Missing piece of Art Gallery of NSW entrance filled after a century.
Indigenous artist Karla Dickens has dedicated her largest-ever public art commission, installed in the sandstone portico of the Art Gallery of NSW, to the country’s invisible people and all those “told to stay out of sight, be quiet and behave”.
“The placement of this work beats all the odds,” she says. “It is for my ancestors, for queers, and for forgotten artists that do not fit the status quo.”
Dickens’s panel To See or Not to See fills the framed niche above the gallery’s grand entrance that for more than a century has lain empty after gallery trustees cancelled the 1913 commission of a bas-relief bronze by the Australian-born sculptor Dora Ohlfsen.
Ohlfsen was one of the world’s most highly regarded sculptors and designers of medals and medallions when invited to add the missing decoration to the facade of the gallery’s Walter Vernon-designed building, but the commission was withdrawn for unknown reasons.
Unlike Ohlfsen’s idea of a decorative panel of horses and charioteers, Dickens has created an eight-metre-long glass frieze comprising six hooded figures.
Dickens’ figures wearing head coverings referencing the spit hoods used until last month on young people at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in the Northern Territory.
They also speak to Dicken’s feelings about being invisible as a middle-aged, First Nation woman and artist. Dickens became one of the faces of the February flood disaster that struck the artist’s hometown of Lismore in the northern rivers when she sat for Blak Douglas’s Archibald Prize-winning portrait, Moby Dickens.
“Dora was not only made invisible as her work was denied and bypassed, as a gay woman Dora took to hiding her sexuality for important safety reasons,” Dickens says.
Stern and unyielding: Karla Dickens as portrayed by Blak Douglas.CREDIT:BLAK DOUGLAS
“To See or Not to See talks to many including Dora Ohlfen’s story. The work speaks to all the female artists who never saw the same opportunities as their male peers. It has taken over a hundred years to see the work of a woman grace the facade of this heroic colonial building.”
The Wiradjuri artist was invited to create a new contemporary work for the gallery’s entrance in 2020, in time for the 150th anniversary of the institution’s inauguration as the ‘Academy of Art’ in 1871.
Pandemic lockdowns delayed its completion, and the delicate installation took place over three days in October as hoardings came down on the forecourt makeover in time for the official opening next Saturday of the gallery’s Sydney Modern wing.
New greenery and polished stone reflection pools replace parking spaces in the redesign by internationally renowned landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson and Seattle firm GGN.
Art Gallery of NSW director Michael Brand said it was especially significant that a work by a contemporary Indigenous artist filled the niche above the original building’s front door in the space left empty by the cancellation of Dora Ohlfsen’s commission.
“Karla’s commission readdresses forgotten histories and interrogates continuing legacies of colonialism, adding a powerful and meaningful sense of arrival to the Art Gallery’s beautiful original building.”
Dickens’s glass panel can now be spied above the doorway as visitors cross the gallery threshold, its glass and metal patina blending into the sandstone facade “like those who blended into the landscape as they watched the new arrivals move in and take ownership”.
“I now see those behind the hoods as Witnesses and Guardians overseeing whoever walks into the building.,” she said. “First Nation peoples have always known the advantage of a decent viewing point. Just like the mobs who watched the boats come into Sydney Harbour.”