doing colour field painting, which was all about the flat surface, she instilled elements of light and painterliness into her aesthetic'. Featuring more than 80 works, the AGNSW retrospective reveals an artist of versatility, skill, and moods, unafraid to range across artistic styles, from the cascading abstraction of Rollascape 2, to the meditative realism of Moon at dawn through a telescope (2000), to glorious still lifes such as Scribble Rock pomegranates (1999). What first inspired Dawson to take up art? 'Very simply, my mother,' Dawson tells me. 'She was gifted. When she was a young girl she thought that she would be an artist, but then of course she met my father and became a wife instead.' Dawson was born in Sydney in 1935, to parents Olga and Kingsley. Before she had children, Olga had attended Julian Ashton's esteemed Sydney Art School, whose alumni include William Dobell and Joshua Smith. With her knowledge of art, Olga recognised her daughter's unusual talent and encouraged it. She even sought the advice of state gallery directors, including then AGNSW head Will Ashton who recommended supplying the child with paper and pencils – 'no rulers, no rubbers, no copying' – and leaving her be. 'I loved drawing,' Dawson says. 'I drew and drew and drew. She used to give me big papers and charcoals. It was normal in our house that I always lay on the floor and drew, and this, I think, was intended to give me confidence right at the beginning. All my gift comes from my mother.' They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. When the family moved to Melbourne in 1940, Dawson began Saturday morning art classes with the realist painter Harold Septimus Power, at his studio on the corner of Elizabeth and Little Collins Street. Dawson was the only child in the class, aged 11. 'He was a lovely, funny old fella,' Dawson says. 'He was a very good artist, wonderful training. To me, his studio was the beginning of my art work. There was this little easel – it was really funny – the other big artists all around me. I just remember it being very comical. They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. No, I shouldn't be rude. They respected that a child was to be taught early.' Dawson went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. A tonalist self-portrait created in the early 1950s while she was a student there, depicts a poised, beautiful young woman, silk scarf knotted around her neck, confidently meeting the viewer's gaze. (Dawson would later model for Italian-born fashion photographer Bruno Benini in a series of studio portraits and shoots in Melbourne.) In 1956, Dawson won the NGV Travelling Scholarship, another significant step in her career. She studied at London's Slade School of Fine Art, where, frustrated with her attempts at painting, she began to explore lithography and printmaking. Her passion for painting was reignited when she saw The New American Painting exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1959, on tour from New York's Museum of Modern Art, and featuring the work of abstractionists including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Adolph Gottlieb. At Slade, Dawson won another scholarship, which funded further travel through Europe, including a six-month stay in the small village of Anticoli Corrado, north of Rome. The area's picturesque valleys, hills and rolling clouds spurred Dawson's first significant series of abstract landscapes. 'A painter can live here without anyone thinking him queer or bohemian – I'm a farmer – I'm a painter – same thing,' she wrote home to her family while living in Anticoli Corrado. In her catalogue essay, Mimmocchi notes that these thoughts 'had a prescient correspondence' to the life that Dawson later found at Binalong. In 1961, Dawson returned to Melbourne and had her first solo exhibition at the innovative Gallery A, in Flinders Street, founded by designer Max Hutchinson and sculptor Clement Meadmore to promote modern art and design. When Gallery A moved to a larger space in South Yarra, Dawson established a print workshop there and became the manager and master printer. In the following years Dawson also worked on props and sets for the experimental Emerald Hill Theatre company in South Melbourne, and in 1965 met her future husband, Michael Boddy, there. 'He wasn't fat then. He had a lovely face, really. I thought he was beautiful, actually beautiful, that's all,' Dawson says. 'I certainly rejoiced in his presence, and looked forward to his presence, and made sure that when I knew he was coming to the gallery, I'd be there, all that sort of thing.' In a living room in another part of the house hangs Dawson's 1973 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Boddy. It was her first Archibald entry, and she became the third woman to win the prize in its 52-year history. She depicts Boddy as a gentle giant in a lilac t-shirt and worn hat, fingers clasped on his generous belly as he reads. Behind him fans, a rake and a spade, symbols of their rural existence. The painting won't be in the retrospective, nor will another blazingly good portrait, Summer 1986, in which the older Boddy – tall, fleshy, bespectacled, grumpy – lies naked, bar slippers and socks, in a pose reminiscent of Monet's Olympia. Boddy said he much preferred it the Archibald-winning portrait. