JOHN WOLSELEY: Exhibition Opening
The Magnificent Return of Bilbies, Bettongs
and Hare Wallabies to Newhaven
Opening Event: 2pm Saturday 8 March 2025
John Wolseley
For those of you who may have missed the opening event, here are some of the speech notes from Robyn Davidson OAM.
Robyn Davidson is an Australian writer best known for her 1980 book Tracks, about her 2,700 km trek across the deserts of Western Australia using camels. Her career of travelling and writing about her travels has spanned 40 years.
Her memoir, Unfinished Woman was published in late 2023.
Robyn Davidson was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the King's Birthday Honours List in June 2024.
Robyn Davidson
SPEECH NOTES
I was so chuffed to be asked to open this exhibition, and to introduce the work of my old friend John Wolseley, who, of all the people I know, surely needs no introduction because apart from being the wonderful artist he is, he’s also rather good at introducing himself.
I didn’t know him all that well when we fetched up together at Newhaven Station with a clutch of other artists, who were there to be inspired by a piece of desert, then owned by Birds Australia.
In fact, there’s a painting of birdsong in this exhibition, which I remember him working on when we were there together.
Later, Newhaven was taken over by Australian Wildlife Conservancy who took on the task of regeneration– keeping out feral animals and plants, so that the native creatures, surviving by a thread, could be reintroduced, and hopefully, thrive.
When I walked across Australia back in '77, I could sit on a sand dune a thousand miles from anything, and the sand would be laced with the tracks of native animals. Now, in that same spot, the tracks would be almost entirely of camels, rabbits, foxes, cats. Which is why I don’t go back to the desert much, because it fills me with grief.
But John does go back. He’s been back to Newhaven often, to record and respond to the exciting work that’s been done there, illustrating how the land can regenerate relatively quickly when it’s given a break.
And we can see the evidence today of how successful that project has been. He’s recorded not just the bilbies, bettongs and hare wallabies who are doing so well there, he’s also included their dwellings, pointing to the interdependency of life form and place, place and lifeform, which constitutes the web of nature. The very topology of that butchered landscape is changing back to what it once must have been. And god knows, we need some good news in these strange times.
So I want to celebrate that work tonight, and celebrate the artist himself, who has so consistently, dedicatedly and indefatigably shown us the lyricism and preciousness of our unique country.
When we were at Newhaven, I’d go out with him to a patch of desert, and watch him, stripped to the waist under a blistering sun, dancing around with his pieces of paper, making his frottages on bits of burnt scrub, and occasionally, for my entertainment, doing ballet pirouettes in the sand. But back at camp, in the evening, he’d be just as likely to read extracts from some obscure chinese poem, or a passage from Gilgamesh.
Which brings me the notion of play and seriousness. John is playful, but when you look at his body of work, you see that it’s a sacred kind of play. A serious kind of play.
I suspect when he first came here from the UK, he was stunned by what he saw, and sometimes people from outside can see a new place with fresh eyes. With John it seems to be a physical, sensual thing. As if he’s trying to immerse himself in the landscape, or perhaps participate in it is a better phrase, something approaching how, perhaps, first peoples, the old ones, with whom John has sometimes collaborated, experience their country.
So his work is not just aesthetically luscious, it is political in the best sense. It teaches people not only to value our varied environments, but to recognise how fragile and threatened they are. People who may not be able to go out there to see for themselves. His work is both celebration at what is still there, and an expression of sorrow at what is being lost. It’s that wonderfully rare amalgam of high art with the natural sciences.
I also suspect that his vision is in a kind of critical dialogue with some previous great australian artists, who saw the desert primarily as something harsh and forbidding, something inimical to human life. People who know that desert country intimately don’t see it that way. We see it more as a vast garden, as long as you know how to tend it and respect it.
So dear John, we are all very lucky that you dumped old England and found your footing in Australia. Their loss, our gain.
Enough from me, I now formally open this exhibition, so you can go and take in these Wolseley wonderworks for yourselves. Enjoy.