A New Generation 1983–1988

The Australian National Gallery is one of the jewels of Australian public life. Although it has only been in existence a relatively short time, it is a matter of considerable pride to know that today it stands as one of the foremost galleries in the world. This remarkable achievement has been made possible through the combined efforts of Government, the public and the private sector.

Following on from its first art collection, which Philip Morris gave to the nation in 1982, the company has now gone one better. This new donation of a second collection, comprising the works of our younger artists — over 90 of whom are represented in this exhibition —will enable a large public to see their work, as well as providing generous encouragement to their careers.

Through its generosity Philip Morris has helped to broaden the artistic perspectives of the Gallery, and I hope that more companies will follow its lead.

The Hon. R.J.L. Hawke, A.C., M.P.
Prime Minister of Australia

Philip Morris, in keeping with its long-standing patronage of the arts, is proud to present another major art collection to the nation.

To celebrate Australia's Bicentennial year, Philip Morris decided a few years ago to follow up on its earlier involvement with a major collection of the works of some of Australia's younger, bolder and most talented artists.

Our first collection, which we gave to the nation in 1982 to coincide with the opening of the Australian National Gallery, consisted of 328 works by 117 artists and featured paintings, sculptures, prints and ceramics, as well as hundreds of posters. Also included in that gift was arguably the best collection of contemporary Australian photography, representing the work of another hundred artists.

When we concluded our purchasing program for the first Philip Morris collection, galleries and artists approached us, expressing concern that new artists of talent were finding it increasingly difficult to sell their work. Given Australia's relatively small art market, a great deal of fine young talent was, so to speak, withering on the vine before it had had an opportunity to mature.

Our response was to devise a program which would husband this new talent. James Mollison, the Australian National Gallery's Director, agreed to select for us the best works of Australia's new generation of artists. Some of the works are controversial, some fly in the face of traditional canons. But, taken together, we believe they reflect the changing aesthetic values of the times and, as such, will provide future generations with an invaluable record of the artistic trends of the 1980s.

As with the first collection, a condition of this latest gift is that the works, while permanently housed at the Australian National Gallery, are to be made available to State and provincial galleries, either to augment or fully constitute their exhibitions.

All in all, Philip Morris (Australia) Limited takes enormous pride in presenting this Bicentennial gift to the nation, not least because it stands as a true measure of our commitment to Australia and to the cultural life of all Australians.

James King
Chairman

ML (Michael Lloyd): What is in the exhibition?

JM (James Mollison) : Works purchased with funds from the Philip Morris Arts Grant for the years 1983 to 1988 in addition to a few things from the Gallery collection and a small number borrowed from artists, galleries and private collectors. The Philip Morris Arts Grant has been around $45 000 per year for five years. The sum wasn't sufficient to buy everything I wanted for the show — ten to fifteen per cent of the works here are borrowed.

ML: Is this the first Philip Morris Arts Grant exhibition?

JM: No. There have been several previous Philip Morris Arts Grant exhibitions. The most recent, in 1986, was at the Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra. Previous to that, the works collected between 1972 and 1982 were shown in an exhibition at Melville Hall on the Australian National University campus and was part of the ANG's opening celebration.

Most of the exhibitions previous to these were held in busy public places: in City Square, Melbourne, and Hyde Park, Sydney, in 1975, and out of doors at the Adelaide Festival in 1976. Works bought by the Grant to represent the generation of photographers who emerged during the mid-1970s were shown in Sydney in Hyde Park in 1977 and in Adelaide on North Terrace during the 1978 Festival. In Sydney they were shown in Hyde Park in 1979 and in Melbourne on St Kilda Road opposite the National Gallery of Victoria in 1980. These exhibitions were all held as works were purchased for the Grant and were intended to show the public the work of the most innovative emerging artists in the Australian community — as it was being made.

Most of the artists in these shows were young, but this is not always the case — there are many late starters in art.

ML: Following on from what you have said, does this mean that these are artists who have established their reputations since 1983?

JM: They are the artists whose names we didn't even know in 1983. Few of them have reputations. If artists have been noticed before 1983, and had shown in a few important exhibitions, I excluded them from this selection for the Arts Grant.

GG (Grazia Gunn): Do you see the Philip Morris Arts Grant as a support for contemporary art or as a means of promoting contemporary art?

JM: In 1973, when we first began to collect, no institution other than the Australian National Gallery was collecting seriously in this field. In recent years we have seen a number of corporations, a few banks and individuals, putting together collections of this kind.

Initially, Philip Morris support was extraordinarily important to emerging artists, and frequently in the early days of the Grant the only sales made from exhibitions were.to the National Gallery and Philip Morris. The situation has changed.

ML: Do you think that the patronage of these artists is a result of the example set by Philip Morris in the early period?

JM: I think Philip Morris was early into the area, but only by a few years. People were becoming more interested in new art in communities around the world. In New York, the Lower East Side galleries which dealt with this generation of New Yorkers were noticeable in the late 1970s.

ML: I would have thought the patronage of young artists is more a phenomenon in this country than in the States.

JM: In every community there are some people who are interested in the work of artists as they emerge, though not many support them by purchasing their work.