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works. The 1973 portrait has just been returned to Dawson after being on tour for several years in the Archie 100 exhibition. Mimmocchi had originally included Summer 1986 in her loan requests (it's in the National Portrait Gallery collection), but after much thought, decided it didn't 'fit' the retrospective, 'both physically within the space but also given its overpowering presence.' In a more subtle tribute to the significant men in Dawson's life, Mimmocchi has included a smaller pencil portrait of Boddy, and one of Cameron. Dawson and Boddy married in 1968, the same year that Dawson's abstract works would be celebrated in The Field. In 1974, the couple moved to Binalong, and three years later ensconced themselves even further in the bush, buying the property they named Scribble Rock. Boddy famously remarked: 'Our marriage is one long conversation. We moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.' 'That was absolutely true,' Dawson confirms. 'Yes, we just rattled on together for years.' She describes the move to Scribble Rock as the 'absolute coming together' of her work. The natural world was a fount of inspiration, and so too the bounty that she and Boddy grew. Cauliflowers, cabbages, turnips, onions, sprouting potatoes and more inhabit Dawson's wondrous still lifes. Dead animals feature too – a kookaburra, a young wedge-tailed eagle, a hare, a tawny frogmouth – all rendered with exquisite care, homages to the transience of life, and evocative of 17th century Dutch still lifes. Dawson tells me that Boddy would often bring the dead creatures in for her to paint. 'He'd say 'there's a dead bird down there, I think you'd like it, go and get it or I'll go and get it for you if you like'. So he would bring it up for me, or I'd go and get it, and then we'd talk about it, and he might even write something about it.' At Scribble Rock, Dawson and Boddy immersed themselves in the local community and produced a newsletter, Kitchen Talk, which Boddy would write, and Dawson illustrate, promoting the principles of organic farming. We look at one of the abstract landscapes Dawson created in Binalong, Balgalal series 5 – Sunday Morning (1975), named for the creek that ran through Scribble Rock, a vast triptych that stretches for almost four metres. 'Well, they're not really abstract,' Dawson corrects me. 'They're trees,' she says. 'They're living things, and you actually see that – that's out here and that's behind it, and that one's there, and that's next to it and coming that way,' she says. 'So when you start looking you see that they're actual solid tree shapes, but they're just simplified.' Loading After Boddy's death in 2014, Dawson moved back to the Binalong township before relocating to Ocean Grove in 2016 to be with family. Her recent fall has kept her from the studio of late, but she's keen to go back. 'When everything settles, I'd love to go and work in the pod,' Dawson says. 'I feel I'm sort of ungracious by not working in it. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works,' she says, emphasising the sentiment with a theatrical growl. What will the works be about? 'I don't know,' she says, and makes another long, low, growling sound, as though summoning ideas. 'But it's coming.'
The Age
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Janet Dawson was told to ‘stick to one' thing. Instead, she broke all the rules
The first thing that strikes you about Janet Dawson is her voice, deep and resonant, a voice from another era. But the artist, aged 90, is not at all stuffy. 'I'm a lucky old bat,' she says by way of introduction when we meet at her home on a sprawling bush property in Ocean Grove on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula. Dawson lives in a low-slung, 1970s modernist home with exposed brick walls and long rows of large windows that look onto eucalypts, shrubs and lawn. Her studio, or 'pod' as she likes to call it, is in a sheltered corner of the garden. Clad in corrugated iron, the studio is crammed with paintings and drawings, some finished, some not, Dawson's art books, and remnants of her former life in rural New South Wales. Above the creative clutter rises an incongruously giant white sculpture of Mickey and Minnie Mouse that Dawson bought from a nearby furniture warehouse. 'We've got to find a home for Mickey and Minnie because I love them so much,' Dawson says, her intensely brown eyes flashing with a hint of mischief, just like the photos of her as a younger artist. I can tell this will be fun. But the interview almost didn't happen. Dawson was in hospital recently after a fall. She's recovered remarkably well and sits comfortably in her armchair, ready to chat about her six-decade-plus career as an artist, print-maker and organic farmer ahead of her times. I visit her on a sunny winter's morning ahead of the first major retrospective of her work, opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on July 19, a recognition long overdue. Dawson made her name in the 1960s as a superstar of abstraction, one of only three women included in the National Gallery of Victoria's landmark 1968 exhibition The Field. One of the key works in that exhibition, Rollascape 2, will be shown in the AGNSW retrospective. It's big, bold and yellow, a series of exuberant curves that unfurl for three luscious metres. 'That's one of my favourite paintings,' Dawson says as I show her an image of it on my laptop. 