Do Go On - Do Go On Presents: Arty Facts - Joy Hester's 'Love I'

Episode Date: August 6, 2022

Joy Hester's 'Love I' is a fascinating piece with an equally fascinating story behind its creation. Affairs, angst and an art gallery built on an ancient cow burial ground all play an important role in the life of Joy Hester. Jess Perkins tells Joy Hester's story in this episode of 'Do Go On Presents: Arty Facts'.'Do Go On Presents: Arty Facts' is a joint production from Stupid Old Studios and the Do Go On podcast.Do Go On are Dave Warneke, Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart.Stupid Old Studios is an independent production house based in Melbourne Australia who specialise in making fine, handcrafted nonsense.Twitter: http://twitter.com/stupidoldInstagram: http://instagram.com/stupidoldFacbeook: http://facebook.com/stupidoldstudiosThis production was made possible with support from the Community Broadcasting Foundation. Find out more at http://cbf.org.au Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. You're listening to Artifacts, a show that dives into the fascinating history of famous artworks and painters. Broadcast on C-31, Stupid Old Studios YouTube channel and the Community Radio Network.

So often we hear about artists whose work isn't recognised until long after they're dead. And one of those artists was Joy Hester, whose tumultuous life and artistic career was deeply rooted right here at Heidi Museum of Modern Art. Hello and welcome to Artifax. My name is Jess Perkins and I'm here with my colleagues and acquaintances, Dave Waterkey and Matt Stewart. Hey. I would have said friends, but alright? Well, I thought friends. I was just razzled ya, like friends do. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, this is a bit of fun. We are here at the Heidi Museum of Modern Art and we're sitting in front of a piece by an artist who spent a lot of time here at Heidi. This is a piece from the love series from Joy Hester.

Either of you're familiar at all with the name Joy Hester, with Heidi in general. I like how the name makes me feel. Yeah. Joy Hester. Okay. And it makes you feel... Good. Okay.

Yeah. Cool. Matt, how does it make you feel? Yeah, also good. Any relation to Paul Hester? Yeah. Wow. I don't think that's true.

It's not true. But it was fun for a moment, wasn't it? It was, yeah. This work screams love to me. Yeah. Love I or Love One? What's the... Well, Roman numerals, so you can probably say either, I suppose.

What's L in Roman numeral? Love. Love. Love. L stands for love. You ever been so in love that your mouths disappear? Yes. Yeah, me too.

No. Yeah, well... One day. One day, little buddy. So to find out more about Joy Hester and the history of Heidi, I'm here chatting with head curator Kendra Morgan. Thanks so much, Kendra. Can you tell me a little bit about the love series,

one of which is currently on display here? Yes, the love series is absolutely beautiful. They often show two heads. Often the male head is more shadowy and a darker presence. The female is shown in a lighter, luminescent way. And the two heads often merge, often at the point of the eye.

So they are about sexual bonding, but also just about intimacy and real deep, deep connection. And they were very unusual in Australian art at the time. Most explorations of sexuality and art, particularly by women, were about, I guess, the female nude or about eroticism in a more overt way. And these, of course, were very personal expressions

of Joy Hester's psychological state at the time. I'm going to focus a little bit on the life of Joy Hester, as well as the fascinating and deeply intertwined lives of the artists who gathered here at Heidi in the 30s, 40s and 50s. It has a really, really interesting and somewhat complex history here. I'm really excited because I can see on your face that there's something. Something's happened here. Nothing, like nobody's been murdered.

I just want to. That's what your face is saying. I know, and that's why my voice in my mouth is now dispelling that rumor. They want to tell us that, but they can't. They can't, no mouths. That's love. I wonder if there's any ghosts around these halls. Okay, you've immediately misunderstood.

There's nothing like that. From the murder victims. Oh, God. You're going to be so disappointed now. Disappointed, oh. Where's a murder? No one died here. I was promised murder.

