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Rupert Betheras Marking Tracks Flipbook PDF
4 5 Return From Nyrippi (detail) 2010 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 210 x 216 cm Collection of the artist I first met
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Rupert Betheras Marking Tracks
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Rupert Betheras Marking Tracks Deakin University Art Gallery
Introduction
I first met Rupert Betheras when I was Director of Shepparton Art Gallery some ten years ago. I was introduced to Rupert by Paul Briggs AM, a respected Indigenous leader and founding president of the Rumbalara Football and Netball Club in Northern Victoria. At that time Rupert was living in Shepparton with a friend and just starting to explore his practice and forge a new identity as an artist.
My favourite quote about Rupert’s work comes from his biography written by Beverly Knight from Alcaston Gallery, ‘Rupert Betheras paints like he played football; fast, furious, incredibly focused and with a passion that is full on. His work ethic too, as it was when playing, is to be admired, but his assertive mark making is now developing into something special and enduring.’
Since then his work has been included in four group exhibitions at Alcaston Gallery (Sydney), Shepparton Art Gallery, McCulloch Gallery and Brightspace. He has also held five solo exhibitions at 4Cats Gallery, the Australian Knitting Mill Gallery and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne in 2008 and 2009, and Alcaston Gallery, Sydney in 2010.
Deakin University Art Gallery is pleased to present Marking Tracks a solo exhibition of the paintings of Rupert Betheras spanning the last 10 years of his practice. I invite you to come along for the ride. Leanne Willis Manager, Art Collection and Galleries
It is fitting that we launch our 2012 exhibition program with his work, as Rupert is a graduate of Deakin University having completed a Bachelor of Arts in 2004 (majoring in sociology). We are very pleased to welcome him back to the University and congratulate him on his first solo exhibition in a public gallery. I would also like to thank Rupert for his assistance in organising the exhibition. I have enjoyed working with him and the opportunity to view many of his works that have contributed to his development as an artist. I am deeply appreciative of the assistance of Beverly Knight of Alcaston Gallery and her support staff, in particular Adriana Del Medico, for their assistance in putting the exhibition together. I would also like to thank the private collectors Dr Terry Cutler and Colin and Angie Carter who have loaned works to the exhibition. Finally, I would like to thank Rodney James for his introduction to Rupert and his work, Maurice O’Riordan for his interview with Rupert in the catalogue and Jasmin Tulk for the catalogue design.
Return From Nyrippi (detail) 2010 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 210 x 216 cm Collection of the artist 4
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Rupert Betheras: Marking Tracks
After Collingwood 2003 Oil on canvas 101 x 76 cm From the collection of Colin and Angie Carter
While some artists establish a signature style which they successfully refine and exhibit from very early on, others develop by embracing a more inclusive practice, combining broad-ranging interests and life experiences along with a rich vocabulary of visual sources, motifs and ideas.
about the early modernist artist Giacometti, by his biographer James Lord in which he describes the way art made it possible to experience and explore the ‘uncertain outcomes of everyday undertakings’. Each new work represented ‘a fresh assault on the impossible’.
Rupert Betheras, I think, belongs to the second category. Street art, work by his family forebears, Aboriginal art especially that from Central Australia and the Western Desert, contemporary painters and mentors such as David Larwill, Gothic and Italian Quattrocento religious art, and Australian and European masters such as Whiteley, Olsen and Van Gogh all jostle for his attention. Betheras’ welldocumented life as a professional footballer and subsequent involvement in sport-based art programs and residencies provide an additional dimension, contributing to the breadth and depth of his art.
Accordingly, Betheras moves freely between styles – from figurative to abstract and combinations of the two. Early works focus on the solitary figure isolated in space. Figures then retreat, incorporated into the landscape. Conventional ways of denoting pictorial depth are denied by the flatness of the picture plane – one recent work is even called Stripped Back – and then reinstated such as in Ilparpa Composition #10 2011.
Marking Tracks affords the first opportunity to see Betheras’ work displayed in a public gallery context. The ten paintings selected include key works from the past 10 years, with an emphasis on the most recent Central Australian landscapes. Together, these pictures offer a tantalising signpost into where Betheras has come from and where he might go. Art is Rupert Betheras’ way of making connections with people and place. His landscape paintings of IIparpa on the outskirts of Alice Springs and further north-west at Yuendumu are a direct response to the vibrant colours and striking contrasts encountered there. Betheras discerns ancient, underlying structures in the land and invests in it anthropomorphic qualities such as in Red Sky Landscape and Between Worlds 2011. Betheras’ work is as much about what he feels as what he sees. Immersing himself in the rhythms and vitality of his environment, Betheras is mindful of the ancient songlines which give these places their spiritual weight. He recognises the limits of his own knowledge and understanding and engages with the approach of more recent comers who have set out to develop an intuitive and all encompassing response to the land. In the process he has developed a highly personal pictorial language in which life’s small dramas wash over him and trigger a passionate and highly-engaging response.