'I think it works very well, and the fact that it means absolutely nothing is terrific.' Dawson doesn't play by the rules, never has. As a younger artist, she'd often be pressed by critics to explain the 'meaning' of her abstract works. She'd patiently respond, in her cultivated tones, that 'meaning' didn't reside in the story a painting told, but in a painting's shapes and colours, and the emotions and sensations it provoked. When Rollascape 2 was exhibited again at the NGV in The Field Revisited in 2018, Dawson described it as 'an expression of a painting trying to escape from the prison of the square'. That splendidly vigorous image could equally apply to the artist herself. Dawson has escaped categorisation, followed her own artistic instinct, regardless of fashion. When American critic Clement Greenberg visited Australia in the 1960s, he told her to 'stick to one' thing. She ignored the advice. 'One of the great strengths of her work is that she didn't conform,' says exhibition curator Denise Mimmocchi, the AGNSW's acting head of Australian art. That it has taken so long for a state gallery to stage a retrospective of her work may have something to do with Dawson's resistance to neat definition. Her gender, and eventual retreat from the centres of art in Sydney and Melbourne may also have played a part, Mimmocchi says. After coming to prominence as a pioneer of abstraction, Dawson faded from the limelight as she moved towards realism in works inspired by the natural world. The shift coincided with her move to Binalong in regional New South Wales in the 1970s with her late husband Michael Boddy, a Yorkshire-born actor and playwright. Out bush, Dawson didn't for a moment miss the art cliques of Melbourne and Sydney. 'Oh, they were awful,' Dawson tells me, pulling a face. 'It's nothing to do with artists, it's all to do with …' She completes the sentence with a series of comical gestures that indicate the tedious snobbishness of it all, sending me into fits of laughter. We're sitting in a small back room of the rambling house that she shares with her extended family – niece Penny, Penny's partner Lee, and Dawson's sister-in-law Jill, wife of Dawson's late brother Cameron. He'd be pleased to see them all here listening in as Dawson tells stories about her adventure-filled life. It was Cameron's vision to build a house with enough rooms for several generations to live comfortably together. Dawson's works are scattered throughout. In the room where we sit, there's a buoyant still life of a leafy, broken-off branch of a loquat tree brimming with velvety-yellow fruit that spill across a bustling domestic table. At the bottom right of the composition, we glimpse the artist's hand capturing the moment. The pastel work was created at Binalong, at Dawson and Boddy's rural property, Scribble Rock, where the couple lived for almost 40 years. In style, the loquat painting couldn't be more different to Rollascape 2, and yet both works share a sense of energy, motion and light. Mimmocchi tells me that even when Dawson was 'meant to be doing colour field painting, which was all about the flat surface, she instilled elements of light and painterliness into her aesthetic'. Featuring more than 80 works, the AGNSW retrospective reveals an artist of versatility, skill, and moods, unafraid to range across artistic styles, from the cascading abstraction of Rollascape 2, to the meditative realism of Moon at dawn through a telescope (2000), to glorious still lifes such as Scribble Rock pomegranates (1999). What first inspired Dawson to take up art? 'Very simply, my mother,' Dawson tells me. 'She was gifted. When she was a young girl she thought that she would be an artist, but then of course she met my father and became a wife instead.' Dawson was born in Sydney in 1935, to parents Olga and Kingsley. Before she had children, Olga had attended Julian Ashton's esteemed Sydney Art School, whose alumni include William Dobell and Joshua Smith. With her knowledge of art, Olga recognised her daughter's unusual talent and encouraged it. She even sought the advice of state gallery directors, including then AGNSW head Will Ashton who recommended supplying the child with paper and pencils – 'no rulers, no rubbers, no copying' – and leaving her be. 'I loved drawing,' Dawson says. 'I drew and drew and drew. She used to give me big papers and charcoals. It was normal in our house that I always lay on the floor and drew, and this, I think, was intended to give me confidence right at the beginning. All my gift comes from my mother.' They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. When the family moved to Melbourne in 1940, Dawson began Saturday morning art classes with the realist painter Harold Septimus Power, at his studio on the corner of Elizabeth and Little Collins Street. Dawson was the only child in the class, aged 11. 'He was a lovely, funny old fella,' Dawson says. 'He was a very good artist, wonderful training. To me, his studio was the beginning of my art work. There was this little easel – it was really funny – the other big artists all around me. I just remember it being very comical. They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. No, I shouldn't be rude. They respected that a child was to be taught early.' Dawson went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. A tonalist self-portrait created in the early 1950s while she was a student there, depicts a poised, beautiful young woman, silk scarf knotted around her neck, confidently meeting the viewer's gaze. (Dawson would later model for Italian-born fashion photographer Bruno Benini in a series of studio portraits and shoots in Melbourne.) In 1956, Dawson won the NGV Travelling Scholarship, another significant step in her career. She studied at London's Slade School of Fine Art, where, frustrated with her attempts at painting, she began to explore lithography and printmaking. Her passion for painting was reignited when she saw The New American Painting exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1959, on tour from New York's Museum of Modern Art, and featuring the work of abstractionists including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Adolph Gottlieb. At Slade, Dawson won another scholarship, which funded further travel through Europe, including a six-month stay in the small village of Anticoli Corrado, north of Rome. The area's picturesque valleys, hills and rolling clouds spurred Dawson's first significant series of abstract landscapes. 