Pure art history
by Michèle Nardelli
The Bridge, Dorrit Black (1891-1951), 1930, Sydney. Oil on canvas on board, 60.0x81.0cm. Bequest of the artist 1951. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
That year, South Australia was the first Australian colony to grant full adult male suffrage, giving every male over 21 – including Aboriginal men – the right to vote. (It was another 40 years before the right was extended to women but SA was still at the vanguard of women’s suffrage).
In the same year, the Bureau of Meteorology was founded, providing vital weather information for the growing number of agricultural adventurers in the colony.
And it was in 1856 that the South Australian School of Art was founded, the first public art school in Australia.
It says something about the core nature of the emerging state that art stood side by side with democracy and science as a priority in the evolving community.
Housed in the former Exhibition Building on North Terrace, for many years the school was known as the School of Design, then the School of Arts and Crafts. Always progressive, it was the first art school in Australia to employ a female teacher of painting, Elizabeth Armstrong in 1892, who remained with the school until her retirement in 1928. Armstrong joined Jessamine Buxton, Ethel Barringer and Marie Tuck on the staff where, by the 1920s – and in contrast with the trend elsewhere in Australia – the majority of the staff were women. In the ‘30s and ‘40s, other women teachers including Mary P Harris, Dorrit Black and Jackie Hick were instrumental in introducing students to modernism.
Among the School’s graduates and students are renowned artists Margaret Preston, Hans Heysen, Jeffrey Smart, Barbara Hanrahan, Mandy Martin, Aleks Danko, Hossein Valamanesh and Zhong Chen.
Portfolio Leader at the School, Andrew Hill, says the innovative tradition that characterised the School of Design at the turn of the century is still very much a part of the character of the school today.
"Our graduates continue to win prizes, awards and wide acclaim for their art, design practice, arts writing and curatorship," Hill said.
"I think we have maintained an element of the vanguard spirit and optimism on which the school was founded and a boldness about the place of art in the wider community."
Celebrations of the 150th anniversary will begin with a major exhibition at UniSA’s South Australian School of Art (SASA) gallery in the Kaurna building at City West campus from October 12-26.
The exhibition, curated by Linda Marie Walker, is entitled Given the Face and explores the relationship between surface, appearance and meaning, and features artists who are SASA graduates and staff including John Barbour, Linda Lou Patterson, Andy Petrusuvics, Katie Moore, Akira Akira, Aldo Iacobelli and Angela Valamanesh. The opening of the exhibition at 6pm on October 11 will feature a special retrospective address looking at the evolution of the school.
The traditional end of year exhibitions for visual arts and visual communications graduates on November 29 this year will also pay tribute to the 150th anniversary.
"Perhaps one of the most significant projects to come out of the celebrations will be the launch of a research project that will delve into the history of the school and its role in Australian art and the life of the state," Hill said. "That promises to uncover much more for us to be proud of and fascinated by."