If we start with world-famous actor Hugh Jackman and give over control to you, where will the chance meetings, delightful parallels, and forks in the road take us? Boss us around in another choose-you-own-adventure program where you vote on which portrait Penny Grist, Curator Exhibitions talks about next! Join us online for a fun and fascinating frolic down the highways and byways where art and biography meet.
- Hello everyone and welcome to another virtual programme with the National Portrait Gallery. Thank you so much for joining us today, it's so nice to see so many familiar faces and names coming through our Zoom room today. Before we get underway, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians, of the lands on which we're broadcasting from today, which are the Ngambri and the Ngunnawal peoples. And I'd like to extend a warm welcome, to any first nations people who are joining us from around Australia today. If you would like to, we'd really encourage you to leave your cameras on, it's always lovely to see faces. What a surprise that people at Portrait Galleries who work at Portrait Galleries like to see faces. So if you feel comfortable, please feel free to leave your cameras on and throughout the programme today, if you'd like to interact with both Penny or myself, please pop any questions, comments, observations, into the chats function at Zoom, should be along the bottom of your device. And we always love to have your input into these programmes, we keep them highly interactive, as I'm sure most of you are very well aware and very familiar with our format now. Speaking of interaction, these Thursday programmes were developed rapidly, during last Canberra lockdown to bring you some conversations, with artists and photographers and also our MPG staff. And one of those programmes that we developed was The Brains Trust of Penny Grist. One of our curators who, decided to have a little bit of a play, we kinda made these programmes at Sandbox and we said, what can technology bring us, that maybe you can't necessarily do in the gallery space? And it turns out there were a few things. It meant that we could get up close and personal with some of the works in a way that our security guards would have connections about if you actually did in the physical gallery itself. But it also meant that we can get your feedback and input into the programmes. So we're gonna revisit a programme that Penny developed or format for a programme that Penny developed a while back where you get to take us, you the audience, get to take us on a little bit of a journey. So the only prescribed part of this programme really, is our starting point. And what did dishy starting point, is dishy a word Penny? Do we still use dishy? It sounds very old fashioned to me, but I'm bringing it back, anyway I'm gonna own dishy. So we're gonna start with a very dishy subject, Hugh Jackman, so I've got my friends, the art installer was here. We shot these works, Hugh Jackman was a relatively newly acquired portrait. We'd been after him for years, but we finally managed to secure this portrait and I've took all of these fantastic instal shots with our art handlers, ready for the announcement of the portrait, we never ended up using them. So I said to Penny this morning, right, our art handlers are getting a gauncy, they're getting out in front of our audience, whether they like it or not. So here they are, both behind Penny and myself installing Hugh Jackman on the wall. Penny, do you wanna take us on a journey?
- Yes, thank you so much. Your life got James, our amazing art handler beside me. While, Hugh still on the trolley there. So I'm now just gonna bring Hugh right up behind me. There we go. So we've called this programme Six Degrees of Hugh Jackman. Now that is entirely not so much for the dishyness but actually because he had the right number of syllables to mirror the number of syllables in the word separation, 'cause we all know Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Six Degrees of Hugh Jackman was the closest I could get in their collection. Another time we'll have, Six Degrees of Edmund Capon, he was the other one that was quite close. But I just wanted to start with a word about this Six Degrees thing, which I actually learned about recently and maybe you're all know this, but it was actually a term founded or coined, by Stanley Milgram, the famous American experimental psychologist, in 1967. So it has a like a dated vintage. What he did was send a whole lot of, like hundreds of people, a package and they needed to get it back to one Boston stockbroker that they could not possibly have known, by sending it only to acquaintances. And what he worked out was that, basically that took six connections, to get back to this totally unknown guy. So there you go and it's called the Small World Theory. So again, that small world thing, has it been teach, the long predates, all our social media networks. Anyway, that's just a little bit of, bit of a digression to start off. So as with all these other programmes, if you're a regulars, I start off with the connection. We have a little bit have a look at the portrait in time. So, when the portrait was made and what that person was doing at that time, 'cause I always think that's quite an interesting way, of exploring someone's biography. We have a little bit of a bit about the portrait and it's making, so a little bit of a quick close look and then we might throw in one or two fun facts before moving on to see which way you take