'A painter can live here without anyone thinking him queer or bohemian – I'm a farmer – I'm a painter – same thing,' she wrote home to her family while living in Anticoli Corrado. In her catalogue essay, Mimmocchi notes that these thoughts 'had a prescient correspondence' to the life that Dawson later found at Binalong. In 1961, Dawson returned to Melbourne and had her first solo exhibition at the innovative Gallery A, in Flinders Street, founded by designer Max Hutchinson and sculptor Clement Meadmore to promote modern art and design. When Gallery A moved to a larger space in South Yarra, Dawson established a print workshop there and became the manager and master printer. In the following years Dawson also worked on props and sets for the experimental Emerald Hill Theatre company in South Melbourne, and in 1965 met her future husband, Michael Boddy, there. 'He wasn't fat then. He had a lovely face, really. I thought he was beautiful, actually beautiful, that's all,' Dawson says. 'I certainly rejoiced in his presence, and looked forward to his presence, and made sure that when I knew he was coming to the gallery, I'd be there, all that sort of thing.' In a living room in another part of the house hangs Dawson's 1973 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Boddy. It was her first Archibald entry, and she became the third woman to win the prize in its 52-year history. She depicts Boddy as a gentle giant in a lilac t-shirt and worn hat, fingers clasped on his generous belly as he reads. Behind him fans, a rake and a spade, symbols of their rural existence. The painting won't be in the retrospective, nor will another blazingly good portrait, Summer 1986, in which the older Boddy – tall, fleshy, bespectacled, grumpy – lies naked, bar slippers and socks, in a pose reminiscent of Monet's Olympia. Boddy said he much preferred it the Archibald-winning portrait. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works. The 1973 portrait has just been returned to Dawson after being on tour for several years in the Archie 100 exhibition. Mimmocchi had originally included Summer 1986 in her loan requests (it's in the National Portrait Gallery collection), but after much thought, decided it didn't 'fit' the retrospective, 'both physically within the space but also given its overpowering presence.' In a more subtle tribute to the significant men in Dawson's life, Mimmocchi has included a smaller pencil portrait of Boddy, and one of Cameron. Dawson and Boddy married in 1968, the same year that Dawson's abstract works would be celebrated in The Field. In 1974, the couple moved to Binalong, and three years later ensconced themselves even further in the bush, buying the property they named Scribble Rock. Boddy famously remarked: 'Our marriage is one long conversation. We moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.' 'That was absolutely true,' Dawson confirms. 'Yes, we just rattled on together for years.' She describes the move to Scribble Rock as the 'absolute coming together' of her work. The natural world was a fount of inspiration, and so too the bounty that she and Boddy grew. Cauliflowers, cabbages, turnips, onions, sprouting potatoes and more inhabit Dawson's wondrous still lifes. Dead animals feature too – a kookaburra, a young wedge-tailed eagle, a hare, a tawny frogmouth – all rendered with exquisite care, homages to the transience of life, and evocative of 17th century Dutch still lifes. Dawson tells me that Boddy would often bring the dead creatures in for her to paint. 'He'd say 'there's a dead bird down there, I think you'd like it, go and get it or I'll go and get it for you if you like'. So he would bring it up for me, or I'd go and get it, and then we'd talk about it, and he might even write something about it.' At Scribble Rock, Dawson and Boddy immersed themselves in the local community and produced a newsletter, Kitchen Talk, which Boddy would write, and Dawson illustrate, promoting the principles of organic farming. We look at one of the abstract landscapes Dawson created in Binalong, Balgalal series 5 – Sunday Morning (1975), named for the creek that ran through Scribble Rock, a vast triptych that stretches for almost four metres. 'Well, they're not really abstract,' Dawson corrects me. 'They're trees,' she says. 'They're living things, and you actually see that – that's out here and that's behind it, and that one's there, and that's next to it and coming that way,' she says. 'So when you start looking you see that they're actual solid tree shapes, but they're just simplified.' Loading After Boddy's death in 2014, Dawson moved back to the Binalong township before relocating to Ocean Grove in 2016 to be with family. Her recent fall has kept her from the studio of late, but she's keen to go back. 'When everything settles, I'd love to go and work in the pod,' Dawson says. 'I feel I'm sort of ungracious by not working in it. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works,' she says, emphasising the sentiment with a theatrical growl. What will the works be about? 'I don't know,' she says, and makes another long, low, growling sound, as though summoning ideas. 'But it's coming.'
