The 2019 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes: personal favourites

In May last year I did a quit whip around the Art Gallery of New South Wales and on the blog put up a series of reflections about what I had found interesting in the shows held that year.

This year I am doing the same thing. As before, my visit was very quick but I saw some very good works in the three exhibitions on display downstairs at the gallery. I liked all the winners and will put up the Sulman Prize winner here. The Wynne Prize winner, as in the case last year, was an Aboriginal artwork. The Archibald winner I thought also very good but it has gotten a lot of coverage and it will be easy for anyone who wants to to find a photo of it online.

In what follows most of the selected paintings are figurative works and the other thing that links them is a certain looseness or gestural quality in the application of the paint. Two of the works are naïve and one is a curious mix of abstraction in the tradition of John Olsen and the literalness of Indigenous painting.

The show that was located nearest to the entrance this year was for the Sulman Prize finalists, so I’ll start with those that I found interesting in it. The first painting in my catalogue is by Nick Santoro and it is titled ‘Hewitts Avenue montage’.

This painting is right near the entrance so you see it as soon as the usher has scanned your ticket. The colours are very interesting, particularly the sky, and the naïve style is reminiscent of a lot of artwork by Aboriginal painters that I have seen in recent years in different exhibitions, including some at this gallery. Like abstract Aboriginal art, there is a literalness in this work that is very appealing as it challenges convention in an oblique fashion. There is no doubt what each object in the work represents and so meaning is created by the associations that the different elements of the painting produce as they combine together to form a whole. I also like the narrative tendency of this kind of art.

The winner of the Sulman Prize this year is McLean Edwards’ ‘The first girl that knocked on his door’, a portrait of a young man in a yellow check jacket. It’s not clear what the man has on his shoulders or even what he is holding in his hand, although the text that accompanies the painting says that the latter object is an “apple/phone”, which doesn’t really make things much clearer. I liked the directness of the subject’s gaze, which is straight at the viewer as though challenging him or her to make a judgement of the very bold jacket he is wearing. This is a nice meditation on youth.

The next painting that I want to look at is Tom Carment’s Sulman Prize entry ‘Singer typewriter in Don’s shed, Perth’. This painting has echoes of de Kooning, especially in the types of colours used and in the loose, gestural application of paint. The text that accompanies the painting says that Carment has painted a number of different typewriters in recent years. I like the mix of abstract and figurative elements in this lovely painting.

Ken Done’s ‘Dive 3’ is a lovely work that reminded me of Arthur Boyd’s late works when I saw it. Done is best known for his T-shirts and scenes of Sydney Harbour, but this time he has focused his attention underwater. Wonderful use of colour and so delightful it’s almost edible!

Now to the Wynne Prize. The first painting I want to look at is one that is overtly controversial. It is Abdul Abdullah’s ‘A terrible burden’. 

This painting combines figurative elements – in the background – with conceptual elements – in the text that is written boldly over the top of the image. Commenting on the dispossession of the continent by white people at the expense of the Aborigines, the work will not appeal to many people because of its calculated message. I didn’t like the way the text that accompanies the work has been picked up by other commentators who have written about this work. It seems to me that an artwork has to survive on its own, unassisted, or not at all. But this is a bit purist, I am aware.

The next painting I want to look at is Jun Chen’s ‘Magnolia trees’. This artist is represented in Sydney by a gallery in Chippendale and I didn’t go along to see his work last year when there was a show on there. Chen was born in China in 1960 and migrated to Australia in 1990. In an appealing and oblique way this lovely painting references ideas current in the last century in China; a way that doesn’t mask the figurative brilliance of the work.

We now come to Marc Etherington’s ‘The view from my mum and dad’s place’, a fetching naïve work with strong figurative elements and a terrific colour scheme that suggests dusk, an evocative time of day.

Robert Malherbe’s (below) ‘Lithgow, path to water’ is very striking with almost exaggerated figurative elements and vigorous brushwork.

Below is Yantji Young’s ‘Tjala tjukurpa (honey ant story)’ combines John Olsen’s distinctive style with the Aboriginal style that Olsen himself drew on. This is a fine work and was very memorable.

