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It is most intriguing. The quasi-biblical text on painter Ian Fairweather is Murray Bail’s 2008 revision of his tome, Fairweather; and his chapter on the artist’s hermetic late life on Bribie Island is accompanied by images of figurative work and unresolved speculation about the Aboriginal influence on this Scottish-born painter’s art.
At the Brisbane Festival, a multi-media team, initiated by composer Eric Griswold, verbalised by author (and narrator) Rodney Hall and illustrated by video artist, Glen Henderson, identify Bribie as the place where Fairweather absorbed the Australian landscape into his art as it became more and more non-figurative. An almost opposite viewpoint to Bail’s. Henderson in particular takes off from evocative photographs of mangrove spikes and what Hall delightfully describes as ‘up and down eucalyptus leaves’, and then morphs them meditatively into a painting like Gethsemane to add meaning to the key observation by Hall, ‘Each layer of his paintings was a life let go’.
But then perhaps the different creators were trying to achieve contrasting things? Bail’s Preface to his 1981 edition of Fairweather pronounces: ‘He was an autobiographical painter, often to a neurotic degree. Pinpointing with precision the fugitive whereabouts of Fairweather throughout his life is important not only in illuminating the development of his art. It is necessary in confirming many of the titles and datings of his work which have for so long been in doubt. There has been so much myth, hearsay and embroidery surrounding Fairweather it has overshadowed his art’.
Perhaps as a result of Bail getting such matters out of the way, Rodney Hall and Co have been able to come out from those shadows and attempt ‘the opposite of story-telling, to