Betheras’ practice of painting different subjects at the same time, and commencing and then completing paintings in different locations, also leads to new and unexpected permutations. The masterful Bloodbath in Warlpiri Camp 2010 is one such work. Painted in Brunswick Street, Melbourne, Betheras relates how it ‘escalated into the paint form of an old work’ that had been sitting around for years, much like ‘that recent event had escalated’. Finally, Fire and Figure 2006 and Return from Nyrippi 2010 reveal the extent to which Rupert Betheras focuses on the extremities of human experience: sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, light and dark, the negative as well as positive. Betheras gets caught up in what he depicts. Social rituals, experiences and events are magnified so that they come to represent elevated, or heightened emotional states. Oil, enamel and more recently acrylic paints are hence put down quickly and sometimes combined. The paint is forceful and raw in places, delicate elsewhere, with thinly stained washes and drips of vibrant colour reverberating and held together by robust linear scaffolding which has been applied through jabs, swirls and arcs. Rupert Betheras’ art strides confidently between story-telling, formal inventiveness and art and life as a form of energy, discovery and endless flux. Rodney James Senior Curator Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
The experiential quality of the work is matched by the element of formal and stylistic discovery and play. Betheras identifies with an observation made 6
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Marking words: an interview with Rupert Betheras Marking Tracks, is the first survey exhibition of Melbourne/ Alice Springs-based painter Rupert Betheras. It spans the past decade and includes work from his debut solo exhibition at Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne, whilst focusing on recent developments with the majority of paintings being from 2010 or 2011. In marking out the key, recurring aspects of Betheras’ particular approach to painting – the vigorous brushstroke, technicoloured palette, shifts from figuration/landscape to abstraction, and evocation of Aboriginal community life and country in Australia’s Central Desert – this survey exhibition embraces reflection. In interview with Maurice O’Riordan, Betheras reflects on a richly informed, immersive and committed practice.
Maurice O’Riordan (MO): Most of the work in this exhibition appears to be drawn from your ongoing connection with Alice Springs and outlying regions. Can you give some background to this connection and its significance for you? Rupert Betheras (RB): I have travelled in the Northern Territory quite regularly, maybe up to 30 or 40 times since first driving up to Darwin in 1998. I remember the first trip driving along the Stuart Highway at night. Hundreds of tumbleweeds suddenly started blowing onto the road and jumping up in the lights of the path of the car lights. A massive electrical storm in the distance provided a dramatic backdrop with brilliant lights cracking the sky. It was really exhilarating and we were laughing but also kind of scared as the tumbleweeds were like figures coming from the ground and attacking the car. Then we got to Tennant Creek just as the pub closed, at 2pm on this day. It had a dress code so all these local traditional people were making their way down the main street 8
in suits and hats. They were a bit drunk and I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is crazy. Where the hell am I?’ It was a new experience for me as a Melbourne boy, who had seen a bit of the world and who had stuck to the coast as a surfer in my travels in Australia. I took a job in Alice Springs in 2006 working with youth and football but my motivation was also to go there and paint. Alice Springs is a hub of artistic activity. In Melbourne I grew up with youth who all carried textas, ink and bags of paint [as street/ graffiti artists]. In Alice you see people walking around with canvas, paint. It is a big part of the community, as is football, so I’ve been able to get by pretty well. MO: Do you see yourself as ‘between worlds’ as the title of two works in the exhibition suggest? RB: The title of the Between Worlds paintings came from the works themselves that were in many ways a response to the earlier Ilparpa works. Ilparpa is an outer suburb of Alice 9
previous page Fire and Figure 2006 Mixed media on linen 168 x 137 cm From the collection of Terry Cutler
Springs. The Ilparpa works are painted with a rich mix of colours, bright and colourful. The Between Worlds works are painted in the same location but are darker, with areas that are not seen. I wanted to include unknown, inaccessible areas in the work, areas of the landscape that I know nothing about and that the viewer is also unable to see in the landscape. This creates a different emotion and relationship to the landscape. These works may have coincided with a funeral I attended in Alice Springs, and also with the idea that I see things there with my eyes but there are a lot of other ways to relate to the land there and I am respectful of that too. MO: The Between Worlds paintings appear to have a lot of underpainting or layering of colour. Can you explain your approach to the canvas: do you start with a rough sketch of a particular scene (maybe sketched on the spot?) and work intuitively from there – back in the studio – building colour, mood and effect as