The Age
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘I threw the brush away': How Loribelle made a joyous breakthrough
, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Something magical, even spiritual, took place in Loribelle Spirovski's Sydney studio this year. She pressed play on a William Barton recording and picked up a brush to begin painting the Indigenous musician's portrait. Then the breakthrough happened. 'When I heard William's voice on my speaker, it just told me to put the brush down,' she says. 'It was a very visceral feeling, and … I threw the brush away, and I put a glove on, and I dipped my hand in the paint.' She began painting with her fingers, something she had dabbled with for effect on other pieces, but this time the sweep and rub of fingers on canvas was everything. It was all the more wonderful because it came after years of struggling to pursue her art while nursing a debilitating injury that sends pins and needles into both her hands. Spirovksi's Archibald Prize 2025 finalist, 'Finger painting of William Barton', Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter 'As soon as I lifted my hand, it was just like it just knew exactly what to do, almost like muscle memory, and with my right hand as well. So I felt the pain, and I, you know, I consciously had to keep, like, setting my shoulder back, keep resetting, keep doing that. 'But I started crying and laughing and singing and dancing, and it was a completely …' At this point, one of the perils of the Lunch With interview interrupts Spirovski's flow. The patient staff at Marrickville's Tita Carinderia Filipino cafe, who let us keep talking even as they are shutting up shop, ask if they can take away our plates. Without missing a beat, Spirovski asks if they have a box so she can take away the remaining food. Born in Manila, she and her mum lived with relatives in the Philippines until she was eight; Spirovski can't leave these morsels of memory behind. Then we turn back to that day in the studio: 'I had never felt so free, never felt so alive as that moment. And it felt like I had, I had arrived, like I was waiting, I was begging for this for so long.' After years of physical pain and mental anguish, Spirovski had found that holy grail of artistic endeavour – her unique voice – and painted a gloriously joyous painting. The portrait became one of the most striking finalists in this year's Archibald Prize. With a flowing mural of scarlet flowers sweeping over its walls, brightly patterned tablecloths, and kaleidoscopic strings of snack sachets hanging behind the counter, Tita Carinderia is as exuberant as the Barton portrait. I know nothing about Filipino food but Spirovski is an enthusiastic teacher and takes me through the menu. It's not the food she ate every day as a child, which was nothing fancy. 'That's my childhood right there,' says Spirovski, pointing to the fire-engine red cans of spam and corned beef on display over my shoulder on the cafe's shelves. The vegan adobo at Tita. Credit: Sam Mooy Instead, Tita's offers 'fiesta' fare with a bit of a fast-food feel. It's 'rich food', Spirovski explains. 'So it's the kind of food that you save for a special occasion.' The exception is the adobo, which Spirovski says is traditionally made with pork or chicken. 'It's a way of cooking it, braising it, in soy sauce and vinegar, depending on where you're from. Every place has a different version. So you can basically go to a Filipino person's place and know where they're from based on what's in the adobo.' Coconut milk, sugar and peppercorns are other regional variations. The pork is sold out so we order the not very traditional vegan adobo, the tapsilog and, for dessert, an ensaymada, which brings us to 'ube'. Ube is a purple yam and a ubiquitous ingredient in Philippine cooking, especially sweets. Almost every pastry in the counter-top display cabinet seems to be pulsatingly purple. Our ensaymada is no different but is also sprinkled with yellow cheese. I have my doubts about this combination. After ordering at the counter, we settle down to talk. I have followed Spirovski's work ever since I commissioned her to paint a portrait of my child as an 18th birthday present. That major milestone was celebrated with a sad little pizza party via Zoom during the pandemic so arranging something more memorable seemed like a good counterpoint to the early lesson in sometimes-life-sucks. After the lockdowns, Spirovski met us and took the photos that formed the basis of the work. The result is a treasured family memento, though in the intensity of the portrait's gaze I see a premonition of the difficulties ahead for my child transitioning to adulthood under COVID's long shadow. Tita's ube ensaymada. Credit: Sam Mooy Those post-COVID years were formative for Spirovski too. It's a complicated collage. There was the injury. 'In September 2021, I wake up in the middle of the night and my arm feels like it's been crushed by a cement roller. It's just that sudden … and it happened every night.' It's seven months before she can get a diagnosis: thoracic outlet syndrome. There was the slow burn of memories evoked by the experience of accompanying her husband, the pianist Simon Tedeschi, on a cruise on the cusp of COVID. He was booked to play for the passengers. 'I've never been around as many Filipinos since moving out of the Philippines,' she says. 'Because almost all of the crew were Filipino. They all look like my uncles. They all look like my cousins, my aunties.' But she was not one of them – she was being served by them. 'It was just such a strange, surreal experience.' And then there was the destabilising effects of temporarily moving out of her inner west house so she could use the money she earned in 2020 (when everyone wanted a new painting to brighten up their lockdown walls) to renovate and build herself her first studio. 'When you move house … things come up that you don't expect.' It led to a long period of self-examination: 'Having that breakdown and having another breakdown, and then surviving and learning an awful lot.' This happened in tandem with the writing of a Proustian novel prompted by the cruise, circling around her childhood experiences. 