JOSEPH BRENNAN applauds the original thinking which has made the Newcastle regional gallery one of the most interesting galleries in New South Wales.

Following the opening of its Quirky exhibition in late 2009, Newcastle Region Art Gallery Director Ron Ramsey suggested to journalist Tim Connell that, “unconventional thinking, like art, has a way of making us see the world through new eyes”. A long line of unconventional thinkers has played a crucial role in the growth and development of Newcastle Region Art Gallery and its collection.

In 1966, for example, the then director David Thomas invited controversy with the acquisition of Fred Williams’s 1965–1966 Landscape in Upwey. The work was part of a series Williams undertook after his 1963 move to Upwey in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges, Victoria. Williams sought to paint landscapes dislocating in their vastness yet still distinctly Australian. These works, with foliage that seemed to float above sunburnt ground, would revitalise landscape painting in Australia. And yet, conservative groups were outraged when Thomas spent a mere $1700 purchasing the work. Today, Williams is one of Australia’s most celebrated landscape painters and thanks to Thomas’s eye for the unexpected — and Gil Docking’s eye before him, as the gallery’s first director — Newcastle now has an excellent representative collection of Williams’s works.

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Image: Fred Williams, Landscape in Upwey, 1965-1966, oil on canvas, 137.2 x 134.6cm. Purchased 1966. Newcastle Region Art Gallery Collection.