WEBVTT 1 00:00:09.790 --> 00:00:11.320 line:15% For a long time at the portrait gallery 2 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:13.510 line:15% we've been thinking about doing a show that looks 3 00:00:13.510 --> 00:00:15.990 line:15% at the process of portraiture, 4 00:00:15.990 --> 00:00:19.170 from the initial meeting between subject and artist. 5 00:00:19.170 --> 00:00:22.290 It might be from the artist's preparatory drawings 6 00:00:22.290 --> 00:00:24.530 for the work through to the finished work, 7 00:00:24.530 --> 00:00:26.170 the kind of techniques that are employed, 8 00:00:26.170 --> 00:00:27.610 the relationship that builds up 9 00:00:27.610 --> 00:00:30.320 between artist and sitter and so on. 10 00:00:30.320 --> 00:00:33.640 And looking at the resources within our own collection 11 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:38.220 I found this group of beautiful drawings by Jenny Sages. 12 00:00:38.220 --> 00:00:41.070 The joy of portraiture is to be able to combine 13 00:00:41.070 --> 00:00:43.930 and recombine portraits in various ways, 14 00:00:43.930 --> 00:00:47.170 so that they tell different stories all the time. 15 00:00:47.170 --> 00:00:48.840 And that's what we've done with three 16 00:00:48.840 --> 00:00:50.960 of the large Jenny Sages' portraits 17 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:52.790 we have now in our collection. 18 00:00:52.790 --> 00:00:54.780 Now they came into the collection along 19 00:00:54.780 --> 00:00:58.170 with beautiful suites of preparatory drawings 20 00:00:58.170 --> 00:01:00.963 in the case of Emily Kame Kngwarreye who's behind me. 21 00:01:02.416 --> 00:01:06.970 In the form of drawings of dances in rehearsal 22 00:01:06.970 --> 00:01:09.290 in the case of Irina Baranova, 23 00:01:09.290 --> 00:01:12.930 or in the form of works that show how a portrait 24 00:01:12.930 --> 00:01:14.970 could have evolved very differently 25 00:01:14.970 --> 00:01:17.943 from the way that it did, in the case of Helen Garner. 26 00:01:18.930 --> 00:01:23.930 Now the work behind me, Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Lily, 27 00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:28.460 was the very first work purchased for the collection 28 00:01:28.460 --> 00:01:32.810 of the National Portrait Gallery back in 1998. 29 00:01:32.810 --> 00:01:35.220 line:15% And it was a very important statement 30 00:01:35.220 --> 00:01:37.080 line:15% for the new portrait gallery. 31 00:01:37.080 --> 00:01:39.620 Andrew Sayers, our inaugural director, 32 00:01:39.620 --> 00:01:42.380 wanted to make a clear declaration 33 00:01:42.380 --> 00:01:44.960 that the portrait gallery wasn't going to be about 34 00:01:44.960 --> 00:01:48.030 men in suits, stuffy boardroom portraits, 35 00:01:48.030 --> 00:01:51.210 of white Anglo Saxon Protestant men. 36 00:01:51.210 --> 00:01:52.727 Jenny Sages got a plane. 37 00:01:52.727 --> 00:01:55.760 Jenny is very charming and she catched a ride on a plane 38 00:01:55.760 --> 00:01:57.470 with some German curators 39 00:01:57.470 --> 00:01:59.120 who were going to see Emily's work. 40 00:01:59.120 --> 00:02:01.380 Emily hadn't been working for very long at that stage. 41 00:02:01.380 --> 00:02:05.280 In fact, Jenny had been painting for longer than Emily had. 42 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:09.480 Emily was 83 at the time and Jenny was about 51 I suppose. 43 00:02:09.480 --> 00:02:13.380 But when Emily saw Jenny, she said, "You are small like me." 44 00:02:13.380 --> 00:02:15.980 And she assumed Jenny was the same age as she was, 45 00:02:15.980 --> 00:02:17.970 and Jenny took that on the chin very gracefully, 46 00:02:17.970 --> 00:02:21.430 and she sat down with Emily on the dusty ground, 47 00:02:21.430 --> 00:02:24.100 and they talked like two 83 year olds. 48 00:02:24.100 --> 00:02:27.360 And what we have in our collections of drawings of Emily 49 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:30.460 that Jenny poured onto paper as she was sitting with her 50 00:02:30.460 --> 00:02:33.010 is a record of their conversation and a record 51 00:02:33.010 --> 00:02:36.580 of Emily's gestures as they sat there talking together. 