Shanna Muston
Exhibition & Production Team Leader, Rockhampton Museum of Art
The Rockhampton Museum of Art Collection is strongly bound to the legacy of gifting, from the renowned collecting era led by Rex Pilbeam in the 1970s to the more recent Moya Gold bequest and subsequent Gold Award. These initiatives have nurtured our collection of nationally significant artists, providing the local community with the opportunity to see works equivalent to those shown in state and national institutions at home in their own region. Collective effort and community involvement are entwined throughout the collection, ensuring local and regional stories are interwoven among the national narrative in building a collection that is by, with, and for the people of Rockhampton. The newly built premises of RMOA is evidence of the incredible opportunities that housing and caring for this collection bring, thanks to the vision and contributions of many over time.
The foundations for the collection are built on generosity. Prior to a physical art gallery existing, locals gifted works to the Rockhampton Regional Council. One of these early gifts is a collection of works by renowned artists Vida Lahey and Lionel Lindsay, donated in 1962 by Ruby Campbell, a Central Queensland artist and avid art collector. The story of this donation delves into a deeper narrative of women artists working in Queensland during this era. Lahey was city based and Campbell a rural property owner, with each travelling down a different path yet incredibly passionate and pivotal in advancing the arts sector in their equivalent regions. Both were fuelled by a desire to give to others, while also maintaining dedication to their own arts practice. These women looked to the future, with big ideas of how the arts could contribute to their communities.
Two works by Lahey, Daisies and Geraldton Wax Flowers 1962 and Yellow Jug with Flowers c. 1960, are fine examples of her classic watercolour floral arrangements. Lindsay’s work likewise includes still life arrangements, such as Zinnias 1924, while other works document the Australian bush lifestyle, such as Mail & Post Office, Cracow 1932, which features swaggies, bottle trees and scraggly trees. As Campbell once noted, ‘Essentials for a picture [are] unity, vitality, infinity, repose,’1 and it is easy to see why she admired these artists and collected their works. Gifting precious items is an act shown by many others throughout the collection, where artists, collectors, philanthropists and community have contributed for the benefit of others.
Campbell’s Kilburnie Suite donated in 2003 by the Rockhampton Art Gallery Trust illustrates the influences of these artists on her own practice, particularly Lionel Lindsay. This suite of etchings printed from plates found after her death shows scenes of everyday rural life with studies of animals, buildings and people within the landscape of the Kilburnie property. Through these works, a time in history that was documented by Lindsay at a similar time was being captured by a female—moreover, a rural cattle property owner who did all the same work of a man.i This is an important and unique perspective not so commonly shared in history.
The difference in Lahey’s and Campbell’s artistic careers perhaps illustrates the hurdles of being a rural artist in a time before the internet, where correspondence was shared by mail and one couldn’t promote their practice and engage as easily as rural and regional artists can today. Perhaps if Campbell had taken up her correspondence tutor John Shirlow’s suggestions in 1932 to exhibit in Brisbane, she might have become as well-known as Lahey.
The regional perspective through a contemporary lens is also captured in the collection through continuing community-involved traditions and opportunities, such as the biennial Bayton Award. This award is specifically for Central Queensland artists and is given thanks to the pooling of funds and support from the philanthropy board. The 2019 winning work Songs of Suburbia and Subtropical Poems by Easton Dunne is a multi-panelled large-scale drawing depicting Dunne’s grandmother working in the garden among many other recognisable characteristics of the region. The work is an homage to life in regional Queensland, a celebration of the freedom and outdoor lifestyle we enjoy. Dunne grew up on a rural property, and we see them exploring similar themes to that of Campbell and Lindsay, observing everyday moments in a documentary style. As a contemporary counterpart, Dunne explores drawing in a more expressive and experimental way, as shown in the digital drawing Wooroona Views 2019. Dunne’s works joins many other contemporary regional works exploring the local landscape, such as William Yaxley’s work depicting local sites such as Great Keppel Island or Mount Morgan in a colourful and bold aesthetic, often from an aerial view similar to a hand-drawn map (see Yaxley’s wonderful work Great Keppel Island 1974).
Other works respond to the landscape in a different way such as 2017 Bayton Award winner Death and Devotion 2016 by Tobias De Maine. Made with natural materials sourced from the local environment, the contemporary ceramic work is a reflection on the death of De Maine’s father and how death is experienced and addressed in different cultures.2 Death and Devotion is a quiet and contemplative work that sits comfortably among the collection’s significant ceramics collection, with a nod to the still life genre. The work stirs thoughts on life and the passing of time, and the way we attribute meaning to objects and use them to hold onto the intangible through a tangible means. Among the ceramics collection, it joins Trio with Shallow Dish 2010 by Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, her work presenting still life in the object form. It could also be placed alongside other explorations of the still life seen throughout the collection such as the photography of Joachim Froese in Rhopography #44 2003, donated as part of the Queensland Centre of Photography gift.
The creation of new work is now supported through the new Commissioning Collective, another show of collective effort and community support. The collective’s first commission is a site-specific work by D Harding, an Indigenous artist of the Central Queensland Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples. This work will ensure an important local Indigenous culture and perspective is also included in the collection in what will be a valuable addition and no doubt a moving and thought-provoking piece reflecting on their communities. As the artist has stated, “If the work doesn’t relate to your family and community then what’s the point?”3
These works illustrate how the collection held by the Rockhampton Museum of Art is so much more than a collection of artworks: it holds and shares ideas, stories, perspectives and histories that we can admire, discuss, critique, learn from and create memories with. Assembled through varied methods and significant community involvement, the Collection is one that captures regional stories and presents them against the national narrative. It has a sense of communal ownership, and it is one for all Central Queenslanders to be proud of, along with the new home to hold and care for these treasures as trusted.
February 2022
1 Bettina MacAulay, Ruby Campbell 1888-1977 (Biloela: Banana Shire Council, 1997).
2 Kerri-Anne Mesner, “Science meets nature in artworks by award winner,” The Morning Bulletin, 4 June 2017, https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/rockhampton/science-meets-nature-in-artworks-by-award-winner/news-story/a2cf5c08ae47cd9dc361de4efee3767d
3 Tate, “Artist Dale Harding – ‘Environment Is Part of Who You Are’,” YouTube, 4:56, posted 12 October 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA77G9UKIc.