No, so how's this? Because the three of us, we love a great name. Joy, St. Clair Hester. Oh, yeah. That's good. That is good. Born in August of 1920 in the Bayside, Elstonwick Elwood area of Melbourne. She was a student of St Michael's Grammar School

in St Kilda until the age of 17, at which time she enrolled in commercial art at Brighton Technical School for one year before leaving to attend the National Gallery School in Melbourne. So yeah, an art education started at a pretty early age. She even won a prize for a life study at the annual students competition, so she's, you know, she's very talented. While the curriculum was based in very traditional media and practice, Joy took this time to experiment a little bit. she broke free from formal restraints of art education at the time. And her work during this time, though bound by tradition, was concerned with shadow and tonal shading and the relationship between dark and light.

In 1938, at the age of 18, Joy Hester met fellow artist Albert Tucker, another pretty good name, Albert Tucker, and lived with him in East Melbourne. And that same year, she was a founding member of the Contemporary Art Society, which was an organisation formed to promote non-representative forms of art. And they sort of had a focus on contemporary styles of art. Say to represent non-representative forms of art. To promote. Okay.

Non-promotional forms of art. Yeah. I mean, I'm still confused, but I love it. It sounds like a positive move. Yeah, very important positive move. So the Herald Exhibition, which brought British and French artwork to Australia for the first time, happened in 1939. And there was an article published in 2005 that said,

The Herald Exhibition of 1939 was the most important exhibition ever to come to Australia. Wow. I think it's the most important thing that happened in 1939. Most important thing that happened in 1939. What affected different. Wow, when I think of 1939 and world events, I think of that art exhibition that came to Melbourne.

That's right. Yeah, I think it kicked off some pretty nasty business after that. You think that's what started everything? Well, yeah, as far as I can tell. Wow. Yeah, I think there was another artist who was pretty cranky about things after that. Oh no. Because it's it, it goes on to say,

despite obvious lacks and omissions, no German expressionists, no Russian constructives. Yeah, he was furious. No, no Australian-impression. No Italian futurists and few surrealists. It brought the modern movement with a bang to the doorstep of Australia as nothing else had.

So it was big, it was huge. Not a lot of people know that Mussolini was an Italian futurist. Did not think, when researching, that this is where we would go. But I mean, that's the joy of artifacts, isn't it? Joy Hester. Yeah.

There was also where Joy Hester met Melbourne-based art patron Sunday Reid. Oh my God. What a name. Incredible, right? Sunday. Just Sunday as a first name is incredible. Yeah. And then Sunday Reid just...

With an E or a Y on the end? Why? Like the day of the week. Okay, not a chocolate. No. No, not an ice cream Sunday. It's still cool, though. I'm picturing, yeah, sitting out in the park, having a Sunday

Reed. Lovely. That's nice. Beautiful. That is beautiful. So Sunday and her husband John Reed were prominent art benefactors at the time

and had purchased a former dairy farm a few years earlier and had turned it into a place for like-minded art lovers to retreat, create and connect. And that's where we are today. We're sitting in an old dairy farm. So maybe the ghosts are going to be cows.

Moo. Moo! Imagine. Imagine. Imagine. We're in a really like nice, fancy art place. I agree and I think it feels right. It does be like to talk about.

It doesn't make sense that they insist that we do this before they open the gallery. Nobody. No, we can walk in on Matt going, ooh. But I mean, we just heard that they were driving past it was an old run-down dairy farm and it cost a grand. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. We were just told when we got here that it cost them a thousand pound. I mean, inflation, it was the 30s, yeah.

But it's like 15 acres for a thousand pounds. Yeah. It's wild. So they named the property Heidi after the nearby suburb of Heidelberg. And also, I think, as a reference to the Heidelberg School, which was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. Frederick McCubbin and his gang of Neer-Dewells. All doing their little art. Yeah.