52 00:02:36.580 --> 00:02:39.827 And these drawings are annotated with phrases like, 53 00:02:39.827 --> 00:02:41.247 "I like your hat." 54 00:02:41.247 --> 00:02:42.387 "You are small like me." 55 00:02:42.387 --> 00:02:43.707 "Do you have children?" 56 00:02:43.707 --> 00:02:45.560 "Then you have to keep working." 57 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:48.350 And eventually Emily got very tired of the process. 58 00:02:48.350 --> 00:02:51.400 She said, "My back hurts, does yours?" 59 00:02:51.400 --> 00:02:53.630 And then she said, "Are you finished? 60 00:02:53.630 --> 00:02:54.677 I've had enough." 61 00:03:01.230 --> 00:03:04.883 This is an exhibition about the process of portraiture. 62 00:03:05.790 --> 00:03:09.760 But how do you show that when somebody has made a portrait, 63 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:11.460 in this case, a self-portrait, 64 00:03:11.460 --> 00:03:14.450 with absolutely no preparation what-so-ever? 65 00:03:14.450 --> 00:03:15.620 There are no drawings. 66 00:03:15.620 --> 00:03:17.040 There are no photographs. 67 00:03:17.040 --> 00:03:18.430 There's nothing. 68 00:03:18.430 --> 00:03:20.730 Jenny looked at herself in the mirror, 69 00:03:20.730 --> 00:03:24.113 line:15% and she made her own portrait, then and there. 70 00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:28.630 line:15% When I said to Jenny, "Well, if we're gonna talk 71 00:03:28.630 --> 00:03:29.910 about the process of portraiture, 72 00:03:29.910 --> 00:03:31.970 what are we gonna put with your self portrait?" 73 00:03:31.970 --> 00:03:35.830 She said, "Well, the process of my self-portrait is me! 74 00:03:35.830 --> 00:03:37.030 It's my life. 75 00:03:37.030 --> 00:03:37.863 It's what I do. 76 00:03:37.863 --> 00:03:38.800 It's what I am. 77 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:40.730 It's what I live for." 78 00:03:40.730 --> 00:03:44.400 But she's not comfortable with making a portrait of herself. 79 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:45.980 And the result is this portrait, 80 00:03:45.980 --> 00:03:49.320 where she's stepping out, as it were, of the composition. 81 00:03:49.320 --> 00:03:50.810 She's barely there. 82 00:03:50.810 --> 00:03:54.160 She looks as if she's talking to somebody over here. 83 00:03:54.160 --> 00:03:56.600 She's not facing the viewer. 84 00:03:56.600 --> 00:03:59.240 She's not presenting herself in full-face. 85 00:03:59.240 --> 00:04:02.023 She's presenting herself on the periphery. 86 00:04:02.880 --> 00:04:04.940 And she's filled the space in the rest 87 00:04:04.940 --> 00:04:08.693 of her portrait with words, words that are not her own. 88 00:04:09.760 --> 00:04:12.443 They're words by the poet, Anna Akhmatova, 89 00:04:13.580 --> 00:04:17.246 a Russian poet from the early 20th century. 90 00:04:17.246 --> 00:04:20.870 And that's because Jenny, late in life, 91 00:04:20.870 --> 00:04:24.550 began to connect very strongly with her own background 92 00:04:24.550 --> 00:04:27.343 as a Russian growing up in Shanghai. 93 00:04:28.567 --> 00:04:30.500 It's an uncompromising work. 94 00:04:30.500 --> 00:04:32.160 It's an unflattering work, 95 00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:35.480 but it's executed in Jenny's characteristic medium, 96 00:04:35.480 --> 00:04:38.290 which is encaustic on board. 