STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 781

Full transcript of a recording of

STEPHANIE SCHRAPEL & ANDREW STEINER

on 21 May 2006

At the Royal South Australian Society of Arts Gallery in the Institute Building of the State Library of South Australia

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

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OH 781 SCHRAPEL & STEINER

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

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J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, STATE

LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 781

Recording by June Edwards of Stephanie Schrapel speaking on ‘Retrospective 1986–2006’ and Andrew Steiner speaking on ‘Retrospective and Recent Works’ exhibitions at the Royal South Australia Society of Arts Gallery on 21st May 2006.

DISK 1

This is a recording of Stephanie Schrapel and Andrew Steiner at the Royal South Australia Society of Arts Gallery in the Institute Building at the State Library. Stephanie Schrapel’s talking about a retrospective exhibition of photographs and Andrew Steiner is talking about his retrospective and recent works exhibition at the Gallery. This is June Edwards doing the recording.

PART 1 – STEPHANIE SCHRAPEL

Right. So what I intend to do is to not give you a history lecture because if anybody’s

really desperate for some of the history, leave your name and address and we can

mail you out something. But it’s more important for the visuals. Now, South

Australian Heritage started with the sky and went right through and finished with

Halley’s Comet, which was in ’86.

The first one that I pulled out – and if you look around you’ll see that I’m very

interested in the light, the moon, the sun, you can pick up the things that interest me:

textures, patterns – the first one looks like a face. It is a homage to Tolkien, as is the

one next to it: that one is a small section of original tree which was photographed

about 1960s, ’70s, the Old Gum Tree at Glenelg, the State’s Proclamation, and I just

couldn’t believe when I saw this lovely detail.

The next one is, again, genuine tree, no computer – no computer distortion on any

of these works, no fake sticking the moon or the sun in. They are all as is. The next

one was a tree trunk, up in Northern Territory, in Darwin.

Then the one with Rob Johns and Mary McQueen – I love Mary McQueen’s

lithographs and she came here to edition that one for the Print Council with Rob

Johns, who is a brilliant technician: he went through the Art School, went to Italy

and decided, like they have in Italy – they have studios to print your works and

they’ve got some in Melbourne – he realized that he wasn’t going to be as great an

original artist as he thought he would, but what he could do was make sure that other

artists could get their prints editioned well, and he did do that in Adelaide.

Then Ruth Tuck, if you know, she’s not young there. She came in, we took her

down in the cab to Hindley Street for Fest West a few years back, it was after Mervyn

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had died and Ruth sat there sketching, and she turned to me and said, ‘Steph, I don’t

have to go home to that architect husband of mine to have my perspective criticized.’

Those of you who know Mervyn will appreciate that one.

Margaret King Boyes is a Vice-Patron of the Society, she is an AM now – Dr

Margaret King Boyes. We could write a book on Margaret – in fact, she’s got to have

a book written on her. But she’s set up – when Lord of the flies got so much fuss,

Margaret found that the mothers complaining hadn’t read it, so she set up a reading

group and they’re still going, reading groups all over the metropolitan area.

The barn owl is gorgeous, I had to put the barn owl next to Margaret because it is a

portrait, and she loves owls. And when Lois O’Donoghue, Lowitja, came to the

opening I went all goose-bumpy because she stood there – she knows Margaret well

because Margaret lives opposite Eden Hills Primary and Lois was at Colebrook – and

she said, ‘The owl is my totem.’ So I got all goose-bumpy over that one. That’s a

bonus.

The self-portrait – I love doing this sort of thing – that’s the Second World War

searchlight in Alice Springs, and you get that distortion.

And the other one’s a distortion in some glass down in Hindley Street and the

refraction – if anybody draws flowers in a vase and doesn’t break the line where the

water goes, they haven’t been looking. The man is not disembodied at all; that’s the

refraction through the glass. But I couldn’t resist, it was great fun.

