Lloyd Rees, Afternoon (Blue Days on the Derwent), 1983, oil on canvas on board. Collection R Jensen.
Lloyd Rees, Morning on the Derwent, 1982, oil on canvas. Collection TMAG. Purchased Tasmanian Government grant.
Lands of Light: Lloyd Rees and Tasmania, Installation view, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Photograph Rosie Hastie.
Left: A Morning Vision at Northwood, Lloyd Rees, 1986, oil on canvas, Collection: R Jensen, Right: Blue Day in September, Lloyd Rees, 1986, oil on canvas, Collection: NGV – Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of the Joe White
Image at centre, The sunlit tower, Lloyd Rees, 1986, oil on canvas, Collection: QAGOMA — Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1996, Accession number: 1987.029. Install image, photography: Rosie Hastie.
Lands of Light: Lloyd Rees and Tasmania, Installation view, photography: Rosie Hastie.
While Lands of Light focuses on Lloyd Rees’s (1895-1988) late paintings inspired by the Tasmanian landscape, these are contextualised with works made near his Sydney home, his Brisbane birthplace, and his trips to Europe. As Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) lead curator Peter Hughes says, “Lloyd Rees may be the best draughtsman that Australia has produced. The exhibition is about the Tasmanian aspect of his practice, but these later works need the introduction to his genius.”
Rees began visiting Hobart consistently, twice a year, after his son Alan moved there in 1967, and this exhibition was developed through the ongoing association with his family. The Tasmanian paintings, created between 1967 and 1988, reflect a level of stimulation drawn from both a new landscape and the change in light (with Hobart’s lower humidity and latitude). Although Rees’s practice was never bound by the details of place, often opening to architectural structures and humanist interpretations.
The exhibition culminates in the later paintings Rees made when his sight was impacted by macular degeneration. “This condition meant he had to change his style,” explains Hughes. “Rees was addicted to art making. He couldn’t and didn’t stop. These later works reflect a strategy to continue with the shortcomings of his age and eyesight. He adapted, using a broader brush, and more abstraction, focusing on colour, light and tonality.”
The later works grew larger in scope: they became open, in their luminosity, to the spiritual. In paintings like The Great River (an impression of the Derwent), 1983-85, what dominates is the capture of light over the harbour. As Hughes writes in the exhibition catalogue, “The articulation of space through detail and careful composition, while not entirely absent, gives way to an expansive vision, suggesting the infinite.” Through Lands of Light, Rees’s shifting perspectives throughout his esteemed, long practice are articulated with new insights.
Lands of Light: Lloyd Rees and Tasmania
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
On now—27 October
This article was originally published in the July/August 2024 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
Mundamurra Ngijinda Dulk—My Island Home at Cairns Art Gallery, is a landmark exhibition dedicated to the late Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, one of the most singular voices in Australian contemporary painting.
Farrago, the University of Melbourne’s student union newspaper-turned-magazine celebrates a hundred years of publication. At a time when print publishing in the arts is under increasing pressure, The George Paton Gallery is exhibiting ‘Farrago 100 Years’, celebrating the editorial legacy and design innovation of the periodical.
In our ongoing series, Shelf Portraits, Art Guide writers recommend the books—recently published or deserving of more attention—that shed new light on an idea that has long simmered in the art world or has helped them see a familiar medium in a different light.
An exhibition of newly commissioned works at the National Art School gallery in Sydney brings to light the historic and ongoing ties between Indigenous and Asian-Australian communities.
Auckland-born and raised artist Lisa Reihana is ever the optimist, creating two new works signifying social cohesion to hang outside two Australian arts venues—Ngununggula, and Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks —just as dark divisions seek to undermine the value of migration and Indigenous sovereignty.
Arwin Hidayat’s TERNYATA AKU MASIH BERBAHAS (It Turns Out I’m Still Breathing) at Mitchell Fine Art, presents a lifetime of visual storytelling, experimentation and curiosity.
