35. SIDNEY NOLAN

Nolan first addressed the Burke and Wills story as a young artist in 1948, fresh from completing his groundbreaking first Kelly series. He returned to the subject in the early 1960s and again twenty years later, towards the end of his career. The Flogging belongs to the last of these important painting cycles, executed in 1984-5 when Nolan was in his late 60s, when he was able to draw on almost fifty years experience as a painter, and his fame and reputation had been many times confirmed. 

For Nolan revising a subject enabled him to reassess a theme in light of his own progress as a painter as well as current world events. A famous traveller, Nolan voraciously exposed himself to ideas which could be used in his work, and so revisiting a subject provided him with the opportunity to chart his own progress. The Burke and Wills story was widely known, if not approaching the status of mythology, rich in incident, and ripe with
artistic possibilities.

Burke and Wills expedition captured the imagination of the Australian public from the moment the explorers set out from Melbourne on 20 August 1860. The stated aim was to traverse Australia from Melbourne due North to the Gulf of Carpentaria, a distance of approximately 3,250 kilometres, and in the process explore a large area of inland Australia that had never been seen by Europeans.

The expedition, consisting of nineteen men with twenty three horses, six wagons, twenty six camels and food for two years progressed slowly, before reaching a point about half way at Coopers Creeks, at the time the furthest extent of previous exploration, on the 11 November. A depot camp was set up there on the site of the now famous DIG tree and a lead group consisting of the expeditions leader Robert OHara Burke, his second in command William John Wills, John King and Charles Gray embarked on the last leg of the journey for the Gulf of Carpentaria with six camels on the 16 of December. Burke calculated that the group might need three months to reach their destination and return. But now, at the height of summer, and running low on provisions, things started to go wrong.  Although they got within a few kilometres of their destination the party were unable to penetrate the mangroves and after some effort to make landfall on the coast were obliged to set off for the return trip without sighting the actual ocean.  Overdue for their rendezvous, the expedition was returning to Coopers creek hungry and suffering from dysentery, when one of the party, Gray, was caught stealing food. The Flogging, the incident depicted by Nolan, was Grays punishment, but when he died a few days later, it added to the sense of the venture as cursed with bad luck. Burke, ill-disposed to Gray, believed the latter was feigning his illness, and overreacted to the theft of food.  Later commentary openly discussed the possibility that the severity of the flogging had lead to Grays death. The event can be seen as one of the many moments of poor judgment and bad luck that culminated in the eventual demise of the expeditions leaders.

In 1984 the producers of a new film being made on the expedition invited Nolan to join the actors and crew as they shot the scenes on location. The resulting series of paintings re-interpret the tragic story by framing it within the context of all of the banalities of the showbiz world of actors, technical staff and location paraphernalia. Here he repositions the event using a triptych format to present the actors Jack Thompson as Burke and Ralph Cotterill as Charles Gray performing the historical moment while it was being filmed.  On the left is the director comfortably controlling the scene seated beneath a beach umbrella, while on the right another member of the film crew operates an elaborate camera. Nolan underlines the strangeness of the situation by depicting in the central image the flogging taking place as an odd ritualistic spanking.  By pointing to the bizarre aspects of the event, Nolan draws on parallels that suggested themselves to him as he watched the film being produced. He noted that the mood at the time was dark.

Nothing was different to when Burke and Wills were there. It was a drama as if it were happening all over again. I felt like Prometheus when he stole the fire, not guilty, but a bit uneasy, almost as if I shouldnt have been there.¹ Doubtless Nolan derived a sense of irony that in the interval of little more than 120 years since the actual event, here was another group of men engaged in what he perceived to be a similarly inauspicious adventure.

In comparison to his earlier treatments of the Burke and Wills subject, the 1984 paintings present a completely different and more complex approach for Nolan, which include a post-modern reading of the events. While the first series had focussed on some of the better known events, the second (1962) series consisted of paintings with almost no specific references. In the 1984 series the main story had become peripheral, ambiguously represented so that the film production itself becomes a metaphor for the expedition. By devoting himself to the trivialities of the film production process Nolan exposes the grandiose intentions and noble motivations of the expedition as it remorselessly degenerates into tragedy. Through these paintings, and especially when seen in conjunction with his earlier treatments of this subject, Nolan underlines what he saw as the futility and folly of the expedition, now overlayed by the irony that it has been reduced to entertainment for a cinema audience.

These contradictions and the very personal viewpoint which are the hallmark of Nolans approach have the benefit of refreshing discussion of the historical events and provoking a re-assessment of a familiar story in a very contemporary manner. When the earlier series are taken into consideration, Nolans ongoing engagement with the subject constitute a major contribution to our perception of the events and the construction of the legend and myths that succeeded it.

These contradictions are one of the prime movers of Nolans art, and one of its greatest strengths. The paintings often appear fresh and spontaneous, and while it is clear that Nolan valued spontaneity, we also know the same paintings were often the product of a great deal of preparation. It is hard to imagine how he could depict the narratives of the Kelly story, for example without researching his subject thoroughly.  It is well known Nolan undertook a trip through Kelly Country, North East Victoria for the purpose of getting to know the terrain, and also on the chance that he might meet an eyewitness to the events he was interested in. By participating in a filmed re-enactment of the Burke and Wills story Nolan was in a unique position to be able to re- evaluate and comment on a legend which he had himself contributed to creating. 

The comparison of The Flogging with the quite different paintings of the same subject executed in 1961-2 demonstrate how far Nolan had progressed as an artist. The earlier group, reveal the frailty and vulnerability of the expedition and the paintings are at the same time more simplified and more poetic than the later works.  The individual paintings are not as specific in subject matter, and the evanescent figures exist in a landscape that has become metaphysical. In the 1984 series the details of arcane film-makers and the actors are, notwithstanding the fact that we are seeing a scene-within-a- scene, direct, specific, and even earthy.

As is often the case with Nolan, his paintings operate on various levels. By moving the ostensible subject to the periphery and using the making of the film itself as his subject Nolan has succeeded in creating a new facet of a Myth that he had himself helped to create. The paintings from this group testify to the fact that the motivations that served him in 1948, continued to be the foundation of his work many years later.

Footnotes
1. Sidney Nolan interviewed by Keith Dunstan, The Sun, Melbourne, 3rd November, 1984, quoted in Clark, J. Sidney Nolan; Landscapes and Legends, a retrospective exhibition: 1937-1987, National Gallery of Victoria, 1987, p.169

Timothy Abdallah, BA