NEWCASTLE CHEST COMMISSION

Curious Colony: A Twenty-First Century Wunderkammer. Newcastle Regional Art Gallery.

A contemporary work of art, The Newcastle Chest 2010, has been inspired by the Macquarie Collectors’ Chest c1818, and has been commissioned by Newcastle Region Art Gallery.

Made by cabinetmaker Scott Mitchell from the same native timber species found in the Macquarie chest and crafted to the same dimensions, this contemporary Wunderkammer conceals and reveals the work of five of Australia’s leading artists.

These artists were selected because they work with subjects and media that relates to the Macquarie chest. For example Philip Wolfhagen is a celebrated landscape painter who also has a fascination for convict painters like Joseph Lycett and William Buelow Gould; Maria Fernanda Cardoso has for decades worked with insects in her art making; birds are a recurring subject for Louise Weaver; for Esme Timbery, shellwork has been an important cultural expression and Lionel Bawden’s interest in Wunderkammern objects led to his inclusion in the commission.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Colombian-born, Sydney-based artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso engages with the entomological world in her work, inspired by the spiders, beetles and butterflies displayed in the Macquarie chest. Cardoso has focused on specimens that are NOT seen in the original chest, that is, those creatures from the insect world that use mimic camouflage as a survival strategy. These insects offer a metaphor of the pressures placed on the individual, to blend in – pressures felt by Cardoso herself as a migrant in Australia.

Tasmanian painter Philip Wolfhagen has made three oil paintings on red cedar panels in response to convict painter Joseph Lycett’s panels on the Macquarie chest.
Sustained study of Lycett’s work has endeared Wolfhagen to the convict artist’s many idiosyncrasies, including his dramatic cloudscapes and his detailed treatment of the landscape. The coastal landscapes depicted by Wolfhagen, including the distinctive sedimentary rock configurations, are at once a tribute to Lycett and the artist’s direct response to the Newcastle coastline.

Melbourne-based artist Louise Weaver has responded to the Macquarie chest’s drawers and trays of taxidermied birds. Weaver’s drawer installation includes a native budgerigar, a zebra finch and a rainbow lorikeet, united by a wreath of wattle made from crocheted handblown-glass orbs.

Weaver’s birds are ‘taxidermied from the outside’. Mummified in brightly coloured crotchet, they call into
question our historical treatment of nature and our frenzied collecting and museumising.

Aboriginal artist Esme Timbery belongs to a long line of shell workers from La Perouse. With the assistance of her daughter Marilyn Russell, Timbery has made new work inspired by the shell, algae and seaweed drawers of The Macquarie Collectors’ Chest. For Timbery and her family, shells are protective. They possess healing properties and help link the present and past. Timbery has used Macquarie tartan to cover the tiny slippers and boomerangs encrusted with white shells collected from Newcastle, Sydney and beyond. The shells colonise the tartan surfaces, returning them to nature and ‘country’.

Sydney-based artist Lionel Bawden has been inspired by the booty in the bottom drawer of the Macquarie chest, which includes toucan bills, seed pods and a shark egg. Bawden has handcrafted a bower for the bottom drawer made entirely from coloured pencils. The form of these contemporary sculptures echoes the puzzling originals and provides a lure into a new imagined world.

English