{"id":4847,"date":"2025-07-19T03:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T03:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/4847\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T03:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T03:37:10","slug":"a-maverick-australian-artists-long-overdue-retrospective-at-agnsw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/4847\/","title":{"rendered":"A maverick Australian artist\u2019s long overdue retrospective at AGNSW"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size<\/p>\n

The first thing that strikes you about Janet Dawson is her voice, deep and resonant, a voice from another era. But the artist, aged 90, is not at all stuffy. \u201cI\u2019m a lucky old bat,\u201d she says by way of introduction when we meet at her home on a sprawling bush property in Ocean Grove on Victoria\u2019s Bellarine Peninsula.<\/p>\n

Dawson lives in a low-slung, 1970s modernist home with exposed brick walls and long rows of large windows that look onto eucalypts, shrubs and lawn. Her studio, or \u201cpod\u201d as she likes to call it, is in a sheltered corner of the garden. Clad in corrugated iron, the studio is crammed with paintings and drawings, some finished, some not, Dawson\u2019s art books, and remnants of her former life in rural New South Wales. Above the creative clutter rises an incongruously giant white sculpture of Mickey and Minnie Mouse that Dawson bought from a nearby furniture warehouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to find a home for Mickey and Minnie because I love them so much,\u201d Dawson says, her intensely brown eyes flashing with a hint of mischief, just like the photos of her as a younger artist.<\/p>\n

\"Janet<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson in her \u201cpod\u201d in a sheltered corner of the garden.Credit: Eddie Jim<\/p>\n

I can tell this will be fun. But the interview almost didn\u2019t happen. Dawson was in hospital recently after a fall. She\u2019s recovered remarkably well and sits comfortably in her armchair, ready to chat about her six-decade-plus career as an artist, print-maker and organic farmer ahead of her times. I visit her on a sunny winter\u2019s morning ahead of the first major retrospective of her work, opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on July 19, a recognition long overdue.<\/p>\n

Dawson made her name in the 1960s as a superstar of abstraction, one of only three women included in the National Gallery of Victoria\u2019s landmark 1968 exhibition The Field. One of the key works in that exhibition, Rollascape 2, will be shown in the AGNSW retrospective. It\u2019s big, bold and yellow, a series of exuberant curves that unfurl for three luscious metres.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of my favourite paintings,\u201d Dawson says as I show her an image of it on my laptop. \u201cI think it works very well, and the fact that it means absolutely nothing is terrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dawson doesn\u2019t play by the rules, never has. As a younger artist, she\u2019d often be pressed by critics to explain the \u201cmeaning\u201d of her abstract works. She\u2019d patiently respond, in her cultivated tones, that \u201cmeaning\u201d didn\u2019t reside in the story a painting told, but in a painting\u2019s shapes and colours, and the emotions and sensations it provoked.<\/p>\n

\"Janet<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson\u2019s \u2018Rollascape 2\u2019 (1968).<\/p>\n

When Rollascape 2 was exhibited again at the NGV in The Field Revisited in 2018, Dawson described it as \u201can expression of a painting trying to escape from the prison of the square\u201d. That splendidly vigorous image could equally apply to the artist herself. Dawson has escaped categorisation, followed her own artistic instinct, regardless of fashion. When American critic Clement Greenberg visited Australia in the 1960s, he told her to \u201cstick to one\u201d thing. She ignored the advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the great strengths of her work is that she didn\u2019t conform,\u201d says exhibition curator Denise Mimmocchi, the AGNSW\u2019s acting head of Australian art.<\/p>\n

That it has taken so long for a state gallery to stage a retrospective of her work may have something to do with Dawson\u2019s resistance to neat definition. Her gender, and eventual retreat from the centres of art in Sydney and Melbourne may also have played a part, Mimmocchi says.<\/p>\n

\"Australian<\/p>\n

Australian artist Janet Dawson at her home studio in Wallington.Credit: Eddie Jim<\/p>\n

After coming to prominence as a pioneer of abstraction, Dawson faded from the limelight as she moved towards realism in works inspired by the natural world. The shift coincided with her move to Binalong in regional New South Wales in the 1970s with her late husband Michael Boddy, a Yorkshire-born actor and playwright. Out bush, Dawson didn\u2019t for a moment miss the art cliques of Melbourne and Sydney.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, they were awful,\u201d Dawson tells me, pulling a face. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing to do with artists, it\u2019s all to do with \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

She completes the sentence with a series of comical gestures that indicate the tedious snobbishness of it all, sending me into fits of laughter.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sitting in a small back room of the rambling house that she shares with her extended family \u2013 niece Penny, Penny\u2019s partner Lee, and Dawson\u2019s sister-in-law Jill, wife of Dawson\u2019s late brother Cameron. He\u2019d be pleased to see them all here listening in as Dawson tells stories about her adventure-filled life. It was Cameron\u2019s vision to build a house with enough rooms for several generations to live comfortably together.<\/p>\n

