Risky Business: Ivan Durrant Versus the National Gallery of Victoria

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Acknowledgements

An early version of the article was presented at the AAANZ 2022 Conference for the session ‘Museums and Risk’. I would like to thank the other participants for their contributions as well as the anonymous readers for their most helpful suggestions. Thanks are also due to David Hurlston and to Ivan Durrant for generously responding to my questions.

Notes

1 For the historical significance of the Modern Masters exhibition, see Understanding Museums: Australian Museums and Museology (2011), ed. Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien, National Museum of Australia, https://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/Issues_museology_introduction.html; especially Daniel Thomas, ‘Art Museums in Australia: A Personal Account’, https://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/DThomas_2011.html; and Caroline Turner, ‘International Exhibitions’, https://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/CTurner_2011.html; Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine de Lorenzo, Alison Inglis and Catherine Speck, Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening Our Eyes (Melbourne: Thames and Hudson, 2018), 95.

2 ‘Notes for the Prime Minister for the opening of the exhibition, Modern Masters: Manet to Matisse at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 9 April 1975’, available at https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00003691.pdf

3 For the Australian Government’s role in indemnifying international loan exhibitions, see Jim Berryman, ‘Art and National Interest: The Diplomatic Origins of the “Blockbuster Exhibition” in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies 37, no. 2 (2013): 163–66.

4 For the Whitlam Government’s arts policy, see ibid., 163–64; and Mendelssohn et al., Australian Art Exhibitions, 46–52. For the 1973 acquisition of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, see Lindsay Barrett, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of the Metropolitan Dailies’, in The Prime Minister’s Christmas Card: ‘Blue Poles’ and Cultural Politics in the Whitlam Era (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001), 13–44; and Terry Smith, ‘Putting Painting at Stake: Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles’, in Jackson Pollock’s ‘Blue Poles’, ed. Anthony White, exhibition catalogue (Canberra: The National Gallery of Australia, 2002), 59–62.

5 Maureen Gilchrist, ‘Great Day in Our History of Art’, The Age, Tuesday 27 May 1975; no author, ‘The Night the Modern Masters Came to Melbourne’, The Herald, May 27, 1975.

6 Ibid.

7 ‘And the Queue just goes on … and on … and on …’, The Herald, June 21, 1975.

8 Greg McKenzie, ‘I’ll Kill the Cow on the Stage: Artist’, The Sun, May 25, 1975.

9 ‘MONASH COW, TX 28/5/75, EX FILM NTV1639, 1.58’, ABC Research Archives; ‘Monash University Cancels Ivan Durrant Happening Planned for Alexander Theatre’, ABC Research Archives.

10 A version of the footage is available online. The description reads: ‘Unedited version cow being slaughtered in paddock (actual shooting not included on ‘Current Affair’) cow being dumped on steps’. ‘Australia: Cow Killing an Angry Wave of Protest (1975)’, British Pathe, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/VLVA2GG9QNTKLPWC7HSJ0KE5O0BMR-AUSTRALIA-COW-KILLING-AN-ANGRY-WAVE-OF-PROTEST/query/durrant.

11 The artist quoted in ‘$100 Fine for Dumping a Dead Cow’, The Age, July 24, 1975.

12 ‘Dead-Cow “Art” at Gallery’, The Sun, Tuesday, May 27, 1975.

13 National Gallery of Victoria, Council of Trustees, 3 June 1975, Director’s Report, V(b) ‘Dropping of Dead Cow in front of Gallery’, Shaw Research Library, NGV.

14 Magistrates’ Court, Melbourne. ‘Information for an offence punishable summarily and summons thereon’, 9 June 1975, artist’s collection.

15 For Ivan Durrant’s severed hand happening of June 1975, see Ivan Durrant: Barrier Draw, exhibition catalogue, by David Hurlston with Rodney James and Barry Dickins, National Gallery of Victoria: Australia, May 1–October 25, 2020 (Melbourne: NGV Publications, 2020), 24–25; 68–69.

16 Eva Dodd, ‘Art News’, Toorak Times, June 10, 1975.

17 ‘$100 Fine for Dumping a Dead Cow’.

18 Neil Howe, Parallel Realities: The Development of Performance Art in Australia (London: Thames and Hudson, 2017), 275–76.

19 Graeme Sturgeon, ‘Private Ritual in Public, The Australian, August 2, 1975.

20 Jeffrey Makin, ‘Intensive Care Art: It’s Sick’, The Sun, June 30, 1975.

21 For this event and its ensuing controversy, see Ken Scarlett, Australian Sculptors (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1980), 167–69; Charles Green, Peripheral Vision: Contemporary Australian Art 1970–1994 (Melbourne: Craftsman House, 1995), 12–13; Katherine Louise Gregory, ‘The Artist and the Museum: Contested Histories and Expanded Narratives in Australian Art and Museology 1975–2002’ (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2004), 18–24; and Mendelssohn et al., Australian Art Exhibitions, 78–80.

22 Thursday 21 August 1975–‘Protest National Gallery of Victoria’, Shaw Research Library, NGV.

23 For Mortensen’s 1975 Delicatessen installation and performance, see Anne Marsh, Body and Self: Performance Art in Australia, 1969–92 (Melbourne: Australian Video Art Archive (AVAA), Monash University, 1993), 8, as well as 23–24, 35 for commentary on the Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond, another important early setting for performance art during this period.

24 Kaldor Public Art Projects, Project 03: Gilbert & George, https://archive.kaldorartprojects.org.au/index.php/Detail/objects/26. For discussion, see Sophie Forbat, ed., Kaldor Public Art Projects, exhibition catalogue (Sydney: John Kaldor, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2009), 86–99.

