Kendrah Morgan, Head Curator at Heide Museum of Modern Art, once gave me some great research advice about Gray:
“Look at the adjacent resources. That’s where some of your best discoveries will lie.”
She was right.
While tracking down the location of Gray’s painting St John’s Struck by Lightning (1966), I came across Rosalie Gascoigne’s Catalogue Raisonné (free PDF), a beautiful book her son Martin compiled. It includes all her works and a concise biography.
Rosalie, born in New Zealand in 1917, moved to Canberra in the 1940s with her husband Ben, an astronomer at ANU. She became one of Australia’s most celebrated assemblage artists and, in 1982, the first woman to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale.
When Gray and Joan arrived in Canberra in the 1960s, it was still a small city of about 50,000 people, and the art community was close-knit. Anyone interested in art knew each other and regularly turned up at exhibition openings.
I’d already seen a few examples of other artists speaking highly of Gray’s work, but this passage in Martin Gascoigne’s book really struck me:
“Family members were regular attendees at opening events, even though Rosalie and Ben were not buying [artworks] because they were saving to build their own home, the exceptions being a painting of Glebe House by Gray Smith … bought in 1966.”
That line says a lot. It’s one thing for the public to buy an artist’s work, but when another artist does, it speaks volumes.
Naturally, I wanted to see Garden Party at Glebe House (1966) for myself. I found it in a private collection, sitting proudly in the owners’ living room.
Here it is.
If you happen to own a Gray Smith painting, I’d love to hear from you. We’re hoping to organise a retrospective and create a Catalogue Raisonné for his work.
I’d love to hear more about the connection between Rosalie and Ben Gascoigne and Gray and Joan Smith. Feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me directly.
3 Responses
What a strange little painting- I love Gray’s way of seeing
Many artists of this era had their art work/s framed by Gray’s brother Martin Smith. The frame Garden Party at Glebe Place looks like a Martin frame – a story within a story.
I suspect that Gray’s paintings in Canberra were framed by Brian Ollie out at the Green Door. We only just worked this out chatting to Brett. His work in Melbourne is most likely, as you say, framed by Martin. We were just in Castlemaine this week, and their gallery has an exhibition about framing. There is a lovely Charlie Blackman with a Martin frame.