Australia - South Australia and Victoria in the 1970's

AUSTRALIA - South Australia and Victoria in the 1970's

Dunmoochin & St Andrew's

The town of St Andrew's lies at the edge of the Kinglake National Park on the slopes of the Great Dividing Range. Famous as a gold mining area from the 1850's, featuring spectacular wilderness and views of the Melbourne skyline, Port Phillip Bay, the Yarra Valley and across to the You Yangs. Hodgkinson's St Andrew's works were executed whist he was residing at Dunmoochin, the home of Clifton Pugh, in the early 1970's. Pugh bought 15 acres of bushland near Cottles Bridge northeast of Melbourne in 1951 which he named Dunmoochin. The property became a sanctuary for artist and artisans escaping the bustle of Melbourne. Artists who worked or resided at Dunmoochin have included Rick Amor, Frank Hodgkinson, John Howley, Helen Laycock, Peter Laycock, Mirka Mora, Kevin Nolan, John Olsen, John Perceval, Alma Shanahan, Albert Tucker, Frank Werther, Fred Williams and Peter and Chris Wiseman. Painting expeditions and day trips to the Kingslake national park and St Andrew's area were common amongst the residents of the community. It was whilst residing at Dunmoochin that he met his third wife Kate who was a potter also living and working within the community.

St Andrews Track 1972 acrylic-gesso 61 x 51

St. Andrews III 1972 acrylic-gesso 51 x 64

St. Andrews II 1972 acrylic-gesso 51 x 64

Saltation Series

In 1972 Hodgkinson visited the Coorong, stretching more than 130 kilometres, Coorong National Park protects a string of saltwater lagoons which are protected from the Southern Ocean by the sweeping sand dunes of the Younghusband Peninsula. A wetland of international significance and important archaeological site, the Coorong is of enormous cultural significance to the Ngarrindjeri people, with ancient mounds of discarded shells revealing archaeological evidence of Aboriginal campsites over thousands of years. The distinctive landscape provides an important breeding area for the Australian pelican and is a refuge for ducks, swans, cormorants, terns, grebes and numerous species of migratory birds. The resulting series of work titled Saltation, capture the unfathomable spirit of this place. The paintings stem from impressions of a time stopped world, an original world of of slowly evolved ecology belonging to a people who have inhabited this space it seems as long as time has existed. White man feels an intruder here, fragile, compelled and fearful in this strange aquatic vastness. The substance of it's mystery is a merging of erotically formed sand hills, eerie banksia, sweeping beds of river silt textured with encrusting salt and mirages with watery film by fierce light. It is an endlessly floating landscape formed by the defending waters of the Murray River expanded into lakes and reaching the Southern Ocean through a narrow passage in the sand dunes.