Flooded river, Kimberley, 1983
John Olsen
oil on canvas
167.0 x 152.0 cm
signed and dated lower right: John Olsen / 83
inscribed with title verso: Flooded River / Kimberly [sic]
The Christensen Fund Collection, Perth (label attached verso)
Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne
Savill Galleries, Sydney (label attached verso)
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1997
John Olsen: The Land Beyond Time, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, then touring nationally, May 1983 – February 1990, cat. 81 (label attached verso)
Arthur Boyd & John Olsen: Two Great Australian Painters, Savill Galleries, Sydney, 7 – 31 May 1997, cat. 8 (illus. In exhibition catalogue, n.p.)
Olsen, J. et al., The Land Beyond Time, Macmillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1984, pp. 251 (illus., as ‘Lake Gregory in flood III’), 309
Ellis, W. F. (ed.), The Land Beyond Time: paintings and drawings by John Olsen, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1984, p. 66 (illus.)
McGregor, K., and Zimmer, J., John Olsen: Journeys Into the You Beaut Country, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2016, pp. 117 (illus.), 338
Between August 1982 and April 1983, John Olsen travelled extensively through the northern reaches of Western Australia as part of a project commissioned by the Christensen Fund in Perth which resulted in the lavish book Land beyond time.1 Described as a journey of ‘modern exploration of Australia’s North-West frontiers’, Olsen’s companions included authors Geoffrey Dutton and Mary Durack, and naturalist Vincent Serventy. Halfway through the project unseasonal rains filled Lake Gregory (Paraku), an otherwise brackish body of water situated between the Great Sandy and the Tanami deserts. The flooding spurred memories for Serventy and Olsen who had previously visited Lake Eyre (Kati Thanda) together in 1974 when it too overflowed and brought life back to the desert. For Olsen, who had already spent many years studying Buddhist and Zen texts, this ephemeral experience of ‘fullness out of emptiness’ perfectly fitted his understanding of their principles. Flooded river, Kimberley, 1983, shows the artist expressing this sentiment with the swollen waters of the lake forming a vast central bowl that teems with life whilst sending tendrils of growth into the otherwise sparse red dirt beyond.
Olsen encountered Lake Gregory during a small plane flight in April 1983 with Dutton describing ‘the great muddy invasion of the red and yellow land… Roads and a riverbed disappeared into the edge of the lake, with only the trees along the riverbanks showing above the waters that flooded into the lake.’3 On landing, the manager of the nearby Aboriginal settlement and cattle station took the party on a boat ride ‘down the flooded river between the trees’ before returning to the community ‘under tall coolabah trees where hundreds of darters were nesting, the chicks wobbling in agitation in the shallow nests.’4 The art critic Robert Hughes once wrote of Olsen’s ability to use his mind ‘as a sieve, catching a complex load of emotions and associations… the picture seems to grow from his brush as naturally and directly as a twig from a branch,’5 and in Flooded river, Kimberley, it is possible to trace Olsen’s painterly journey as he follows the flights of the many thousands of birds whilst they chase insects and fish. Completed at his home studio in Clarendon, South Australia, Flooded river, Kimberley, is full of the artist’s signature calligraphic brush marks, bustling from here to there as they seek to capture this short-lived episode of life.
1. Olsen, J. et al., The Land Beyond Time: a modern exploration of Australia's north-west frontiers, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1984
2. See Olsen, J., Drawn from Life, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 1997, pp. 189, 190
3. Geoffrey Dutton, cited in Olsen et al., op. cit., p. 244
4. ibid., p. 246
5. Hughes, R., ‘Abstract Regions’, Nation, Canberra, 8 October 1960
ANDREW GAYNOR