Bringing the colours and textures of remote WA to the city

Virginia Ward’s boots scuff the red earth, and from her extensive journeys to remote places all over WA comes her new exhibition All The Litter Things.

The artworks are textural designs on timber forms — the dust, earth, and mud of the Great Victoria Desert, the Kimberley, and Pilbara, brought to the Art Collective gallery behind St George’s Cathedral in Perth.

Pindan Earth brings home the red of all sorts of remote desert spots in the interior of Western Australia.

Small amounts of resin come from marble gum trees, where it has oozed and set and cracked off, ruby-red and shiny, deep in our inland.

Some of the pigment was bought from an art centre in the Kimberley (which is particularly relevant to this story, as you will see).

And there are leaf motifs of WA’s rare flora, particularly the huge, statement crescents of eucalyptus brandiana, named for Grady Brand (which, again, is a big part of this story, as you will see).

Virginia has been a working career artist and sculptor for more than 40 years. She was the second West Australian artist to be invited to exhibit in the Sydney Biennale (after Carol Rudyard) and has worked in the WA Art Gallery and Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery collections, and Kerry Stokes’ private collection. Born and raised in WA, she got her Masters degree at the Victorian College of the Arts, was an art lecturer at Curtin University, worked in London and New York — and is in her studio in Mosman Park every day, making.

Virginia is also my wife. There, I have declared my interest. And that is particularly relevant, too, in that the materials used in her new collection come from our journeys together all over WA. They are the result of me strapping on three spare wheels, loading tools, 140 litres of water, and having 1400km worth of fuel on board. They are the result of Virginia catering for a couple of weeks in the desert without a fridge, old-style.

Virginia is from a family used to that. Her father, Hector Ward, was a State geologist at a time when the bitumen stopped just outside what was then a much smaller and quieter city of Perth.

He met Jesse, Virginia’s mother when she was the matron of the Aboriginal maternity hospital in Darwin.

When Virginia was young, Jesse would set out in her pink Peugeot to meet Hector, travelling along tracks, with Virginia holding her goldfish bowl on her lap. Going bush, and doing it in the simplest way, is part of Virginia’s history. It’s in her DNA.

So often, in our standard diesel Series 80 Toyota LandCruiser, we have travelled as light as we can (and always trailer-less), alongside Grady Brand and Lesley Hammersley, in their diesel Toyota HiLux. After more than 40 years with Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Grady is now working on his community gardening projects in Fremantle with Lesley, who was a department director at Kings Park.

Grady led the wildflower festival for many years, and Kings Park won many major awards under his guidance, it’s no wonder Dr Stephen Hopper, a former director of Kings Park, named eucalyptus brandiana after him.

It leaves brand many of Virginia’s new pieces. All her career, Virginia has used discarded material in her work. (I met Virginia when I was living alone with my dog, Lasseter, and it’s a joke among my friends that her committing to working with discards is fitting, though apparently I’m still a work in progress.)

The offcuts of the stringed musical instruments Margaret River luthier Scott Wise makes are also used as stencils, and the bases of the current collection are the wooden discards from the Arteil chair factory in O’Connor.

Virginia collects offcuts and discarded pieces, and gives them this new life. A life of beauty. Leaves are used as stencils, and textured colour is applied. They are reborn.

Some come from the Gibb River Road, just outside Derby — a stone’s throw from where I met Virginia in 1997.

She and Indigenous artists Jimmy Pike and Mervyn Street were representing Australia at the first WA International Artists Workshop, at Birdwood Downs Station. Other artists came from the UK and Botswana, Thailand, and Indonesia, to join the total of 15 artists working intensively for two weeks on the station.

I was editor of The West Magazine and went there to write about the workshop. I have just dug out that story from the archives, and re-read it…

“ ‘We are from very different cultures, but there are a lot of similarities between us,’ explains Virginia Ward, who left home town Perth to work in Melbourne, London, and New York before returning. ‘We are all trying to discover our cultural roots and crossing boundaries. There are artists from different cultures, and yet there is a similar approach in the way the work is made. The use of materials.’ ”

Virginia is still true in her thoughts approach and ethics.

Her work is still tangible and handmade.

It is still about “boots on the ground”. Feet on the earth.

It is still about salvage and salvation. And I should know.

fact file

+ Art Collective’s gallery is in Cathedral Square, facing the lawns, between Hay Street and St George’s Terrace in the centre of Perth. It is open from 11am-4pm, Wednesday-Friday, and from noon-4pm on Saturdays.

+ Virginia Ward, All The Litter Things is open from March 9-April 13. Drawing on concepts of recycling, rebirth, and regeneration, Virginia’s new exhibition features artworks made from salvaged wooden offcuts, as well as earth, resin, and sand collected from various parts of WA.

+ It is fitting that Virginia is exhibiting alongside WA artist Jo Darbyshire. Her new series of paintings, Mirage, is inspired by reconnecting with her childhood home in Lake Grace. Mirage is on the same dates, from March 9-April 13, in the same space. The works explore the power of painting to create and invite the viewer into liminal, imaginative spaces.

+ Art Collective WA is a not-for-profit organisation that highlights the work of leading West Australian contemporary artists through a program of exhibitions, events and publishing.