So Heidi became a real focal point for progressive art and culture as the reeds opened their home to artists like Sydney Nolan. Albert Tucker and Joy Hester were here, John Percival, many, many more. In fact, Sydney Nolan, while living at Heidi on and off for almost a decade, painted his famous Ned Kelly series in the Heidi dining room between 46 and 47. Wow. Yeah. Between lunch and dinner. Well, because otherwise the dining room was being used and it would be pretty rude to take up the whole dining table, you know? Because there's many, many in that series, right? Yeah, yeah, there's several of them. I can't remember the exact number, but there's a lot of them.

And that's like one of the iconic Australian art things. Couldn't I say it better. So well said. God, we're the right people to do this series. Yeah. We've picked up a lot of the jargon. Yeah. Are the meiz en saint?

Oh, yeah. I don't know what that means. That's not the right. What does that mean? You. Physician. Position. Composition. It's what's happening in front of the camera.

Yeah. Which is us right now. I stand by that. We are when we're lost. So Joy had found a great friend in Sunday Read and a place to work and collaborate with other artists. And this loose grouping of artists became known as the Heidi Circle. I've, yeah, loose group, eh? Is that...

Are you foreshadowing there? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The wider community probably thought everything going on at Heidi was very bohemian. We do still have visitors come to the museum who tell us that they lived locally and their parents said, do not go near that property. They bathed naked in the sun

and they swim naked in the river and it was very, I don't know, communal in some kind of intensity and the way they conducted their lives. So I think the local community found them a little unusual for the time, which is the 1930s and 40s. So there were artists who lived and worked at Heidi

and included many of Australia's best known modernist painters. So I guess, yeah, Sunday and John Reid just really good at bringing people together and creating a space for them to... And do they make art themselves? They just like making other people making the art. They, yeah, I think they just, they wanted to support artists while they were making art. I think there's some works that, you know, Sunday said she helped with and stuff like that. But I think it was more just...

Clean the paint brushes, yeah. standing next to the artist while they're painting and going, that was such a good stroke. I should use a bit of green. Yeah, yeah. While they are using green. Yeah. And then she'd go, yeah, great choice.

Great choice. Yeah. Just a really good hype woman. Yeah. Which I think we all need. So these artists led really fascinating and dramatic lives while they were living and working at Heidi. So much so that they're the subject of books,

articles, podcasts, including a book called Modern Love, the lives of John and Sunday Read. which was written by the current head curator Kendra Morgan, and artistic director Leslie Harding. It was released in 2015. And about the book, Emily Biddo wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald. The reads are revealed as hugely influential figures

in the development of Australian art and intellectual culture. They offered significant financial support and intellectual mentorship to countless artists, and they were unflagging advocates of artistic freedom of expression, going as far as paying the legal fees of a number of artists and writers who had charges of obscenity brought against them. Yet, as with many patrons, John and Sunday expected something in return for their lagesse.

Fun word. They depended on the circle for a sense of creative vitality. In a particularly harsh assessment, Albert Tucker described the reeds as bored rich people looking for outlets. So I guess, yeah, like, I mean, you're asking, what did they do? They were wealthy. They had a thousand pounds. They had a thousand pounds.

on them as they drove past those shoes cash i'll have that thank you that's i feel like if i could be anything i'd love to be a bored rich person oh yeah that's the train yeah i mean albataka saying it is like a little bit of an insult but i didn't take it that way bored rich people they became your heroes yeah holy shit because i mean that just that implies that they weren't they weren't stressed they weren't why they were bored yeah they're just paying other people's legal fees oh the best yeah so good so yeah there was some they were paying fees because of obscenities. Is that that famous Sydney-Knowing painting that just said, fuck?

And some people didn't like it. It was Ned Kelly just with the helmet on, everything else. Yeah. Full-nooth. Full frontal. Yeah, yeah. Chop hanging out. And yeah, the helmet was that sort of Nolan style, they're very modernist, but the rest was

very realistic. A little too real-tistic. A little too real-to-realist. You could see every single pubis. Is that, no, that's not pubic hair. Pubis is a bone. You could see every single way he had multiple of multiple bones. Everybody has multiple bones.

