How rare an experience it is to be in an exhibition where you feel you are in the presence of the artist at work. It is as if you are watching the artist’s hand and eye moving swiftly in perfect unison as he outlines the object of his intense looking, repeating contours, making corrections, starting afresh, appearing to breathe life into his subjects, and thinking all the while.
Of the five hun ... (read more)
Irena Zdanowicz
Irena Zdanowicz is Honorary Fellow at the Centre of Visual Art (CoVA), University of Melbourne, where she is working on an online catalogue raisonné of the late work of Bea Maddock (1934–2016). From 1981 to 2001 she was Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2003 she collaborated with Stephen Coppel for the catalogue of the British Museum’s exhibition, Fred Williams: An Australian Vision. Her online publication: Rick Amor: An Online Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints was launched in 2017: www.catalogue.rickamor.com.au.
For my return visit to the exhibition Fred Williams in the You Yangs at the Geelong Gallery, I decided to take the train instead of driving, as I usually do. Although the creeping suburban sprawl, especially around Melbourne, has narrowed the area without housing or industrial estates, there is still just enough left of the flat Wimmera volcanic plain, its monotonous succession of fenced paddocks, ... (read more)