And the other one is the ceiling in a palace in Palermo, Sicily. The man was mad,

mad and angry mad and he broke up all the glass, because then everybody at the ball

looked as distorted as he did.

Then we’ve got some nice landscapes from Adelaide, the Railway Station and

Rundle Street before it was a mall; the Northern Flinders and Mount Chambers –

that was lucky because I was on a field trip taking photographs for the Aboriginal

teacher aides, and Cliff Coulthard said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to see her at dark,’

and he said, ‘Tomorrow morning we walk up a mountain.’ Yes, we walked up a

mountain all right, and it’s on that end corner, in the morning: three-thirty, we

started.

But then Palmyra – that’s near Palmyra, that’s the necropolis, and the jets were

doing sonic booms over that, so you wonder how long it lasts.

Some of my photographs I have got because I have been trying to find somewhere

to go to the toilet and of course there’s not toilets everywhere, so you’re looking for at

least a bit of broken wall or bushes. And I went round the back of the step pyramid

and there was this chap cooking and those dogs, just like our dingoes and kelpies.

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They’d got to that point where they’ve just got to put the next foot forward, they’re all

lined up. And the little family, it looks always wonderful because we went across the

river on a ….. and the magic of just sailing, I hadn’t ever experienced that, but in calm

water.

And the looks, or the other one, I could see this wonderful set of buildings coming

up, I was on a bus and I thought, ‘Crikey, they won’t be able to stop the bus,’ so I set

the camera – it’s the only bit of technical information I’ll give you – I set it at a 125th

to stop movement, F8 because it was far enough away and I couldn’t do the

movement, and I waited and the Stobie pole was coming out of the woman’s head –

no, no – and the donkey was coming and I’m trying to balance all these bits, and the

bus started to turn and I just got it. I was very proud of that one.

The second one similar: it does pay to read up on good travel guides because this

was a lovely trip that was a wonderful run done by Frank Seer who used to be – and

several of these were taken on Frank’s trips – he was in the Classics Department in

here, he’s now the Professor in Melbourne Uni, they’re lucky – but he used to run

these wonderful tours overseas and we did, it was Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Israel. What

a run. It was fantastic. And the morning we’d gone up to one high place, Abraham’s

high place, the afternoon they weren’t doing anything and they were going up to this

particular spot the next morning. But my Blue guide said that the sun was only fully

on that temple between four and four-thirty p.m. So of course I ran all the way up

and all the way back (laughs) and came back in the dark; but I was determined to get

it.

Then the next one’s wonderful – I love windows and doors and gateways, not just

for what they are but for their symbolic, you know, they symbolize passing through

and looking at things and time. And that’s in India, that’s .….

And the next one, I’m just hoping that it’s not completely destroyed because that’s

the Ziggurat at Ur, which I went to in ’79, and even then there was a tank training

ground to the right-hand side; and you weren’t allowed to photograph from the top

of the Ziggurat because of that, and the guards on that side had rifles and guns and it

was quite an interesting time. But you weren’t going to wander round and try and do

too much, because two of the curators down there just showed you these dead snakes

that they’d shot the day before: well, that really does sort of stop you from prying

around. But I got right up to the top, and the steps on the – say the pyramid’s

straight in front of me, the steps on that side; two steps down, the second step down,

a dog had done X thousand years ago what it does today when it treads in the

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concrete, and there was this lovely doggy pawprint in the mud-dried brick. So I got

permission to photograph that. (laughs) It was very dark.

Then the next one is of course stunning and means a lot to a lot of us, because it’s

the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. And I am absolutely staggered: I’ve seen the

stupas in Nepal and Burma and Thailand, and the Dome of the Rock and the

mosques in Iraq, and if there’s a sandstorm you’d still see them. They are gold. I

mean real gold. And they glow. And I suddenly realized that’s one of the reasons,

because if you’re travelling by camel or something or through a sandstorm, at least

something stands out, you can navigate, you can see the glint of this. And

particularly in that flat landscape. And I loved the detail and I loved the wonderful

pattern and detail in the tiles.