me next. Now, this one has a little bit of a difference, because what I've built into this one are a few loops. So let's see if we make some loops or reach some dead ends and have to go back. So, let's see how we explore this particular, degrees of connection. In fact, you can get 10 degrees of Hugh Jackman out of this programmes not the advertised six, if we go the right way. So let's just start with this portrait to begin. Now, this was actually one of our most recent commissions, so painted in 2020 by Vincent Fantauzzo, the Melbourne artist, an interesting year, to be commissioning a portrait of an, by an artist based in Melbourne, of an active base between Sydney and New York. So, part of the portrait painting was based on Zoom calls, like this one and also on photographs that Hugh's partner, Debora-Lee Furness also an amazing actress, own right, took. And Vincent has commented that, that look in his eyes of sort of knowing and trusting. He thinks might have partly come, from that part of the process, with his sort of partner getting involved there so that Vincent has some material to work with. The other thing I really love about this portrait is that and something the artist has also commented on is, it's so not a Wolverine portrait. You couldn't actually get a portrait of this actor that is any further distant from his, most famed and awarded, "X-Men" character as Wolverine. And I think it's much closer to one of the most delightful, parts of his biography that I really love, which is that he spent his gap year in England, teaching PE, physical education. If there's anyone out there that was taught PE, by Hugh Jackman in his gap year, I think we'd love to hear from them.
- [Presenter] That would be one degree of separation, right?
- That would be one degree of separation, but I feel like that's much more the relaxed, it's the person, not the actor, it's very much not in character. Something I also find particularly fascinating about portraits of actors. There's a lovely, lovely intimacy to it and casualness to it, not only in the way, he's dressed, but also in the way he's posed. So, I mean, it's hard to get enough of Hugh Jackman, but should we move on or we'll never get through, this web of connection. So Hugh joe, should we go to next, what are the choices?
- [Presenter] Hmm, let's see, Hector, if we can bring up the two choices. We have, Reg Livermore and Kate Grenville. That should have raised approach there looking solitary. All right, so should we ask our audience, to tell us which path we might take? I'm gonna launch the poll.
- [Penny] Tell me which way I'm gonna go people.
- [Presenter] So you should have a poll appearing on your device now. You can select either Reg or Kate. I can see the votes coming in thick and fast. Ooh, it's like a, it's a race. We'll probably give people, mm-hmm, maybe another few seconds, just to make a selection. And, that's it, ending the poll now. Sharing the results with you all. It looks like Reg maybe my comment about him, looking solitary has come out on top. So we're going down Reg Livermore path.
- [Penny] Have we gone from dishy to solitary .
- [Presenter] Now I'm making up all the words today.
- Brilliant, all right. I'm gonna get, since you've chosen Reg, I'm gonna bring Reg up behind me as well. All right, so we've chosen Reg Livermore. So again, star of screen and stage. So in that sense, he already has something in common, with Hugh Jackman, but he's got another connection, that goes back a little bit further. And it's one that seems to come up every now and again, in his programmes. And it's not necessarily the one you would expect. They both went to the same high school, not at the same time, but they both went to Knox in Sydney. So Hugh Jackman was, star of their production, of "My Fair Lady", as you can imagine and was school captain. Reg had a slightly different approach to school. He left at early having for a few years, been working notes as well as doing school, working notes at The Independent Theatre and where he'd done some acting classes and sort of just went straight on the stage. So from about the age of 13, Reg Livermore was already hiring holes so he could stage his own pantomimes. So you could see the the theatre was in his blood and another person who's loved the theatre he was in, was the photographer of this amazing portrait in the collection. We've got many, many portraits by Robert McFarlane, in the collection and this is one of my absolute favourites. I relatively knew acquisition, over the last few years as Robert's been going through his archive. And it's just such a lovely, young moment but also exemplifies, that sort of sense of street photography of just capturing what Robert calls, the sort of still point as the world is moving around. And you've got this lovely moment of sort of contemplation and not showing us not being on stage. And again, it has that in common, with the Hugh Jackman portrait. So should we position Reg Livermore in time here? So 1965, for anyone that remembers, television of that time, he was the alien Varossa, on the ABC Sci-Fi show, "The Stranger", at the time this portrait was made, hard to imagine, but, you know. He was also performing as the witch in the "Wizard of Oz", at the Tivoli, right around the time this portrait was made. Robert McFarlane basically embedded himself with Sydney theatres, at this time. He was hanging out in dressing rooms, in the audience, in rehearsals, on the stage. And so you get this beautiful suite of intimate portraits.
