*CWA ART AWARD, TENNANT CREEK
*RA SUMMER EXHIBITION, LONDON
Robin Hardiman compares

On the face of it, these two exhibitions make an odd couple but go a little deeper and each has something to say about the other, just as each speaks volumes for the differing societies which they reflect.
Art is not, as some suspect, an unnecessary extravagance, a bit of nonsense indulged in by those with too much time on their hands. On the contrary, art springs from some deep well in the human psyche and there has been no society in the whole history of the world that has not produced art in some form or other. Something as widespread, as ubiquitous as art has a necessary function in the lives of human beings: art celebrates and exercises that mental faculty called imagination.
I don't understand it and what does it mean? are two frequently heard comments about art and they are comments as easily encountered in the great metropolitan centres of the world as here in Tennant Creek. Another common response to art is: I know what I like when I see it. That last remark is an admission that art does not always work through understanding, through comprehension, but acts instead in an emotional way - you look at something and for reasons that are not clear or obvious, the form or the colours or just the impact of the thing, you like it. And that is as it should be. Art is not only for the critics, although they have their place.
First, a few statistics relating to the exhibitions, one presented by the Country Women's Association at the Tennant Creek Art Gallery and the other presented by the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House in Piccadilly, London. Number of exhibits: 110 and 1,180. Total award monies: $1,800 and 63,000 pounds (equivalent to $189,000). Highest asking price: $5,000 and - wait for this one: a sum equivalent to $432,000! So far there has been a discernable progression: the number of exhibits rises by a factor of ten; the prize money by a factor of one hundred and in the asking price a factor of one thousand is at work. What of the populations from which these respective exhibitions are drawn? Here the differential is nearer half a million. Looked at in this calculated way, it becomes clear that there's no shortage of artistic activity in the Outback.
What then of the exhibits? Are there parallels to be drawn, comparisons to be made, can anything useful come out of the contrast? Why yes, for in both exhibitions the very best work of individuals is represented and in both exhibitions viewers will respond according to their minds and their emotions by rejecting some of the work, admiring other works and loving some of it unreservedly. Art does not exist and has no purpose without response.
The London exhibition features some of the greatest names in current world art: the Americans, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombley, Andrew Wyeth and Robert Rauschenberg; the great Spaniard Antoni Tapies (who priced his terra cotta bathtub at almost half a million dollars); art megastars Balthus and Baselitz, Isozaki and Stella, the breathtaking woodcarving of David Nash, world famous architects Frank Gehry and Norman Foster. The award for "the most distinguished work in the exhibition" of twenty five thousand pounds, went to Richard Serra for a work in paintstick on paper entitled HUDDIE LEADBELLY. It is a large blobby circle of thick black, um, stuff and really I have no idea what distinguishes it. But that's art.
The Tennant Creek exhibition is probably the largest hung in this town under the aegis of the CWA, with entries received from across the Territory. Alice Springs artist Dan Murphy was the invited judge, awarding $1000 to a group of three paintings in acrylic on linen entitled TENNANT CREEK, TENNANT CREEK I and TENNANT CREEK II by Marina Strocchi of Alice Springs. The Youth Award went to Perry Gunner and the Viewers' Choice to Rowena Paine Murphy's OUT THE BACK.
While volume does not guarantee quality, the 2001 CWA Art Award in Tennant Creek contains many fine works and a few that leave me as perplexed as that London front-runner did. There are delicate water colours and bold acrylic paintings in a variety of styles from photo realism to abstract expressionism. There are fine indigenous works, some beautiful ceramics, evocative photographs and computer art.
Group exhibitions such as these two provide a good introduction to the current state of artistic activity for the general viewer. For the dedicated art buff, and I confess to being one of those, they come as a welcome relief to that technical and highly specialised form of art so pervasive in exhibitions such as the 2001 Venice Biennale, the video installation.
If the 2001 exhibition in Tennant Creek is anything to go by, don't miss it next year for this is a show that grows and goes from strength to strength.