Rita Hall
School of Art History Project home | Stanley Street staff snapshots | SASA 150 years photo gallery
The South Australian School of Art at Stanley Street North Adelaide 1965-8
As
a timid country girl aged 17, it took a year of night classes in drawing
with Peter Schultz to become brave enough to enrol full-time at the SASA
in 1966.
Along with about 80 others we became the J1 students, training as art teachers. Everyone seemed so cool at first, but it soon became apparent we were much the same in our mutual awe of the fabulous Ann Newmarch, Edit Richards, Barry Pearce and Richard Haese, all only slightly more advanced students at the school. But our own group included the worldly Petrus Spronk and the brilliant Heather Smith.
The days, months and years at Stanley Street are now remembered as some of the most exciting times of my life. I adored History of Art lectures with Albie Smith, (all those slides and new information), Lettering with David Dallwitz, Graphics with Geoff Brown and Ken Paul, Painting with Ian Chandler where I learned about scumbling and glazing I think, and the fun of Crafts with Meg Douglas. Doug Hardie was always helpful in the Library. Most stimulating of all were the delights of Design with Helen MacIntosh and Geoff Wilson who laid the foundations for understanding a visual art language. Geoff's teaching continues to inform my art practice, but at the time I resented having to do so much work.
My
only real academic disaster was caused by the affable Syd Ball in 1967,
recently returned from New York. He was appointed as our painting
teacher and proceeded to quote Clements Greenberg, which meant
abandoning any previous knowledge of painting, tenaciously gained by
finally getting a handle on Van Gogh! Masking tape and flat colour were
the only way to go apparently. My frustrations were acute;
I nearly failed painting and it has taken me almost forty years to
seriously attempt painting again.
By 1968 we were jumping out of boxes, justified and explained as 'happenings', at the RSASA Gallery and we became involved in political protest marches by painting banners. Art students always had a plentiful supply of paints and brushes it seemed, even though they were hard won.
I came to love printmaking, especially etching, and in 1979 I came back to Stanley Street to teach it at TAFE for a while, but Sculpture remained a terror, partly due to my dilemma in attempting to communicate with the wonderfully passionate Owen Broughton.
The
building itself held many mysteries, among them the secret studios of
the real art students like Virginia Jay, or the hideouts of the
seemingly never-ending procession of cleaners
gliding along the corridors with their mops.
They were a great three years and I was fortunate to come back in 1975 for a full year of Printmaking with Franz Kemp and Barbara Hanrahan.
There are so many stories, so many memories, I shall treasure them all. The Kentish Arms also needs a mention as part of the Stanley Street campus. We solved all the problems of the world there I recall over glasses of cinzano and hock, lime and lemon.
Lasting and enduring friendships from those years include Carol McLean-Carr (nee Foster), Ian Winter, Geoff Brown, Geoff Gibbons, Winnie Pelz, Hendrik Kolenberg, and everyone's best friend, Geoff Wilson.
Rita Hall (nee Postema)