Last modified on Sun 14 Mar 2021 11.28 EDT
In 2019, the Royal Academy staged an exhibition by the great Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck. On the day I saw it, the galleries were preternaturally quiet â the crowds who are so mad for Frida Kahlo seem not to have heard of Schjerfbeck â and in the room where the curators had hung 17 of her self-portraits, a time-lapse sequence dating from 1884 to 1946, I was amazed to find myself entirely alone. Only I wasnât, not really. She was all around. Schjerfbeckâs colours are often mossy, shades of grey-green that bring to mind not only nature at its lushest, but also gravestones, mottled and cold to the touch. In the spectral hush, I saw a woman first grow into herself, then move beyond that self â as death tiptoed ever closer, the self-portraits grew ever more abstract â and it was indescribably strengthening. I could have taken on anyone that day. An unseen presence had sprayed courage on my wrists.
‘Canberra’s National Gallery is still full of surprises’
Jan 22, 2021
Sculptural work by Xu Zhen, one of China’s most significant artists, at Canberra s National Gallery. Source: Ian Smith
A fallen and malleable Corinthian-style pillar – that looks as though it may have once graced Greece’s Parthenon – suddenly moves, just when you’d least expect it! Snake like, it seems to follow you as you walk through Canberra’s National Gallery. Its title is ‘Hello’, by artist Xu Zhen. As Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked, “If you stare into the abyss, eventually it will stare back at you.”
Xu Zhen’s ‘Hello’ sculpture. Source: Ian Smith
Lieutenant Oliver Neall and his wife, Golda (née Ellis), 1943, AWM P04243.001
When the Second World War broke out Golda Ellis volunteered for the Murray Bridge chapter of the Adelaide Cheer-Up Society. The society provided meals for the hundreds of servicemen who passed through the town, whether on their way to war or coming home from the front. Golda enjoyed meeting the young men, and loved to collect colour patches from them. She wasn’t allowed to put them on the outside of her uniform, so she sewed them to the inside of her blue woolen cape.
Colour patches collected by Golda and sewn into her blue woolen cape, AWM REL32369