Are you one big bones? It sounds like he had an extra one. I don't think, you should get that checked. I saw somebody else describe it as, if you were going to be a part of Heidi, then it was almost expected that Sunday was going to be a very involved part of your, not just professional life, but also your personal life.

There were affairs a plenty at Heidi as well. The most tumultuous affair was between Sunday Reed and Sydney Nolan. And this lasted quite a while. Apparently ended when... Somebody said when Sunday wouldn't leave her husband John for Sydney Nolan. They kind of split up. And then Sydney Nolan married John's sister, Sinifia. And that caused a bit of a rift between all of them as well.

So it was a little bit messy. Right. It sounds like the Fleetwood Mac of Australia. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like rumours. Wow. Yeah. I get it.

Now you understand. Apparently Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings were left here after the sort of fallout. And he wrote to Sunday asking for his Ned Kelly works back, but she instead returned to 284 other paintings and drawings and refused to give up the remaining Kellys, partly because she saw the works as fundamental to the proposed Heidi Museum of Modern Art, which was always the plan. It was always the plan for them to build an art gallery here. And it wasn't until 77 that she sought to resolve the dispute.

She didn't give them back to Nolan directly. Apparently she just gave them to the NGB. The National Gallery of Australia is. Now you can look at them if you like. Yeah, you can go visit them if you want. So like I said, it seems that Heidi was a pretty creative and amazing place for a young artist to be, but it also had an intensity and drama all around. And Joy Hester was certainly not immune to that at all.

So she and Albert Tucker were married in 1941 and together they had a son, Sweeney, born in 44. And in a dramatic twist, which would rapidly change the trajectory of Joy's life, in 1947, she was diagnosed with Terminal Hodgkin's lymphoma. Doctors told Joy she maybe had a couple of years to live, two years probably. Immediately, apparently, the same thing.

day she was diagnosed, she left Albert Tucker and her son and ran off to live in Sydney with fellow Heidi artist, Gray Smith. Just left. Right. So betrayed and hurt, Albert Tucker also left Heidi. He left Australia, in fact. He went off to England to paint there. So join Albert left their son, Sweeney in the care of John and Sunday Reid, who eventually adopted Sweeney, raising him as their own. Which is, yeah, all very sudden. And he's a toddler at this point. He's about three. Oh, brutal. One anecdote that I came across was that Sunday

was pretty desperate to adopt a child and in the past had broached the subject with other artist couples in the area. Give me your son. You've got an extra one or? Yeah, funnily enough, nobody had agreed to just... You're going to finish that or... Give her a child?

In the dining room again. You're going to finish bringing that up? Because I could. I mean, I can do it. Do you want a hand? I'll do it. So yeah, she was particularly delighted apparently to be left in charge of the care for Sweeney. So Hester and Smith lived in Sydney for a time before returning to Victoria, first living in Upway, before settling in Box Hill. And Joy's illness impacted her work dramatically and left an indelible mark,

loading it with emotional content. Her cancer diagnosis came in 1947, and by the time she received it, she had really focused her work on this idea of psychological expression and intense emotional states and intense physical estates. In fact, one of the most interesting things about her work is how she explores, how the body feels to the person inhabiting it, rather than how it looks or is externalised or can be emblematized. She spent a year undergoing quite intense radiation treatment, and during that period, she focused very much on the face, is the key subject for her work. She continued to make art, and the face is really a kind of an expression of raw feeling.

Often she really telescoped in on the eyes. One eye in some of these works is externalised, looking out to the outward world. The other one is kind of focused internally and very introspectively. And they really express her fear of death, her experience of having this radiation treatment where she had a mask over her head

and was in a claustrophobic state in the hospital. And they are an absolute, you know, milestone, I think, in the development of Australian art. During this period of the late 40s, Hester produced the drawings that became part of her notable, face, sleep and love series, which this one is part of the love series. And her works were exhibited alongside her poetry in 1950 at her first solo show at the Melbourne Book Club Gallery. She had two more solo exhibitions in 55 and 56, but struggled to sell her art.

