The Albert and Barbara Tucker Gallery at the Heide Museum of Art will host a
The Albert and Barbara Tucker Gallery at the Heide Museum of Art will host a total of 65 drawings by Joy Hester and Albert Tucker. The gallery space, which is usually dedicated t o exhibitions of Tucker’s art or work in context of his peers, will feature a series of art works derived during the nine-year relationship between Tucker and Hester.
Both artists were a part of the Heide Circle, which was a group of influential modernist artists that lived and worked in the Buleen area. In 1938, the two met in Melbourne whilst Hester was a student at the National Gallery of Victoria, and Tucker, at that time, was an aspiring painter. During the late 1930s and 1940s, both the pair produced art works that were considered controversial and progressive, but it was the support of art patrons, John and Sunday Reed, who also founded the museum, that both artists’ works are on display today.
“We are a having the exhibition because John and Sunday Reed…supported both of their works,” explains Kendrah Morgan, curator of the exhibition. “The Reeds met Albert Tucker and Joy Hester in the late 1930s and they bought their work from them, and kind of championed them at a time when their art was considered unconventional because they were pursuing modernist’s idioms in the wake of European Masters like Picasso and the German expressionists.”
In a lot of ways, the drawings showcased in the exhibition are a historical snapshot of a period in Melbourne when the city was going through much change and upheaval. “The social context for the exhibition is end of the Depression and the war years,” explains Morgan. “The show is divided into sections that look at different themes that they both worked on, and the show very much looks at points of intersection and their work, and points of connection and shared influences as well as their different approaches in terms of style and medium.”
A section of the exhibition hosts a series of life drawings both artists did together. And despite the fact that they both sketched the same models, each provides insight into their own personal artistic approaches and interpretations. Hester, who chose drawing as her medium as opposed to painting (an unusual choice during that era), was stylistically more expressive and gestural than Tucker, who, on the other hand, was more interested in finer craftsmanship and anatomical accuracy.
They also produced art works that captured the urban scenes of Melbourne, featuring the laneways and back alleys of the CBD as well as human interaction from when the pair worked at a studio near Collins Street. But some of the most interesting drawings from Hester and Tucker were the ones that were influenced and inspired by their own personal experiences of war.
To say the least, Melbourne in the 1940s was not in top form. War and the Depression had hit, crime rates rose, the war was on Australia’s doorstep, Darwin had been bombed, and an influx of American troops came into the city. Hester and Tucker both felt a sense of moral outrage towards the war, and a lot of their works reflected that.
“There’s a large section [in the exhibition] that looks at the impact of war – the physical and psychological casualties of war because Albert Tucker went into the army in 1942,” says Morgan. Interestingly, Tucker and Hester married in 1941 in hopes that by doing so, it would delay Tucker from being drafted into the war since single men were being considered first. Despite being against the war, Tucker fought for his country and later found himself in the Heidelberg military hospital.
“He was attached to the plastic surgery unit and he had to draw horrific war injuries and men who were suffering shellshock,” explains Morgan. “He [Tucker] did a series of what he called The Psycho Drawings and a couple of those are in the exhibition.” That particular pastel series looks at the mental trauma specifically caused by war, and though Hester wasn’t herself participating in the warfare, she was greatly influenced by Tucker’s experiences and later, her own.
“She was six years younger and emulated him to an extent that she was interested in psychological portraiture. She also did some images of soldiers and victims of war,” says Morgan. “Hester had also saw a lot of newsreel footage of the concentration camps, and was horrified by it. She did a series of emaciated corpses and figures hanging from nooses and so forth…and a lot of works on the themes of grief, and lamentations and loss.”
Joy Hester & Albert Tucker Drawings 1938-47 opened on September 18 and is showing at Heide Gallery until February 6. You can also catch Drawings: The Heide Collection and Up Close .