- So Penny, I think I'm having a quick look at our website. There's a cool little function, that people may not have noticed before, but our web programmer Patrick decided one day that it would be interesting for people to find out how old the people were when the portraits were taken. So if you jump on our website and follow any of the links that our friend Matt is dropping into the chat, you'll discover that Robert McFarlane was 23, when he took this photograph and Reg Livermore was 27. So just a nice little, if you scroll down on the page, it's a little bit of information right at the bottom. And that happens, is there for every single portrait in that collection. And some of them are really interesting, when you say how old they were, when the portraits were actually taken.
- Yeah, it is really interesting. I loved it when Patrick added that, that element to the website and particularly for someone like Reg Livermore, who's such a, spans the generations in terms of his presence in the theatre and on our TV screens. I mean, he won an Helpmann Award in 2014, for performing in "Wicked". So even the "Wizard of Oz" had evolved into a new thing, with Reg still performing in it. And of course, he's also famous for being a gardener. I love people with multiple strings to their bow, but the Pirramimma garden in the Blue Mountains, was very famous. And now I think when I was researching this programme, I think you can book in time with Reg, for him to come and have a look at your garden and give you some advice. So how a little bit, I'll look at that. If you're in Southern Islands area. So, Reg Livermore, where is he gonna take us? I mean, with that level of, that span of career, there's so many directions we could go in in this, from him on, so should we say who the next choices throw up.
- [Presenter] Sounds good. So, ooh, we have Bob and Dolly Dyer and we have Ruth Cracknel. I'm gonna relaunch this poll, ready and away we go. Down the rabbit hole, Bob and Dolly and Ruth.
- [Penny] So I think you can probably all guess, what the sort of, world of theatre connection is, but there's some really specific, nice ones to explore with both of these portraits, which way will you go?
- [Presenter] I can say...
- Are we gonna,
- [Presenter] Definite favourite coming through here.
- [Penny] Yeah.
- [Presenter] I might see, Penny, which do you reckon it will be?
- [Penny] There's a lot of, yeah.
- [Presenter] Here we go.
- [Penny] Lot of votes for Ruth.
- [Presenter] How can you go past Ruth Cracknel and that's such a fantastic portrait of her too.
- [Penny] Sure is.
- [Presenter] Okay, off we go.