Now I have to check what the next one is: ah yes, that’s Crete. I don’t ever sleep in

when I’m away. That was the early morning, looked out the hotel window in Crete,

and there was this wonderful sunrise and the lovely cross, just in the centre of those

hills, of a Greek Orthodox church.

The next one: you can be lucky. I’d been to Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral,

this one was Wells, and the BBC1 was there with all the wonderful lights in the world

because they were doing a program. And they hadn’t started; but I just kept very

quiet and stood very still and got a photo. (laughs) With the whole BBC lighting, just

for me.

The next one is night, looking down on the wonderful domes of St Mark’s, Venice.

That’s an incredible place. You sit one side and have your two-dollar – well, it was

two dollars then; it was in ’81 – coffee, and there’s a full symphony orchestra. You

walk across, in the middle you can’t hear anything and then as you go the other side

there’s another full symphony orchestra and you can have another coffee for two

bucks, with a free symphony orchestra. I love it.

The mosque is Karbala. There are two sacred mosques, one in Najar, one in

Karbala: they were Mecca before Mecca.

And then the last one on that wall, I love Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Portguese

artist, her work is stunning. I tracked around Paris and raced into a newsagent, of all

things, to get some brown paper to wrap some parcels – (greets newcomer) you’re

just in time for the Church, Vicki, well done – and found a poster up in the

newsagent and graphics for Vieira da Silva, so I raced to the Bibliothèque Nationale

and saw that; and then the big book I got in the Musée de L’Ambre had – I found

1 BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation.

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that she’d done some stained glass windows in Reims so I raced back to the hotel,

dropped the book, took the address, grabbed a train, got to Reims just before dusk,

raced around to a chemist to get high-speed film and – would you believe – it’s not

the Cathedral, but it’s a church in Reims and it has windows by Shagal to die for, and

Vieira da Silva’s. And I stood in front of that window. And the same as I felt – and

even more so, actually – than Chartres; and I love the Byzantine, I love the Gothic,

they’ve just all got a most wonderful atmosphere – but standing in front of that

window you just did, you just teleported up. You could feel yourself going up and

through that window. It’s magic.

And I explained about the sun on Mount Chambers, I set the tripod down halfway

and I saw the moon and I thought, ‘I’ve got to get this shot,’ and stopped and got it;

then I had to get up the top with Cliff Coulthard’s help because he said, ‘Oh, you just

walk it up and hug the mountain.’ I said, ‘Cliff, I’ve got more front than you, mate.

You can hug the mountain; my backside’s out there.’ Anyway, I’d handed him the

cameras and he put his hand down, I could haul myself up, because what they

needed was the sun from behind us hitting the two curves of the range, because there

are two parts of the serpent.

Lake Mungo I was very lucky. I was doing some project work for the National

Trust and it was a major, big publication on world heritage being launched at the

High Court by Gough Whitlam, and the archaeologist didn’t have time to do the

article so they rang me up and said, ‘Look, would you mind going up to Lake Mungo

and doing an article for us for the magazine?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course I will – on one

condition,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to use my photos; I’m not having somebody else’s

photos with my article.’ And they said yes, so I took Heather Clegg with me and she

did some pottery and we had this wonderful exhibition in Canberra for Heritage

Week ’88 called ‘Moods of Lake Mungo’. I was thrilled when the archaeologist came

and just said to me, ‘You’ve got the moods.’ That meant a lot. And her friend, Isabel

White, who’s an expert who’s published on the Barrier Reef and that, she bought

one, which was a big thrill, too. And I had the delight – it was Gorman House, and

there was this lovely young boy about twelve came in on a skateboard and he kept

coming back, and he kept bringing all his mates in to show them that photo with the

Southern Cross at night. And in the end I caught him measuring diagonally, he was

working out what size he could afford, and he’d worked out he could afford a postage

stamp. And I said, ‘Oh, you won’t see it [on] a postage stamp.’ And I knew he

wanted to buy it. I would have given him one gladly and I said, ‘Look’ – he’d even

brought his father in and I could see Father was not interested so there was no point

