Take 5

Ann Newmarch

Ann Newmarch (born 1945) is an esteemed South Australian artist and educator. She trained in both fields during the 1960s leading to a long-held lecturing post at the South Australian School of Art, and an expansive and internationally celebrated career as a painter, printmaker and sculptor. Raised in a strict Methodist household where art was deemed ‘corruptive’¹, Newmarch defied her parents in following this path and developed a politically charged practice in both teaching and making.

As well as feminism and feminist issues which were key concerns in her earliest prints and paintings, Newmarch used the print medium to great effect throughout the 1970s and 1980s to rail against the Vietnam War, American imperialism, uranium mining and the inequitable treatment of Aboriginal people in white Australia. During this period, she co-founded the Progressive Art Movement (PAM) and Women’s Art Movement (WAM) fostering the collective production of political prints and posters, and she famously refused to exhibit in commercial galleries, turning away from the ‘male dominated and profit-driven’ arts industry.²  

In adopting this stance Newmarch contributed to many community arts projects, and notably in 1986 partook in a cultural exchange program sponsored by the Australia-China Council to create two large murals in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, China. Created with fellow Australian artist Anne Morris and four artists in China these murals addressed the theme of friendship between the nations³ – a project hard to envisage in today’s political climate. In 1997 the artist was given a major retrospective by the Art Gallery of South Australia and in 2019 a gallery was named in her honour in the City of Prospect where she lives. 

FUMA is custodian of 50 works by Ann Newmarch, many of which entered the collection through donations by the former Australian Experimental Art Foundation and her artist peers Kate Millington and Mandy Martin. The five works featured here from 1967 – 2009 nod to the trajectory of a 50-year career and the socio-political concerns that have shaped it.

A small survey of the artist’s work will be on display at the Newmarch Gallery from 12 December 2020 to 25 January 2021.

¹ _{Robinson J, 1997, ANN NEWMARCH: the personal is political, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, p 6.}

² _{Ibid, p 10.}

³ _{Ann Newmarch, The British Museum, London, viewed online 1 December 2020 
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG40102#:~:text=Newmarch%20was%20born%20and%20brought,clothes%3B%20attract%20a%20nice%20young%E2%80%A6}

_{Two women, 1967
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
101.5 x 76.5 cm}

_{Union Collection, Flinders University Museum of Art Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art 5242 © the artist}

Ann Newmarch undertook a Diploma of Teaching (Art) at the Western Teachers College from 1964-1967 and as part of her coursework attended practical art classes at the South Australian School of Art, where she was taught by esteemed Australian artists Geoff Wilson (1927-) and Sydney Ball (1933-2017). At the time American hard-edge abstraction was the popular style of painting amongst students.

Two women depicts two semi-nude figures against a contorted and abstracted background. The composition of the painting reflects the ‘hard-edge’ trends of her art school environment but also retaining her personal interests through the depiction and representation of the female form. 

_{Look rich, 1975
screenprint, coloured inks on paper
70.5 x 55.1 cm, ed 31/40}  

_{Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Amanda Martin Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art 5021 © the artist}

Driven by the belief that the ‘personal is political’, a rallying slogan of second-wave feminism, Ann Newmarch used art to tackle social and political issues.

Look rich draws attention to the private and domestic roles of women in contemporary society by critiquing consumer culture. She juxtaposes the female body with magazine clippings to highlight the physical and psychological pressure the media puts on women to look and act a certain way in order to attract a husband or be perceived as a good wife and mother.  This work and others of this period – including her most well-known Women hold up half the sky (1978) – reveal inequality and call for change and action.   

^{200 years: Willy Willy, 1988
screenprint, coloured inks on paper
67.9 x 57.3 cm, ed 31/40}  

^{Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art 2566.016
© the artist}

200 years: Willy Willy was created as part of a three-week residency at the Victorian Print Workshop in Melbourne for the National Gallery of Australia’s Bicentennial Arts program. To commemorate Australia’s bicentenary twenty-five artists were invited to partake in the project resulting in a limited edition folio of prints.

Newmarch’s contribution considers the impact of colonisation on the Australian landscape and First Nations communities reminding viewers of their ongoing destruction at the hands of white culture.

^{Ann, 1994
coloured pastels on paper
78.5 x 62 cm}

^{Gift of Dr Janice Lally
Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art 4435
© the artist}

The images of me were drawn for my own relief … to take myself away from the existing family, to vent frustration, anger, sorrow, terror, uselessness. [Artist Statement, 1994]

^{Blinded by the light from the series Cultural Pattern and Human Fragility (Pandora’s Box), 2009
coloured inks and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
146 x 100 cm}

^{Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art 4724
© the artist}

Blinded by the light is one of sixteen works created for the exhibition, Cultural Pattern and Human Fragility (Pandora’s Box) which was presented at Flinders University City Gallery in 2009.  Limited by her body’s physical abilities following a cancer diagnosis, the artist created collages in A4 format that were then scanned, scaled up and painted. The series is concerned with the complexities and contradictions of human behavior as well as the transient nature of life. 

One not only has to look at art, but also needs to read it. These works are both decorative and complex and need time to be read. When this series was completed, I needed to check for three elements: The Hand, the Heart and the gun. The hand creates, it also pulls the trigger. (Artist statement, 2009)