25 Jennifer Phipps and Geoff Burke, eds., Performance, Documents, Film, Video, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, August 28–September 28, 1975. For discussion, see Stephen Jones, ‘Video Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, 1973–78’, Art Journal 52 (2013), https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/video-art-at-the-national-gallery-of-victoria-1973-78/; and Mendelssohn et al., Australian Art Exhibitions, 78–79.

26 Daniel Thomas notes ‘its suggestion of protest against American cultural imperialism, and perhaps also of more diffuse anti-Americanism on account of the then recent Vietnam war quagmire’. Daniel Thomas, ‘Fleshly Moralities: Ivan Durrant in Melbourne’, Art Monthly Australia 172 (August 2004): 33.

27 The artist also stressed that the dead cow happening had ‘nothing to do with Anti-Americanism’ in an interview with the author on 13 February 2023.

28 The artist, quoted in Jill Bowen, ‘Ivan the Terrible: He’s at it Again’, Cleo, August 1976, 26.

29 For the international context to institutional critique, see Blake Stimson, ‘What was Institutional Critique?’, in Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, eds., Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 20–42. For institutional critique in relation to more contemporary practices, see Janet Marstine, Critical Practice: Artists, Museums, Ethics (Routledge: London, 2017), 6–13.

30 For discussion, see Green, Peripheral Vision, 31; Catherine Speck and Joanna Mendelssohn, ‘The 1970s: Curators Framing the Avant-Garde in Writing and Rewriting Art History’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 17, no. 1 (2017): 106.

31 Alberro and Stimson, Institutional Critique, 8, 170–99. For Art & Language’s relationship with Australian art and criticism during this period, see Heather Barker and Charles Green, ‘The Provincialism Problem: Terry Smith and Centre-Periphery Art History’, Journal of Art Historiography 3 (2010): 3–17.

32 Rodney James, ‘Blood Red: Ivan Durrant’s Social Conscience’, Ivan Durrant: Barrier Draw, 66–85.

33 Geoff Robertson, ‘Cow Slaughter’, ABC News, May 26, 1975, ABC Research Archives.

34 Zombies of the Stratosphere, directed by Fred C. Brannon, Los Angeles, CA: Republic Pictures, 1952, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045352/.

35 ‘Protesters Arrested after Gluing Themselves to Picasso Painting at NGV in Melbourne’, ABC News, October 10, 2022, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-09/protesters-glue-themselves-to-picasso-painting-ngv-in-melbourne/101516560; ‘Extinction Rebellion Activists Glue onto Picasso Painting at the NGV’, Extinction Rebellion Australia, October 10, 2022, https://ausrebellion.earth/news/extinction-rebellion-activists-glue-on-to-picasso-painting-at-the-ngv/.

36 ‘Alas Poor Daisy, I Knew Her Well’, The Age, May 27, 1975.

37 Roy Grounds, Frederick Romberg and Robin Boyd, The National Art Gallery and Cultural Centre (Melbourne: J. Creffield Pty Ltd, 1960); for discussion see Christopher R. Marshall, ‘Between Beauty and Power: Henry Moore’s Draped Seated Woman as an Emblem of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Modernity, 1959–68’, Art Journal 46 (2006): 42–43, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/between-beauty-and-power-henry-moores-draped-seated-woman-as-an-emblem-of-the-national-gallery-of-victorias-modernity-1959-68/.

38 A connection also noted in Philip Goad, ‘An Oriental Palazzo: Roy Grounds and the National Gallery of Victoria’, Backlogue 3 (1993): 76.

39 Marshall, ‘Between Beauty and Power’, 36–49, 72–73.

40 Christopher R. Marshall, ‘Monumental Sculpture and Institutional Identity at the National Gallery of Victoria: From Here to Eternity, and Back’, in Interesting Times: New Roles for Collections, Museums Australian National Conference Proceedings 2010 (Canberra: Museums Australia, 2011), 105–07, https://www.amaga.org.au/sites/default/files/uploaded-content/website-content/Conferences/2010/ma2010_conference_papers.pdf.

41 Mary Eagle, ‘Hopping in for his Chop’, The Age, March 30, 1978.

42 Paul Heinrichs, ‘A $6000 Stake in “Meat”’, The Age, May 31, 1978.

43 Ivan Durrant: Barrier Draw, 72–76.

44 Paul Heinrichs, ‘Art Tastes Meet the Market’, The Age, March 21, 1978.

45 Ivan Durrant, interview with the author, February 13, 2023.

46 Ivan Durrant: Barrier Draw, 25.

47 Brian Blackwell, ‘Horror Art Movie Seen by Kids: Shock Scenes as igeons haHcked to Death’, The Truth, June 2, 1979.

48 Bill Hitchings, ‘“Revenge” heory on Slashed Painting’, The Herald, June 18, 1979.

49 Ibid.; Marsali MacKinnon, ‘Art Slashing to be Probed’, The Sun, June 19, 1979.

50 Ibid.

51 ‘Angry Artist Grieves’, The Age, October 3, 1979.

52 ‘Artist Durrant Sues Gallery’, The Sun, October 4, 1979.

53 Ivan Durrant, letter to Robert Lindsay, September 14, 1986, Ivan Durrant artist file, Shaw Research Library, NGV.

54 Documentation for this proposal can be found in the artist’s file at the Shaw Research Library, NGV, for discussion of which, see Thomas, ‘Fleshly Moralities’, 34.

55 Ivan Durrant: Barrier Draw, exhibition catalogue, by David Hurlston with Rodney James and Barry Dickins, National Gallery of Victoria: Australia, May 1–October 25, 2020 (Melbourne: NGV Publications, 2020).

56 Durrant quoted in Bowen, ‘Ivan the Terrible’, 26. The quote was made in relation to Ivan Durrant’s severed hand happening of June 1975.