Peter Bray Gallery Explained

Location:435 Bourke Street, Melbourne

Peter Bray Gallery (a commercial gallery) was established as Stanley Coe Gallery in 1949 before being renamed in 1951, after a change of management. Situated at 435 Bourke Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, it closed in 1957.[1] Many of the major names in mid-century Australian contemporary art showed there during its brief, but very busy, lifespan.

Directors

The director/curators were Helen Ogilvie (from 1949 to 1955) and Ruth McNicoll (from Sept 1956 to close). The gallery was owned by Peter Bray,[2] whose interest was in exhibiting pictures and retailing contemporary furniture by Grant Featherston, as it was not unusual in the 1950s to combine the two retail lines into the one establishment[3]

Artists

Originally Stanley Coe Gallery, established in 1949, and taken over by Peter Bray the following year,[4] Peter Bray Gallery showed Australian paintings, sculpture and prints by significant contemporary artists.[5]

Printmaker/painter Helen Ogilvie (1902–1993) was a generous mentor of emerging artists, and in 1949 Stanley Coe appointed her as one of Australia's first women gallery directors to create a commercial exhibition space on the upper floor of his interior design shop at 435 Bourke Street, Melbourne,[6] [7] decorated with pale grey-blue walls and hair-cord carpet.[8] Artist Tate Adams dubbed it "the lone beacon in town for contempoary art." For the period until 1955, and with advice from her friends Ursula Hoff, Arnold Shore and Alan McCulloch, she organised a program of exhibitions of the avant-garde;[9] [10] John Brack who first exhibited there 27 October – November 1953, again in 1955,[11] then first showed his Racecourse series 5–15 November 1956 and in the same year the gallery sold his most famous work Collins Street, 5 pm to the National Gallery of Victoria.[12]

Also exhibited there were Margo Lewers, Ian Fairweather (23 April – 3 May 1956), Leonard French (who showed his Illiad series, amongst his earliest experiments with enamel house paint on Masonite, October 1952),[13] Inge King,[14] Arthur Boyd (15–24 September 1953), Charles Blackman, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (whose first Australian show in a commercial gallery was there in 1953), Helen Maudsley, Sydney Nolan,[15] Clifton Pugh,[16] Michael Shannon, Guy Grey-Smith,[17] David Dalgarno, Ian Armstrong and others.[18]

Charles Blackman unveiled his radical series of schoolgirl paintings at the Peter Bray Gallery in May 1953, establishing his reputation in a decade in which he invented the themes that defined his career. Abstract sculptor Lenton Parr, returning to the country after working as assistant to Henry Moore, held his first Australian exhibition at the gallery in 1957, the same year that Arthur Boyd showed his figurative ceramic sculptures there.[19] Ogilvie, Modernist printmaker, painter and craftsperson in her own right, was engaged with the Crafts Revival of the 1950s and 60s, and made a living designing cutting edge lampshades in London for a period.

Exhibitions

Exhibitions at the gallery turned around regularly and were only a week or week-and-a-half in duration. Interspersed with the one-person shows mentioned above were group shows by artists in a particular medium, or by artist groups and societies.[20]

Notes and References

  1. http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/catalogues/gallery/130424/peter-bray-gallery.aspx Prints and Printmaking website
  2. 'Design and Art Australia Online (governed by a Management Committee comprising representatives of the University of Sydney and University of NSW and Chief Investigators) https://www.daao.org.au/bio/group/biography/peter-bray/?
  3. "Most Melbourne galleries then were on do-it-yourself lines, most attached to furniture shops,.." Blackman, Barbara. The Good Ship Mora: Melbourne in the Fifties [online]. Meanjin, Vol. 55, No. 2, 1996: 293–305. Availability:http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=888246093407022;res=IELLCC . [cited 9 Jul 15]
  4. http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00090b.htm Encyclopedia of Melbourne Online
  5. Burstall, Tim & McPhee, Hilary, 1941– & Standish, Ann (2012). The memoirs of a young bastard : the diaries of Tim Burstall, November 1953 to December 1954. Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, Vic., p.298
  6. 'New gallery' The Age Wednesday 07 Dec 1949, p.7
  7. News: NEW GALLERY . . 22,635 . Victoria, Australia . 8 December 1949 . 11 August 2021 . 22 . National Library of Australia.
  8. News: THE LIFE OF MELBOURNE . . 32,219 . Victoria, Australia . 7 December 1949 . 18 October 2020 . 12 . National Library of Australia.
  9. News: 16 July 1952. Young people buy pictures. 6. The Argus. 33,031. Melbourne. National Library of Australia.
  10. News: Young people buy pictures . . 33,031 . Melbourne. 16 July 1952 . 6 . National Library of Australia.
  11. Shore, Arnold (1955). 'Artist stresses human values'. (8 March 1955). The Argus (Melbourne, Victoria: 1848– 1957), p. 13. Retrieved 8 July 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71637449
  12. "In 1953, he had his first solo exhibition at Peter Bray's Gallery in Melbourne. Collins Street was exhibited at the same gallery in March 1956 and was immediately purchased by the NGV." McKiernan, M. (2010). 'John Brack Collins Street 5 pm, 1955'. Occupational Medicine, 60(2), 88–89.
  13. Johnson, George & Heathcote, C. R. (Christopher Robin) & Zimmer, Jenny, (editor.) (2006). George Johnson : world view. South Yarra, Vic. Macmillan Art Publishing
  14. Inge King's art has "the gadget air". (21 October 1952). The Argus (Melbourne, Victoria: 1848–1957), p. 5. Retrieved 8 July 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article23217241
  15. "In some cases, it is also the artist's role to slice Australia open and show it bizarrely different, quite new in its antiquity. Half a century ago, Sidney Nolan did just this with his desert paintings and those of drought animal carcasses. I recall seeing some of these at the Peter Bray Gallery in 1953 and being bewildered by their aridity: a cruel dryness which made the familiar Ned Kelly paintings seem quite pastoral." Wallace-Crabbe, C. (2003). Gallery Notes. Australian Book Review, August 2003, p.38
  16. News: Four art styles . . Melbourne. 21 June 1955 . 9 . National Library of Australia.
  17. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1300&dat=19560605&id=S2EQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=cZUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4427,580158&hl=en 'Inaugural exhibitions at two galleries' The Age June 5, 1956, p.2
  18. See newspaper articles on Peter Bray Gallery held in the National Library of Australia
  19. Hassall, D. (2015). Arthur Boyd and his' Prodigal son'Mural. Quadrant, 59(1–2), 114.
  20. News: One Woman – Nine Men . . Melbourne . 11 February 1953 . 9 July 2015 . 4 . National Library of Australia.
  21. News: Foundations and frustrations . . 23,355 . Victoria, Australia . 1 April 1952 . 18 October 2020 . 11 . National Library of Australia.
  22. 'Sydney artist a "modern romanticist'"', The Age Tuesday 01 Apr 1952, p.2
  23. The Age Tuesday 22 Apr 1952, pps.2, 5
  24. The Age, Tuesday 06 May 1952, p.2
  25. News: 1952-10-21. Inge King's art has "the gadget air". 5. Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957). 2020-10-17.
  26. M . H. W. . Autumn 1953 . The Art Galleries . The Port Phillip Gazette . 1 . 3 . 23.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Peter Bray Gallery".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.