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Arts / Turning painter Tom into trendy

 

Tom Roberts’ “A Break Away!”... “The most amazing painting of movement,” says assistant curator Simeran Maxwell.
Tom Roberts’ “A Break Away!”… “The most amazing painting of movement,” says assistant curator Simeran Maxwell.
WHEN the National Gallery of Australia’s director Gerard Vaughan arrived in Canberra to take up his new post, he promised a good deal for young people, and the coming “Tom Roberts” show looks set to make good that promise.

“CityNews” took the opportunity to chat with assistant curator of the exhibition Simeran Maxwell (“I’m sort of a youngie”, she says) in the thick of preparations.

“We’re trying to reinvigorate Tom Roberts and to make something that younger audiences can connect to,” Maxwell tells us.

“We want to get them to look again and realise that the things Roberts was painting were part of a narrative current today and worth addressing for a younger audience.”

All generations will be pleased to learn that this time audio tours can be uploaded on to personal smartphones or ones provided by the gallery and there’ll be technology for the visually impaired, too.

And in the accompanying public programs, Maxwell says: “We will try to create a conversation across a range of people across the disciplines that will tap into a young audience.”

“Tom Roberts” is definitely an exhibition that has something for everyone and she says there is much more to Roberts than she had initially realised – “he is really important”.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, she explains, Roberts was not a political man, his main motivation was making sure that he was remembered as an artist and, with friends on both sides of politics, he used those connections to build his career.

The celebrated 1903 work “Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 9 May 1901”, known as "The Big Picture".
The celebrated 1903 work “Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 9 May 1901”, known as “The Big Picture”.
Take the celebrated 1903 work “Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 9 May 1901”, known as “The Big Picture”, in which mini-portraits of real people feature with the huge canvas.

“That way, they could be enticed into becoming the subjects for a portraits later… was very clever,” Maxwell says.

Clever, but also: “He comes across as a really nice guy… an artist doesn’t have to be nice to be a fantastic artist, but it’s nice when they are nice, and we ought to remember he lived off those commissions.”

Head of Australian Art, Anna Gray, has planned the exhibition in a chronological order, so initially we will see the works Roberts created as a student, moving through the varying stages of his career, including his introduction to the Australian outback – significant for a man born in England.

“Mostly, we will take a very contemporary view of the show, but we have to have a sense of ‘period’ and the ‘9 by 5’ room does that,” Maxwell says. That’s a reference to the little paintings exhibited at the famous “9 by 5 Impression Exhibition” in Melbourne.

There’s a whole room for “The Big Picture,” transferred from Parliament House for the show, accompanied by sketches he made in pencil and the engraving.

“Tom Roberts” finishes with the late works. “We want to disprove the theory that his life works finished with ‘The Big Picture’,” Maxwell says. “He had plenty of money by then, so focused more on much smaller paintings, but there are many beautiful and touching works, scaled down.”

Inevitably, though, viewers will spend more time in front of the famous national paintings such as “A Break Away!”, “Shearing the Rams” and “Bailed Up”.

“‘A Break Away!’ is just phenomenal,” Maxwell enthuses.

“It’s the most amazing painting of movement. Painting is intrinsically still, but Roberts has come as close as possible to creating the physical movement – the turning of the rider in the saddle, I think people will be taken by that.

“And for an Englishman, he captured the Australian summer like nobody’s business.”

“Tom Roberts”, the NGA until March 28.

“Holiday Sketch at Coogee” by Tom Roberts.
“Holiday Sketch at Coogee” by Tom Roberts.

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