'Very vivid memories started to come up from the Philippines, and things that … I thought I'd already put to bed but, actually, I just ignored.' We've picked a Filipino lunch spot because of her connection to her mother's heritage, and I'm so glad we did because the adobo is delicious, accompanied by a memorable pickled carrot, and the tapsilog's rice is fluffy and garlicky. My cold brew with calamansi – a type of lime – is a coffee-citrus revelation. But Spirovski's Serbian father is also part of her story, though war and immigration barriers kept them apart until she was seven. He was an engineer, building a bridge in Malaysia when he met her mother, whose career as a singer in hotel bands took her all over Asia. Tapsilog with satisfyingly garlcky rice. Credit: Sam Mooy They were married and living in the former Yugoslavia when war broke out in the 1990s. He moved to Australia while her pregnant mum went back to the Philippines until he could get a visa for her and his new daughter to join him. In Sydney, he worked as a taxi driver. Spirovski ascribes her ferocious work ethic to his example. 'I grew up thinking that … working hard for your family is the noblest thing you can possibly aspire to. That's why I didn't call myself an artist. Until last year I called myself a painter because it was like a trade, you know, honest, solid work.' But reading her highly impressionist novel, White Hibiscus, published earlier this year, it's clear Spirovski sees the world with the eyes of an artist – and it's a gift to the reader to share that vision. Though she intended to be an art teacher when she finished her HSC, it's no surprise that she ended up a full-time artist. She was inspired to teach by her experience at Bonnyrigg High School in Sydney's west. 'The greatest gift I received as a teenager was my art teacher, Vicky … saying, basically, here's the storeroom [full of art materials]. You can use anything you want … That was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' She had to abandon teaching after suffering performance anxiety during her first stint in front of a class: 'I had panic attacks every single day.' She began painting portraits, selling a piece to a family friend and another to her boyfriend's uncle. Then she started posting to Instagram and getting more commissions. When she entered the Portia Geach Award in 2014 and was accepted as a finalist, it was impossible to resist the pull of her vocation. Starting out from a little spare space near the door of her parent's fibro home in Mount Pritchard, she has built a successful career, with shows in the US, Europe and London exhibiting works reminiscent of early German expressionism, heavy on symbolism. This year is the fourth she has been a finalist in the Archibald. The bill at Tita's Carinderia. But throughout that time, she has struggled with self-doubt, and a sense that, like her taxi driver father, she had to keep working. 'Nothing was scarier than a holiday … because I'm like, no, I will lose momentum. If I lose momentum, this house of cards that I built will completely collapse beneath me.' Even as her injury kept ringing a red alarm to slow down, she continued to try to paint and to write. It led her to face one of the darker moments of her childhood, an experience of abuse, which she captures obliquely in the book. Did she always know she would tackle it in the writing? 'I suspected I would have to because, if I was being actually honest, I couldn't deny that that was the root of everything, and the root … of my insecurity … my relationship with work, my very toxic relationship with work.' She realised writing White Hibiscus was an act of care for her five-year-old self. A friend recently asked her: 'What did you let go of from writing the book?'
Perth Now
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
From Arnhem Land to the world, power of art on show
Wurrandan Marawili's towering sculpture has been welded and carved out of road signs - and it's not just art, but an expression of cultural and political power. "We are Yolŋu and we got power from our paintings, singing, songs and dancing," the artist said. "I think this is very important, to tell the story for the world and share our culture." His artwork, Gamata - flames beneath the sea, is part of the major winter exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, titled Yolŋu Power: Art of Yirrkala. The show features eight decades of work from more than 70 artists connected to the small community of Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. In just one example of how art from this area is regarded globally, 42-year-old Marawili has recently returned from New York City. He travelled there for the final instalment of an exhibition of Yirrkala bark painting, that has been touring the US for the past three years. Rock bands Yothu Yindi and King Stingray also hail from the region, along with Marawili's own musical outfit, Garrangali band. Artists connected to Yirrkala were among the first Indigenous Australians to deploy their art for political ends, as an expression of cultural identity. In 1963 the Bark Petitions were created in Yirrkala to protest against bauxite mining: the first documents showing First Nations relationships to land to be recognised by federal parliament, they mark the beginning of the land rights movement. The previous year in 1962, the documentation of creation stories in the Yirrkala Church Panels helped kickstart the Aboriginal art movement. The Art Gallery of NSW's relationship with Yirrkala's Aboriginal-owned art centre, now known as the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, stretches back decades. While the exhibition has been developed over several years, it's the first major curated show under recently appointed director Maud Page. "Art from Yirrkala has really had an explosion internationally, and about time," she said. Page said AGNSW was the first institutional gallery in Australia to display work from the centre as art, rather than cultural objects. Yolŋu Power has been installed in the gallery's new Naala Badu building, the same space that has housed blockbuster shows by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and Chinese artist Cao Fei. The Yolŋu Power exhibition is structured around significant developments in art from the region, from bark painting to printmaking, digital installations, and sculptures of discarded metal. The show opens with a video projection showing daily life in Yirrkala, followed by an installation of dozens of towering carvings of Moku spirits. Rooms of bark paintings show off traditional styles, while a display of prints demonstrates how the adoption of this medium gave rise to the use of brilliant colours and everyday, rather than sacred, subjects. Then there's digital art: a room of animated projections that dance across the floor of the gallery and over the shape of a termite mound, accompanied by music. The exhibition runs until October 6. AAP travelled with the assistance of the Art Gallery of NSW.
