Artist Sheila Newman will be the artist-in-residence at Oak Hill Gallery in Mornington from Wednesday, July 31st to Tuesday, August 6th, 2024. This timely residency comes as the Victorian government prepares to impose significant population growth and high-rise development in the fragile and biodiverse region. Newman's exhibition will feature striking portraits of former M.P. Barry Jones, created during her participation in his landmark 1994 inquiry into Australia's population carrying capacity. That inquiry received a record-breaking 90% of submissions opposing radical population increases - a report that was scandalously never tabled in Parliament.
Newman's Jones-paintings powerfully reflect the urgent relevance of Jones' population inquiry findings, as Frankston grapples with state-mandated density and high-rise development. Like the rest of Australia, residents have been prevented by a complicit press and government from meaningfully commenting on the driving population growth rationale behind the proposed planning changes.
"The stated purpose of proposed Planning Scheme Amendment C160fran is to 'assist in accommodating anticipated population growth in Victoria.' Despite this clearly stated objective, residents of Frankston have been explicitly prevented from commenting on this population-growth rationale. Our comments, input, and objections, have been framed only to comment on how an aggressive plan to accommodate this coercive growth might be slightly tweaked at the edges to pander to an illusion of some vestigial self-determination. These population engineering and land-use intensification programs are on such a scale that they will transform our lives and drastically reduce our self-determination and living space. This is being imposed via amendments to the Victorian Planning and Environment Act 1987 introduced from 2018. The result is increasing demand on land and driving up prices."
Newman says,
"Our governments have got us into such a pickle that they just talk about the growing homelessness in the growing population and the need to accommodate more people and charge everyone more for water and power. The government is running a shameful con-job, when you consider that Australia's population growth, without migration, is about 0.5%, but, with migration, it was 2.5% in March this year. We are on course for a population of 150m within the lifetime of a child living today."
The paintings depict a dystopian landscape of dense, dark towers that have drained a riverbed, set aga
inst a vast, dry, crimson desert. Blending into the crimson are kangaroos, dingos, and a humpy, which were taken from sketches made by Ludwig Becker, the artist who died early in the doomed Burke and Wills expedition that sought non-existent permanent rivers inland.
"The planners still haven't learned from Burke and Wills," says Newman. "They have built new suburbs all over the food-growing areas with reliable rainfall and good fertility - like Packenham and Cranbourne. It is as if our planners think that people live in a vacuum. If I hear the word 'vibrancy' again, I think I'll scream."
Newman's artworks and commentary provide a thought-provoking counterpoint to the government's population growth and development agenda. As Sheila states, "These population engineering and land-use intensification programs are on such a scale that they will transform our lives and drastically reduce our self-determination and living space. They will destroy wildlife habitat."
"The developers want to build towers on the edge of a tiny seaside creek, blocking everyone else's view, so that no-one can build in front of them. I imagine people sitting on their balconies and staring far out to an abstract sea, oblivious as nature dies below them. There are currently 49 houses along the sea-side of Kananook Creek along Gould Street, in a still-rustic lifestyle of quirky individual yards backing onto the water, little jetties, canoes and boats rubbing against them, and ducks, herons, kookaburras and cormorants plying their trade along the creek. Evenings are beautiful with trees backlit and the water glistening, natural perfumes, and the pleasant chatter of birds. People walk there in a relaxed and safe fashion. I always try to recognise Frankston artist Rick Amor's 'Aunt's House.' This was a haven for artists in the past. If this is not history and worth preserving, I don't know what is. Why would anyone - except a developer - want to destroy something so rare and pleasant for 'edgy and vibrant concrete towers?"
Sheila Newman is an artist, cartoonist, sociologist, and writer and editor of several books and articles on democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy.
She says that painting Barry Jones was like trying to capture a windmill in a high wind.
"Even at his desk, his arms were constantly changing position, wrapping and unwrapping around the back of his head, or round his chest, or dramatically flung about. His face never stopped moving and he talked to everyone in his office as I was trying to sketch him. So, that is the reason for the unusual postures in the two portraits you see. And I couldn't decide which position to focus on, so I finished up doing two."
The exhibition also includes numerous small portraits and landscapes. Sheila Newman will be present at Oak Hill Gallery most days of her residency. She encourages people to visit Oak Hill Gallery if they have not been there before.
"There is probably no other place like it. It is an art hub run entirely voluntarily by its members, most of whom are artists themselves. Apart from the micro-residencies, there is a new exhibition at the beginning of every month. The last one was "Pet Project," and the upcoming one will be, "Birds, Bees and Botanical." Local artists really enjoy the challenge of producing a new painting for the monthly exhibitions and visitors love the variety and change."
If you would like to know more, go to https://www.facebook.com/OakHillGallery or https://www.oakhillgallery.com/
Oak Hill Gallery's artist residency program is sponsored by Woodard's Real Estate, which runs a charitable foundation that supports initiatives for the homeless.
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