Vida Lahey is a well-regarded Queensland artist who exhibited in 33 solo exhibitions beginning in 1902. More recent interest in women artists rekindled interest in her works. Glenn Cooke reveals a project to document Lahey’s output and seeks the help of collectors in this task.
A quite remarkable amount of wood-carving was produced in Australia, in the framework of the Arts and Crafts movement, at the beginning of the 20th century which is, and remains, unidentified. If we don’t have a provenance we can look at stylistically similar works, such as Queensland’s Harvey School, to provide a context. The Ipswich folk-carver Peter Harley (c 1873-1941), however, produced distinctive work over a significant period and his profile began to emerge from obscurity after Glenn Cooke presented his ‘Merry Christmas‘ box to the Ipswich Art Gallery in 2005.
Artists draw inspiration from many sources. Glenn Cooke examines at how a 20th-century Queensland wood carver took his design inspiration from an historical French pottery plaque some 400 years old, finding what seems to be the exact example he used.
While the artist H. C. Simpson (1879–1966) depicted subjects such as Mount Warning in northern NSW, his output is emphatically linked with the early years of the ‘Gold Coast’ and specifically the resort towns of Coolangatta, Currumbin and Tweed Heads. Although his work is not held in particularly high regard artistically, thousands of Queensland homes treasured his original landscape paintings of favourite, unblemished scenes that brought back happy memories. Some collect his works, but many are passed down through families as nostalgic links to previous generations, a reminder of a Queensland and the NSW Northern Rivers which has been swept away by (over-)development.
A friend of mine wanted to see a mosaic mural in the Crypt at Anzac Square in Brisbane (now operated by the State Library of Queensland). For most of the year it is protected by an information panel, but the mural is on view for just two weeks in January ― the month when the artist and craft worker Don Ross (1917–2015) was born (and died, aged 98). Her interest ― her niece is married to William Dickson (the grand-nephew of Don’s wife Joy, known as Dicki), who joined our pilgrimage to view the mural. I was able to provide them with some personal details of his life as, when I came to Brisbane from Blackall in the late 1960s, I joined the Contemporary Art Society of Australia (Queensland Branch) where Don Ross was an exhibiting member.
Australiana is often defined by the combination of local materials, local motifs and local skills to create art that is distinctively and recognisably Australian. The Harvey School of pottery making, which flourished at the Central Technical College in Brisbane from 1916 for more than thirty years is one of the best-known examples. Almost 40 years ago, Glenn Cooke began researching the Brisbane woodcarver L J Harvey (1871–1949), who taught himself pottery making and established the school, which mainly attracted well-bred young ladies. New evidence emerged in 2019 to reveal developments in the early years.
Glenda King, Maude Poynter: painter and potter. Tasmanian Chapter of the Australiana Society Inc., Hobart, 2018. Soft cover, 108 pages, plentiful colour and black and white illustrations. ISBN 978-0-646-98281- 6,
I started at the Queensland Art Gallery as the first Curator of Decorative Arts in 1981 ‘wet behind my (curatorial) ears’. The first project I initiated, LJ Harvey & his School, opened in September 1983, following the relocation of the Gallery’s collection to its new building on the south bank of the Brisbane River in 1982. This was the first fully researched and published exhibition project ever undertaken by the Gallery.
The much-loved artist Margaret Olley is commemorated in the Tweed Regional Art Gallery at Murwillumbah, which established the Margaret Olley Art Centre and displays some of her paintings and her re-created studio. Glenn Cooke is adding his personal tribute to Olley, in the form of an illustrated database of Olley’s art.
