Udo Sellbach: Harsh Truths and Strong Feelings

Artist, educator and arts administrator Udo Sellbach (1927 2006) has made, and up until his death in September 2006, continued to make a profound contribution to the fine arts in this country. Born in Cologne in 1927, Udo emigrated to Australia in 1955. His experience as a founding member of the Kolner Presse and printmaker at the Kolner Werkschulen (1947-53) equipped him with the expertise to promote the development of printmaking as a studio practice within Australian art schools, particularly in the areas of etching and lithography. Sarah Scott conducted this interview with Udo in his studio in Taroona, Tasmania shortly after his seventy-ninth birthday in July 2006.

More from this Issue

Bert Flugelman: Still Flying

Bert Flugelman is a sculptor and painter. His influence on generations of students is legendary, in major art schools in Sydney, Adelaide and Wollongong whose sculpture departments suddenly spring into life when he arrives. He has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wollongong, whose Friends association raised the money to pay for his gigantic winged sculpture on Mount Ousley overlooking the city an Icarus in the ascendant. At 82, he is still hard at work making large-scale works in his studio and workshop in Bowral, NSW, where Tamara Winikoff interviewed him on 23 June 2006.

Tamara Winikoff

Daphne Williams: The Solid Core

Richard (Dick) Kimber

Richard Larter: The Seasons of Art

For Richard Larter the material act of making paintings is an essential part of his daily life. He has written that my first mature paintings were pointillist abstracts done in house paints and enamels on lilac coloured masonite (Larter, 1998). Larter is an artist well aware of the visceral qualities of paint. Larters syringe paintings, made by forcing paint in raised lines onto hardboard, became the signature works for his initial Australian success. His role as assistant to the ceramicist Zora Merabek who was restoring the Marabout Tombs in Algiers led to a continuing interest in the visual forms of Islamic culture and a love of strong pure light. This article follows Larters prominent career and a lifetime of travel throughout Australia, New Zealand and abroad.

Joanna Mendelssohn

Joan Brassil: Force and Tension

Joan Brassil was a rare spirit, a charismatic and immensely generous artist. She died at age 86 on 19 April 2005. Anne Sanders interviewed Brassil in July and August 2004 questioning her about her remarkable practice, her collaborations with scientists and her views on the cosmos. How did she conceive of the nature of art and what makes a person become an artist? Key figures here discussed include Malevich, Darwin, John Pollack and Brian Robinson.

Anneke Sanders

Hector Jandany 1927-2006: Teacher of Culture

Hector Jandanys work was informed by the ever-present knowledge of his country, and the ngarranggarni or Dreamtime the time the world and the rules for life began. He was renowned as a teacher of Gija language and culture in Warmun since the 1980s and he helped spread knowledge of song and ngarranggarni throughout the East Kimberley. Jandany was part of an amazing cultural team including George Mung Mung, Jack Britten, Henry Wambiny, Queenie McKenzie and others supported at Texas Downs by the kindness of manager Jimmy Klein.

Frances Kofod

Arthur Pambegan Jr: Not to Die Away

Arthur Pambegan Jr was born in 1936 and lives at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. He is one of the senior members of the Wik-Mungkan language group and an elder of the Winchanam people. His main traditional lands lie between the Small Archer River and the Watson River. The sacred totemic sites of his people are told through two main stories Walkaln-aw (Bonefish Story Place) and Kalben (Flying Fox Story Place) which are the subjects of ceremonial carved sculptures. Peter Denham spoke to him in June 2002 at Aurukun.

Peter Denham

Clifford Frith: perpetuating the bloodlines

Pat Hoffie talked to Clifford Frith, about his life as an artist and a teacher, about where and how your essential focus is born and shaped and the possibility of passing some of this on to students and others. She has admired and watched his way of working and living for two decades and as Frith continues to outlive in energy and inventiveness so many younger than himself she probes into how this came to happen. He is a prolific artist, moving between painting, sculpture and drawing.

Pat Hoffie

Milton Moon: Approaching the Intangible

In his 80th year the eminent potter Milton Moon, AM, continues to make pots, working in a studio at his home in Adelaide. He exhibits with Aptos Cruz Galleries at Stirling in the Adelaide Hills. Over a long career Moon has received many awards and honours, including a Churchill Fellowship (1965) and is represented in many major public collections, including all the State galleries and The National Gallery of Australia. On a mild morning in early spring 2006 Margot Osborne sat with Moon to discuss his career as outlined in this article.

Margot Osborne

Artrave

Artlink

Guan Wei

Unfamiliar Land Guan Wei Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia 16 June - 23 July 2006

Robin Best

Inge King: Playing Seriously

Zara Stanhope talked to Inge King on 28 August 2006 shortly after the dedication of her latest piece of public art Rings of Saturn at Heide Museum of Modern Art. The interview took place at the Robin Boyd designed house where King (b. 1918) and her aristist partner Grahame King have lived for half a century. The both have small studio spaces in the buildings, which are set on several acres in Warrandyte in outer Melbourne.

Zara Stanhope

Bernard Smith: Reluctant Icon

Generations of art students have been encouraged to read his books on the history of Australian art. He has been revered, rejected, loved and loathed by young and old. Julie Copeland of ABC Radio Nationals Sunday Morning Exhibit A has interviewed Bernard Smith many times over the years, about his books, his art criticism, his autobiography. In the lead up to his new books publication The Formalesque, and on the occasion of his 90th birthday in October 2006 she asked him to recap for Artlink readers, how the varied influences of his early life came together to produce Place, Taste and Tradition in 1945 when he was 29 years old.

Julie Copeland

View all articles in this issue