Friday, January 21, 2011

Mary Turner Documentary Proposal

An exhibition focused on the Orange Regional Gallery’s Mary Turner Collection is scheduled for August – October 2011. The Collection itself comprises 34 paintings which Mary donated to the Gallery in 1986, and the exhibition will include also significant Australian paintings by artists represented in the collection. In addition, a proposal for an exhibition focusing on the Macquarie Galleries is being planned for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to be shown in 2013 or 2014.

Mary Turner (nee Killen), now 84, spent her childhood in the western outback of NSW, and subsequently studied in Sydney with the artists Thea Proctor and Adelaide Perry. In 1956 she was appointed a Director of the Macquarie Galleries, and continued in that role for 23 years. The Macquarie Galleries gave their first shows to both John Olsen and Margaret Olley, among many others. Mary Turner was an important mentor to artists Ian Fairweather, Kevin Connor, Grace Cossington Smith and a multitude of other renowned Australian artists.

Mary was a great-grand-daughter of Edward Killen II, who bought Urisino and three other stations in the far west of NSW from the cattle baron Sir Sidney Kidman. Edward Killen was a mentor to the philanthropist George Henderson, an uncle of Mary’s, who was one of the early users of light aircraft out west. See also: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Arts/Noteworthy-bequest-that-will-change-peoples-lives/2005/05/26/1116950818618.html. Mary can tell a story of being flown around by Henderson in the late 50s. Urisino was the base for the first flying Doctor’s service. Nancy Bird Walton describes her first dramatic view of the garden behind the high wind barrier fence in her biography My God it’s a Woman. George Henderson’s wife, Margaret Henderson, was the first female announcer on ABC radio (2FC) long before television. She was nee Margaret Doyle and directly descended from Cyrus Matthew Doyle who arrived in the Rolla in 1803 (Edward II was a comparative parvenu in 1852!) and is listed in the ADB (Aust Dict. of Biography)

This rural background is connected to the exhibition projects mentioned earlier. To give it concrete recognition, I am planning to take Mary and several artists on a field trip next April to the places of her childhood and heritage such as Nimagee (near Cobar), Urisino and Elsinora Stations, Wanaaring near Bourke. We have been offered accommodation at a Shearer’s quarters near the Elsinora homestead site and 80k’s from the Urisino homestead. The CWA has offered to cater for us.

Who we need to film urgently: Mary Turner, Margaret Olley, John Olsen, Kevin Connor, Roddy Meagher, Thora Craig, Mary’s sister, (95), lives in Townsville and worked at the Macquarie Galleries. Also Frank Watters, Edmund Capon (Re Mary’s time as an AGNSW Trustee), Stella Downer, Eileen Chanin, Lloyd Rees Estate, Idris Murphy, Guy Warren and so on. Author/Art Historian Christine France is available to interview artists.

Funding: The Orange Regional Gallery can sponsor travel and accommodation for the field trip in April. ORG are offering free accommodation and travel if artists donate a painting.

For this project to go ahead, we need donations from supporters to pay a producer to film this story for the ABC.

Available Archival Material/footage:

· We have been granted access to the Macquarie Galleries archive held at the Art gallery NSW up to 1979.

· Extensive family historical records collected by relatives such as Darrel Killen, Ted Marr and Mary herself.

· Noel Butlin Archives Centre at the Aust Nat. University.

· The State Library of NSW and Art Gallery of NSW have recorded and transcribed extensive interviews with Mary. The ABC has also interviewed her and the showreal should be found in the archives there.

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