The members of the Northern Sydney sub-branch of the Children’s Book Council (CBCA) were in for a treat when they gathered on Saturday morning (19h March) in the imposing foyer of the Art Gallery of NSW.
Approaching its glowing sandstone exterior flanked by mock columns and scribed by the names of the greats of Western art, such as: Giotto, Rembrandt, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, and framed by the parklands of the Domain and Woolloomooloo Bay, this edifice to art commands your full attention.
And it was full attention and imagination needed when we started our Storytelling through Art tour with our vice-president and multi-hatted, multi-talented, Lindy Batchelor. Lindy is a volunteer children’s guide at the gallery, and as writers, librarians and illustrators, we were to become the children on the tour.
We started in the oldest wing delighting in the colours and images. At John Glover’s 1838 Natives on the Ouse River, Van Diemen’s Land, we looked at backgrounds, middle grounds and foregrounds; we reenacted the action – fishing, swimming and cooking. Then Lindy showed us a map and told us that many in the painting were the last Tasmanian aboriginals before they were rounded up and taken to Flinders Island.
As we gathered at our next painting, David Davies’ From a Distant Land (1889), Lindy handed out tokens: a letter, candle, a woman’s photo, shoe polish. We each had to tell the story of the painting. As the postman rode away, what was happening in the hut? ‘Look into the shadows; look at his shoes,’ Lindy urged. Relating to the kids on her regular tours, she said it was great, ‘because it teaches the kids to interact; to trust their eyes; to tell their own story.’
After looking around the 3-D of sculptures, and discovering unimagined treasures that the sculptor had hidden, we came to another interactive part of our children’s tour. We stood in front of Thomas Cooper Gotch’s 1891 My Crown and Sceptre. Lindy knows exactly how to capture the imagination of children as she seats one of our group, Alicia, on a seat in front of the painting. It is the story of Phyllis (Gotch’s daughter) celebrating the Queen of the May. As we decided what Alicia needed, Lindy dressed her until she transformed into Phyllis. Alicia declared, ‘I feel royal and want to be painted!’
We reenacted Sir Frederic Leighton’s white marble statue, An Athlete Wrestling with a Python, and listened to the sounds in paintings: ‘What can you hear?’ Lindy kept urging us on. We looked at shadows cast by reimagined eucalyptus poles and pondered over the spiritual metaphor of such.
At Grace Cossington Smith’s 1928, The curve of the bridge, Lindy brought out a handful of brushes for us to contemplate how the artist would have used them.
We looked at the traditional carvings and paintings on the Pukumani grave posts from the Tiwi Islands, and at John Olsen’s 1963 Five Bells, Lindy urged us to ‘take your line for a walk and see where it takes you,’ before she produced a swatch of blue colours for us to try and connect with the painting.
A final walk through the John Kaldor contemporary gallery found us wondering over reimaginings: the playful and dynamic ways modern artists have used colour. Lindy gave us each a coloured pipe cleaner and we had to twist and weave it to create one of the 87 tin sculptures in Robert Klippel’s display. ‘It makes you look more closely,’ says Lindy.
At the end of our Storytelling through Art tour we were thinking how lucky children are today who can have this much interaction and fun with so many treasures in such a magnificent building and with such an expert. If you would like to see what’s on offer for your child or school group, see: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/discover-art/gallery-kids/