Gallery acquires Drysdale classic
ONCE the wool centre of the world, Geelong’s lasting wool weaving capacity has played a role in ensuring cricket’s famous baggy green caps will be made from 100 per cent Australian wool for decades.
Geelong Textiles created the highquality woven fabric used in the caps from wool donated by hundreds of woolgrowers from across Australia under an initiative of the Australian Wool Innovation’s marketing arm, The Woolmark Company, and Cricket Australia.
Geelong Textiles director Quentin Vahl Meyer (right) said the wool was sent overseas to be spun, then returned to Geelong to be made into a wool felt that was in turn delivered to the next link in the process, eventually landing at Kookaburra to make the caps.
He said the 200m of high-quality fabric that was created in May would be used to make cricket caps for state sides, as well as the baggy greens for the national team.
In addition to a sense of satisfaction in being part of the process of making an iconic symbol of Australian sport, it was also great to see support for Australian manufacturing, particularly for a high-end product. A RUSSELL Drysdale painting added to the Geelong Gallery’s collection is considered its most important acquisition in more than a decade.
The gallery has welcomed Drysdale’s 1960 work Halfcaste woman.
Drysdale, who migrated from England and attended Geelong Grammar, earned an international reputation for the distinctly Australian character of his work.
The painting was donated by Rosemary Gough, who welcomed the painting into her home in 1991.
It then travelled in a retrospective of Drysdale’s work, curated by Geoffrey Smith, a friend `of the Goughs.
“Through this process, we learnt much about the history of the artist, how he had come from England as a child and spent his latter school years at Geelong Grammar, holidaying with his aunts at Drysdale on the Bellarine Peninsula,” Mrs Gough said.
“Drysdale loved the outback of rural Australia but often felt that he never quite belonged in Australia and by the same token was now alienated from his English roots.
“In Geoffrey’s words, ‘Drysdale too was a half-caste’.”
Reflecting on the process, Mrs Gough said she saw Halfcaste woman in a new light.
“I appreciated the empathy with which Drysdale had painted this woman who didn’t fit comfortably in her two worlds,” Mrs Gough said. “But I could also appreciate the dignity he had captured in her.”
After 28 years of enjoying Half-caste woman, Mrs Gough and family have decided to donate the work to the public collection of Geelong Gallery.
The gallery says the acquisition is its most significant since its public campaign to acquire Eugene von Guérard’s View of Geelong in 2006.
Gallery director Jason Smith said the gallery was overwhelmed and delighted by the generosity of Mrs Gough and her extended family.
“Half-caste woman joins Russell Drysdale’s landscape, Hill End 1948 in the Geelong Gallery collection,” he said.
Drysdale was considered a leading modernist whose works attracted international recognition of Australian art. He died in 1981, aged 69.
Half-caste woman will be on display from tomorrow.