you progress? RB: When in Alice I usually start by hustling around the town looking for my materials left behind from my last trip, trying to get lifts, or saying hello to various people, looking for stretcher bars, gesso, linen, paint from friends which sometimes means great colours, and also looking for accommodation. Often it’s hot, and I’ll usually catch up with people over a beer before I start to paint. The Ilparpa, Between Worlds and Red Sky Landscape works were started 20 minutes out of Alice town, amongst the ranges on an old farm. The Alice environment and experiences permeate into my mind and I try to give them life in my work. MO: Perhaps the exhibition’s two most confronting paintings are Fire and Figure (2006) and Bloodbath in Warlpiri Camp (2010), their sense of brutality and erasure also hinted at in After Collingwood (2003) with its footballer’s ‘marked-out’ face. Can you give some background to the events or incidents which inspired Fire and Figure and Bloodbath in Warlpiri Camp? RB: Bloodbath in Warlpiri Camp was started two years prior to it being finished at my friend’s studio in Brunswick Street last year. It was a
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response to finding out about a tragic incident that saw a young man killed in a town camp in Alice. It impacted on me because I knew the people and community involved on both sides of the clash – guys I had played football with in Yuendumu and shown around Melbourne. I did not set out to paint about that event consciously. It escalated into the painting from an old work that had been sitting around for years, much like the event that escalated out of control. It is still a very sensitive issue. MO: Fire and Figure’s apparent image of a pregnant woman writhing in the grip of a furious fire does not make easy viewing. What sort of reactions has this painting evoked? Do you think audiences (both white and black/nonAboriginal or Aboriginal) find it too confronting, too difficult to register and deal with what is actually happening in the painting, or why it is happening? RB: I appreciate what the German painter Anselm Kiefer said about his reluctance to discuss details of his life and his working methods, believing such information hinders the spiritual and philosophical content of his art. I think your interpretation above is powerful but I am not going to say, ‘Yes, that is what I set out to paint’, or otherwise. MO: Bloodbath in Warlpiri Camp I think brings the horror of Fire and Figure to a new level. It reveals a more abstracted sense of the macabre which makes in effect a more raw and universal statement about violence, death and injustice. Its blood-smeared surface is keenly felt, and again this work is difficult to fully apprehend. The white striated markings forming the background of this work also appear as body markings on the woman in Fire and Figure. What do these markings signify for you? RB: A friend pointed out that these markings are also connected to the colours on the footballer in After Collingwood – the black and white Collingwood guernsey. Naturally they refer to tribal markings. It is an identification with ritual activity on one level. I have played football in those colours for the Collingwood Magpies, and also for the Yuendumu Magpies in Warlpiri country.
MO: The two Ilparpa compositions in this exhibition declare an interest (maybe a new direction?) in the landscape convention. Both works share a clear sense of sky, foreground and scale, and both evince an unabashed love of this country as a dynamic, ‘living’ landscape. In what way is Ilparpa a ‘living landscape’ for you? RB: It is alive – by being there and seeing the changes in colours of the land and skies. There are stories of the Arrernte and Warlpiri that I hear in relation to the land, and of the early explorers: the stories of conflict and bloodshed but also the day-to-day events that occur, the everyday human struggle. I am also responding through my relationships with other artists that inspire me. My grandfather painted landscapes in a traditional manner, but my mother’s paintings and sculptures are influenced by the organic, abstract and surreal. MO: In Return from Nyirripi (2010), we see the enduring influence of the late David Larwill in your work. This painting’s mad kaleidoscope of colour and patterning give it an air of carnivalé yet the mask-like faces of the figures in the ‘troop carrier’(?) don’t necessarily evoke celebration; they are imbued more with a primal urgency and menace. Is there something primal in this connection with the human face as a mask? Do you see this painting as one of celebration or in less definitive terms?
about what Van Gogh would have painted if he had come to Australia to paint. The influence of Larwill came from knowing him in Somers where he lived and painted, and where my father lives. He was supportive of me and gave me materials and use of his studio at different times. I really valued his friendship, encouragement and inspiration in my career to date. MO: Finally, how would you define your own spirituality, generally and in terms of your painting? RB: I find it difficult to describe. Painting for me is not always an enlightened process. It requires work and application. I guess the spirit reveals itself and in many respects I would perhaps be reluctant to answer even if I did have a precise definition. Notes: Maurice O’Riordan is editor of Art Monthly Australia. This interview was conducted via email in January 2012.