97 00:04:38.290 --> 00:04:42.100 To make these portraits, Jenny pours wax onto a board, 98 00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:44.670 and when the wax hardens, she smooths it out, 99 00:04:44.670 --> 00:04:46.070 and when the wax hardens, 100 00:04:46.070 --> 00:04:49.350 she rubs pigment into the wax to colour it. 101 00:04:49.350 --> 00:04:51.990 She very rarely uses a brush, but she pokes 102 00:04:51.990 --> 00:04:53.400 at the surface of her works 103 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:55.500 with anything she can lay her hands on, 104 00:04:55.500 --> 00:04:58.550 kitchen knives, etching tools, 105 00:04:58.550 --> 00:05:00.300 anything with a bit of a sharp edge 106 00:05:00.300 --> 00:05:03.320 that she can worry the surface of her work, 107 00:05:03.320 --> 00:05:05.010 and then she rubs in more colour 108 00:05:05.010 --> 00:05:08.320 that adheres, sticks in the grooves that she's made. 109 00:05:08.320 --> 00:05:12.610 And that's how Jenny gets this beautiful sheen 110 00:05:12.610 --> 00:05:14.800 on the surface of her works, 111 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:19.040 which glows with a kind of natural glow. 112 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:21.530 When I saw this book at Jenny's place, 113 00:05:21.530 --> 00:05:23.473 I just had to have it, because it's, 114 00:05:24.520 --> 00:05:27.230 it is the tangible manifestation 115 00:05:27.230 --> 00:05:32.230 of Jenny's enthusiastic, effervescent personality. 116 00:05:32.330 --> 00:05:35.363 I've never seen a book with so many (laughs) flags in it. 117 00:05:38.130 --> 00:05:40.990 This is one of Jenny Sages' characteristic works. 118 00:05:40.990 --> 00:05:42.570 She's not a portraitous. 119 00:05:42.570 --> 00:05:44.823 She's an abstract landscape painter. 120 00:05:45.670 --> 00:05:48.450 line:15% And she became an abstract landscape painter 121 00:05:48.450 --> 00:05:49.693 line:15% in a fell swoop. 122 00:05:51.150 --> 00:05:54.090 For about 30 years, Jenny worked for magazines, 123 00:05:54.090 --> 00:05:58.600 notably Vogue, as a fashion illustrator and a travel writer. 124 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:02.320 But it wasn't until 1983 when she was 50 125 00:06:02.320 --> 00:06:05.270 that she took a trip to the Australian inland. 126 00:06:05.270 --> 00:06:09.430 She went to the Kimberley region of West Australia, 127 00:06:09.430 --> 00:06:11.250 and near the Bungle Bungles, 128 00:06:11.250 --> 00:06:13.810 and she walked through that country. 129 00:06:13.810 --> 00:06:16.230 And it was there, that this little woman, 130 00:06:16.230 --> 00:06:19.040 born in Shanghai, of Russian heritage, 131 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:21.740 transported to Sydney, studied in New York, 132 00:06:21.740 --> 00:06:24.360 worked for Vogue, travelled all over the place. 133 00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:27.190 It was there, in western Australia 134 00:06:27.190 --> 00:06:30.633 that Jenny found a real connection to place. 135 00:06:31.550 --> 00:06:35.170 And from that moment, her life, as she had known, 136 00:06:35.170 --> 00:06:36.930 just dropped away. 137 00:06:36.930 --> 00:06:41.910 This one again is made using encaustic, 138 00:06:41.910 --> 00:06:46.010 but here Jenny smoothed the surface of the wax 139 00:06:46.010 --> 00:06:50.930 and rubbed in a pale, yellow, boney pigment 140 00:06:50.930 --> 00:06:54.310 to produce a surface that really is like something 141 00:06:54.310 --> 00:06:58.240 that is emanated from nature, from the ground. 142 00:06:58.240 --> 00:07:02.140 It's boney. It's stony. 143 00:07:02.140 --> 00:07:04.570 It's ivory-like. 144 00:07:04.570 --> 00:07:06.580 It's shiny. It's highly polished. 