\"Janet<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson with her Laminex coffee table, one of a series exhibited at Gallery A, Melbourne, 1968.Credit: Nine Media\/Fairfax Photos<\/p>\n

Dawson\u2019s works are scattered throughout. In the room where we sit, there\u2019s a buoyant still life of a leafy, broken-off branch of a loquat tree brimming with velvety-yellow fruit that spill across a bustling domestic table. At the bottom right of the composition, we glimpse the artist\u2019s hand capturing the moment. The pastel work was created at Binalong, at Dawson and Boddy\u2019s rural property, Scribble Rock, where the couple lived for almost 40 years.<\/p>\n

In style, the loquat painting couldn\u2019t be more different to Rollascape 2, and yet both works share a sense of energy, motion and light. Mimmocchi tells me that even when Dawson was \u201cmeant to be doing colour field painting, which was all about the flat surface, she instilled elements of light and painterliness into her aesthetic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Featuring more than 80 works, the AGNSW retrospective reveals an artist of versatility, skill, and moods, unafraid to range across artistic styles, from the cascading abstraction of Rollascape 2, to the meditative realism of Moon at dawn through a telescope (2000), to glorious still lifes such as Scribble Rock pomegranates (1999).<\/p>\n

What first inspired Dawson to take up art?<\/p>\n

\u201cVery simply, my mother,\u201d Dawson tells me. \u201cShe was gifted. When she was a young girl she thought that she would be an artist, but then of course she met my father and became a wife instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/p>\n

Robert Walker\u2019s \u201cJanet Dawson in her Paddington studio\u201d (1966).Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales<\/p>\n

Dawson was born in Sydney in 1935, to parents Olga and Kingsley. Before she had children, Olga had attended Julian Ashton\u2019s esteemed Sydney Art School, whose alumni include William Dobell and Joshua Smith. With her knowledge of art, Olga recognised her daughter\u2019s unusual talent and encouraged it. She even sought the advice of state gallery directors, including then AGNSW head Will Ashton who recommended supplying the child with paper and pencils \u2013 \u201cno rulers, no rubbers, no copying\u201d \u2013 and leaving her be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved drawing,\u201d Dawson says. \u201cI drew and drew and drew. She used to give me big papers and charcoals. It was normal in our house that I always lay on the floor and drew, and this, I think, was intended to give me confidence right at the beginning. All my gift comes from my mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing.<\/p>\n

When the family moved to Melbourne in 1940, Dawson began Saturday morning art classes with the realist painter Harold Septimus Power, at his studio on the corner of Elizabeth and Little Collins Street. Dawson was the only child in the class, aged 11.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a lovely, funny old fella,\u201d Dawson says. \u201cHe was a very good artist, wonderful training. To me, his studio was the beginning of my art work. There was this little easel \u2013 it was really funny \u2013 the other big artists all around me. I just remember it being very comical. They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. No, I shouldn\u2019t be rude. They respected that a child was to be taught early.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dawson went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. A tonalist self-portrait created in the early 1950s while she was a student there, depicts a poised, beautiful young woman, silk scarf knotted around her neck, confidently meeting the viewer\u2019s gaze. (Dawson would later model for Italian-born fashion photographer Bruno Benini in a series of studio portraits and shoots in Melbourne.)<\/p>\n

\"Janet<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson\u2019s self-portrait painted between 1951 and 1953.<\/p>\n

In 1956, Dawson won the NGV Travelling Scholarship, another significant step in her career. She studied at London\u2019s Slade School of Fine Art, where, frustrated with her attempts at painting, she began to explore lithography and printmaking. Her passion for painting was reignited when she saw The New American Painting exhibition at London\u2019s Tate Gallery in 1959, on tour from New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, and featuring the work of abstractionists including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Adolph Gottlieb.<\/p>\n

At Slade, Dawson won another scholarship, which funded further travel through Europe, including a six-month stay in the small village of Anticoli Corrado, north of Rome. The area\u2019s picturesque valleys, hills and rolling clouds spurred Dawson\u2019s first significant series of abstract landscapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cA painter can live here without anyone thinking him queer or bohemian \u2013 I\u2019m a farmer \u2013 I\u2019m a painter \u2013 same thing,\u201d she wrote home to her family while living in Anticoli Corrado. In her catalogue essay, Mimmocchi notes that these thoughts \u201chad a prescient correspondence\u201d to the life that Dawson later found at Binalong.<\/p>\n

\"Janet<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson, pictured at her Waverly home with her husband Michael Boddy after winning the 1973 Archibald Prize.Credit: Peter John Moxham\/Fairfax Media<\/p>\n

