FollowRegarded as a landmark exhibition in Australian art history, “The Field” was the National Gallery of Victoria’s inaugural exhibition at its new premises on St Kilda Road, Melbourne in 1968.
To commemorate the museum’s 50th anniversary in 2018, “The Field Revisited” recreates this exhibition for contemporary audiences at NGV Australia at Federation Square.
“The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
‘And overheard at last night’s Arts Centre exhibition of way-out abstract art: “It’s a lovely gallery, isn’t it. But where are the paintings?”’ – Andrew McKay, The Herald, 1968
With its silver foil-covered walls and geometric light fittings, the National Gallery of Victoria‘s “The Field” was a boundary-pushing exhibition, the first comprehensive display of colour field painting and abstract sculpture in Australia, and opened to much controversy at the time.
“The Field”, 1968, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria. Image courtesy NGV.
“The Field” boldly launched the careers of a generation of young Australian artists, including Sydney Ball, Peter Booth, Janet Dawson and Robert Jacks, many of whom were influenced by American stylistic tendencies of the time. Eighteen of the exhibiting artists were under the age of thirty, with Robert Hunter the youngest at 21 years of age. The exhibition is widely considered a breakthrough moment in Australian art history, heralding its contemporary international focus.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the show in 2018, “The Field Revisited” recreates this exhibition for contemporary audiences. Reassembling as many of the 74 original artworks as possible, this exhibition has been co-curated by Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV and Beckett Rozentals, Curator, Australian Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts to 1980.
“The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
“The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
As co-curator Tony Ellwood notes,
When ‘The Field’ opened it caused an incredible sensation by showing daring, abstract contemporary works by emerging Australian artists. […] By restaging the exhibition fifty years on, we hope to re-examine its impact and significance in Australian art history and allow a whole new generation to experience it for themselves.
“The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
“The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
As a number of works from the original 1968 exhibition are known to have been destroyed, and the fate of six paintings and six sculptures still remain unknown, the NGV commissioned a number of artists, including Garrey Foulkes, Col Jordan, Emanuel Raft, Trevor Vickers and Normana Wight, to recreate their original works for “The Field Revisited”.
“The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
The remaining works from the original exhibition that are absent from the 2018 exhibition will be commemorated through a specially-designed silhouette on the gallery walls, their physical space marked out throughout the exhibition space to reinforce their importance and place in the 1968 exhibition. Where possible, the fate of these missing works has been noted in the exhibition wall texts, allowing visitors an invaluable insight into the recent history of these works.
“The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
John Peart, ‘Corner Square Diagonal’, 1968, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 229.2 x 227.6 x 12.6 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased in 1969. Image courtesy NGV.
Art Radar spoke to the exhibition’s co-curator, Beckett Rozentals, Curator, Australian Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts to 1980 at the NGV, about the significance of the original exhibition, the challenges of restaging it, and what a 2018 audience might see differently from that of 1968.
Beckett Rozentals, Curator, Australian Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts to 1980, NGV in the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition ‘The Field Revisited’, 2018. Photo: Eugene Hyland. Image courtesy NGV.
Could you tell us a little bit about the original exhibition, “The Field”, in terms of both the NGV’s own history and wider narratives of Australian art history? Did it mark a kind of watershed moment in shifting public attitudes towards contemporary art in terms of the controversy it generated?
“The Field” opened the National Gallery of Victoria’s new premises on St Kilda Road in 1968. A landmark exhibition in Australian art history, it marked a dramatic shift in the Gallery’s approach to contemporary art. The curatorial premise was to define an ‘entire direction’ in contemporary Australian art that had received no prior institutional attention, and to study international stylistic tendencies in emerging Australian artists. It was a conscious counterpoint to the NGV’s permanent collection, and was the first in a planned series of exhibitions that were to be dedicated to contemporary Australian art. Geometric light fittings and silver foil-covered walls provided the perfect environment for the groundbreaking exhibition.
Entrance to “The Field”, 1968, National Gallery of Victoria. Photo: George Mehes. Image courtesy NGV.
“The Field”, 1968, National Gallery of Victoria. Image courtesy NGV.
Selected for exhibition were 74 works by 40 artists, around half aged under 30, who were primarily producing art that was flat, abstract, patterned, geometric or in the colour field style. The staging of “The Field” catalysed debate in the late 1960s regarding the course of Australian art – the exhibition was divisive and its reception varied. For many, it seemed odd to open the Gallery’s new premises with such a narrowly focused exhibition, particularly for those who were accustomed to the prevailing style of figuration. Some artists were unhappy that they were not included and felt the inaugural exhibition should have instead highlighted the achievements of Australian art history.
The controversy generated by the exhibition was not sparked by the works themselves, the Australian art world was familiar with this style of art. [Coming from ] the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, the travelling exhibition “Two Decades of American Painting” had opened at the NGV in 1967 and was the first large-scale exhibition in Australia to survey contemporary American art, featuring new styles of abstraction by artists such as Josef Albers, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko, as well as hard-edge and colour field painting. However, this was also not the first time audiences had been exposed to this international style, with galleries such as Pinocotheca, Tolarno, Central Street Gallery and Strines Gallery exhibiting hard edge colour field works from the mid-1960s.
Works in preparation for “The Field”, 1968, National Gallery of Victoria. Photo: George Mehes. Image courtesy NGV.
The selection of predominantly emerging artists for the inaugural exhibition of the NGV’s St Kilda Road premises, and a focus on such particular direction of Australian art was contenious. “The Field” proposed a new direction for the Gallery, one that was committed to the avant-garde, and helped launch the careers of a generation of Australian artists. Its significance in Australian art history cannot be overemphasised.
Tony McGillick, ‘Arbitrator’, 1968, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 287.0 x 406.0 cm. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane . Purchased in 2007 with funds from the Estate of Vincent Stack through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation. Image courtesy NGV.