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giving a boy a big one because there wouldn’t be anywhere in the house for it, I could

see from Father, not interested. So I said, ‘Look, I brought the slide with me. I’ve

checked out the labs.’ I said, ‘I can get you a postcard size and I’ll sign the back, for

twenty cents, would that be all right?’ Oh, he was rapt. So that’s what we did. And

I’m thrilled to bits because that boy will always go into art exhibitions. And the first

work I bought I actually lay-byed: it was Kenneth Clark, ‘Christian building since

Christ’s death’, which I lay-byed with David Dryden’s gallery out in Melbourne

Street.

And the orange one, if you look at the ribbed sand – and Mungo is eroding – from

the top of that little tiny cliff – it’s only about that high – to the ground is thirty

thousand years. The erosion. And that’s where they found the Mungo bodies. But

they’ve found, unfortunately, people behaviour: the rangers there tried it out. They

tried putting some posts round and throwing odd bones that people didn’t know

what they were and snakeskins, and wherever they roped off people stole the stuff.

So now they have a post there and a post there and a post over there, and they’ve got

on record the directions so that they know where the site is. But isn’t it shocking that

people do that.

And then of course Kakadu’s wonderful, and we’ve got Mary here today, which is a

thrill, because she’s one of the four of us – June Colligan[?] is now dead – but again

Heather and Mary and I, we were invited up to the ‘Artists in the field’ camp up in

the Northern Territory. You get yourself up there and the Northern Territory Art

Gallery puts you up for three weeks out at Yellow Waters; gives you for three weeks

the four-wheel drive, petrol and everything; and you have three weeks up there to

explore Kakadu and then you come back the next year with your work. And then in

2002 they did a retrospective. And it was a bit funny for David Dryden and I to meet

up there and say, ‘Gee, took a retrospective here for us to catch up with each other

again!’

But Mungo was magic. But the sun moves so fast you can’t even change a film.

You walk up a creek in the morning, you come back in the afternoon and there’ll be a

wet patch, you can see how much that water from the really wet season just keeps

draining and draining. And as it drains there’s more and more birds and more and

more crocs have to crowd into a small area, as the water recedes. So there was one

tree and – Mary will remember – five flocks of galahs, noisy, these yellow-crested

ones, cockies, on it; and Mary said, ‘Oh, they wouldn’t be able to fit another one on,’

and she and I stood open-mouthed as two more flocks came in. It was incredible.

And we saw the – Yellow Waters, if you go up there, do the cruise in the morning

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with the mist rising, it’s magic; and then the midday one’s when the crocs are up on

the surface and anybody swimming there is mad. I’m concerned because people

have taught the crocodiles – they’re not stupid, they are dinosaurs like the shark –

and they’ve [been] taught, you know, little aluminium boat with an engine means

food. And there’s people with their kids there, trailing their hands in the water. And

these crocs, one flip of their tail and they’d have that boat overturned.

The bird is fishing at night: that was hand-held and late afternoon and the magic.

And the birds are also sneaky: they wait till one bird gets the fish and then the other

birds dive-bomb it until it drops it and then they get it the easy way. They’re not

silly. And the beautiful lilies. And the crocodiles hide, they put their nose like little

kids do, they think you can’t see them if their nose is behind a lily.

Then Ubirr[?], the small one there, the large one of that the Northern Territory

Gallery’s got. I wanted the moonrise, the full moon over Nourlangie, which I got, to

the right; I also wanted it over Ubirr, but that would have required standing in that

green bit, which is a crocodile-infested swamp and an Aboriginal area. Well, I was

quite happy to ask for permission from the Aboriginal people, but I wasn’t

negotiating with crocodiles. No way.

That other one was taken with a 20mill Russian lens that fits on my Nikon and it’s

the tree just growing up, it’s wonderful, I just couldn’t get over that. And Nourlangie,

the lightning man.