In 1961, Dawson returned to Melbourne and had her first solo exhibition at the innovative Gallery A, in Flinders Street, founded by designer Max Hutchinson and sculptor Clement Meadmore to promote modern art and design. When Gallery A moved to a larger space in South Yarra, Dawson established a print workshop there and became the manager and master printer. In the following years Dawson also worked on props and sets for the experimental Emerald Hill Theatre company in South Melbourne, and in 1965 met her future husband, Michael Boddy, there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t fat then. He had a lovely face, really. I thought he was beautiful, actually beautiful, that\u2019s all,\u201d Dawson says. \u201cI certainly rejoiced in his presence, and looked forward to his presence, and made sure that when I knew he was coming to the gallery, I\u2019d be there, all that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a living room in another part of the house hangs Dawson\u2019s 1973 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Boddy<\/a>. It was her first Archibald entry, and she became the third woman to win the prize in its 52-year history. She depicts Boddy as a gentle giant in a lilac t-shirt and worn hat, fingers clasped on his generous belly as he reads. Behind him fans, a rake and a spade, symbols of their rural existence.<\/p>\n

The painting won\u2019t be in the retrospective, nor will another blazingly good portrait, Summer 1986<\/a>, in which the older Boddy \u2013 tall, fleshy, bespectacled, grumpy \u2013 lies naked, bar slippers and socks, in a pose reminiscent of Monet\u2019s Olympia. Boddy said he much preferred it the Archibald-winning portrait.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019d like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works.<\/p>\n

The 1973 portrait has just been returned to Dawson after being on tour for several years in the Archie 100 exhibition. Mimmocchi had originally included Summer 1986 in her loan requests (it\u2019s in the National Portrait Gallery collection), but after much thought, decided it didn\u2019t \u201cfit\u201d the retrospective, \u201cboth physically within the space but also given its overpowering presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a more subtle tribute to the significant men in Dawson\u2019s life, Mimmocchi has included a smaller pencil portrait of Boddy, and one of Cameron.<\/p>\n

Dawson and Boddy married in 1968, the same year that Dawson\u2019s abstract works would be celebrated in The Field. In 1974, the couple moved to Binalong, and three years later ensconced themselves even further in the bush, buying the property they named Scribble Rock. Boddy famously remarked: \u201cOur marriage is one long conversation. We moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was absolutely true,\u201d Dawson confirms. \u201cYes, we just rattled on together for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Janet<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson\u2019s \u201cHare on blue\u201d (2009).<\/p>\n

She describes the move to Scribble Rock as the \u201cabsolute coming together\u201d of her work. The natural world was a fount of inspiration, and so too the bounty that she and Boddy grew. Cauliflowers, cabbages, turnips, onions, sprouting potatoes and more inhabit Dawson\u2019s wondrous still lifes. Dead animals feature too \u2013 a kookaburra, a young wedge-tailed eagle, a hare, a tawny frogmouth \u2013 all rendered with exquisite care, homages to the transience of life, and evocative of 17th century Dutch still lifes. Dawson tells me that Boddy would often bring the dead creatures in for her to paint.<\/p>\n

\"Janet<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson\u2019s \u201cBalgalal series 5 \u2013 Sunday morning\u201d (1975).<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d say \u2018there\u2019s a dead bird down there, I think you\u2019d like it, go and get it or I\u2019ll go and get it for you if you like\u2019. So he would bring it up for me, or I\u2019d go and get it, and then we\u2019d talk about it, and he might even write something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Scribble Rock, Dawson and Boddy immersed themselves in the local community and produced a newsletter, Kitchen Talk, which Boddy would write, and Dawson illustrate, promoting the principles of organic farming.<\/p>\n

We look at one of the abstract landscapes Dawson created in Binalong, Balgalal series 5 \u2013 Sunday Morning (1975), named for the creek that ran through Scribble Rock, a vast triptych that stretches for almost four metres.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, they\u2019re not really abstract,\u201d Dawson corrects me. \u201cThey\u2019re trees,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re living things, and you actually see that \u2013 that\u2019s out here and that\u2019s behind it, and that one\u2019s there, and that\u2019s next to it and coming that way,\u201d she says. \u201cSo when you start looking you see that they\u2019re actual solid tree shapes, but they\u2019re just simplified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

After Boddy\u2019s death in 2014, Dawson moved back to the Binalong township before relocating to Ocean Grove in 2016 to be with family. Her recent fall has kept her from the studio of late, but she\u2019s keen to go back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen everything settles, I\u2019d love to go and work in the pod,\u201d Dawson says. \u201cI feel I\u2019m sort of ungracious by not working in it. What I\u2019d like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works,\u201d she says, emphasising the sentiment with a theatrical growl.<\/p>\n

What will the works be about?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she says, and makes another long, low, growling sound, as though summoning ideas. \u201cBut it\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janet Dawson: Far Away, So Close is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until January 18.<\/p>\n

Get the best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size The first thing that strikes you about Janet Dawson is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-4847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}