Art gallery in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Gallery A was a mid-century Australian gallery that exhibited contemporary Australian art. It was established in 1959 at 60 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, and then relocated to 275 Toorak Road., South Yarra. A second Gallery A venue was opened and run concurrently at 21 Gipps Street, Paddington in Sydney from 1964, and a third in Canberra (1964, closed 1970). The Sydney business largely displaced the Melbourne gallery, which also closed in 1970, and continued until 1983. Its founder was Max Hutchinson and other directors during the history of the gallery at its three venues included Clement Meadmore, James Mollison, Janet Dawson and Ann Lewis.
History.
Melbourne.
The founding director of Gallery A was Max Hutchinson (1925–1999) whose business Adroit Displays, in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, was furniture, commercial display and industrial design and who was a founding member of the Society of Designers for Industry in Australia. At the suggestion of sculptor and fellow furniture designer Clement Meadmore, who wanted to create a 'little Bauhaus in Melbourne,' Hutchinson used his showrooms to exhibit contemporary Australian design and "exciting developments in abstraction".
With Meadmore as first director, during the early part of 1962 it closed its first location at Flinders Lane, Melbourne to open later that year in larger premises at 275 Toorak Road, South Yarra. There, Janet Dawson, who had returned in late November 1960 after nearly four years in Europe, started an art school and print shop where she worked 1962-64 as a lithographic proof printer for visiting artists, including John Brack, John Olsen and Fred Williams.
Dawson collaborated with Hutchinson and Meadmore on the gallery's major 1961 exhibition "The Bauhaus: Aspects and Influence," which included the latter's work alongside that of Bauhaus master Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and opened by architect Robin Boyd.
Working as the gallery manager and technical assistant, Dawson's abstraction developed through her adoption of acrylic paint and shaped composition boards which she used in her design of furniture for the gallery, made at the invitation of the Australian Laminex company and fabricated by Steven Davis in Melbourne; one item from her ‘Living Art’ table top series of 1964 is in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection. Having shown prints and drawings at Gallery A, Dawson held her first painting solo there in 1964, while James Mollison, managed the Melbourne Gallery A over 1964–1965.
Sydney.
Wishing to expand Gallery A to Sydney, Hutchinson collaborated with Ann Lewis, her business partner artist and collector Rua Osborne and later Rowena Burrell, and opened a second gallery there in November 1964, with a third venue being opened simultaneously in Canberra. Gallery A Sydney was located at 21 Gipps Street Paddington in a renovated stone Georgian cottage and closed in September 1983.
Its nearly twenty years of exhibitions were also influential and included Mike Brown’s censor-baiting 1965 exhibition, "Paintin’ a-go-go!;" Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski op art paintings and electronic drawings in 1966; the anti-Vietnam War "Arts Vietnam" of 1968; the Ralph Balson memorial exhibitions; and experimental installations of the early 1970s by Peter Kennedy. The Melbourne and Canberra galleries closed when in 1970 Max Hutchinson shifted his business to New York. Gallery A, Sydney continued to operate under a new board of directors, and continued to show Australian and American avant-garde hardedge, abstract expressionist painting, and sculpture. The gallery was influential in art in Sydney.
Canberra.
The Canberra branch of Gallery A, started in 1964 and officially opened 31 March 1965, was in the Enrico Taglietti designed Town House Motel, Rudd St, Canberra City. It closed in 1966, but reopened after a relocation, until 1970.
Influence.
Hutchinson moved to live to America in 1978. Prominent in Australian art circles in the 1960s, from 1968 he ran Max Hutchinson Gallery at 127 Greene St. in New York City. In 1974, Hutchinson expanded his New York showroom across the street to open Sculpture Now at 142 Greene St., and that year recommended the controversial purchase of Jackson Pollock's "Blue Poles" to the National Gallery of Australia director Mollison, who had progressed to that position via Gallery A. Max Hutchinson Gallery moved to larger premises next door at 138-140 Greene St in 1976. In 1985, Hutchinson moved his activity to Sullivan County where he created an 88-acre outdoor sculpture gallery on an old farm in Kenoza Lake. He died of liver failure on 23 April 1999 in the Community General Hospital of Sullivan County in Harris, New York.
References.
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