What inspired or drew you to recreate the show?
There was a great deal of discussion amongst NGV staff regarding how we would celebrate the 50th anniversary of the most talked about exhibition in Australian art history. It was decided that a recreation, a first for the NGV, would be a spectacular way to commemorate this landmark exhibition. After all, recreations make it possible for audiences to view the curator’s purpose and the circumstances surrounding the original presentation.
By bringing together as many of the 74 paintings and sculptures possible, the recreation has allowed an analysis of the impact of the exhibition at the time, and its significance today for both artists and gallery visitors alike.
Tony Coleing, ‘Untitled’, 1968, installation view at National Gallery of Victoria. © Tony Coleing. Image courtesy NGV.
Could you tell me a bit about the process of putting together the 2018 iteration, and its challenges?
The first step in the recreation was to track down (or determine the fate of) the 74 sculptures and paintings included in the 1968 exhibition. This proved to be very challenging. With only three works in the NGV collection, it was three down, 71 to go. We knew that other state collections held “Field” pieces, so we began researching their collections and contacting relevant curators. Second point of call was researching collections of regional and university galleries, and also contacting the artists, artist’s estates, private collectors, commercial galleries across the country and even international auction houses and foundations.
“The Field”, 1968, National Gallery of Victoria, including works by Tony Coleing and Noel Dunn. © the artists. Image courtesy NGV.
At the opening of “The Field Revisited” in April 2018, we had determined the fate of 62 works, and the search for the missing six paintings and six sculptures continues. Included in the works we had determined the fate of were a number of paintings and sculptures that had been destroyed, either by the artist, or by accident. The stories behind the destroyed works were fascinating. Sculptures by Emanuel Raft and Nigel Lendon were damaged in house fires, and two of Col Jordan’s works had been damaged beyond repair while moving from Wollongong to Sydney in the 1970s. Normana Wight found that after the exhibition toured to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, there was little interest from institutions or private collectors in acquiring her painting. A large shaped canvas measuring 360.5 by 152.5 centimetres, Wight stated that she could not live around a painting, and subsequently cut it into pieces. Trevor Vickers swapped his work Untitled painting (1968), constructed out of three red and three yellow canvases bolted together, for Sweeney Reed’s 1956 Plymouth. Reed later dismantled the work, effectively destroying it, and the pieces eventually went missing.
One of Ian Burn’s mirror pieces in preparation for “The Field”, 1968, National Gallery of Victoria. Image courtesy NGV.
The NGV commissioned several artists to recreate works for “The Field Revisited”, including Jordan, Wight and Vickers. The concept of recreating, however, is not new in the history of “Field” works, and a number of artists have recreated or coordinated the recreation of works before “The Field Revisited” was conceived. The first work recreated took place between 1968 and 1969, when Janet Dawson recreated Wall (1968), originally painted on composition board, on canvas before the National Gallery of Australia acquired it.
Janet Dawson, ‘Wall II’, 1968–69, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 184.3 x 184.4 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased in 1969. Image courtesy NGV.
What do you think a contemporary audience will see differently from the original exhibition, and what might they gain in relation to this re-presentation of a moment in art history?
From a visual perspective, contemporary viewers will see the exhibition in a different gallery space. The temporary exhibitions gallery at NGV International from 1968 no longer exists. “The Field Revisited” is being held at NGV Australia, and spans across four gallery spaces. This is a very different experience from [that] in 1968, where the exhibition space was one rectangle. The viewer could see the end of the exhibition from the beginning. So contemporary viewers will have a sense of discovery as they move through the spaces.
I think contemporary viewers will be impressed by how avant-garde the works still feel, and they also have the benefit of viewing the exhibition through a post-Field Australian art world lens! “The Field” contributed to the significant place abstraction continues to occupy within contemporary Australian art, and to the recognition that the public art gallery can be a place where expectations are challenged.
National Gallery of Victoria, “The Field” poster, 1968. Designer: Sydney Ball. Image courtesy NGV.
More generally, what do you think about this mode of telling art’s stories – presented as an interrogation of exhibition histories? I am thinking about a wider trend of institutional self-reflexivity, where public institutions are now reconsidering their roles, responsiblities and their publics in the 21st century. Particularly, what does this idea represent for the NGV? Does this kind of historiography equal maturity and confidence in its position globally?
As I mentioned earlier, recreations allow the viewer to fully appreciate the artist, or in this case, the curators’ original intent. In a postmodern context, this relates to thinking about how works might be re-contextualised over time. A recreation allows the viewer to consider the afterlives of works, how they were and how they are now received, and how works have been exchanged and exhibited. It also allows an examination of how socio-historical conditions affect the ways in which we think about art.
The original selection of works for “The Field” reflected the gender bias of the art world at that time – out of the 40 artists, only three were women. We are very aware of this imbalance in 2018, and through this restaging, we invite audiences to consider the impacts of this, and how far we have progressed over the past 50 years.
National Gallery of Victoria, “The Field Revisited”, 2018, installation view at NGV Australia at Federation Square. Photo: Tom Ross. Image courtesy NGV.
Opening in 1851, the NGV is the oldest gallery in Australia. However, 1968 marked the gallery’s move into a new building with a new vision that demonstrated its commitment to the contemporary through the presentation of “The Field” as its inaugural exhibition.
It is imperative to keep questioning our curatorial decisions, and recreations also allow us to look at our curatorship, what we might be overlooking now, what we are doing well, and how we can anticipate progress.
Jessica Clifford
2261
“The Field Revisited” is on view from 27 April until 26 August 2018 at Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, Flinders St & Russell Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia.
Related topics: Australian artists, museum shows, painting, sculpture, events in Melbourne, Abstract art
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