58. GARRY SHEAD

Queen Elizabeth II visited Australia for the first time on 3 February 1954, when Garry Shead was just twelve years old: she was the first reigning monarch to ever visit Australia. At the time, there was a massive outpouring of nationalism and it was estimated that seventy percent of the population flocked to see Her Majesty in person during her two month national tour. Shead was a pre-pubescent Sydney schoolboy when he had his royal encounter and his memories of that day are vivid:

I remember seeing her and feeling the eye contact as she passed. I also remember dreaming about her (sometimes sexual dreams) - there was possibly nothing sexy about her, she was like a Walt Disney Cinderella, but I encountered her at the dawning of my own pubescence. There was something unearthly and untouchable in her beautyso that even a prime minister could not touch her elbow. She passed like an incarnate spirit. ¹

This encounter was to stay with Shead past adolescence and into adulthood - it become the theme for his Royal Suite paintings which are some of the best and most well-known paintings in his vast and memorable oeuvre. The artist uses the metaphor of the monarchs 1954 visit to express a range of themes and to recall the Australia of the 1950s and the impact of the Menzies government.

The present work, Queen and Subjects, is a joyful reminiscence painted with the characteristic hallmarks of Sheads Royal Suite works. The artist wryly contrasts the delicacy of the fair-skinned Queen against the harsh, alien landscape of central Australia. Here, Her Majesty parades down a red carpet, laid down to prevent the earth staining her regal gown. She appears as an apparition, adorned with Royal regalia; a hovering crown, blue sash, and golden orb to assert her sovereignty. Two large kangaroo stand guard beside the Empress, rifles resting on their shoulders. Shead surrounds the figure of the Queen with native animals and gumtrees to further alienate the monarch from the traditional majestic surrondings.

Shead began creating images of the Queen as early as 1962 in the form of cartoons for Oz, the underground satirical magazine which famously became the subject of two obscenity trials.² He struggled with depicting her dual role - as both the very public head of state and also the beautiful, vulnerable human behind the royal facade. He began the Royal Suite paintings in 1995 and although Shead could be described a republican ³ the timing saw these works become involved in the republican debates of the late 1990s - this however, was not Sheads intention for the series. Sasha Grishin describes the Royal Suite series as historical paintingslooking back to the Australia of the 1950s when the omnipresent figure of Menzies dominated. ⁴

In Queen and Subjects, Shead paints a scene of cheerful optimism; the Queens first visit to Australia as the reigning monarch.  As with the best of Sheads Royal Suite paintings, Queen and Subjects is graced with a lyrical charm and gentle sensousness.⁵ He is painting an allegory, that of the naive belief in the white goddess from a foreign land. Perhaps on the simplest level, the series is about a quest for beauty and a lost innocence⁶

 

1. Garry Shead, taped interview with the author, Canberra, 16 March 1996, cited in Grishin, S., Garry Shead - Encounters with Royalty, Craftsman House, Sydney 1998, p.28
2. Wikipedia, accessed 31 March 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(magazine)
3. Grishin, S., Garry Shead Amazed and Amused, Australian Art Collector, issue 14, October December 2000, p.81
4. Grishin, S., Garry Shead - Encounters with Royalty, Craftsman House, Sydney 1998, p.28
5. Grishin, S., Garry Shead Amazed and Amused, Australian Art Collector, issue 14, October December 2000, p.81
6. Grishin, S., Garry Shead - Encounters with Royalty, Craftsman House, Sydney 1998, p.29

 

Caroline Jones BA MArtAdmin