RB: In some of my works like Return from Nyrrippi, I think more of early Italian masters and Gothic art. I think of them in terms of the magnified focus of human emotion and the interaction between the people and with the spiritual world, not unlike Aboriginal art in a way. I relate to the images, say, for instance, of an old man draped in cloth; ready for death, he is surrounded by many people and children and angels, devils, spirits and the afterworld. There is an interaction between these characters and a central event. My painting technique is quite different to those masters but I feel there is a similar sensibility or foundation, but in an Australian context too. I do not always paint with such feeling – it can’t just be turned on like a tap. I once did this painting of a kangaroo and it had a strange head immersed in it, and I was thinking
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Bloodbath in Warlpiri Camp 2010 Oil on linen 208 x 240 cm Collection of the artist 12
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Between Worlds 2011 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 180 x 92 cm Collection of the artist 14
Between Worlds #2 2011 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 180 x 120 cm Collection of the artist 15
Stripped Back 2009 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 165 x 178 cm From the collection of Terry Cutler 16
Ilparpa Composition #10 2011 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 180 x 198 cm Collection of the artist 17
Ilparpa Composition #11(detail) 2011 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 180 x 200 cm Deakin University Art Collection 18
Red Sky Landscape 2011 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 208 x 240 cm Collection of the artist 19
Rupert Betheras Born: 1975, Melbourne, Australia
Born in Melbourne in 1975, Rupert Betheras was fortunate his family’s interests lay with the creative arts; he had the benefits of sporting involvement and the fostering of his early creative pursuits, and both were respected and encouraged. One of four boys, Betheras knew from as young as seven years old that making his mark in sport was important, but also valued his mark making, joining his older brothers in pursuing street art. His attentions were to be captured by a burgeoning graffiti art scene and the concept of making marks on surface; an action both primal and direct. All four boys, Betheras recalls, have been involved in the street art subculture in Melbourne. In the 80s writers would congregate at Richmond station to see what others had been painting and then venture onto other train lines to explore new corners of the city and surrounding regions. It was as much about rights of passage as it was about creativity. Outside of New York, Melbourne was regarded as one of the real hot spots. It was a teenage utopia of sorts with its guiding precepts: ‘creativity, music, art and dance, discontent, destruction, decadence and community.’ As a teenager, Betheras admired many of the older street artists in collectives such as Future 4, USA (United Street Artists) and DMA (Da Mad Artists). He was attracted to the early innovators; the prolific and the rebellious. Rupert found his own expression in visual art in Year 11 at school when he travelled to Europe with the school cricket team. Europe was a turning point for him and was, ultimately, an epiphany of sorts: ‘I was sketching while I was there and when I got back I was taken to a Brett Whiteley exhibition of paintings from Paris – I was very inspired and, even as a young man still at school, I knew I wanted to paint. I felt a strong link to the content of the paintings, and Whiteley as a person.’ Art classes also provided his first glimpse of Australian Indigenous art. He discovered the concept of painting country, land; he felt connected. In 1998, Rupert Betheras came to Alcaston Gallery to see Ginger Riley Munduwalawala’s exhibition. He met Ginger and gallery director, Beverly Knight, who as an avid football supporter
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knew that Betheras had just been drafted to the Collingwood AFL team. Betheras had recently been to Ngukurr, in South-East Arnhem Land, and was accompanied to the gallery by his guardian, a six year old Aboriginal girl with family links to the area that Riley and Knight knew so well. A friendship based on sport and art developed. Beverly Knight began to observe his painting skills which were obviously based on street art. She knew of his recent tragedy; one of his brothers had died when he was 20, and that the workload of an AFL player would overshadow his time spent painting. She kept watch on the progression of his artwork, and in 2004 he abruptly left the Collingwood Magpies. The painting After Collingwood underpinned the first solo exhibition at Alcaston Gallery in 2008. It was the start of an ongoing journey for Betheras. The painting was a portrait of a Collingwood footballer who Betheras described as having the classical Collingwood look. He describes this as a mix between Bobby Rose, the Collier brothers and Nathan Buckley. It was a work in progress at the time of his delisting from the Magpies team. He subsequently demolished the face (his) but ironically turned his attention to painting. Since 2004 he often played football but always painted in the Northern Territory including Alice Springs, Darwin, the Tanami Desert, Yuendumu and Shepparton in Northern Victoria. ‘The landscape (the spirit) inspires me,’ he says. His first exhibition at Alcaston Gallery in May 2008 showed the development of his art. It resembled his youthful spirit, but also included his roots in street or graffiti art, the influence of supportive artists like David Larwill, life’s ups and downs and the powerful effect on his art of Aboriginal artists he had met over the previous 10 years. Rupert Betheras’ second solo exhibition, The Broadford Hold-up was held at Alcaston Gallery from June 23–11 July 2009. Betheras stated, ‘These paintings were created in three locations and studios. One studio was in a disused shearing shed just beyond Broadford near Sugarloaf Creek in country Victoria. It is on Taungurong country and not far from where
