Category: The Arts

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‘Alan’s Art Deco’ exhibition at Macaria

camdenhistorynotes

Review: ‘Alan’s Art Deco’ Exhibition, Alan Baker Art Gallery, Macaria, 37 John Street, Camden. October 2023-April 2024.

Interwar Art Deco style

A new art exhibition at Camden’s Alan Baker Art Gallery highlights the modernity and cosmopolitanism of the interwar period in an exhibition of artist Alan D Baker called ‘Alan’s Art Deco’.

The interwar period was a vibrant time for Australia following the trauma of the First World War. It was a time of hopes and dreams, new ideas and styles, best expressed by the Sydney Harbour Bridge, an exclamation mark in modernism.

The cover of ‘Alan’s Art Deco’ exhibition catalogue which tells the story of the artist Alan D Baker and his artworks as a commercial artist between the 1930s and 1950s. (I Willis 2023)

In sleepy Camden, cosmopolitanism and modernity appeared in the form of new banking chambers, car dealerships, motor garages and movie palaces that appeared in the town centre from new coal.

Pubs in Camden were modernised. Across the state, the big brewers wanted modernity displayed in their commercial promotions and hired commercial artists like Alan Baker to express this in the Art Deco style.

Art Deco is a style that the exhibition catalogue describes for its

clean shapes and lines, geometric and stylised ornamentation and above all, a celebration of the luxury of modernity, the style influenced every visual medium, from architecture to fine art.

(Catalogue Notes)

The Art Deco style first appeared in the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, and then developed over the next 15 years in Western Europe and the USA.

Exhibition

‘Alan’s Art Deco’ exhibition illustrates the artwork of artist Alan D Baker and is spread across four galleries, portraying his work from the 1930s to the 1950s. Baker created a range of artworks that were used as posters, murals, bottle labels, coasters, newspaper and magazine advertising, menus and theatre programs. (Catalogue Notes)

Alan D Baker (1914-1987) left school at 15 and enrolled full-time to study art at JS Watkin Art School in Sydney. Gary Baker, Alan’s son, writes that

Great emphasis was placed on tonal drawing in pencil charcoal , pen and washes and after about 4 years Alan was allowed to paint in oil colour.

https://www.garybaker.com.au/alan-d-baker/

According to Gary Baker, Alan had

a great love of the Australian countryside and enjoyed travelling in his caravan with his family and dog, visiting the Flinders Ranges – South Australia, Central Australia, Queensland – especially Longreach, and Northern and Western New South Wales. On the south coast of New South Wales, at Gerroa, he had a holiday house. This was the source for many of his landscapes and seascapes.

His works are in the New South Wales Art Gallery, the National Gallery – Canberra, Queensland Institute of Technology, the Hinton collection at Armidale, and many private and public collections.

https://www.garybaker.com.au/alan-d-baker/

Exhibition Across Four Galleries

Fittingly, exhibition curator Roger Percy has divided Baker’s career into four galleries, starting with Gallery 1, themed ‘Welcome To The Era’. This gallery displays a series of Baker’s works from the 1930s. These artworks were part of the artist’s life between being a student at JS Watkins Art School and then as an art instructor until 1938 when the school closed on the retirement of John Watkins.

After 1938, Baker turned to commercial art after his return from war service in New Guinea during the Second World War. Themed ‘Black & White’ Gallery 2 displays advertisements that were created using a scratchboard for ‘newspaper image printing’. This fine detail required the artist to use ‘scrap knives to scrape ink off a surface to reveal the white clay beneath’. Originating in 19th century Europe, this was ‘a cheaper and quicker alternative to alternative to other printing methods’ while retaining the fine lines from the artwork.  (Catalogue Notes)

‘The Originals’ displayed in Gallery 3 shows work commissioned by one of Australia’s oldest brewers, Tooth & Co, which tied over 600  hotels to sell its products. The company commissioned artists like Baker to advertise beer and link it to sport, health and cultural sophistication. Baker’s contributions were created using self-portraits, while other works depict his father.

Visitors at the exhibition opening of ‘Alan’s Art Deco’ consulting the catalogue and viewing Alan Baker’s work ‘And KB on the Ice for Supper’. (I Willis 2023)

One of ‘The Originals’ is ‘And KB on the ice for supper!’ and has been described by the Australian Beer Posters website as

 a fantastic Australian brewery poster to compliment any wall [that] are highly collectable and a refreshing way to bring colour and verve onto any wall.

(Australian Beer Posters)

Journalist Stephen Gibbs has written in the Daily Mail Australia that

KB was first brewed in Sydney at Tooth & Co’s Kent Brewery – hence the name – in 1918 and was the dominant packaged beer in New South Wales for much of the 1970s and 1980s.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10175639/KB-Lager-returns-bottle-shops-decade-legendary-beer-disappeared.html
The gates of Tooth & Co Kent Brewery at 26 George Street West, Broadway, Sydney. KB Beer was named after this brewery. The two images are from 1939 and 2005. (CoS)

Gallery 4 is themed as ‘Commercial Print’ and depicts Baker’s original commercial artworks ‘in classic Art Deco scenes with flawless figures, precise draftsmanship and idealised scenes’. (Catalogue Notes)

The exhibition is privileged to be loaned several artworks from the Powerhouse Museum Collection and the Josef Lebovic Gallery in Sydney.

Poster art outdoors

Baker’s poster art for Tooth & Co was often displayed on the outside walls of hotels and is a form of public art.