The two of the sunrise, one was one night when they’d been burning off so it was all

hazy and the next wasn’t. But the mosquitoes I reckon are incredibly big.

The next one’s a bit of a trick because I actually like exhibiting that upside down. If

you can imagine it the other way – it’s actually all the chemicals that have been

running down on a tank at the Ranger uranium mine, and if you turn it ninety

degrees it looks like a lake. Again, the moon. And the little white spot at the top, I

even had to tell the lab when they printed it: ‘No, that is not a spot on the lens, that

is Venus.’ It’s the moon and Venus.

Flying up to Ayers Rock, Darwin, I looked out – I always watch out of the plane

window – and it was Lake Eyre in flood and I managed to get that from thirty

thousand feet up in the aeroplane. Not a small, high-wing Cessna with the door off,

which I’ve had lovely time with, but that wasn’t.

Similarly – I think June and Heather went straight up, Mary and I went up to Alice

and stopped and hired a car, Mary drove out, we went out to Ayers Rock. And you

know Ayers Rock: Uluru. The gum trees, those beautiful white gums are so

symbolic.

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The other one is out of Hawker because South Australian Heritage toured the

regional areas and Hawker wanted it, and they said, ‘Look, if you donate a photo, the

chap that owns the motel will put you up for three nights and you can come up in the

bank plane.’ Gee, I enjoyed going up in the bank plane. I had to keep dead still

because if I moved my feet it hit the ailerons. I was in the co-pilot’s seat. That was

great. Up, down, I think we went Adelaide, Pirie, Whyalla, Augusta, Hawker. Great

fun.

Five minutes: right, we’ll get there.

And the other tree. So that was that orange one.

Stonehenge I love and I managed to go to Stonehenge, but now I gather you can’t

get in, but I was able to wander round.

The Feathered Serpent is Teotihuacan in Mexico, and the linkages, the Feathered

Serpent, the Rainbow and Rain Serpent symbolism is worldwide.

China: I had a wonderful time in China. Friends of the Art Gallery of Adelaide,

Melbourne and Sydney. And we went in ’78. It was early and it was wonderful, and a

lot of the Chinese people had never seen foreigners so we had some most wonderful

experience. The first one, which was highly-entertaining was it was lovely seeing all

the grandfathers with their little children in the day and somebody handed a piece of

chocolate and this little lad went and put it in his top pocket, which you couldn’t do

in Adelaide in summer.

The other one was out at that hot spring spa and a lady was walking towards us

with a little child toddler, and the toddler started to fall. This friend that I taught

with, whose name is ....., we both just immediately reached our hands out to stop the

child falling and the woman grabbed the child and stood trembling and I have never

seen such fear, and we realised she thought we were foreign devils that would steal

her child, so we just stood absolutely still and the woman then looked – and we

smiled, as she picked the child up we smiled – and I could see her thinking that’s not

what she thought would happen, she thought we’d be angry and she was

outnumbered. So she stood very still and we stood very still, and then she smiled

and came right up close and reached the baby’s – she was holding the child’s hand –

and touched the child’s hand on both our forearms and smiled, and we bowed and

smiled. And I thought that to me was – you don’t get that in a tour guide, you know,

we thought that was just very, very moving.

Now, India’s another wonderful place and we’ve got the Palace of the Winds which

was built so all the ladies, the Rajah’s wives, could look out and watch what was

happening.

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And this one is a shrine, it’s a tomb at ..... and it’s marble, and that to me – it just,

with the incense and the candle, just seemed to me about eternity, it’s very magic.

Then again, at Kanchipuram. What I loved in India – and it was sort of far enough

back, it was in the ’70s, that we were still thinking of the atomic bomb and nuclear

holocaust – and I thought, ‘Well, they’ll survive better than we will, in cities, because

they know how to grow their own food.’ And Michael Dutkiewicz, Wlad’s eldest, rang

me on Friday, he’d come in to see the show and I was so thrilled because he rang me

because he said how much he loved it, and he said that he’s never seen in the

archaeology books, and he said he’s sure that’s what they must do. He sees diagrams

of the plough, he said, but the weight of the stone: he said, ‘Of course it would need

the weight of the stone on it.’

