AUSTRALIAN ART

Southland Times, Issue 22465, 28 December 1934, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN ART

ADELAIDE EXHIBITION. INTERVIEW WITH LADY ARTIST. An insight into the artistic life of Adelaide was given a Times reporter yesterday by Miss Ivy Hamilton, a visitor from that city. Miss Hamilton is a water-colour artist, while she also teaches painting. She said that art, had a strong hold there, and that tnere were several excellent artists in South A “Not''long before I left there was a very good exhibition at the Society of Arts rooms in the Institute Buildings, North Terrace. All sections of fine art were strongly represented, with works by leading artists from all over Australia,” Miss Hamilton said. “The exhibition is held annually, and at the last one from 150 to 200 pictures were shown.” . . An exhibition of modernistic art was made in Melbourne recently, and when questioned by the reporter whether the “futurists” had gained a hold in Adelaide she replied in the negative. “There are some artists in Adelaide who follow the futuristic cult, but not like abroad. I saw things in London some years ago that I simply could not understand,” Miss Hamilton remarked. “I had to look at the catalogue before I could tell what I was looking at. “For instance, at an exhibition at a Leicester Square gallery I saw a remarkable attempt at translating the abstract. The exhibition was of drawings designed for one of Lawrence’s books on Arabia, and one etching was simply a mass of wavy lines with a little dot in the centre. On looking at the catalogue I saw that the title of the etching was ‘The Germ of Disease.’ It must be said, though, that this work represented the illustration of a real idea, whereas much other of the modernists’ work is simply incomprehensible. “Art is gaining a much stronger hold on the Australian people as time goes on,” Miss Hamilton added. “In Adelaide there are two very good art schools: the Government school and the School of Fine Arts, run by a graduate of the Central Art School, London.” Questioned as to the effect of the depression upon the sale of pictures, Miss Hamilton said that the bad times had caused artists to depend almost entirely upon exhibition sales. The Society of Arts rooms in Adelaide were let almost continuously for shows, for as soon as one was finished another was started.

Miss Hamilton intends to paint a number of water-colours during her tour of Southland, Canterbury and the West Coast.