- So you've chosen Ruth, great choice. So, what you've given me the opportunity to do, is tell you another thing that, Reg Livermore was doing in 1965, which was, he was in a, production code, "A cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down". A phrase that was already popped, sort of fairly in common parlance in Australia, but this review style show at the Tivoli just at, no, it was at the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney, which ran for 15 months and over 250 performances, absolutely jammed that particular phrase, into Australian culture. I mean, you still hear politicians say every now and again, it's really in there and that was courtesy of, this production that both Reg and Ruth, starred in together at that time. So they spent a lot of time together on and off stage, I imagine during this time. So that's the connection to Reg, which is not just a general theatre connection. It's a really nice time-based and lovely Australian cultural based connection. So let's talk about this particular portrait. So, this was made by, Rosemary Valadon, in 1995. So that's the year after the end of, the ABC TV series that absolutely shot Ruth Cracknell into the, echelons of Australian entertainment history. And she was an accomplished stage actress, Shakespearian actress, all of, her work and film across film, like, her work is extraordinary, but mother and son definitely lodged her, in the Australian imagination. So that ran from 1995 to 1994. So this portrait was made right after, that series ended you could not get a greater contrast, from the character she was playing in that series, to this portrait. So Rosemary Valadon at the time was doing a series of goddesses, that was the sort of theme. So she was painting, Australian great women, in this sort of goddess theme. So this portraits actually called Ruth Cracknell, as the Sibyl. Now the Sibyl in Greek mythology is that, like apparently, incredibly elderly, although Ruth is only 70 in this portrait, thanks to Patrick's algorithm, I know that and they were responsible for prophecy. So she was a prophetess, an oracle, that's the figure of the Sibyl. I particularly love the grandeur of this portrait, with the bits and pieces representing the stage and that book and those sort of the, classical figures behind. And we know that Ruth Cracknell regards this as sort of the definitive portrait of Ruth Cracknell. So that's, you kinda get a better review from a sitter, to an artist than that. It's a really, really interesting piece of work too and kind of one of those love in contrast, to the Hugh Jackman that we started with and with the Reg Livermore, you've really got a sense of the theatrical, in this portrait of an actor. So you don't necessarily have her in character or like she's sort of in character as a Sibyl, but she's very much in a set, immersed in a set and very happy there. So this was also the year after she won the 1994 Logie, for the most popular comedy personality. So yeah, I can't think why Rosemary paint in one of the Logie's in there in the, in the bottom there.
- Penny, do you know, what the coloured sticks, they're a little bit hard to see on the screens, but you know what she's holding in her hand there.
- I was actually wondering that while I was examining this, while preparing, no, I don't actually.
- We might have to seak that...
- It could be a classical reference or it could be something, completely else.
- Hmm.
- Yeah, that's a good subject for further research for somebody.
- Yeah, sounds good. And if anyone else in our audience has any ideas about, theatre people might have any ideas, what it might be referencing. I'm also intrigued by the books that she has,
- Mm-hmm.
- piled up beside her, but I might have to go and have a closer look, at the portrait later on to see if there's anything there that can be discerned from having a closer look.
- Which you can, because this one is hanging, in the open portrait gallery at the moment. So anyone who's in Canberra, head in and take a closer look at those books sitting beside Ruth.
- [Presenter] Maureen's taken a stab at incense perhaps, but yeah, we'll let you know Maureen.
- So you're going down the Greek, sort of spiritual path there, hmm. So from "A cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down", where should we go from Ruth? Who does she connect to? Let's see, where are you gonna take me next. Should we bring up my choices?
- [Presenter] We have Kate Grenville or Bee Miles,
- [Penny] Ahh,
- [Presenter] These are two very different characters.
- [Penny] Hey you fond, one of my little loops, that I've built in, to this exciting journey. So let's see.
- [Presenter] Okay, launching the poll.
- [Penny] Two very different works, two very different characters here. And maybe you already know what the connection between all three of these people might be.
- [Presenter] I wonder if people have heard of Bee Miles, be interesting to find out. Oh my goodness, Penny,
- [Penny] Oh.
- [Presenter] I don't think we've had this in the history of, choose your own adventure park, oh somebody is on a lite date to come through.
- [Penny] Comes a little bit ahead.
- [Presenter] Okay.
- [Penny] This is very exciting.
- [Presenter] We had it up until a second ago, that last part is just tipped us over, so we're going down...
- [Penny] Yeah, hang there for a while but.
- [Presenter] Going down the Kate Grenville path.