The Advertiser
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
From Arnhem Land to the world, power of art on show
Wurrandan Marawili's towering sculpture has been welded and carved out of road signs - and it's not just art, but an expression of cultural and political power. "We are Yolŋu and we got power from our paintings, singing, songs and dancing," the artist said. "I think this is very important, to tell the story for the world and share our culture." His artwork, Gamata - flames beneath the sea, is part of the major winter exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, titled Yolŋu Power: Art of Yirrkala. The show features eight decades of work from more than 70 artists connected to the small community of Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. In just one example of how art from this area is regarded globally, 42-year-old Marawili has recently returned from New York City. He travelled there for the final instalment of an exhibition of Yirrkala bark painting, that has been touring the US for the past three years. Rock bands Yothu Yindi and King Stingray also hail from the region, along with Marawili's own musical outfit, Garrangali band. Artists connected to Yirrkala were among the first Indigenous Australians to deploy their art for political ends, as an expression of cultural identity. In 1963 the Bark Petitions were created in Yirrkala to protest against bauxite mining: the first documents showing First Nations relationships to land to be recognised by federal parliament, they mark the beginning of the land rights movement. The previous year in 1962, the documentation of creation stories in the Yirrkala Church Panels helped kickstart the Aboriginal art movement. The Art Gallery of NSW's relationship with Yirrkala's Aboriginal-owned art centre, now known as the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, stretches back decades. While the exhibition has been developed over several years, it's the first major curated show under recently appointed director Maud Page. "Art from Yirrkala has really had an explosion internationally, and about time," she said. Page said AGNSW was the first institutional gallery in Australia to display work from the centre as art, rather than cultural objects. Yolŋu Power has been installed in the gallery's new Naala Badu building, the same space that has housed blockbuster shows by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and Chinese artist Cao Fei. The Yolŋu Power exhibition is structured around significant developments in art from the region, from bark painting to printmaking, digital installations, and sculptures of discarded metal. The show opens with a video projection showing daily life in Yirrkala, followed by an installation of dozens of towering carvings of Moku spirits. Rooms of bark paintings show off traditional styles, while a display of prints demonstrates how the adoption of this medium gave rise to the use of brilliant colours and everyday, rather than sacred, subjects. Then there's digital art: a room of animated projections that dance across the floor of the gallery and over the shape of a termite mound, accompanied by music. The exhibition runs until October 6. AAP travelled with the assistance of the Art Gallery of NSW. Wurrandan Marawili's towering sculpture has been welded and carved out of road signs - and it's not just art, but an expression of cultural and political power. "We are Yolŋu and we got power from our paintings, singing, songs and dancing," the artist said. "I think this is very important, to tell the story for the world and share our culture." His artwork, Gamata - flames beneath the sea, is part of the major winter exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, titled Yolŋu Power: Art of Yirrkala. The show features eight decades of work from more than 70 artists connected to the small community of Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. In just one example of how art from this area is regarded globally, 42-year-old Marawili has recently returned from New York City. He travelled there for the final instalment of an exhibition of Yirrkala bark painting, that has been touring the US for the past three years. Rock bands Yothu Yindi and King Stingray also hail from the region, along with Marawili's own musical outfit, Garrangali band. Artists connected to Yirrkala were among the first Indigenous Australians to deploy their art for political ends, as an expression of cultural identity. In 1963 the Bark Petitions were created in Yirrkala to protest against bauxite mining: the first documents showing First Nations relationships to land to be recognised by federal parliament, they mark the beginning of the land rights movement. The previous year in 1962, the documentation of creation stories in the Yirrkala Church Panels helped kickstart the Aboriginal art movement. The Art Gallery of NSW's relationship with Yirrkala's Aboriginal-owned art centre, now known as the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, stretches back decades. While the exhibition has been developed over several years, it's the first major curated show under recently appointed director Maud Page. "Art from Yirrkala has really had an explosion internationally, and about time," she said. Page said AGNSW was the first institutional gallery in Australia to display work from the centre as art, rather than cultural objects. Yolŋu Power has been installed in the gallery's new Naala Badu building, the same space that has housed blockbuster shows by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and Chinese artist Cao Fei. The Yolŋu Power exhibition is structured around significant developments in art from the region, from bark painting to printmaking, digital installations, and sculptures of discarded metal. The show opens with a video projection showing daily life in Yirrkala, followed by an installation of dozens of towering carvings of Moku spirits. Rooms of bark paintings show off traditional styles, while a display of prints demonstrates how the adoption of this medium gave rise to the use of brilliant colours and everyday, rather than sacred, subjects. Then there's digital art: a room of animated projections that dance across the floor of the gallery and over the shape of a termite mound, accompanied by music. The exhibition runs until October 