And then the other three shots there were from H..... Highlights, which was a

gallery above Art Zone, it was above Imprints Bookshop, because he was looking

after the stuff then for us and we had a show there, and I took all the photos in

Hindley Street and they were the way the lights changed and the patterns, and again

the moon moving in the sky.

That second-to-last one is Ruth Tuck’s child art exhibition. If you could imagine

from that hanging all the way down, all the way round, children’s art from her art

classes. And the children used to do the openings and have ..... ..... ..... and it was

lovely.

And the last one was great fun. There’s twins, they are Cockneys born on St

Patrick’s Day and they love the Queen. And their other friend – and that was the

Referendum, and they said to me in a local coffee shop, ‘We hope the press are

coming.’ And I said, ‘You can’t ever trust the press, but I promise I’ll come and

photograph you.’ So they were down at Coromandel Valley singing Rule Britannia,

There’ll always be an England – they can’t sing a note in tune but that doesn’t stop

them. So we photographed them. And some time later, when the Queen was here,

the last time the Queen was here, they queued up again and did their whole act and

they appeared on every news, including Hobart and Brisbane; and all the Japanese

tourists stopped and wanted to be photographed with them.

But what I’ll do is wind up: thank you, and you can look forward to Andrew,

because I’m looking forward to hearing Andrew, and you can ask all the questions

after. I’ll answer what I can but I don’t promise to know everything, I certainly don’t.

Thank you. (break in recording)

PART 2 – ANDREW STEINER

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Good afternoon, everybody. I wish to acknowledge the original owners, the Kaurna

people, on whose land we are here today. It’s really a great pleasure to see you all

here and thank you for making the effort to share the occasion with us.

Some thirty-three years ago, after a very informal, lovely Sunday lunch, a casual

remark was dropped: the hostess thought that I would enjoy wood carving. I’m sure

all of us are faced with similar remarks and nothing ever comes of it; however, as you

can see from the evidence here, this has really meant a very dramatic turn in my life

and I probably have through it found my true vocation and calling. Subsequently,

the following Monday I started a wood carving course and then I went to England to

study. On my return I did an Art course here, specialising in Sculpture.

And I don’t know whether the rest is history or not, but here we are and even for

me looking onto it it’s certainly somewhat of a very special feeling to see and to know

that all of these I have done with my hands, with the aid of some very, very ancient

hand tools, some of which are displayed in the glass cabinet for you to have a look at.

And realistically I am using exactly the same methods as, for instance, the

Phoenicians did thousands of years ago. I don’t know any electrical tools, and in a

sense it’s a partnership between the wood and the enabler to release the wonderful

beauty which lies within.

Originally not a pretty piece, this is how the Huon pine looks like when I find them.

Each of the pieces I select myself because, when I see them, there seems to be

something between us. They kind of send out messages to me and I send out

messages to them, and then we both know that something wonderful will happen.

Now, Huon pine would have to be one of the most magical materials to use. It only

grows in Tasmania, one centimetre per hundred years. So imagine these pieces here,

thousands and thousands of years old, and they have been laying in the forest floor

or marshes or creeks, or just underground, and rather gnarled and twisted and ugly,

and within those pieces there is this extraordinary beauty hidden away. How this

comes about is because it has this very special oil which can be seventy per cent of its

weight, which then protects it from rotting and vermin. So it’s almost an

indestructible material. The boats which our early pioneers have built from Huon

pine are still as good and sound today as on the day when they were put into the

water. Extraordinary. And I never grow tired – in fact, I keep on wondering [at] this

inexhaustible beautify and variety, because if you look around you can see very many

different textures and colours, and the majority of the work is Huon pine.

