Michael Hobbs' View 1985

CRESSIDA CAMPBELL born 1960

Michael Hobbs' View 1985

woodblock print
89.5 x 53.5 cm (image); 97.0 x 59.0 cm (sheet); 116.0 x 78.0 cm (framed)
signed and dated lower right: Cressida Campbell ‘85
numbered lower left: 2/3
edition: 2/3

Provenance:
Mori Gallery, Sydney, 1987
Private collection, Sydney

Exhibited:
Cressida Campbell: Woodblock Prints 1985-1987, Mori Gallery, Sydney, 8 August - 5 September 1987, cat.16 (another example)

Reference:
Crayford, P. (ed.), The Woodblock Painting of Cressida Campbell, Public Pictures, Sydney, 2008, p.341, cat.P8520

Related Works:
Michael Hobbs' View 1985, watercolour on incised woodblock, 89.5 x 53.5 cm, private collection

Estimate: $70000 - 90000

Result Hammer: $70000

Cressida Campbell’s illustrious career has been one of persistent success. After graduating from the National Art School (or East Sydney Tech as it was then known) in 1979, she had three solo exhibitions with Clive Evatt’s Hogarth Galleries before the age of 24. Her popularity continued to grow while exhibiting at Mori Gallery throughout the 1980s, during which time the present work was created. In 2009 her survey exhibition at S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, broke attendance records for the venue, and by 2022 her much deserved retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, opened to rave reviews. In the words of one of Australia’s best known art critics John McDonald, ‘this magical exhibition will silence the critics – and be a monster hit.’(1)

Needless to say, he was correct. With almost 90,000 visitors, it was the most successful exhibition devoted to a contemporary Australian woman artist ever staged by the National Gallery.(2) It achieved the highest satisfaction score among visitors of a major exhibition in the last five years, and the accompanying publication was the National Gallery’s most successful publication to date.(3)

Campbell’s success can be credited to her ardent and idiosyncratic methods of making, which result in pictures that are complex, engaging and unanimously adored. Campbell begins by carefully carving her image into a woodblock, which she then delicately paints with watercolours. She then sprays the woodblock with water, places a sheet of paper on top, and uses a press to create a unique or very limited edition print. The print and the woodblock are both highly sought after works of art, their meticulous compositions mirroring one another.

During Campbell’s time with Mori Gallery in the 1980s, Michael Hobbs was one of Sydney’s most active art collectors and a regular patron of the gallery. Hobbs was a stockbroker who had migrated from England to Australia in the late 1950s and had an eye for fresh, contemporary art. Hobbs struck up a friendship with Campbell and commissioned the present view of Lavender Bay from his window in 1985, shortly after her first exhibition with Mori Gallery. He retained the woodblock his entire life, and it was eventually sold after his death in 2018. The three resultant prints have been tightly held in private collections, with this being the first instance of one coming to market.

Campbell was inspired by the traditional ukiyo-e prints of Japan, where she visited for the first time the same year, 1985. She recalls, ‘the most enthralling aspect of being in Japan was having the opportunity of seeing high-quality ukiyo-e exhibitions… I was also intrigued by Japanese design and elegant graphic skill across all aspects of life.’(4) While she did not adopt their printmaking methods, preferring her own technique of using one block and applying pigment with a brush, she did adopt their lessons in composition and graphic style. For example, in Michael Hobbs’ View she deliberately obscures the impressive harbour view by cropping the composition to a tight vertical format and incorporating Hobbs’ balcony and favourite chair in the foreground.

Rather than creating a symmetrical, picturesque composition encompassing the whole of Lavender Bay, it is what Campbell excludes that gives the picture its magic. We see the stern of a ferry disappearing to the left, straight masts alluding to yachts below the balcony, and a glimpse of Luna Park in the distance. Instead, Campbell draws beauty from the ordinary aspects of the domestic scene: the rigid structure of the balcony juxtaposed by the curves of the old chair and the unruly Eucalyptus branches. As put by John McDonald, ‘…through visual intelligence, an acute sensibility, and a particular quality of attention, the mundane may be routinely transformed into the magical.’(5)

FOOTNOTES

1. McDonald, J., ‘This Magical Exhibition Will Silence the Critics - and be a Monster Hit’, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 6 October 2022
2. National Gallery of Australia Annual Report 2022–23, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2023, p.59
3. Ibid., p.10
4. Noordhuis-Fairfax, S. (ed.), Cressida Campbell, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2022, p.206
5. McDonald, J., op. cit.

Asta Cameron

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