The exhibition curator, Roger Percy, has followed a similar principle and made some of Baker’s artworks into outdoor posters displayed in prominent locations in and around the Camden town centre, including bus shelters, car park walls, fences and garbage bins.

This poster art of Alan D Baker’s artwork is on public display on the wall of Camden’s Oxley Street Carpark at the rear of the Alan Baker Art Gallery at 37 John Street Camden. Baker created his poster art for Tooth & Co to be on public display on prominent hotel walls around Sydney. (I Willis, 2023)

I think Baker would be pleased that his artwork is on public display for everyone in the general public to view. It is a very democratic approach to public art.

Baker created his artwork for Tooth & Co to be on public display in prominent locations for all to see.

Ringing in the opening

At the official opening, the MC Philippa Percy invited Gary Baker, Alan’s son, to tell his father’s story and then invited Camden Mayor Ashleigh Cagney to ring the gallery bell to officially open the exhibition.

Gary Baker, Alan Baker’s son, tells his father’s story at the opening of the exhibition ‘Alan’s Art Deco’. (I Willis, 2023)

The exhibition is found in Camden’s historic Macaria, a Victorian gentleman’s townhouse designed and built in the Picturesque Gothic Renaissance Revival style in 1860, the Alan Baker Art Gallery home.

The gallery is in the Camden Town Centre’s historic John Street precinct, where you will find next door the former police barracks (1878) adjacent to court house (1857), all opposite the former temperance hall (1867) and school of arts (1866).

This is an enticing exhibition that highlights another aspect of the talent and skill of Alan D Baker as a commercial artist. ‘Alan’s Art Deco’ adds to earlier exhibitions that have demonstrated other aspects of Baker’s art career, for example, the 2021 exhibition FACE to FACE: Live Sittings 1936 – 1972 .

The Alan Baker Art Gallery is located at 37 John Street, Camden. Exhibition entry is free, and the gallery is open Thursday to Sunday from 11am to 4pm. Free off-street is available in Larkin Place, Camden and the Oxley Decked Car Park, Camden, at the rear of the gallery.

The Alan Baker Art Gallery in the historic Macaria building at 37 John Street Camden. (I Willis 2023)
1930s · Aesthetics · Cabaret · Cultural Heritage · Cultural icon · Entertainment · Film · History · Music history · Storytelling · Symbolism · The Arts · Theatre · Uncategorized

Billie Holiday on stage at the Belvoir Street Theatre

camdenhistorynotes

Review: Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill by Lanie Robertson. Musical Arrangements by Danny Holgate. Belvoir St Theatre, 14 September – 15 October 2023.

Theatre performance with heart

I recently attended a theatre performance with a strong humanitarian message at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Surry Hills. The show was a combination of cabaret and drama, highlighting many historic social issues and challenges of the early 20th century that still resonate today.

The show portrayed the life and times of African-American jazz singer Billie Holiday in a performance called ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill’. Originally performed in New York Off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre in 1986 at a venue renowned for staging provocative, cutting-edge new plays and musicals. This version of Lady Day is a co-production between the Melbourne Theatre Company and the State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Cover of the programme for Lady Day at the Emerson Bar & Grill at the Belvoir Street Theatre (BST 2023)

The premise of the production

The premise of the production is that it is set in a south Philadelphia bar at about midnight in March 1959 and is the last performance before Holiday died. This adaptation of Lanie Robertson’s Lady Day is directed by Mitchell Butel, starring Jamaican-born Zahra Newman as Holiday, supported by a marvellous three-piece jazz band consisting of piano, bass and drums.

The staging moves away from a typical biopic and encapsulates many aspects of Holiday’s life in one evening, Butel told ABC Artworks and is not a normal cabaret show. The show does not stray away from the challenges that Holiday faced in her lifetime. These social issues and changes have contemporary resonance, including sexual assault, drug addiction, alcoholism, and racism.

Zahra Newman told ABC ArtsWorks that she wanted to honour the life of Holiday. To achieve this, she and her voice coach, Geraldine Cook, sought out the few primary sources of Billie Holiday. In one of those sources, Holiday states that the name Lady Day was given to her by her sax player, Lester Young.  

Billie Holiday, a musical genius

In the show, Newman pays tribute to the influences on Holiday’s life and amongst them were Holiday’s love of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Holiday was a skilled performer and one of the few African-American singers who toured with an all-white band across the American South. According to Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday was a musical genius who influenced every major singer of her generation, particularly himself.  

Zahra Newman sings the blues

Singing a range of Billie Holiday’s classics, Newman’s voice filled the room, and the blues have never sounded sweeter. Newman’s powerful rendition of Holiday’s 1930s tune ‘Strange Fruit’ came straight from the heart. Holiday originally recorded the song in 1939, with the lyrics drawn from a poem published in 1937 by teacher and songwriter Abel Meeropol called ‘Bitter Fruit’. The protest song deplores lynchings, mainly African Americans, which reached a peak in the Southern American States at the turn of the 20th century. The lyrics compare the lynchings to fruit hanging on a tree. The 1939 recording by Commodore sold over a million copies and was adopted by the civil rights movement as its anthem in the mid-20th century.

Billie Holiday sings the blues protest song ‘Strange Fruit’ originally recorded in 1939 (The Kennedy Centre 2023)

The show ended with the audience in raptures. Newman and the band received an enthusiastic standing ovation for a magical performance – a great evening’s entertainment for all, closing with a strong humanitarian message.