In a meeting room at Deakin University’s Burwood Campus, Emeritus Professor Barbara van Ernst AM gazes out the window. She’s taking in the changes to the landscape since the 1950s when she studied primary teaching here as a teenager, at what was then the Burwood Teachers’ College.
Now a higher education consultant, well-known figure in Australian arts, and on the board as a director and patron of Melbourne’s Montsalvat Artist Community, Barbara has returned as one of this year’s judges of the annual Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award.
She’s joined by fellow judge, award winning contemporary sculptor, arts educator and Deakin alum Dr Dan Wollmering (PhD ‘99). He took the opportunity to have a quick look around the campus at Deakin’s outdoor sculptures and is full of praise for the ‘very impressive’ collection.
A journey through the arts
Barbara’s connection with Deakin goes beyond her time at the teachers’ college.
In the roundabout way of careers, lives and the wave of amalgamations between Victoria’s colleges of adult education and universities in the early 1990s, Barbara returned to what was now Deakin as Head of the School of Visual, Performing and Media Arts from 1994-97.
During her time at Deakin, she was a leading force in establishing the School’s reputation at the Warrnambool campus. As a musician and former music teacher, she credits the role for growing her understanding of the wider arts and the vital role philanthropy plays in supporting them. One of her first major forays into art philanthropy was the acquisition of ‘The Guardians’ by sculptor Shona Noonan, a pair of towering bronze figures that still stands guard at the entrance to the Warrnambool Art Gallery.
‘Exposure to art is essential,’ she says. ‘People who are not exposed to music, to the ideas of plays and dramas and the visual stimulus of sculpture and paintings are missing out on something that forms a huge part of our emotional lives.’
From a friendship built on art to a PhD
Barbara and Dan are not only fellow judges, but old friends, ever since Barbara purchased one of Dan’s works more than 30 years ago.
‘It’s a really beautiful piece and I still love it,’ she says.
Dan returns in kind, that Barbara and her love of the arts has stayed with him decades later.
‘The first time I went to Barbara’s house I just felt right at home,’ he remembers. ‘She had this amazing art collection – paintings, prints and a lot of ceramics and sculptures. She was very open and curious about art in general and had a great empathy and understanding of the arts and the significance of it.’
Through their conversations, Barbara persuaded Dan to do the PhD he was thinking of at Deakin.
At the time, Dan was a professional sculptor lecturing in sculpture, drawing and woodcraft at Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education, having emigrated to Australia from Minnesota, USA, in the 1970s as a high school woodcraft teacher.
He was easily swayed about the PhD – he’d already heard Deakin was a trailblazer in the delivery of PhDs in visual arts.
Having realised, as Barbara puts it, ‘that someone who’s a fantastic artist can’t see the slightest relevance in writing a 100,000-word thesis and not producing any art,’ the University pioneered what was considered a bold experiment – combining artistic output with research and theory.
PhD candidates were instead asked to produce a gallery-standard exhibition and a 20,000-30,000-word critical examination of their work.
At the time, Dan was a professional sculptor lecturing in sculpture, drawing and woodcraft at Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education, having emigrated to Australia from Minnesota, USA, in the 1970s as a high school woodcraft teacher.
He was easily swayed about the PhD – he’d already heard Deakin was a trailblazer in the delivery of PhDs in visual arts.
Having realised, as Barbara puts it, ‘that someone who’s a fantastic artist can’t see the slightest relevance in writing a 100,000-word thesis and not producing any art,’ the University pioneered what was considered a bold experiment – combining artistic output with research and theory.
PhD candidates were instead asked to produce a gallery-standard exhibition and a 20,000-30,000-word critical examination of their work.
‘The idea was for students to do something in their art form that would inform other artists or help collectors and others to understand what happened in creating a piece,’ Barbara explains.
‘It was exciting because there was no formal structure that candidates had to stick to. Obviously, they had to produce something very rigorous in terms of the research, but it was research into their own work. It also meant they were generating works of art.’
For Dan, who began his PhD in the early days of the new model with Barbara and Dr Rob Haysom as supervisors, the focus on practice and a shorter written piece was a great attraction.
‘It helped so much because I could focus on my area of interest, which was abstract sculpture. I was trying to substantiate the idea that abstract sculpture still has a pivotal and important role to play in contemporary art, which of course it does. I arrived there by working backwards, looking at the origins of abstract sculpture and arguing within a theoretical framework why it was still evolving as a strength in contemporary sculpture.’
‘People are craving to do something with their hands’
That art remains relevant in an age of screens and technology is obvious to both Dan and Barbara, from how quickly kindergarten kids take to playing with PlayDoh, to the ever-increasing numbers of adults enrolling in ceramics classes and the rising number of entries in prizes like Deakin’s Contemporary Small Sculpture Award.
‘In the last 20 years, 3D printing and computer programs that control the movement of tools and machinery have changed the whole face of sculpture making and creation,’ Dan says.
‘You can virtually sit down behind a monitor and create a sculpture without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. Yet there’s still a strong interest, particularly in younger generations, in making things in the traditional ways: casting, carving, construction and modelling, which we love to see.
‘In a reaction against screen culture, people are craving to do something creative with their hands. The idea of physicality, touch, feel, and the ability to manipulate and control a material or experiment and make mistakes, can deliver a great deal of personal expression and satisfaction.
‘Sometimes it’s rewarding aesthetically, other times it’s very challenging, but it’s such a necessary part of the human condition, to make things with your hands. Making sculpture is such a wonderful and fulfilling way to release that mental and physical energy, rather than looking at a screen.
‘That’s why the sculpture collection here at Deakin is so important – it puts [art] out there. What Deakin is providing for future generations is a cultural heritage for them to look at and study and appreciate.’
Small sculpture collection set to grow
Deakin’s collection of small sculpture works grows each year with the acquisition of the winning work in the Contemporary Small Sculpture Award. A unique celebration of contemporary sculpture, with no entry fee or restrictions on what materials can be used, the Award provides a platform for emerging and established artists alike and attracts a diverse audience, including local school students, artists, Deakin staff and students, and community members.
Each year, a distinguished panel of judges, including Leanne Willis, Deakin’s Senior Manager, Art Collection and Galleries, selects the finalists whose works are exhibited at the Deakin Art Gallery at Burwood, with one chosen as the winner.
Since the Award’s inception in 2009, philanthropic support has helped increase the prize money offered, reduce freight expenses for finalists and enhanced the Awards’ educational programs.
‘The Award carries a lot of prestige and it’s important to the Australian sculpture scene, as evidenced by all the applications [a record 735 entries] that came in this year. Each year it builds more credibility,’ Barbara says.
‘Hopefully it will continue for many more years, because Deakin is the only university, as far as I know, that has something like this.’
The Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award exhibition opens to the public on Wednesday 27 August at the Deakin Art Gallery, Burwood, with the launch and announcement of winners to take place on Wednesday 3 September. One winner will be selected for the $15,000 acquisitive first prize and a second work will receive the $3,000 non-acquisitive Highly Commended prize (supported by UniSuper).