- [Penny] Brilliant, brilliant. Now I'll just bring up Kate behind me, great. So Kate Grenville, what is her connection to Ruth Cracknel and maybe some of you know, so Ruth Cracknel played, the title character in the film version, the 1996 film version of, "Lillian's Story". So "Lillian Story" is, one of Kate Greenville's most famous novels, although she's got a lot that are very, very well known and bestsellers. So, "Lillian's Story" was filmed by, Jerzy Domaradzki, director in 1996 and Ruth played the older Lillian character and tiny Collette actually played the younger character. So that's the connection between Ruth and Kate. Now, this is a beautiful portrait, from Jenny Sages painted in 2012. Kate Grenville at this point in her life had just finished, the third in this sort of trilogy, although it wasn't, it was a series of novels that came, that started with "The Secret River". So she just published "Sarah Thornhill" the year before, she was up to seven novels at this point. And you can see her here on dark and dark and John land and the Hawkesbury River. So the artist and Sarah went out for a walk along the place where "The Secret River" original novel and series are set. And you may have seen, I always do a little bit of a plug for an ABC programme seemingly in this series. And if you haven't been catching Claudia Karvan and "The Books That Made Us" on ABC, go back and watch it on iview and you can see a beautiful interview with Kate Grenville about that there to. Something I wanted to share with you here, is because we have a fantastic portrait story, with Kate Grenville, a fantastic interview, where she says, a few really lovely things, not only about this painting, but also about the writing, the process of writing, I didn't know, to watching the portrait story, she actually started as a film editor and it was that process of learning to put together, hours and hours and hours of footage, into a story that helped her learn to be a storyteller and learn to be a writer. And she talks about writing as a long hard and often kind of boring process, which I think is really fun. But she also says and you can go and watch it yourself and hear these in her own voice, in her own words, that she talks about, but it's lovely to sort of think about it, while seeing these portraits. So, she met Jenny Sages and realised immediately, they were on the same wavelength as curators, because she had no preconceptions like me, she starts with a question, in so far as it painting can start with a question and allows the material to guide her, which is exactly how I make art. And we had some wonderful conversations, which people who don't make art often find hard to understand because they think it's a sensible and more efficient process than it actually is. It's a terrible model and you fling yourself in and kinda swim feel life and hope at the end, you emerge with something. I think that's a really lovely description, down to earth description of writing a note, from one of Australia's greatest novelists. So they sat together for several sessions, while Jenny took photographs and did some sketches and she took off her shoes because she wanted to be barefoot in that environment and she felt wonderfully relaxed. And she's really pleased with the portrait, is how she ends that. Ends her portrait story there and you can absolutely see that in this portrait, there's a huge amount of relaxation and comfort that comes, it is one of the most popular works, in the Portrait Gallery Collection. And it's very much a testament to Jenny Sage's approach, to all of her portraiture in her incredible way, she was able to build, rapport with each seater, that she met. It's a really lovely experience seeing these portrait in real life too, 'cause it has a great depth to it. That seems to sort of earn a calmness, that really seems to reflect that, quietness of a writer's process. Yeah. So, if you also, with Kate Grenville, "A Room Full of Leaves" is her most recent work. Again, exploring a historical episode, in Australian life, the journey of Elizabeth MacArthur, a really, really fascinating woman, of colonial Australian history so, that's Kate, I wonder where we're gonna go next. Is that not Kate for everyone, I feel like you can't possibly have enough of this portrait, but we probably can't stay here forever. So let's see where she takes us next.
- [Presenter] Whoa, connection with Kate and now we're gonna circling round again, Penny.
- Ahh,
- [Presenter] Are we for, the night trip?
- are we cycling, yeah
- [Penny] Ahh, now, if you choose Ruth, I wonder if you'll get different connections, to the ones you got last time, or are you gonna take your second chance, to know about Bee Miles, that enigmatic character that you say there emerging, from those charcoals stroke?
- [Presenter] Well, it was so close last time, let's see what happens this time with poll. Here goes the poll. Oh.
- [Penny] Oh wow.
- [Presenter] We don't want second lot of Ruth, we gonna, definitely looks like people wanna take, the path of Bee Miles and explore more about that character.