I didn’t fix my attention on too many works in the Archibald but the ones that grabbed me were, again, mainly figurative in their content. The first one I want to look at is Ciara Adolphs’ ‘Rosemary Laing and Geoff Kleem (in their garden)’, which relies on a very subdued palette and is done in oils even though the paint appears to be very thin. White space has been used inventively to create texture and contrast and the painting looks something like a black-and-white photograph.

A similarly mild palette was used by Keith Burt to paint ‘Benjamin Law: happy sad’, a portrait of the popular journalist and TV personality.

Also figurative but with some more expressive elements is Paul Ryan’s ‘Self-portrait in the studio with the Beastie Boys, painting James Drinkwater for the Archibald Prize (Los amigos)’. This self-conscious work has considerable panache and features another Australian artist; Drinkwater is the subject of a post I did on the blog in November. Drinkwater is represented by the same gallery that represents Jun Chen.

Historical Middle East, seven: Military hardware

This is the final post in a new (third) series of blogposts based on the ME trip I completed in May and early June. The other posts in this series are on orientalist art, funerary customs, ritual objects, applied and decorative arts, sacred buildings, and civic and commercial buildings.

It might seem wrong to end a series on history in the ME with a post about military hardware but as you will see there is a story here that links the point of departure – orientalist painting – with the finale. We didn’t spend much time looking for this kind of thing and I just snapped the occasional photo when the opportunity arose to do so. This will be a short post relative to the others in the series.

The driver who took us back to Amman from Petra, whose name was Maruan, guided his 3-year-old Hyundai Sonata hybrid through the city in order to visit his sister and on the way to his relative’s house we passed by the government’s tank museum. We didn’t stop as it was already late in the day and we were keen to get back to our hotel.

But Maruan slowed the car down and told me in English to read the sign that had been installed at the gate of the compound. Seeing this institution even from the outside underscored for me how, in the ME, the military sits relatively close to the surface of the polis compared to a country like Australia. In one shop in Jerusalem when we were looking at the goods on sale I struck up a brief conversation with one of the staff. He expressed a feeling of longing for the kind of peace and security that we take for granted.

There are police everywhere in Jerusalem, as there are in Istanbul. Big grey trucks with water cannon mounted on top of them stand at busy locations in that city ready to be put to use if there is civil unrest. The police there wear civilian clothes with badged vests but they carry automatic weapons in their hands.

As usual with posts in this series, I will start from the earliest objects and proceed to talk about more recent ones. The first object that draws my attention is the iron cannon in the photo below dating from about 1500 that was in the museum next to the Temple of Hercules in Amman. The label that accompanies the exhibit says that the writing cast in the object’s exterior reads: “Ezz for our master Sultan Al-Ashraf Abu Al-Nasr victory for the sake of God the work of Kamal Ibn al-Hamawi.”

The grenades below were in the same case as the cannon and, like it, they are made of iron.

The photo below shows the Aqaba Fortress. We drove to this Red Sea coastal town on day three in Petra after we had gone to Wadi Rum to see the sandstone cliffs among the dunes there. The fortress dates from the 16th century. ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, the 1962 Hollywood movie, was filmed in the city and in the area surrounding it. Apologies for the finger in the frame.

The photos below show two trains near Wadi Rum that sit abandoned on tracks that lead, presumably, somewhere. When we were there a man and a woman were engaged in a photoshoot. The woman, who wore a Lycra top that showed her midriff, was doing handstands and other manoeuvres while the man snapped away with his camera. 

Khalid, our driver, said that the steam train originally came from Japan. He took us to see the trains as a treat after we had decided to accept his offer of a trip to Aqaba in his 3-year-old Hyundai Elantra. While the two of us took photos he went into a prayer room in the station building and completed his devotions. 

If you look online you can find traces of stories about the Hejaz Railway. The steam train in the pictures below is reportedly part of that service and it was during WWI that local Arabs, urged on by Lawrence of Arabia and with the help of the British, blew up sections of the railway tracks in order to disrupt the Ottoman war effort.

The sea mines in the photo below can be seen at the back of the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. I don’t know when these mines were made or if and when they were deployed. They can be seen from a path outside the painting museum at the back of the palace compound.

The photo below shows a military installation that was set up for Ramadan in Boulevard Abdeli Mall, in the western part of Amman. The sign that accompanied the installation said that the cannon was used in the 1940s to signal the end of fasting during Ramadan but the installation also had a PR purpose.