6. AAP travelled with the assistance of the Art Gallery of NSW. Wurrandan Marawili's towering sculpture has been welded and carved out of road signs - and it's not just art, but an expression of cultural and political power. "We are Yolŋu and we got power from our paintings, singing, songs and dancing," the artist said. "I think this is very important, to tell the story for the world and share our culture." His artwork, Gamata - flames beneath the sea, is part of the major winter exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, titled Yolŋu Power: Art of Yirrkala. The show features eight decades of work from more than 70 artists connected to the small community of Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. In just one example of how art from this area is regarded globally, 42-year-old Marawili has recently returned from New York City. He travelled there for the final instalment of an exhibition of Yirrkala bark painting, that has been touring the US for the past three years. Rock bands Yothu Yindi and King Stingray also hail from the region, along with Marawili's own musical outfit, Garrangali band. Artists connected to Yirrkala were among the first Indigenous Australians to deploy their art for political ends, as an expression of cultural identity. In 1963 the Bark Petitions were created in Yirrkala to protest against bauxite mining: the first documents showing First Nations relationships to land to be recognised by federal parliament, they mark the beginning of the land rights movement. The previous year in 1962, the documentation of creation stories in the Yirrkala Church Panels helped kickstart the Aboriginal art movement. The Art Gallery of NSW's relationship with Yirrkala's Aboriginal-owned art centre, now known as the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, stretches back decades. While the exhibition has been developed over several years, it's the first major curated show under recently appointed director Maud Page. "Art from Yirrkala has really had an explosion internationally, and about time," she said. Page said AGNSW was the first institutional gallery in Australia to display work from the centre as art, rather than cultural objects. Yolŋu Power has been installed in the gallery's new Naala Badu building, the same space that has housed blockbuster shows by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and Chinese artist Cao Fei. The Yolŋu Power exhibition is structured around significant developments in art from the region, from bark painting to printmaking, digital installations, and sculptures of discarded metal. The show opens with a video projection showing daily life in Yirrkala, followed by an installation of dozens of towering carvings of Moku spirits. Rooms of bark paintings show off traditional styles, while a display of prints demonstrates how the adoption of this medium gave rise to the use of brilliant colours and everyday, rather than sacred, subjects. Then there's digital art: a room of animated projections that dance across the floor of the gallery and over the shape of a termite mound, accompanied by music. The exhibition runs until October 6. AAP travelled with the assistance of the Art Gallery of NSW. Wurrandan Marawili's towering sculpture has been welded and carved out of road signs - and it's not just art, but an expression of cultural and political power. "We are Yolŋu and we got power from our paintings, singing, songs and dancing," the artist said. "I think this is very important, to tell the story for the world and share our culture." His artwork, Gamata - flames beneath the sea, is part of the major winter exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, titled Yolŋu Power: Art of Yirrkala. The show features eight decades of work from more than 70 artists connected to the small community of Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. In just one example of how art from this area is regarded globally, 42-year-old Marawili has recently returned from New York City. He travelled there for the final instalment of an exhibition of Yirrkala bark painting, that has been touring the US for the past three years. Rock bands Yothu Yindi and King Stingray also hail from the region, along with Marawili's own musical outfit, Garrangali band. Artists connected to Yirrkala were among the first Indigenous Australians to deploy their art for political ends, as an expression of cultural identity. In 1963 the Bark Petitions were created in Yirrkala to protest against bauxite mining: the first documents showing First Nations relationships to land to be recognised by federal parliament, they mark the beginning of the land rights movement. The previous year in 1962, the documentation of creation stories in the Yirrkala Church Panels helped kickstart the Aboriginal art movement. The Art Gallery of NSW's relationship with Yirrkala's Aboriginal-owned art centre, now known as the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, stretches back decades. While the exhibition has been developed over several years, it's the first major curated show under recently appointed director Maud Page. "Art from Yirrkala has really had an explosion internationally, and about time," she said. Page said AGNSW was the first institutional gallery in Australia to display work from the centre as art, rather than cultural objects. Yolŋu Power has been installed in the gallery's new Naala Badu building, the same space that has housed blockbuster shows by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and Chinese artist Cao Fei. The Yolŋu Power exhibition is structured around significant developments in art from the region, from bark painting to printmaking, digital installations, and sculptures of discarded metal. The show opens with a video projection showing daily life in Yirrkala, followed by an installation of dozens of towering carvings of Moku spirits. Rooms of bark paintings show off traditional styles, while a display of prints demonstrates how the adoption of this medium gave rise to the use of brilliant colours and everyday, rather than sacred, subjects. Then there's digital art: a room of animated projections that dance across the floor of the gallery and over the shape of a termite mound, accompanied by music. The exhibition runs until October 6. AAP travelled with the assistance of the Art Gallery of NSW.