- Oh rush, we can do that. So, people in Sydney might be more familiar with Bee Miles than people in other parts of Australia, although she was pretty well renowned in New South Wales as well. So the connection with Kate Grenville is that her novel, "Lillian's Story" and the character Lillian, that Ruth Cracknel play in the film version of the story, is actually based on Beatrice Miles, Bee Miles. So she was often referred to as an eccentric, as a sort of well-known Sydney identity. She had an exuberant way of living. She was non-conforming, so she was a real presence on the streets of Sydney, particularly for cab drivers repeatedly, because she would just introduce herself into the cab and ask to be taken places and not give them much other option. Now I also another regular feature apart from my ABC recommendation in these programmes, has been my recommendation for, dive down the Trove rabbit hole. So I would say that a Google or a Trove search, of Bee Miles, is a very rewarding experience. And there's a fantastic article, in the women's weekly actually in 1968, which is the recollection of this cab driver, who was pretty familiar with Bee. And she turned up on Christmas day asking to be taken to Broken Hill via Melbourne. And he scooped up his cab driver mate grief and they went, on this journey and she had an allowance that was coming in, even though she was sleeping rough, she was just around Sydney, she was just not participating, in the sort of traditional way of living. And they went and so she paid for the cab fare, for that whole trip. And they had this amazing trip through, Victoria and Western New South Wales, with her able to name all of the plants, not only name the plants, but the Latin names as well, the animals, her knowledge was extraordinary. And indeed on the streets of Sydney, other things she was most famous for was, her earning money by offering to recite poems and Shakespeare, for a fee. So she's a pretty extraordinary character and hence the, I imagine the attraction to Kate Grenville, in turning this character and her life and her experience, into that incredible novel. So this portrait was actually taken, is actually based on a photograph and was made a few years after they passed away. So it was made in about 1976, about three years after her death. And I just think it's a really interesting, beautiful, like depiction of this exuberant character, a great smile and the artist, has quite a lovely connection. So is obviously very familiar with her and wanted to recognise her identity and presence in Sydney at that time. So he actually was Roderick Shaw. So he painted in World War II, painted camouflage with Dobell and with Joshua Smith, during World War II and then later was a member of the, artists for democracy and artists against nuclear war. So in his own way, he was a bit of a social activist as well.
- The audience note that astutely note that, Bee Miles is listed on Wikipedia and other resources as being spelled BEA as in the beginning of Beatrice, which could very well be the correct name, but often with the portrait galleries collection, you may find little quirks in the titling of works. And that's often because we follow, what the artists themselves titled the work, so it could well be that and Penny correct me if I'm wrong, but it could be that Roderick knew her or wrote her name down as BEE and that's just what's gone down, in the creation of the portrait.
- That actually struck me too and I did a little bit of a deck and it's actually pretty interchangeable as well, in the documentation. So it could well be that, that's what the artist applied. It could also be, it was just interchangeably used, during her life as well. It's such a great portrait, where should we go next?
- [Presenter] Oh, let's find out. I think this might be our last connection Penny.
- Oh, we've reached a dead end.
- [Presenter] We may have at the end of this one. So the choices that we have, Jill Ker Conway and Quong Tart. I'm gonna launch the poll.
- [Penny] This is an exciting twist, very, very different forms of portraiture. And it's quite from that story about Bee, which connection are you most interested to hear about, like what possible connection, could the famous Bee Miles that Sydney identity, have to either of these people.
- [Presenter] I'm genuinely interested because I missed the tech run, so I have absolutely no idea. So this will be as much of a surprise to me, as it is to everybody else. So the choice has been made, Jill Ker Conway.
- Oh. All right. Let's bring out Jill Ker Conway behind me. I think people have voted for, a very beautiful portrait here. It's a lovely scene and in a way, like is a lovely companion paste, to the Kate Grenville portrait of that, intellectual powerhouse sitting there quietly in nature. So what is the connection to Bee Miles? So, it's Ashfield in Sydney, so we're building a bit of a, this is a real Sydney network that we've built, around Hugh Jackman here, so Ashfield in Sydney. Oh no, I've got my connection wrong, that was the connection to Quong Tart.