Philip Morris has been very adventurous in that frequently they have allowed us to advance money to artists for canvas and materials, and this has given some people their first opportunity to use reasonable art materials. They have never questioned my 'OK to pay' on the invoices forwarded to them.

ML: Without purchases, how do the emerging artists get by?

JM: In this country any number of young artists have used the dole as an arts grant over the past five to seven years. This has a direct relationship to the very lively art scene today, where we find people of real quality emerging in every part of Australia.

ML: Surely the dole has been barely adequate?

JM: Most of these artists come from middle class families. The artists live poorly, but at least they've had years of thinking time even if they haven't had the art materials with which to make as much as they wanted during that time. Many of them used the time the dole bought them in a very productive fashion.

Those who can afford to go to art school usually come from the professional classes in Australia. The children from poor Australian families for the largest part don't become artists. One very interesting aspect of Australian art today is the emergence of a number of people who are using their ethnic backgrounds as the subject matter for their art. I think it's very telling that while we have had communities living rich ethnic lives in Australia over the past forty years, it's only now that those families are able to support an artist in the family.

GG: Would you say that upper middle class artists have had the opportunity to be better educated and have more access to information about art?

JM: Artists generally are among the best educated people in any community, and this current generation of artists is certainly literate in terms of things like TV, music, film and books. They are very concerned about social issues, the environment and international threats.

GG: Are they aware of art that's happening internationally?

JM: They certainly are through books and magazines, and very many of those in this exhibition have already travelled overseas.

GG: Would you say that they are affected by what they see, or is their work the result of all the information that they have put together with the films, the music, the books? Do they have certain artist heroes that they pursue?

JM: I would say they're a generation which, for the largest part, doesn't have heroes or heroines in the visual arts. They have had an enormous amount of material to consider, and while their work can be fitted into various categories, the artists in this show are all people who are trying to go it alone — who haven't tied themselves to new movements as so many Australian artists did in the 1970s. They might want to sample styles, but they usually quickly discard them.

The common thing many of them have taken from recent international art is that they paint with great freedom.

GG: Did a lot of them go to art schools that selectively present what is good and what should be looked at in art?

JM: Their teachers might have set limits, but they're lively enough to have found out about the alternatives for themselves.

Their bite is now so quick, they look and accept or discard in seconds. Fifty years ago people would have mulled for a week before they reached a similar conclusion about whether something was useful or not. These artists are very literate visually. They are used to seeing image after image on television screens — they've been weaned on colour images.

ML: Do you see them admiring overseas models more than they would local ones?

JM: I've talked to very many of these artists after they've come back from their overseas trips. They're not full of information about what they saw — they see it but don't want to talk about it. What they've made of it is a very personal thing. Apart from saying that an Indian temple was great or that the Louvre was big, they are not a forthcoming generation in wanting to tell you what's on their minds — though they're often forthcoming in telling through their work. I have noticed a change since the collecting of the first Philip Morris collection. Previously not one in ten artists invited me to comment on what they were doing. Now nine out of ten artists want me to stay and talk about art. They don't necessarily tell me that they like what they hear, or that what I say is useful, but they like to sit and listen.

ML: It strikes me the collection's diversity impresses you more than the common characteristics that are operating.

JM: The show ranges over an enormous number of artistic dialects — from those who think about it before they put it down to those who almost paint blind, for whom expression is everything. There are also artists who make small and playful works and those who try to paint mysteries. Another theme runs through this exhibition — that of quirky pictures about which we're not allowed to know much at all.

GG: It's created myths really, contemporary myths.

ML: What about regionalism? Do you think there are differences between works being produced in major centres in Australia? Is the old Melbourne/Sydney rivalry still on? Is the work coming out of Perth different from the work being produced in Brisbane?

JM: More than any other generation of Australian artists, many of these people have decided to stay home and make their reputations in their home states. Into the 1970s, as people could afford the bus fare after art school they headed for Sydney or Melbourne. In Adelaide and Brisbane today there are art scenes smaller than those in Melbourne and Sydney, but just as lively. I've noticed in Melbourne that making art is a very respectable profession. As if the examples of people like Boyd, Brack and Williams have led people to see the respect that real artists command in the community. In Sydney, many still go into art as if making it were an adventure and an alternative profession to take up. I found less new art in Western Australia and have seen less from Tasmania, but that might have been because I didn't visit those places often enough. It's not until you meet artists that they tell you about other artists. That is when they are confident you are not going to waste their friends' time when you arrive to look at what they're doing. A few years ago the dealers in Tasmania and Perth didn't seem to be able to direct me to very lively art scenes in those places.

ML: Do you have a rough idea of the proportion of female to male artists in this exhibition?

JM: Approximately half and half. The collection hasn't been put together with any notion of gender balance. The young women in this exhibition mostly don't yet have family responsibilities and have the same freedom to operate as men have. I have noticed how many of them are very strong people; I don't think they're going to allow themselves to be submerged by any sort of pressure.

ML: Is it sensible to talk about a female sensibility coming through?

GG: They are bringing new subjects which really only relate to women.

