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Udo Sellbach's latest work, a suite of some thirty etchings entitled Night Watch, was recently purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery where it has been on display. Sellbach 's guiding principle in this suite was to create a visual equivalent of a song cycle and he produced a series which spirals around a central issue. The issue, a constant theme throughout Sellbach's career, is that of human beings struggling to live with each other in the world. It would not do to push the connection with the song cycle too far but one can see the fruitfulness of the idea: like Schubert or, better, Mahler, Sellbach is deeply moved by human struggles, and by using the format of a cycle is able to return a variety of feelings, intuitions and responses to this commitment. Unlike a piece of music, there is no necessary sequence to the etchings: the works themselves fall naturally into loose and variable groups, linked in this way by subject, in that way by atmosphere. They relate to each other in the way space is handled; they link in terms of density or texture or detail; but however the viewer perceives them, the works come together in a sustained symphony of feeling. But any display automatically imposes a particular arrangement, and in the Gallery the works were arranged in a long line on the wall of the narrow print corridor. There was no obvious thematic order, only a general and subtle lightening of tone as the sequence moved from left to right, but the viewer was nevertheless carried along, seeing themes and ideas develop and ramify.
What struck one first was the formal strength of the