- [Presenter] We'll go there afterwards. Hey, Ashfield, hold your horses, we're coming back.
- We've got another Sydney connection. I'm like, I didn't know, as I was saying, I didn't know you had anything to do with Ashfield, we'll see where this sentence goes, I'm like, no, that's the Quong Tart connection, which I've now, we'll go to that one in a second, we'll pretend you chose both of them, 'cause they're both fascinating. This one is another Sydney connection, which is similar to the Hugh Jackman, Reg connection, it's an old-school connection. So both of them went to, Abbotsleigh Girls School in Sydney and Sydney Uni. Bee Miles actually pulled out of her arts degree because she didn't think, there was enough Australian poets and writers, being discussed in her degree and so she's good out of it, out of there.
- [Presenter] Oh, hey.
- Yeah. Jill kept going and got the university middle in history, from Sydney Uni. She applied to the department of external affairs and because she was a woman, she didn't get the job. So she promptly got a, Fulbright scholarship to go to Harvard. So she ends up in America, which is where we met her in this portrait, because she became the first woman president, of Smith College, which is the biggest women's college in America. And it was actually where she met, the artist of this portrait in 1987, Sarah Belchetz-Swenson. Sarah was painting Jill's official portraits, of president to a portrait in that particular role. But as often happens, when an artist makes a scene that they really connect with, they became really good friends and Sarah then offered to paint a more relaxed, personal portrait of her friend, Jill. So to put her in time in 1987 here, she was a visiting, that was after her term at Smith College. She was a visiting professor at MIT. The book she wrote that year was called and I'm gonna read this off my notes, just here, "Utopian Dream or Dystopian Nightmare", 19th century feminist ideas about quality. Which is interesting in light of her personal history, with the quality there, but she was an absolute towering intellectual figure, in academia and many boards and yeah, an extraordinary woman and I love seeing her depicted in this, beautiful, quiet scene. So, let's explore Quong Tart since you already know the connection with the Ashfield.
- [Presenter] Is such a fantastic portrait though, I'd love to hear a little bit more about this one.
- All right, so I'm gonna bring Quong up behind me as well. All rush, so this is by a fantastic, contemporary artist called Parmela See. And this is part of a series of, 16 silhouette paper cut portraits, that we acquired for the collection, that all recognise and celebrate Chinese Australian achievers and are around, making sure that that history, of Chinese Australian migration in the 19th century and the contributions that those people made to Australian life and culture, are celebrated and recognised. So Quong Tart has a really interesting story, came to Australia as part of indentured labour, on the Gold Fields when he was known, but he was clearly awesome character from the start. He started the football team in Braidwood, so we're getting bit bit close to a Canberra story, Canberra connection here and was the captain captain of the cricket team. So, he was already a pretty active social figure. So having made some money on the Gold Fields, he went to Sydney and became one of the late 19th century's, most prominent businessmen in Sydney. So he started the Lung Shan Tea Room, in 1889. And then later had, an enormously expensive tea room, in the Queen Victoria Building as well, the Queen Victoria Market. To take this portrait, to examine further, I suppose the iconography in this portrait. There are quite a lot of photographs of Quong around, because he was such a prominent figure. So the silhouettes based on those portraits, but there's some symbolism here, a little bit like the Ruth Cracknel one. So what you have is a red silk cotton tree flower, that's the flower at the top. And that's the flower that, is the official emblem of Guangdong Province, where Quong originally came from. And it's also the origin of the paper cutting technique, that Parmela See is using to make these portraits, so there's that beautiful double connection there. The peacock feather was part of the symbolism, around one of the honours that was bestowed upon Quong by China, for his connections that he made between China and Australia particularly in terms of being a liaison, for the first Chinese mission, to Sydney, to Australia. And he received multiple honours, but the peacock feather was sort of part of the fourth tier of those honours without going into the enormous detail. But it's actually like a beautiful way of representing, all of those parts of his identity in this really, as part of this set of silhouettes. So I'm glad we got a chance to talk about Quong and yes, his main residence in Sydney was in Ashfield and Bee Miles was born there, so, that's the connection to Quong. How are we going for time dear, do we have one more? We have probably have time for one more, little jumping its journey, don't we?
