Page 27 - Art Almanac (February 2020)

works including painting, sculpture, decorative art and video by contemporary and 19th and 20th
century artists, alongside a selection of museum curios and natural science specimens. In the
foyer, Prospero’s Island South West (2016), a large-scale wallpaper work by Melbourne-based artist
Valerie Sparks, instantly immerses the viewer in a moody seascape of stormy charcoal skies where
the volatile sea lashes the rocky edifice of a Tasmanian landscape.

Moving into the gallery dim lighting and dark-ocean-blue walls set the scene for the narration
of intrepid journeys over wild seas with a selection of early works from the likes of Samuel Prout
(1783-1852), Oswald Walter Brierly (1817-1894) and James Gillray (1756-1815), to name a few. The
Nancy Packet (1784) by Gillray re-lives a confronting and fearful scene of the final moments before
a lifeboat throws its occupants into the sea’s gaping mouth sure to be swallowed whole, never to
be seen again. In contrast to this vision, on a more tranquil note is Todd McMillan’s By the Sea
(2004), a 72 sec video documenting a condensed version of the artist’s 12-hour endurance work,
a re-imagination of 19th century German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Freidrich’s
Monk by the Sea (c.1809). This seemingly brief encounter compels a sense of solitude and
contemplation while standing alone at the edge of the sea.

The cooled air in the next room permeates a mild arctic chill with paintings by Thomas
Landseer (1793/ 1794-1880) and Isaac Walter Jenner (1836-1902), where glacial landscapes lend
awareness to the hostilities of nature and the fate of doomed expeditions to freezing Arctic
poles. An enormous taxidermy polar bear commands attention at the far end of the room, while
contemporary artists including Rick Amor, Brett Whiteley, Tamara Dean, Brian Robinson and
others turn their creative focus to the exploration of human emotion and our interactions with the
sea’s infinite underwater worlds and delicate ecosystems.

In the third space an illuminating coral pink ‘grotto’ nurtures an enchanting cabinet of curiosities
with a vibrant showcase of natural objects, corals, shells, decorative porcelains, sculptures and
paintings. An exquisite set of violet tinted jewel-like bowls in the form of shells titled Violet
macchia set with teal lip wraps (1992) by Dale Chihuly, take your breath away. Kate Rhode’s Coral
vanitas (2008), a sculptural piece composed of red coral adorned with white rabbits and small

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