A Sense of Place
McCahon, Gascoigne and Displacement
An exhibition at Ivan Dougherty Gallery that paired the work of Rosalie Gascoigne and Colin McCahon under the title A Sense of Place gave such significance to the spiritual, the intuitive, the idea of the artist knowing the land that it clearly sprung from an emotive curatorial position, a type not often encountered in Sydney.
Louise Pether's decision to once again place McCahon beside Gascoigne does not have the support of all McCahon enthusiasts who would prefer to see his work in isolation, just as McCahon liked to be thought of as the artist working in anxious isolation.
Any pairing of artists forces a comparison but the McCahon and Gascoigne relationship is an awkward one if the intention is to highlight empathies. Despite the show's thematic umbrella of landscape, with an apparent stress on religious-feelings-for-the-landscape, the two artists differ because of McCahon's allusions to the metaphysical and Gascoigne's celebration of the beauty of the material. Three catalogue essays try to draw the two artists into a single discussion, but in two of these the difficulties of doing so are apparent in the way these essays have been structured into two parts, one for each artist. It is Ian Wedde's essay, using a story about an encounter with roadsigns, that addresses the difference between McCahon and Gascoigne with respect to the idea of the artist's place in the world. McCahon's sense of being-in the-world directed him to give philosophical significance to the casual object in the environment, whereas Gascoigne gives significance to the material and aesthetic presence of the object.
The title of the show and its realisation as an event suggested a curatorial rationale for binding McCahon and