- Sounds good, do you have a particular fork in the road that we jumped off that you'd like to feature?
- Well, yeah let's have a little look, since we've done showbiz, right? Let's have a look at Bob and Dolly Dyer.
- Yeah that's have a look at Bob and Dolly.
- Haters you just stay, bring up Bob and Dolly there. And then we'll circle all the way back.
- There they are.
- There we are. So just as we started with Hugh in theatre. Oh and then Reg Livermore, we get Bob and Dolly Dyer. So this was the fork in the road that we didn't take, when we were connecting to the Reg Livermore. So his connection to these two and again, we've got some really classic television, coming up in this programme this time. They met at the Tivoli, so they were a bit earlier, than Reg's time at the Tivoli, so they are in 1940. So Bob Dyer had this, he was from Tennessee and he had this HillBilly Banjo playing act and Dolly was a showgirl and they met in a doorway at the Tivoli. And two weeks later they got married and that was the journey to becoming one of the most iconic couples of Australian Television, via radio. So in 1948, they started Pick a Box, on the radio and it transferred to television in 1957 and continued there for 23 years. So, that particular programme and this couple, definitely along with, "A cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down", one of those things that's really embedded in Australian popular culture. And again we have another Logie, it's Logie villed here in this programme today, so, they're clutching their Logie, which I think, this is undated. So it's probably from around 1971, when they received a special Logie, for their achievements on Australian television, this portraits by the superlative Ern McQuillan, who was a photo journalist through in Sydney and around Australia for a good many years and these beautiful portraits, of Australian entertainment and sporting heroes, are one of the greatest parts, of the Portrait Gallery Collection. But Bob and Dolly there you go, what a lovely place to end, with the smiles of Bob and Dolly Dyer. And I think that's probably where we've gone. I think we got Six Degrees of Hugh Jackman in there in the end, didn't we?
- Oh, absolutely, we probably had a few more, thank you so much Penny, for taking us on yet another journey, through the various convoluted connections that we find in the Portrait Gallery. It's always been one of the most, the things that I've been most passionate about, working in the digital section here at the Portrait Gallery, is the connections that we can make our collection. People get people and it's like always, like a spider web of personalities that link to other personalities, so thank you Penny for bringing some of those, linkages and connections to life in these programmes, that we've been exploring over the last few months. If you'd like to check out our website, portrait.gov.au, there's a whole lot of other online and now in-person, in real life programmes, that you can explore. If you would like to join us next Tuesday for our virtual highlights tour, we have an Oz land and closed caption programme. That's all to do with bobbles and blings, so don't miss that one. One of our learning facilitators has trolled the collection, for all of the beautiful jewels and adornments that people in portraits are wearing and it's a very good Christmasy feel programme, for next Tuesday. What I'd also like to plug as conclusion to this programme, is the fact that we've got quite a lot of the recordings, particularly from our Thursday programmes up on our website. So if you've missed any of our Thursday programmes, please jump on portrait.gov.au/watch and you'll be able to catch up on, all of the different programmes that we've been running, over the last few months. Thank you so much to everybody for joining us. Once again, it's been terrific to see all your faces and I hope you'll join us online again soon. Thank you so much, see you, bye bye.
Artist Vincent Fantauzzo on dyslexia, connection and virtual sittings with Hugh Jackman.
Visit us, learn with us, support us or work with us! Here’s a range of information about planning your visit, our history and more!
We depend on your support to keep creating our programs, exhibitions, publications and building the amazing portrait collection!