After I got back to Sydney at the end of the trip I was watching TweetDeck as I usually do during the daytime and saw a photo a Turkish account, that normally posts photos of orientalist art, had put up. It showed a tank or a large gun (I don’t recall this detail clearly) and it had a caption that placed the photo in Cyprus following the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974. I was a little surprised and asked why the account operator had put this image up but in reply the person in charge of the account blocked me. It had been put up, they said, just to rub it in. 

For many people living in the ME, memories of war are fresh and going by the way people who live there think there is little to be optimistic about. Conflict characterises the region and I see no chance for that to change in the near future. Maruan had opened the conversation with remarks about soccer – he showed me on his phone part of a game that had recently been played by the Australian and Jordanian national teams, which Jordan had won – but considerate and peaceable people like Maruan are not always who you meet with.

Some are like the man who, on the day this post was written, climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge in order to protest against the government of Iran. During the climb, which stopped traffic on part of the bridge for about an hour, the 33-year-old made a video of himself that he loaded to social media. In it he addressed President Trump of the US. The Sydney Morning Herald story on the incident went on:

In the video, the man identifies himself as a member of the "Restart" movement, a group that, according to its website, wishes to "overthrow the regime of Islamic Republic of Iran" and "establish a government based on knowledge and merits" to bring peace to the Middle East.

Is the region a contested space? As Tony Abbot might have said, “You bet you are.” You bet it is. And one thing that strikes me as a result of writing this series of posts is that creativity and power have always gone hand in hand. In order to effectively project power you need more than military strength. You also need people who can paint and sculpt and engineer and design and build. You need artisans and artists and architects: people who command the plastic materials that we use to communicate feelings and ideas. 

I have focused in this series on physical things (buildings, ritual objects, kitchenware, glassware, castings, paintings, jewellery, carvings, mouldings, decorative items, even a mechanical device) but the same rules apply when you deal with words and with other such cultural artefacts as music and dance (I wrote about the extraordinary rite of the dervishes in a June post). And it is as true today with social media and videos uploaded to the web over wifi, and short segments of text such as tweets, as it was in the days when cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) letters stamped on clay tablets were the medium of choice for people living in the Middle East. 

Mere strength will only get you so far; to create a successful polity you need people’s trust. To gain it, religion and culture were combined in many potent forms: stories of origin that lived in the present. History keeps these stories relevant to us today so that we can learn important lessons and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

So how did the guy who climbed the Harbour Bridge fare in the courts? According to the SMH, “Naghi Pirzadeh, 33, pleaded guilty in Central Local Court on Monday to entering the structure and disrupting vehicles.” According to his lawyer Michal Mantaj, “his client's night in prison had a ‘profound’ effect on him and [he] had broken down in tears when they had spoken on Monday morning.” So a second chance for this guy, at least. He got a nine-month intensive corrections order, was banned him from going within five kilometres of the bridge, and was also fined A$1200 for this and two other offences.

Historical Middle East, six: Civic and commercial buildings

This is the sixth in a (third) series of blogposts based on my ME trip. The first post in the series was on orientalist art, the second was on funerary customs, the third was on ritual objects, the fourth was on applied and decorative arts, and the fifth was on sacred buildings.

I am getting near to the end of this series but it seems as though I have just started. How many memories are captured here! The current post – not the longest in the series but the one that has the most photos (43) – will be about buildings that did not have a sacred purpose and, as with the previous post, it will start in Jerusalem because that is where the oldest civic and commercial structures we saw are located.

I couldn’t find a definitive etymology for the name of the city. Suffice to say it has stood in its present location for a very long time and so the walls that surround its core – the old city, or old town, which is filled with narrow alleyways and religious buildings and shops selling tourist tat – are doubtless very old as well. The town that stood where the core of modern-day Jerusalem stands would always have had walls as a protective barrier. Jericho, which is one of the oldest settlements in the world, had walls and any child who has gone to Sunday school will be able to talk about them.

The old city of Jerusalem has a number of gates to allow people to get in and out of the town, and there are tens of thousands of visitors who enter the place every day. The gates are dotted around the place and the one we used most often during our visit to the city was the Jaffa Gate, which is on the western side of the old town and which leads to Mamilla Avenue, an upmarket pedestrian mall that is closed to cars and that is lined by restaurants and shops. The first photo below shows another gate, called Zion Gate. The second photo below shows a gate that is located just east of it called Dung Gate.