Australian modernist at the time favoured large oil paintings like those of Sydney Norland, whereas Joy's work was typically smaller in scale, you know, like this one here It's not gigantic and it's black ink. It's just sort of light and dark shades. Not big and colourful. At this time she failed to garner the same recognition her male peers received. She was dismissed by critics as angst written,

which I mean, given what was going on in her life, probably justified. Yeah, it's a funny thing to be criticised for as well. Yeah. Bit angsty. Our art to be happy. Yeah, that's right. Oh, an angsty artist.

Never heard of it. Not for me. Thank you. Yeah, it's not worthwhile, a bit negative. It makes me feel, and I hate that. She had the love series. There was also The Lovers series, which was later. And it was indicative of her maturing and expressive style.

She also published poetry and used her drawings to illustrate her words. Those poems were happy and rhymed. I hope even if the art was a bit, a bit angsty. The poetry was very happy. Yeah, great. And that juxtaposition. That's the real art. So you might be thinking, hang on,

she's having exhibitions eight years after she was told she had two years to live. She lived a bit longer than the two years. The doctors had originally prescribed. Joy and Grace Smith actually had a couple of children together as well, a son Peregrine in 1951 and a daughter Fern in 54. Strong art names. Really good names. But with Sunday read like, a couple more.

Yeah, I'll take them. I'll take them if you want. After an extended period in remission, Joy Hester suffered a relapse of Hodgkins and FOMA in 56, passing away another four years after that in December of 1960 at the age of 40, which is really sad, but lived 13 years, 12, 13 years longer than they had said. Right, I can't believe she was only 40. I know, yeah. Got a lot done.

Yeah, and she hadn't lived that, she did all the exhibitions post-diagnosis. Yeah, that's right, yeah. So. Yeah, so she was working. a lot through her illness and exhibiting her work. Like I said, not getting the recognition of her male peers, but yeah, she will get the recognition. So like many female artists of the time, she wasn't celebrated or properly recognised during her lifetime. However, after her death, a few people, including her first husband, Albert Tucker, worked tirelessly to make

sure her career and her art was recognised by the press, by art galleries and by the wider art community. And through the effort of her peers, she's now recognized as having produced some of the most distinctive and intriguing imagery to emerge in Australia in the 40s and 50s. So huge. John and Sunday Reid organized a commemorative exhibition of her work in 1963. I read in one article that her son Sweeney curated a show of her work at one point as well. And there was an exhibition here a couple of years ago at Heidi. It was the Joy Hester Remember Me exhibition. And it really demonstrated her range, the range of her skill, I guess, and how her work to change dramatically

through her life and career. And there's a little quote from that saying she really moved a long way from her early years in the late 1930s from a naturalistic to a far more expressive and subjective mode of art making. And reviewing her work for Time in 2001, Michael Fitzgerald wrote,

41 years after her death, Hester's drawing still suck the oxygen from the air, providing some of the clearest-eyed images in Australian art. Yeah, a bit angsty for me. Sounds like they kill people. Yeah, they suck the extreme from the air. And we need that to live.

So people have gotten bored in later years. Yeah. So that's the brutal story you hear a lot with artists. Yeah. Don't get the respect until after they die. I know, yeah. And yeah, sadly, she did die quite young. And so didn't get the recognition during her lifetime,

but is deeply respected and admired now. It feels like the critics at the time were doing like an old-school version of, give us a smile, hey? Can you make your paintings have a little smile? You don't even have mouths on them. A bit of a smile. Yeah, maybe it has a little bit of that. It was definitely, yeah, unfortunately, misogyny played a part for sure. What?