the Kelly Gang roamed around. The studio is also occupied by friend and artist Che, whose talismanic rock arrangements punctuate the surrounding landscape. Some works were painted on Wurundjeri Land, in a rooftop studio on the top floor of the former Collingwood Football Club grandstand in inner Melbourne. The room was once a media observation area and there is a spectacular aerial view of the oval and surrounds at Victoria Park.’ Rupert Betheras paints like he played football; fast, furious, incredibly focused and with a passion that is full on. His work ethic too, as it was when playing, is to be admired, but his assertive mark making is now developing into something special and enduring. His second solo exhibition displayed a more sophisticated approach to his painting; his delicate interpretation expressed an inner attachment in his art not seen before. He is telling us how he feels, where he has been, where he is going and all the things that make up the life of Rupert Betheras. He was also very fortunate that his family’s interests lay with the creative arts; his mother, Anne Betheras, a gifted ceramicist. It is clear that creativity flows through the Betheras family. In 2010, Rupert Betheras had his third solo exhibition at the Depot Gallery in Sydney, represented by Alcaston Gallery, entitled Old Sydney Road. This show also featured four of Anne Betheras’ unique hand-formed clay pieces, exhibited together with her son’s paintings. Old Sydney Road refers to the location of his studio near Broadford in country Victoria. Works in the show were also created in Alice Springs, NT and in coastal hideaways on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. The exhibition at Deakin University in 2012 entitled Marking Tracks is a body of work that salutes the development of colour, place and an innate desire to capture the passion and energy through painting.
Solo exhibitions 2002 Recent Works, 4Cats Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2006 Australian Knitting Mill Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2008 After Collingwood, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2009 The Broadford Hold-up, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2010 Old Sydney Road, Depot Gallery, Sydney, represented by Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2012 Marking Tracks, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Selected group exhibitions 2006 Summer Salon, Brightspace, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2006 Same For You, McCulloch Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2007 Gurrtjinarrak – Yorta Yorta with friends, Shepparton Art Gallery, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia 2009 Alcaston Gallery: 20 Years Survey Show, Depot Gallery, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Collections University of Western Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Deakin University Art Collection, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Publications ‘Pies Stroke of Genius’, Geoff McClure, The Age, 28 April, 2008 p.20 ‘Footy star making his mark as painter’, Corrie Perkin, The Australian, 3 May, 2008 p.9 ‘Artnotes’, Maurice O’Riordan, Art Monthly, Issue 214, October, 2008 ‘Allure of Vic Park, like art, is priceless’, Martin Flanagan, The Age, 20 June, 2009 p.10
© Rupert Betheras and Alcaston Gallery, 2012
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Rupert Betheras: Marking Tracks Deakin University Art Gallery 15 February to 31 March 2012
© 2012 the artist, the authors and publisher. Copyright to the works is retained by the artist and his/ her descendants. No part of this publication may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher and the individual copyright holder(s). The views expressed within are those of the author(s) and artist and do not necessarily represent the views held by Deakin University. Unless otherwise indicated all images are reproduced and supplied courtesy of the artist and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne. Rupert Betheras is represented by Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne. Cover: Ilparpa Composition #11 (detail) 2011 Synthetic polymer paint on linen 180 x 200 cm Deakin University Art Collection
Published by Deakin University ISBN 978-0-9806214-8-8 Edition 1000 copies Catalogue design: Jasmin Tulk Deakin University Art Gallery Deakin University Melbourne Burwood Campus 221 Burwood Highway Burwood 3125 Melway ref 61 B5 T +61 3 9244 5344 F +61 3 9244 5254 E [email protected] deakin.edu.au/art-collection Gallery hours Tuesday—Friday 10 am—4 pm Saturday 1 pm—5 pm Free entry Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B
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