Dung Gate is situated in the wall at a place very close to where the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall are located, and it provides vehicular access to the city. Not all of the gates of the old city do. The only way to use some of them is to walk in. At Jaffa Gate you can catch a taxi and Zion Gate allows cars to exit while Dung Gate allows cars to go both in and out. 

The following photo shows the walls of the old town from a point just west of it. This photo was taken on day three of our stay when we had walked down the hill from the hotel to find a restaurant. The restaurant only served vegetarian food and the meal was very filling. It is located in a park and before entering the park I turned around and snapped this photo, looking east. The cypresses that you see in Jerusalem, like the limestone used for buildings, is mirrored by what you see in Amman, the capital of Jordan.

The photo below shows a tunnel in Jerusalem. The old city is full of funny little laneways like this and there are often shops leading off them, as you can see in this photo. The shop here is an art gallery. It’s difficult to know when such structures were built and who built them.

Now to Amman in Jordan. The following four photos show the Roman amphitheatre there. It is made from limestone (naturally) and it sits on Hashemi Street, a busy thoroughfare that leads in and out of the old town. Our hotel was located right opposite the theatre and to get back home at the end of the day if we had been out we just had to tell taxi drivers “Roman theatre” and they immediately understood where to go. 

The photo below shows Hashemi Plaza in front of the theatre. People use this space to gather and talk and socialise.

The following photo shows one of the limestone column capitals that is on the ground in the space. The place is not very well looked after by the authorities and although there is a gate with a turnstile at the entrance it was never manned when we visited the plaza.

The photo below shows me with some of the columns that are still partially standing.

The following photo shows a sign erected on the theatre site by the civic authorities. It dates the theatre to the second century AD at the time of Antoninus Pius; not sure where they got the spelling of this emperor’s name from but it’s different from what you find online. The sign also asks people not to smoke, which seemed odd as the site is in the open air. Perhaps the invocation was for people going into the area inside the building. The sign was situated next to a gate that we never saw open, unlike the turnstile at the entrance, which people just walked through to get into the plaza.

The following two photos show me in Petra, 250km south of Amman, standing in front of the amphitheatre located in the lost city of the Nabataeans. The kingdom became a client state of the Romans in about 100AD, at the same time that Amman (then called Philadelphia) was taken over by the Romans. No doubt theatre formed part of the Romans’ PR apparatus, keeping people loyal and quiet.

The photo below is also of the theatre in Petra, and it shows the stage entranceway (the black hole in the centre of the frame) and the walls of the theatre facing the thoroughfare that people would have used to move from one part of the settlement to another.

The photo below shows the remains of a wall that made up part of the fabric of the theatre. You can see the rubble inside the wall and its smooth, dressed facing stone.

The following photo shows the nymphaeum (a water source) built by the Romans in Amman. The US embassy and scholars at the University of Jordan are restoring this structure. Currently, there is a kind of keeper who lives on-side and he lets you into the enclosure, which is hard by the produce market in the downtown area. Before you leave the place he will ask you for a tip. I gave him, I think, one Jordanian dinar (about A$2).

Having touched on Jerusalem, Amman and Petra we must now go to Istanbul. Here we visited what is called the Basilica Cistern (see photos below), which was a water supply constructed by the Byzantines when the city was still called Constantinople. 

At 3.50pm in the afternoon on day three in the city we entered the site and paid for two tickets (20 Turkish lira, or A$5, each). Downstairs, the cavern the Romans built in the time of Justinian I (about 500AD according to online sources) is pretty spectacular and the Turks heighten the drama by piping in a kind of ancient music so that you feel as though you are in a Fellini movie. Both locals and tourists use the place. We wandered around along the concrete walkway that has been constructed to support visitors, and took photos, then at 4.20pm we came back out onto the street via the exit, which took us to a street different from the one we had used to enter the cavern.