ML: I take the point. What I was trying to say is that there do seem to be certain perceptions about the human condition that come from being female or male.

JM: Among both the men and women there are those who are very strong and those of extreme sensibility. This is of course reflected in their work. I was interested to find that this exhibition, which was selected without any gender bias, comprises the work of 51 women and 65 men.

In quantity and quality they look to me to be the liveliest generation of artists ever to have emerged in this country. Remember we are dealing with artists at the moment of their emergence. No National Gallery would normally buy from a first show, but the Philip Morris Arts Grant has made purchases from the studios of people who haven't even booked their first exhibition.

GG: With promise rather than statement.

ML: It goes back to the politics of administering a fund like this. You can walk into a studio and buy very new art — that's a kind of freedom you wouldn't have in a usual art gallery situation. That untested material can be bought. How do you avoid buying for Philip Morris all pictures to your taste?

JM: I can't claim the show is truly representative of the whole of this generation because I have not been to all the shows or studios at exactly the right time, and I'm not always in a particular city at the moment a particular exhibition is on. Dealers don't always have on hand pictures from previous exhibitions that you'd like to see. The artists are notoriously difficult to contact. Some of them shift house every few months. This is my selection of works I have seen by the current crop of artists — I can't make it anything else. I hope my interest in new art and my experience in collecting it in the past have meant that we have a good proportion of the best of the next generation of artists in this show.

There have been times when the money has run out and we have missed good things. Some of these we have borrowed for this exhibition. Most of the works that I saw and thought should be in this show are here. However, I'm very conscious of all the things I haven't seen. We haven't gone back over old ground for this show, but rather have attempted to mine new areas: artists of no fame much promise.

ML: Makes a good subtitle. Why doesn't the show have works in all media?

JM: This is one of our Bicentenary shows. As photography, decorative arts and printmaking are going to be the subjects of other exhibitions here in 1988, and new practitioners are represented in these, this show is limited to paintings, sculpture and drawings.

ML: Over the period we are surveying, are the media basically conventional? Are young artists still favouring painting over other media?

JM: They like to paint.

ML: So sculpture has gone into the background?

JM: No. The sculptors are still there. They struggle harder than the painters have to for recognition.

ML: Do we have a high proportion of painter/sculptors?

JM: No. A curious thing about Australian artists is that they tend not to work in all media as European and American artists do. Artists with two strings to their bow are rare. While you can find a dozen who have, the great majority have limited their interests. Remember that these are the people who are starting — who is to say that the person painting now isn't in due course going to be a novelist or musician? One of the things common among these people is their love and knowledge of music. It seems that if you want a lead guitar today you head for the nearest art school. You'll find a number of people who are interested in making music and art at the same time.

ML: Is a cross-fertilization operating between music and painting?

JM: This generation grew up knowing that many rock and roll stars had art school backgrounds. They are enormously knowledgeable about the music they listen to and the musicians who make it.

GG: I think it is very interesting because it comes from a very strong cultural link with music — especially if it's popular music — because they are concerned with popular culture.

JM: For these people it's not popular culture — it is their culture: television, movies, pop music and media headlines.

GG: That is popular culture. They are really being fed by this new electronic technology.

ML: Is that also still cultivated by different types of art teaching in Melbourne and Sydney?

JM: One of the things that has puzzled me during the whole of this collecting exercise has been whether it's better for the artists to succeed at art school or to be kicked out within the first twelve months. I can't tell by looking at a work whether it was made by a person who made a success of art training or had dropped out. Recently somebody told me that his reason for going to the Victorian College of the Arts as a post-graduate student is that they provide free studio space. Some young artists feel they have been let down by art schools because the school didn't teach drawing — and the artists of this generation desperately want to be able to draw. In many instances the teachers are of the generation that didn't draw themselves when they were at art school, so they don't know how to help.

These artists, almost without exception, would like to know more about technique. Many don't know, for instance, how to underpaint, glaze and scumble. They might not all want to do this, but many of them feel let down because at no stage during their training were the techniques taught.

GG: Do you think the Gallery could be criticized for promoting these young artists?

JM: All the exhibiting institutions in Australia say they are going to introduce young artists to the public, but not all of the galleries carry out their intentions to this degree. I suppose we could come in for criticism for showing artists at the moment they first seem to have promise; people might well say that they're being shown to the public too soon. But with a hundred people in a show no individual artist is really getting too much attention. I am concerned about that additional hundred artists out there I wasn't able to tap for the exhibition. We're promoting talent, and many people have talent. Not all of them will have the staying power to make it as artists. This exhibition will help those who have felt that nobody has looked at their work. Because we encourage this one or that one is not going to make those people into artists.

In selecting about 280 things for this exhibition, I would have seen at least 50 000 works. If you see enough it becomes easier to exclude those that are too derivative, or people who were good students and haven't added anything of their own to what was passed on to them. There are some people who are very clever technically, but it seems to me they have absolutely nothing of their own to say. There are a few artists I looked at whose work was so puzzling to me that I didn't know what to do about it. Chances are they will be the next generation of Australian artists.

Canberra, 10 March 1988