Skip to main content

Pro Hart and Jack Absalom and more.

Road Trip Day 7: 29th May 2007

When in Broken Hill it is almost a requirement to look at as many galleries as you can. In fact the art gallery trail is a big part of the tourism trade here. Rose and I continued our tour visiting the galleries of Jack Absalom, Sue Hodge (Ochre Sands Gallery) and Andrea Blundell (The Homestead Gallery) and Pro Hart.

Jack Absalom is arguably Broken Hill's second most well known artist after Pro Hart. His gallery is all class and not what you'd expect of a bush landscape artist. Clearly Jack's done alright for himself and his art is complimented with an impressive display of Absalom branded opal jewelry.

Absalom's landscapes are all about the vastness of the Australian outback. Many of his paintings are of vast stretches of Australian scenery such as mountain ranges or wide open plains. Occasionally he ventures into the people of the bush but most of the work on display was focussed on the land, the light and hugeness of it all.

Sue Hodge is very much a painter of the local Broken Hill Landscape particularly around Silverton. Her work stands out because of her use of the palette knife to apply paint. Her technique has a roughness about it that enhances the harsh beauty of the Australian Outback.

Andrea Blundell's art has an almost super real brightness about it that catches your eye. A painter of flowers, wildlife and the Australian outback her use of bold colour cause's her art to leap out for your attention. Her emu paintings have become something of a trademark icon of her art.

No trip to Broken Hill is complete without a trip to Pro Hart's Gallery and Sculpture park (across the road). After visiting so many galleries I was expecting a little bit of the same format (i.e. a gallery filled mostly with the artists own work) but was surprised to discover that Pro's Gallery is as much about the art he collected during his life time as it is about his own paintings and sculpture.

Some of the artists in Pro's collection include Albert Tucker, Brett Whiteley, Picasso, Arthur Boyd, Norman Lindsay, John Perceval, Charles Blackman, Salvador Dali and more. Naturally the gallery features a sizable collection of Pro's Art too.

Pro Hart is more of an Australian icon, remembered as much for the way he applied paint (thanks to various TV commercials) as for the art its self. His signature dragonfly artworks are well represented but Pro's Art is much more about story telling than landscape painting even though much of his work features the Australian Landscape.

His early works depict stories about rural living as well stabs at politics, unions and religion. Later in life Pro's work evolved to a more impressionistic style as he experimented more and more with different ways to apply paint to the canvas (famously using a miniature canon to either burst bags of paint over the canvas or fire paint directly at the surface its self.

Much of Pro's sculpture in metal is inspired by his two dimensional works. Although the sculpture park has quite a number of sculptures they're kind of out of the way and you might not even realise the park is there. One gets the impression that the gallery is less interested in promoting Pro as a sculpture artist?

If you're are and emerging artist or are considering a career as a fine artist then Broken Hill should be high on your list for places to visit. There are so many artists here trying to earn a living full time from their art with many different levels of success. You can learn a lot from just visiting the various galleries and no doubt you can learn even more if you happen to meet the artists themselves.

Broken Hill is an example of a town that has embraced not only its mining heritage but also its arts and cultural community. It really is a cultural centre for the region.

Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

Movie Review: A Complete Unknown (2024) *No Spoilers*

Y ou would think the Bob Dylan story would be 'wind-swept and interesting,' to quote Billy Connelly, however, despite  A Complete Unknown  being quite an engaging film, it feels like it missed the years that really shaped him as a song writer/performer. The film starts in 1961, with a then unknown, 19-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arriving in New York City with his guitar.  From there he forges relationships with musical icons on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking performance that reverberates around the world. The problem being, according to this film, Dylan arrived in New York, for the most part, fully formed as a folk singer/song writer. In virtually no time he makes a very important connection that puts him on the trajectory of doing the work and becoming a name, before making his world changing performance. While there is some drama behind the scenes with his various relationships, none of it is particularly unique to any number of up and com...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls.  The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

Movie Review: Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) *No Spoilers*

I  would not call myself a comic book fan of Hellboy. I've never read a single comic about him. My sum total knowledge of the character comes from the first two live action films, Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), staring Ron Pearlman in the titular role. Essentially I'm a fan of those two films. Particularly Ron's portrayal of the character. I've been wanting to see the two later reboot attempts, in particular, David Harbor's run at the character in, Hellboy (2019), but reviews suggested I'd be disappointed if I spent any extra on them beyond a streaming service subscription. I missed David's Hellboy when it was on streaming, and currently I think you can only rent or buy it. However, Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) surfaced, at no extra cost on Amazon Prime, so I decided to give it a go. The poster says it's the fourth installment in the franchise, so I guess these films are loosely set in the same continuity and are all the sa...

Movie Review: Superman (2025) *No Spoilers*

T he one thing I like about James Gunn as a comic book movie director is that he leans into the comic book nature of the world and the characters.  He's not trying to do a realistic take on any of the characters. He's simply bringing the comics to life. It's still his take on the characters, but he doesn't shy away from their comic book origins. James Gunn's  Superman  is very much a comic book movie in every sense. Nothing is off the table because it's too 'comic-booky' and might look silly in a live action film.  To me that's incredibly liberating. It lets James actually tell a proper Superman story that isn't hamstrung by reality, or tip toeing into the fantastical just enough to allow Superman to exist in the real world. Superman begins in the middle of a battle. Metropolis is under attack by a super powered being known as 'Hammer of Boravia', however everything is not as it seems, and Superman (David Corenswet) must work with other s...

I'm Joining the Illuminati Brotherhood By Personal Invitation of Hiltom Rothschild... Wait, What?

How special am I to have finally come of age (53 years young) and am now eligible to participate in building the world alongside other members of the Illuminati Brotherhood... Yes I've received the call by way of an email, which I'm sure is real because I had to translate it from the Dutch language and it was personally written by Hiltom Rothschild, one of the non-existent members of the Rothschild family (or perhaps deep undercover because Google has never heard of them?). A Transcript of the email below: To: etourist From: Illuminati Brotherhood  Subject: Illuminati Broederschap (Illuminati Brotherhood) I am Hiltom Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family, one of the 13 families of the Illuminati brotherhood. I'm here to let you know that you've come of age and are eligible to participate in building the 🌎 world. It is a calling and a privilege to honor him with pride and gratitude as not everyone will ever be chosen by the LIGHT, many are called but few are ch...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...