145 00:07:06.580 --> 00:07:10.630 It's smooth, and she graven lines into this surface 146 00:07:10.630 --> 00:07:15.150 and rubbed in small areas of pigment into these crevices 147 00:07:15.150 --> 00:07:16.603 that she's dug out here. 148 00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:20.300 And there's something in it that's a little bit like DNA. 149 00:07:20.300 --> 00:07:21.133 There's something in it 150 00:07:21.133 --> 00:07:23.960 that's like a primitive protozoan life form. 151 00:07:23.960 --> 00:07:25.953 There's something worm-like about it. 152 00:07:27.460 --> 00:07:30.604 You can see it as a series of parts. 153 00:07:30.604 --> 00:07:32.617 Hence the name of this exhibition, 154 00:07:32.617 --> 00:07:35.700 "Jenny Sages Parts to Portraiture." 155 00:07:35.700 --> 00:07:38.330 Jenny has literally taken her path 156 00:07:38.330 --> 00:07:40.620 through the Australian country, 157 00:07:40.620 --> 00:07:44.600 and she has come on that journey of portraiture, 158 00:07:44.600 --> 00:07:48.600 of abstract work, of painting, of bringing forth a body 159 00:07:48.600 --> 00:07:51.910 of beautiful work such as this, finished two weeks ago, 160 00:07:51.910 --> 00:07:55.720 specifically for the purpose of this exhibition. 161 00:07:55.720 --> 00:08:00.370 These works combine Jenny's love of textures 162 00:08:00.370 --> 00:08:04.250 of natural materials with her love of family. 163 00:08:04.250 --> 00:08:07.070 She went through her family photograph albums, 164 00:08:07.070 --> 00:08:09.770 and she took photographs from them 165 00:08:09.770 --> 00:08:12.880 and copied them onto these red cedar panels. 166 00:08:12.880 --> 00:08:16.110 And the result is these works on wood. 167 00:08:16.110 --> 00:08:21.110 There are 12 of them that sit in Jenny's bedroom 168 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:23.690 of her family that she has drawn on to the wood 169 00:08:23.690 --> 00:08:25.503 of her own deck in Double Bay. 170 00:08:26.690 --> 00:08:29.240 The extraordinary thing for me, looking at this portrait 171 00:08:29.240 --> 00:08:32.820 of Helen Garner is how when I come up close to it, 172 00:08:32.820 --> 00:08:37.820 it resolves, or it fragments into a series of landscapes, 173 00:08:37.980 --> 00:08:40.680 line:15% of desert landscapes, of desiccated, 174 00:08:40.680 --> 00:08:44.900 line:15% dry earth, with rivulets through it, 175 00:08:44.900 --> 00:08:48.160 with scored erosion lines through it. 176 00:08:48.160 --> 00:08:52.430 This area here of the elbow looks like a crumpled piece 177 00:08:52.430 --> 00:08:57.430 of earth, and the hair looks like a course garden mulch. 178 00:08:58.030 --> 00:08:59.240 It looks like leaf litter. 179 00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:00.983 It looks like forest litter. 180 00:09:02.190 --> 00:09:04.500 And then when you're up close, 181 00:09:04.500 --> 00:09:07.400 the colours in the face of Helen Garner 182 00:09:07.400 --> 00:09:09.693 are like the colours of the desert. 183 00:09:10.850 --> 00:09:14.690 There's not only this red and yellow and ochre, 184 00:09:14.690 --> 00:09:19.690 but up close this most beautiful, pure, gray-blue, 185 00:09:20.090 --> 00:09:22.150 and in the cup of this hand, 186 00:09:22.150 --> 00:09:24.750 it's like the sun going down in the desert. 187 00:09:24.750 --> 00:09:28.380 You can see the deep shadow cast here 188 00:09:28.380 --> 00:09:31.940 in this very organically coloured hand. 189 00:09:31.940 --> 00:09:33.980 Helen Garner said when she looked at this portrait, 190 00:09:33.980 --> 00:09:36.470 she thought her hand looked kind of tough. 191 00:09:36.470 --> 00:09:40.340 That was her word, but she likes the portrait a lot. 192 00:09:40.340 --> 00:09:42.870 And she's a woman of strong opinions. 193 00:09:42.870 --> 00:09:45.350 Anyone who's read her books knows that. 194 00:09:45.350 --> 00:09:50.350 She's one of our clearest and most clear-headed writers. 