The Kilgour Prize, Newcastle Art Gallery, until October 25
The Kilgour Prize exhibition once again animates the ground floor of the Newcastle Art Gallery. Despite social disruption and enforced isolation, more than 350 artists submitted entries, of which 30 finalists have been selected to hang in the gallery. From this cohort, Michael Bell's double portrait emerged as this year's winner of the $50,000 prize.
Established in 2006, the prize has now been awarded on 10 occasions, providing a sufficient time-scale to assess its impact and to begin to track trends. As is becoming increasingly obvious, the portrait is now the subject of choice, although Noel Kilgour, when establishing his generous bequest in 1987, was thinking of paintings of the figure, narrative or lyrical, as at least as important as direct representation of an individual.
On this occasion there are only a handful of works which are not solely portraits. Peter Gardiner creates a new myth, with a white-swathed young woman peering from a dark thicket to a distant shaft of light illuminating a splendidly antlered stag. Other subjects are less ambitious, featuring shadowy figures in domestic interiors, potentially an exciting subject for the artist, as Michael Bell's winning work demonstrates.
His cluttered studio frames his artist persona while containing, with compelling insouciance, a self-portrait of his innocent child self. We recall his entries over many years, couching serious implications in casually painted figures with roots in popular culture.
Another work with this kind of immediacy is Wendy Sharpe's large annotated self-portrait as self-deprecating 'woman artist'. Why not just 'artist' as she pithily suggests, tongue in cheek? Her long and celebrated career as painter of ongoing narratives of life must surely transcend any gender qualifications.
Self-portraits lend themselves to self-dramatisation, particularly evident in this time of self-isolation. I liked Daniel Butterworth's gangly figure, swiftly painted on a flattened cardboard carton, waiting for life to start up again. Another dramatic image is An Sheng's clever painting of himself in bed, illuminated by the light from his phone.
Other portraits add telling details. Two women are accompanied by birds. A lawyer is enshrined within his professional library. An engaging man and his amusing little dogs are given a celebratory ironic frame.
It is perhaps an outcome of the modern art school, with life drawing no longer a focus, that many works have figures marred by odd proportions and clumsy drawing, curiously at odds with the careful application of paint. There is an interesting contrast with works from the collection in the show The Roaring 20s, adjacent to the Kilgour show. It features the human image in paintings, drawings and prints from the 1920s. Portraits by George Lambert and James Quinn reveal a bravura handling of paint. Quinn's wife and her cat in particular have real intensity.
Included is a selection of Lionel Lindsay's lively and accomplished etchings depicting appropriately populated scenes from his extensive travels to exotic places. We remember that Lionel Lindsay was the implacable opponent of non-representational art. Is this a clue to Noel Kilgour's intentions in setting up his generous prize? Abstraction was still a contentious issue in Australia when Kilgour was most active in the 1930s and '40s.
Kilgour was only a minor figure as a painter, though the Newcastle Art Gallery gave him a retrospective in 1977, in exchange no doubt for the gift of paintings. He seems to have been better known as an illustrator of fiction and feature stories. There are examples on line of rather politically incorrect studies of indigenous families and elaborate scenes showing life on the streets and beach.
For example, there is an ambitious drawing of the boxers of Jimmy Sharman's touring troupe touting for sparring partners.
Kilgour also produced a painting manual with the title You are an Artist, presumably full of figure studies to copy. This suggests he had a very specific agenda for his prize, keeping alive the skills he valued.
History, however, is unstoppable, as an exhibition of all Kilgour winners would show. Dallas Bray's comic chook man from 2010 would sit oddly with Blak Douglas's indigenous polemic of 2019 and the line-up of big-eyed young women of today.
Is the Kilgour rapidly becoming yet another portrait prize?