Still in Istanbul, my next stop is the Topkapi Palace, which was established as the sultan’s home and as the centre of government for the Ottoman Empire in the middle of the 15th century. The place is a museum now. The tickets were 60 Turkish lira (A$15) each for the palace and 35 lira (A$9) each for the harem, where the sultan and his family dwelled. The following two photos show scale models of the palace that are located inside the compound, for the benefit of tourists. The first model shows the palace on the headland with the Bosporus marked in blue.

The following photo shows the imperial hall inside one of the buildings in the compound, which contains a large, well-tended garden.

The following photo shows the imperial council hall with a group of visitors in it. The decoration in the place is pretty remarkable and it combines (as I noted in the post about applied and decorative arts) Western and Eastern influences.

The following photo was on the wall in this part of the palace compound. This map shows the official Turkish version of the various extents of the Ottoman Empire at different times in its history. 

The two photos below show arcades of buildings in the palace compound. Note the different coloured stone used on alternate columns, a feature that mimics what you find in Hagia Sophia.

The following photo was taken inside the sultan’s library.

The photo below shows the floor in the part of the palace where guards lived. The hexagonal flagstones reminded me of the flagstones that are found in the great temple in Petra.

The photo below shows the bathhouse in the harem.

Not far from the palace is the Grand Bazaar (see photo below), which also has its roots in the period immediately following the Turks’ 15th century conquest of Constantinople. Originally designed to enable the trading of cloth and jewellery, it is still today full of jewellers and gold merchants.

Still in Istanbul, the next port of call is the Dolmabahce Palace, which one of the sultans built in the middle of the 19th century to serve as the centre of government as well as his personal dwelling. As with the Topkapi Palace there is a harem where the sultan’s mother, wives, and children, as well as the sultan himself, lived. We took photos of the exterior but you’re not allowed to take photos inside any of the buildings, which are grand in design and which mimic European models. The third photo below shows the harem’s exterior.

The photo below shows Sirkeci Railway Station, which was built in Istanbul in 1890 on the south bank of the Golden Horn to serve as the eastern terminus of the Orient Express.

The photo below shows Istiklal Street (Independence Street), which has a tram running down its centre at various times during the day. At the north end of this pedestrian mall is Taksim Square and at its south end is what is called the Tunel, an old subway station (the second-oldest in Europe, according to online sources).

The photo below shows a residential building. In the distance is the Golden Horn.

The photo below shows a building in the tourist area of Istanbul, near Sultanahmet Plaza and Hagia Sophia.

The photo below shows the hotel where we stayed in Jerusalem for the first three days. It is called the YMCA Three Arches Hotel and it was originally opened in the 1933. The building has both a civic and a commercial purpose. 

The land purchase and construction were funded by American and British philanthropists. The interior is very gorgeous and is in a style that reflects the historical importance of the city. “The neo-Byzantine-style complex was designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon, architect of the Empire State Building,” says the hotel’s website. The ethos behind the hotel is animated by ideas close to the heart of the Jerusalem YMCA’s 19th century founders, who wanted the place to celebrate pluralism and peaceful cooperation. The vaulted ceiling of the lobby is very fine and the exterior is made from local limestone. The more luxurious King David Hotel is located just across the road from it. 

The photo below shows Boulevard Abdeli Mall in Amman. This is a modern, upmarket shopping centre in the western part of the city.

The photo below shows a woven wall hanging depicting the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates. The object was in the souk set up for Ramadan in Boulevard Abdeli Mall.

The following series of photos were taken at the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi, another city in the UAE. It is a very grand, air-conditioned edifice that tourists have access to. It was reported in 2011 that it would cost US$490 million to construct and it was completed earlier this year. The size of the structure and the quality of the workmanship involved in its fabrication are remarkable. 

I didn’t note down on my phone how much it cost to get inside but it’s not a lot. They can set up a tour for you as well but when we were there this would have meant waiting a while before it started so we declined the offer. You get on a bus to get from the ticket office to the palace itself, then there are more staff who can guide you from point to point. There is a shop near the exit, after which you get on another bus to take you back to where you can catch a taxi.

The following photo shows the skyline of Abu Dhabi. This photo was taken from the hotel we stayed in. This photo embodies a vision of the future of the Middle East, and is a sincere expression of the ethos of the UAE, one that sets this country apart from its neighbours. Rather than looking back to the past, the UAE determinedly looks to the future and it attracts workers from throughout the Muslim world to work and live.