ART DISPLAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 136, 10 June 1937, Page 5

ART DISPLAY

BRITISH DOMINIONS

EACH IN ITS KIND

A GOOD RECEPTION

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, May 8. Representative work by artists of New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and India is now being exhibited a{ the Royal Institute Galleries, Piccadilly, by the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists. The exhibition was declared open by the Duke of Kent at a luncheon attended b; many noted people and artists. New Zealanders included the High Commissioner (Mr. W. J. Jordan) and Mrs. Jordan, and Dr. E. B. Gunson (past president of the Association of New Zealand Art Societies, and the Auckland Society of Arts) and Mrs. Gunson. Lord Bledisloe was also present. Lord Howard de Walden was in the chair.

The exhibition marked the first occasion upon which a representative collection of Empire artists has been shown in London. The works were selected by committees set up by Gov-

ernments in each of the | Dominions, and Dr. Gunson assisted with the selection and hanging of the New Zealand section. Some 26 New Zealand

artists have been responsible for 40 pictures, and their work compares . quite favourably with that from other Dominions. Two studies of Maoris by Mr. C. F. Goldi9, one of which was lent by Lord Bledisloe, were outstanding in the group, and an excellent study by Mr. Marcus King entitled "The Paddlers" was the subject of especial attention. Other artists whose work was admired included Mr. R. Hipkins, Mr. H. Linley Richardson, Mr. W. H. Allen, and Mr. R. N, Field. Mrs. A. Elizabeth Kelly and Mr. Cecil Kelly also had some of their work hung. Both these artists recently had pictures accepted for exhibition in . Edinburgh. THE HONOURS WITH CANADA. It was interesting to compare the New Zealand art with that of the other Dominions. In contrast, the New Zealanders' methods appear somewhat standardised. Opinion was inclined to place the honours with the Canadians, which is explained by that Dominion being the neighbour of the culturally active United Slates and within a few days' travel of Europe. It has its own academicians and a wide-awake independent body called the Canadian Group of Painters. The latter particularly, and their sympathisers, have developed an intense and vivid interest in the peculiarities of their country and formed a general style which interprets jvith simplicity and vigour the flora, fauna, the mountains, and plains of the great.Dominion.

"Dominion and Colonial artists arc; not less important than those of 'England," the Duke of Kent - said -when proposing the toast of the "Artists of the British Empire Overseas." "Not so long ago English art was looked upon disparagingly by many • people. Many years passed before appreciation of their work was forthcoming. We are just as proud of our work as foreigners are of theirs, and it discourages our artists when they receive so little support. Until recently contemporary art has not been given the recognition it deserves. Now, however, I do not think that we can say that we are neglecting the work of our modern artists."

The Duke said that he could recom- \ mend this exhibition of the work of Dominion artists to the English pubj lie, and he expressed the hope that , more art societies would be formed in the cities of the Empire. The- King had been pleased to grant the exhibition his patronage. (Applause.); Mr. Vincent Massey (High Commissioner for Canada) replied on behalf of the Dominion and Indian artists. MX. W. G. CONSTABLE'S COMMENTS. Writing in the "Listener," Mr. W. G. Constable said of the exhibition: "The groups of influences which may affect the arts in the various Dominions, have certain elements in common, notably a cultural inheritance from Great Britain, strongest in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, combined in South Africa with Dutch traditions, and in India touching only the surface of what has come from her own immemorial past. Otherwise conditions shaping the arts differ widely. Each Dominion has native cultures of its own, of varying degrees of vitality and accomplishment, but all dominated and directed by the nature of local material. Climate and geographical structure are even more strikingly contrasted; South Africa a land drenched-in sun, Canada on the edge of the frozen north, New Zealand thinking in terms of the sea and rivers, Australia and India in terms of great drought-ridden plains.

' "The significance for the arts of such variations in local circumstances is not that they provide the artist with new kinds of objects, but that they may create in him a new kind of vision, a new way of looking at the world. It is not whether an artist successfully produces the appearance of a jack-pine or a blue gum that matters. A man may travel the world from China to Peru and reduce everything he comes across to the measure of his own commonplace outlook. The important thing is whether the sight of new objects, and of new conditions of light and atmosphere, evokes a new azid original way of seeing everything."

Of the New Zealand section he said: "In New Zealand as in Australia, landscape takes pride of place, and reveals similar tendencies. A considerable number of the academic type of impressionism, an example being Marcus King's 'Paddlers'; and the kind of orthodoxy here represented is observed in most of the watercolours. But there is also a considerable group which takes over the impressionist colour scheme, while simplifying its handling to yield a definite pattern, as in J. Turkington's 'Poro-o-Tara,' Janny Campbell's 'Wood Scene,' W. H. Allen's 'Nelson Landscape,' and Roland Hipkins's Tarawera'."