Art Researcher's Eclectic Collection, rerun.
The late Margaret Vine , of Magnetic Island , shown in a magazine article chatting with Australian artist Sir Russell Drysdale , at a Brisbane exhibition , passed on to Special Collections at James Cook University , Townsville , part of her extensive art library. Her interests included architecture , clothing , jewellery , pottery , Persian carpets , editing , wildlife , conservation .
Her donation to the university included three boxes of unique art ephemera containing catalogues of Australian art galleries , invitations to exhibitions , newsletters , single sheet illustrations .
By Peter Simon
Come along for a quick , offbeat tour of the fascinating contents. An exhibition catalogue which particularly grabbed my attention was one by Marie McMahon, inspired by the birds and vegetation in the region of the Rum Jungle uranium mine in the Northern Territory . It was shown at the Australian Girls Own Gallery , Canberra , in l994. The gallery , known as Agog , was owned and operated by former National Gallery of Australia curator Helen Maxwell to combat bias against women artists ; at times it handled work of male artists .
It tells how Prime Minister Robert Menzies in opening the uranium mine in 1954 said it brought Australia into the "Atomic Age". Upon its closure it left 30 kilometres of the East Finniss River dead , pollutants said to be discharged for 300 years.
McMahon's early life was on defence bases in Australia , including Darwin ,with time in the Philippines. Her artwork involved social, political and environmental themes. She lived at Batchelor , the town constructed to serve Rum Jungle. Conflict in Indochina and Cambodia reflected in later works .
Flip open a card and there is a dramatic invite to an exhibition which modern day farmers, under great economic pressures , drought , massive flooding in parts , now fires , would appreciate .
It is contained in three folders specifically covering exhibitions by the legendary art dealer and gallery proprietor Ray Hughes of Brisbane and Sydney with whom she had a close association along with other prominent people in the art world .
;  Ray Hughes , above , enjoying life ; below, an invitation to his gallery in the form of a playing card for an exhibition by Alan Bourne in l977. Hughes started his first gallery in Brisbane in 1969 at the age of 21 , with just $500 , later opened another gallery in Sydney , promoted an early interest in Papua New Guinea , New Zealand and contemporary Chinese art ( which included visiting China) , died age 72.  Other invitations of his took the shape of specially designed, illustrated postcards, a tobacco packet for sculptor , artist and print maker Tony Coleing , renowned for satirical and cutting edge works. |
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WOMBATS AND POLITICIANS
There was a Clifton Pugh wombat painting hanging on the wall of Vine's island home . In the boxes of ephemera at James Cook University is the following Melbourne University Gallery catalogue for Pugh's portraits with a stern looking depiction of himself on the cover .
Involved in conservation issues from the l950s , he and Ivan Smith produced the book Death of a Wombat in l972 ; Pugh aligned himself with the Australian Labor Party , influenced the Whitlam Government's support for the arts and painted politicians Gough Whitlam ,Tom Uren , Clyde Cameron , Don Dunstan , all of the ALP, and Country Party leader , John " Blackjack" McEwen .
SAD AND SAVAGE DARWIN LEAVES
Cover for exhibition by Wendy Stavrianos which compared the vegetation of Darwin and New South Wales.
Sir Russell Drysdale gave JCU rare books section 56 volumes of contemporary published accounts of early European exploration of the Pacific and continental Australia . The university said Drysdale had an interest in Indigenous Australian culture and society, which was increasingly important in his art from the 1950s on.
Included in the Drysdale collection was the rare privately printed 1906 Aboriginal Dictionary (Woradgery [i.e. Wiradjuri] tongue), compiled by J. F. H. Mitchell. It contains an insert of several pages of additional linguistic notes and comments, apparently in Drysdale’s own hand.
(Vine, Drysdale, Townsville.)
