Australiana, Vol 42 no 1, February 2020

The Australiana Society has launched social media campaigns across several platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Our presence on these platforms will diversify the ways we reach members and broaden our audiences. This will generate new interest in the Society for ongoing generations to recruit for membership succession. These important steps bring the society into line with many organisations, such as The Australiana Fund and The National Trust, ensuring we are viewed as relevant and up to date.

Australiana is often defined by the combination of local materials, local motifs and local skills to create art that is distinctively and recognisably Australian. The Harvey School of pottery making, which flourished at the Central Technical College in Brisbane from 1916 for more than thirty years is one of the best-known examples. Almost 40 years ago, Glenn Cooke began researching the Brisbane woodcarver L J Harvey (1871–1949), who taught himself pottery making and established the school, which mainly attracted well-bred young ladies. New evidence emerged in 2019 to reveal developments in the early years.

The Harry Gentle Resource Centre, Griffith University has welcomed specialist in Australian art heritage, decorative arts and material culture to 1945 and contributor to Australiana Timothy Roberts as the centre’s 2019 Visiting Fellow. The centre was established by Griffith University in 2016 following a generous legacy left by Robert (Harry) Gentle, a signal master during the Second World War, public servant and, in his retirement, graduate of the University in 1984. The centre aims to facilitate access to published and unpublished information for the period up to the 1850s, and to collate an inventory of the diversity and claims on country that made up the early colonial period. Tim’s project, Picturing the North: Representing Queensland before 1859, is the first major exploration of the art and artists of pre-separation Queensland.

Charles Rodius began his prolific art career in Paris and London. Convicted of thefts in 1829, he was transported to Sydney, where the convict artist produced landscapes, portraits of leading Sydney settlers as well as notable portraits of Aboriginal people, many translated into lithographs. Rodius had a good singing voice. From 1839, aged about 37, he began to suffer a series of strokes that severely affected his ability to draw. To compete with the new technique of popular, cheap but generally unsympathetic photographic portraits, in 1850 he travelled through NSW and Victoria offering his emotive hand-drawn portraits. Robert Stevens analyses his career in more detail than previously, alongside a selection of images from his large output.

Previously thought lost, this iconic Australian image – a large double-sided painted timber carving of a buck jumper made in 1893/4 by renowned Queensland sculptor Harold Parker – was made as an advertising sign for the Brisbane saddlery of R.E. Jarman. After it re-emerged in 2011 at a Sydney auction, Adam Free’s research has revealed an intriguing background story.