I encourage people to interact with my work and use all of their senses. Some of

them, like this one out here – maybe one of you girls can move it for me, because I’m

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sort of wound up – and that even makes a sound, which means that people can use

all of their senses. Certainly the touching element is very, very inviting. Thanks,

Kate; just turn it. (high piping sound) There we are. So that’s the one which makes

the sound. Some of them do and some of the ‘Windsong’ series also makes a sound.

And if that’s the case it means people can use all of their senses, because it definitely

has got a very distinct, beautiful perfume emanating from the oil.

So with this in mind, with this interaction, later on perhaps you’ll have a look at the

showcase, where it depicts a blind professor of music in Paris, just totally absorbed

and almost transported into a different world, just beaming with happiness, ecstasy,

and saying that with his fingers he could sense the work and the ‘music of hands’.

And this was a very special and memorable occasion for me: one of the highlights, in

fact, of my career.

But there are very many, really. Closer to home here we had a volunteer in the

office and within the first few minutes of starting to work she managed to find the

photograph depicting the opening of that same Paris exhibition with all the

dignitaries there, amongst them Gough Whitlam. Three days later, if you please,

there was a conference downstairs and Gough Whitlam right in front of me: quite a

sort of uncanny experience and very, very special. Unfortunately, he had to abide by

a very tight schedule so he couldn’t come up, but we had a brief but very special

reunion and chat.

Another side of me, which is quite a major part of my activity, are the stained glass

windows and currently I have sixteen public works as stained glass windows and so I

found that this was an excellent opportunity to introduce myself to people who are

not aware of my activity in that field. Stained glass windows are a very, very

extraordinary medium, inasmuch that wherever they are installed they totally

transform the atmosphere of the place. And of course if you are fortunate enough to

have sunlight filtering through them, they change by the minute, by the hour, by the

day, by the season, so there’s an endless variety of activity. And this one on my left,

the one which is suspended over there – incidentally, all three are designed as

pendants but only one is suspended – well, that one there, in the centre of it, has got

very special glasses which were originally made a hundred years ago and it’s a

commemorative issue now, and with our society being a hundred and fifty years old I

thought it was fitting that I should have that here.

You may wonder why this work is here, ‘Remember the Holocaust’, because really,

initially, it sort of seems out of place. But the reason for that is that I think with the

rather turbulent and difficult times we currently find ourselves in, it’s all too

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necessary to remind people, to make them remember, to make them think; and,

regrettably, quite a lot of people have never, ever heard of the Second World War,

Nazi Germany, Holocaust of the Jewish people. I have experienced it here with some

visitors: they thought that the figures here were Aboriginal people suffering. So

that’s one of the reasons why ‘Remember the Holocaust’ is here; and the other reason

is that it illustrates how one can attain, with an inanimate object like a ....., an

extraordinary sense of power and emotion and feeling and pathos and sadness. So

that is why ‘Remember the Holocaust’ is here.

If anybody is fortunate enough to make an acquisition especially of a carving, it

means that that person has got something that can never be repeated, something that

is unique in the whole world, plus a connection to the ancient past; so therefore that

person will become a custodian of something very, very precious.

Now, we will attempt to answer questions afterwards; and you may not believe this

but it’s absolutely true – I never tell a lie, anyway – but the fact is that this exhibition

will finish on the 28th and on the 2nd June I’m starting my new exhibition at Art

Images with totally, absolutely the latest creations, which has never been seen

anywhere before. So you’re all invited. That will run for three weeks as well.

I must just mention, before closing, that another aspect of my creativity are these

fabulous bronze pieces here, and that creates a totally different dimension and gives

an enormous lot of challenge and pleasure. And again, just feel free to touch them,

whatever. So I think, unless someone’s going to remind me that I should have said

something else – no? Okay – yes, someone is sort of semi-wanting to remind me but

thought better of it, which is sensible: anyway, I think thank you very much for

attention, and I haven’t heard anybody snoring, I believe all of you are awake so

that’s good, and I think we’re going to have question time now. And thank you very

much for coming. (applause)

END OF RECORDING.