Indigenous artwork on display at Burwood Library
In January 2019, Art Collection Officer Claire Muir and Curator James Lynch received a number of works which were returned from a storage room at the Lake House restaurant at the Waurn Ponds campus.
Unwrapping one of the works, they were impressed by a large skilfully painted watercolour of the Dandenong Ranges by artist Ronald E Bull from 1978. After some research, they were delighted to learn that Bull was a distinguished Indigenous artist working in Melbourne throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s in the watercolour landscape tradition and was known as the Albert Namatjira of Melbourne. Bull had a particularly difficult life but, despite facing significant adversity, continued his artistic practice right up until his premature death from heart failure in 1979. The artist left the nation with a treasure of over two thousand completed watercolours and paintings.
Unwrapping Ronald E Bull’s Untitled (a view of Dandenong Ranges) 1978. Photo by Claire Muir.
History of the artist
Elliot Ronald Bull was a Gunaikurnai man, the traditional owners of the land and waters of the Gippsland region of Victoria. He was born at the Lake Tyers mission camp in 1942 and was one of 21 children. Ronald was removed from his parents, Albert and Agnes Bull, as an infant and was placed in foster care. He was returned to his parents at Lake Tyers briefly to attend primary school, then at age 12, he was sent to the Tally Ho Boys home at East Burwood, which was run by the Methodist church. This was located just a five-minute drive heading east along the Burwood Highway from the Deakin campus. The boys home is now long gone and is currently the site of a business park, but the memories of Tally Ho remain, infamous ‘for its institutional abuse of young boys in its care’.
Ronald was introduced to art, drawing and painting at the boys home and would go into foster care again as a 15-year-old. Showing great promise as an artist, he pursued his artistic studies informally, training with painter Ernest Buckmaster as an assistant. Bull also wrote letters and frequently visited the studio of Hans Heysen, who he greatly admired. For a short time, he was enrolled at the prestigious National Gallery School under artist John Brack. In the 1960s, he was incarcerated in Pentridge prison a number of times for offences unknown. At Pentridge he painted a significant mural depicting a traditional tribal scene that is still able to be viewed today.
According to Mark Holsworth, Ronald Bull’s first exhibition was held in Morwell in 1965, and throughout the next decade, he exhibited regularly across Melbourne galleries with notable, non-Indigenous artists such as Ernest Vogel and Pro Hart. With regular appearances at the Herald Outdoor Melbourne Art Show and a number of television appearances, Bull was for a time quite a high profile artist and his works were highly sought after. It has been reported that one of his works had sold for as much as £1150.
By the 1980s, Indigenous painting had gone through a revolution with desert and dot style painting becoming internationally recognised and applauded. After his death, the work of Bull had become somewhat out of style and forgotten. As the rich history of Indigenous culture in Victoria is now becoming better understood, Bull’s exceptional contributions can be acknowledged. As Sylvia Kleinert explains in the Australian Dictionary of Biography: ‘he is now considered a significant figure in the regional history of Aboriginal Australia, a parallel in the south-east for Namatjira and a precursor to a later Koori art movement in Melbourne.’
This wonderful painting from the Deakin Collection is now on view in the Burwood Campus library just off the foyer on level 2. A number of new acquisitions by artists such as Peta Clancy, Ngamaru Bidu and Anne Zahalka are also now on display on level 3.
Written by James Lynch, Curator – Art Collection and Galleries. First published in Network.