Together In Art

The glaring blue eyes. The paint-striped forehead. The painter’s palette held up like a shield. Sidney Nolan’s ‘Self portrait’ 1943 is an astonishing declaration of artistic purpose. Aged 26 at the time, and engaged in military service in the Wimmera district of north-west Victoria, Nolan paints himself, not as a soldier in training, but as a warrior in the service of art. Nolan’s painting emerged from the global crisis of the Second World War. But there’s something in the urgency and humility of the work (zoom in to enjoy its rough hessian edges) that also feels relevant to us right now, when artists are reckoning – often using whatever’s at hand – with an unsettled and uncertain world. Artists and their voices are at the heart of this week on Together In Art. Expect more self-portraits and staunch declarations – and an exciting announcement. And look again, for inspiration, at Nolan’s brushes: loaded with colour and bristling with potential.

Exhibition project officer Fatima Hijazi describes how, for #TogetherInArt, performance artist Maissa Alameddine has created a sublime sensory experience set against a vibrant abstract painting by Lesley Dumbrell. 'Alameddine’s soulful verses are inspired by a traditional Arabic folkloric song ‘Hal asmar el lon’ from the Levant region of the Eastern Mediterranean. She draws on an oral tradition inherited from three generations of female musicians and performers before her. Responding to the temporary closure of the Art Gallery of NSW, a cultural space that offers rich engagement with the past and present, she brings the words, language patterns and melody of her heritage to the Gallery’s silent spaces. 'Alameddine, a Sydney-based performance artist, stands before 'Solstice' 1974 by pioneering Australian woman artist Lesley Dumbrell. Derived from the Latin word solstitium, the term solstice is made from sol, ‘the sun’, and sistere, ‘to make stand’ or ‘stand still’. Dumbrell has created her own optical solstice on canvas. Though the vertical linework is controlled and measured, the colour in this painting has a radiant energy that saturates our senses. 'Alameddine in turn plays with tone and with the shape of words in a way that suggests yearning as she stirs the maqam – a system of Arabic melodic modes. She seems, through song, to recast the lyrics – renegotiating their meanings without negating them. 'Rooted in her language while intuitively amplifying it, Alameddine’s performance is an invitation to stand still – to hear, see and connect – in this space and this moment.'

Cazneaux photographed this aged river red gum in 1937 camping in the Flinders Ranges with his wife Winifred and their only son. In the years following, he experimented with the composition and manipulated the negative, cropping the scene and artificially extending some of the branches. The photograph as you see it here didn’t exist until 1950 when Cazneaux actually flipped the negative, reversing the image entirely. In this print, the depth of the hollow cavity is dramatically emphasised and begins to resemble a gaping wound. We read the tree – and its scar – symbolically. It is both a body and a surrogate for what Cazneaux referred to as the ‘Spirit of Australia’ when explaining the title he finally chose in 1941 against the backdrop of WW2 while his son was fighting in Tobruk in North Africa where he sadly died. Under this moniker, the humble tree became mythic. The photograph memorialises personal loss laced with nationalist sentiment but also speaks of hope and survival. There are lessons for us in this tree. As Cazneaux himself reminds us; ‘Although aged, its widespread limbs speak of a vitality that will carry on for many more years.’