Barrie Goddard
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The Golden Years
The richness of the 'Stanley Street' years of the Art School can be attributed to a number of factors.
For me, the overarching one has to be the staff during these years. It was their 'mix' which brought to the school an international flavour combined with the youthful, inquiring energy of many of us who had only recently graduated.
We had staff from the UK, Europe, USA and Canada. Most of the older Australian staff had travelled and worked overseas. For young staff like myself, this overseas experience was an important aspiration. The women on the staff had strong personalities and were major contributors to the teaching program.
The appointment of Paul Beadle in the late 1950s drove this international mix. He had been a submarine commander in the Royal Navy, so he knew how to 'fly under the radar' of the educational bureaucracy. The staff were often in conflict over ideology but through all of this we produced our own artwork, sending it all over Australia for exhibitions and competitions. It was also the time of drugs, sex and 'rock & roll', rebellious youth and staff - the Vietnam War.
The perceived isolation of Adelaide was no longer. We had our own Arts Festival, international students and evening food festivals representing 30 countries. Staff and students were on the move, travelling interstate to see special exhibitions such as 'Two Decades of American Painting' in 1966 in Melbourne. Then overseas, swapping notes on what to see and when to go…'Don't miss the Venice Biennale'. At the end of the decade in 1969, we watched the 'moon landing' on the television in the foyer of the Art School and realised how global we were.
By the 1970s with the Whitlam Labor Government in office, there was a new sense of Nationalism with a great deal of freedom and diversity in the art practice at the School. The course structures had become project-based rather than subject-based to more closely reflect studio practice. Sculpture projects involved happenings and performance, with first year students mounting a parade of floats down Stanley and Melbourne Streets. We took the Art School out of the school. Firstly with short trips - field work to the Adelaide Zoo, Port Adelaide, the Old Gas Works at Brompton. Later to Mildura for the Sculpture Triennale, then field trips to the Flinders Ranges and beyond.
This sense of freedom, fun and play filtered through to our own Olympics - endless games of table tennis in the staff room, to the pool table in the canteen, to the Friday night dart competitions in the Kentish Arms, which had virtually become an extension of the Art School.
Finally, in the late 1970s (despite vigorous protesting by staff that included a petition to Parliament) we were all bundled up and sent kicking and screaming to Underdale campus - 'Siberia in the suburbs!'
Barrie Goddard, 2008
Postscript: This is probably more of a shaky Super 8 movie than a series of snapshots. I have also tried not to be specific about 'what staff did what', but to give a more generalised account of the Stanley Street years.
Select an image to see it enlarged in a new screen.
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