I know. As a feminist, that is a real, offensive to you. Yeah. It's a real turn off to me. Misogyny. I hate it. Can't stand it. For 1950, these images of, um,

that really legitimised the idea that psychological experience was a valid subject for creative expression. You know, that was just beyond most of the critics, you know, recognition. They didn't know how to understand it. But also she tackled subjects that were very female-centric. You know, she did look at love, birth, death, the experience of motherhood. And she also drew rather than painted and drawing was considered a secondary medium. So the critics just couldn't take her seriously. She wasn't considered a serious artist.

Would you say she was sort of ahead of her time? Absolutely ahead of her time. I mean, just the fact that we all now accept drawing as an autonomous means of expression, but in the 1930s when she started out, it was very much considered a medium that you worked in preliminary to creating a painting or a sculpture. And she found drawing very immediate,

it presented no barrier to kind of her interior vision. And she stuck with that. It's such an interesting place that we're in now and like, yeah, Joy Hester's work is amazing and her experience is here. But the whole sort of community and John and Sunday Read, it's a pretty fascinating place. Maybe there's no literal ghosts, but it feels like the spirit of this loose group of individuals still permeates through these walls and halls. Do you still visit the dining room? No. No.

You can't. Damn. You're looking for a kid. Anybody got a kid? Kid up for grabs? Have you visited Heidi before? No. My first time.

I've been here a few times and today's the first time I realize it's called Heidi, not hide. And I've said that to people, just going down to hide today. Yeah. And people have not... Played along. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh.

And once again, proving we are the wrong. right people to be doing this art-based series. And I've said it to all sorts of people like, you know, famous artists I couldn't think of a single world. Once again, proving. Leonardo DiCaprio, you know. Set it to Decaprio, yes. Please, leave me alone. Well, yeah, you should come down to Heidi. There's lots of permanent exhibitions. They also do,

temporary ones. Yep. This is cool to hang out in a place that's so important in Australian art history. Yeah. And can I say this? World Art History. Whoa. I'm going to say it.

There's been so many points where we could have ended. Well, they think we're fine. No, that's what I mean. We won't have to do that now. You're not doing a live edit. We'll keep going to. We do it in camera. You do it in camera?

With scissors. Great. So we're sitting here in front of one of Joy Hester's pieces from the love series. Thoughts, opinions, feelings. What do you think? I like it. I like what's going on there. I like one of them's chin is up.

Keep your chin up. Keep your chin up. That's not angsty to me. That's stoic. Yeah. And this one's got a very long neck. Long neck. I love a long neck.

Yeah. Love a couple of long necks. But I know I think it definitely feels like something's going on there. And I love that. What do you think that something is? Yes, yeah, yeah. I feel it's kind of, you know, it's making me feel excited. Okay.

I think I maybe want you to stop talking about what you think about the art. Love to give Dave a go. Maybe you give you a time out. It's rare that art makes me horny, but... It's not rare. It's not rare. It's quite easy, actually. I love it.

I feel lucky that we've looked or fortunate that we've looked at it for so long. Yeah. Because when we walked in here, it's quite a very rare. quite a small, unassuming piece. Yeah. And I feel like often you walk into a gallery, you go, oh, fantastic. Yeah, I'll look at that for a few seconds. Fantastic.

Move on. Because there's so many things on offer, because I've been looking at it for so long. The more I'm looking at it, the more intriguing I find it. Yeah, I agree. I'm finding more things. I think you're absolutely right. It's nice to sort of actually have a chance to properly look at it and spend some time looking at it. And the more I'm looking at it.

Yeah, I'm going to make an offer. I think I'm going to make an offer on this one. It doesn't have a price. You got a thousand pounds? thousand pounds it's a bargain I imagine that is pretty cheap I'm talking in 1934

okay you got equivalent cash now no you got a few mill doggone presents artifacts has been made with the support of the community broadcasting foundation and is available nationwide

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