195 00:09:51.500 --> 00:09:53.310 And Jenny Sages approached her, 196 00:09:53.310 --> 00:09:55.350 because she admired her writing. 197 00:09:55.350 --> 00:09:58.830 It wasn't that Jenny and Helen had met at some arts event, 198 00:09:58.830 --> 00:10:02.020 or some cocktail party, or opening, or theatre. 199 00:10:02.020 --> 00:10:04.260 It was Jenny approaching Helen, 200 00:10:04.260 --> 00:10:06.820 because she loved Helen's writing so much. 201 00:10:06.820 --> 00:10:09.300 And she had absorbed things that Helen had said, 202 00:10:09.300 --> 00:10:11.880 and Helen had become part of her life, 203 00:10:11.880 --> 00:10:16.050 part of her imagination before she ever approached her. 204 00:10:16.050 --> 00:10:18.420 And Jenny wrote to Helen and said that she's like 205 00:10:18.420 --> 00:10:21.270 to paint a portrait of Helen with her sisters 206 00:10:21.270 --> 00:10:23.850 who appear in Helen's collection 207 00:10:23.850 --> 00:10:26.393 of nonfiction stories, true stories. 208 00:10:28.040 --> 00:10:29.670 Helen said, "You've got to be joking. 209 00:10:29.670 --> 00:10:31.720 My sisters would never agree." 210 00:10:31.720 --> 00:10:34.910 And in the end, after a few more letters of negotiation, 211 00:10:34.910 --> 00:10:39.290 Helen and Jenny met in Melbourne and then in Sydney, 212 00:10:39.290 --> 00:10:42.400 and you can see in the works that accompany 213 00:10:42.400 --> 00:10:45.230 this large portrait in the exhibition 214 00:10:45.230 --> 00:10:48.520 that a warm relationship built up between the two women. 215 00:10:48.520 --> 00:10:50.940 Jenny obviously loved portraying Helen. 216 00:10:50.940 --> 00:10:51.940 She loved drawing her. 217 00:10:51.940 --> 00:10:56.010 She's made this lovely series of oil sketches of Helen, 218 00:10:56.010 --> 00:10:59.053 which glow with the light of her studio. 219 00:11:07.290 --> 00:11:11.160 Now Jenny Sages saw a film that Catherine Hunter had made 220 00:11:11.160 --> 00:11:13.940 about Irina Baranova, and she fell in love. 221 00:11:13.940 --> 00:11:17.123 line:15% She was enchanted, entranced by Irina. 222 00:11:18.210 --> 00:11:20.730 line:15% Irina's intonation, her accent reminded her 223 00:11:20.730 --> 00:11:22.350 line:15% of her own Russian mother. 224 00:11:22.350 --> 00:11:25.650 She was enchanted by the older woman's beauty 225 00:11:25.650 --> 00:11:26.960 and her gracefulness. 226 00:11:26.960 --> 00:11:29.680 And she resolved to meet her if she could. 227 00:11:29.680 --> 00:11:30.638 Jenny's own daughter lived up near Byron Bay, 228 00:11:30.638 --> 00:11:34.310 and Jenny went up to visit her 229 00:11:34.310 --> 00:11:36.680 and there she met Irina Baranova. 230 00:11:36.680 --> 00:11:39.960 And this is the portrait that evolved over time 231 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:42.400 as Jenny followed her to Melbourne 232 00:11:42.400 --> 00:11:44.710 and made the magnificent series of sketches 233 00:11:44.710 --> 00:11:47.523 of dancers in rehearsal that we have in this exhibition. 234 00:11:48.570 --> 00:11:52.300 This portrait shows Irini Baranova urgently imparting 235 00:11:52.300 --> 00:11:55.800 to a new generation of dancers, steps that she had learned 236 00:11:55.800 --> 00:11:57.890 from great choreographers in ballet 237 00:11:57.890 --> 00:12:00.320 and creators such as Fokin. 238 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:04.350 It's an uncharacteristically colourful work of Jenny's. 239 00:12:04.350 --> 00:12:07.960 You can really sense the layer upon layer of colour 240 00:12:07.960 --> 00:12:10.150 that she's rubbed into Irina's face. 241 00:12:10.150 --> 00:12:11.300 There's a lot of blue. 242 00:12:11.300 --> 00:12:12.270 There are greens. 243 00:12:12.270 --> 00:12:16.190 There are purple tones to make a very convincing, 244 00:12:16.190 --> 00:12:19.823 very elegant, but very elderly woman's face.