How lucky was I? The academic and author, Simon Pierse was in Australia briefly and invited me to share a floor talk with him. He spoke about the Australian art and artists in London, 1950-1965: an Antipodean Summer (his newly published book), and I spoke about Alannah Coleman. We were both lucky as Traudi Allen (academic and author as well), introduced as in such a thoughful way. It was related to a very interesting exhibition curated by Kendrah Morgan (Heide curator) of Albert Tucker's expatriate paintings. If you haven't seen this then do so I insist.
For me it was interesting to trawl through some of my archives to discover things I didn't know, or had long forgotten about Alannah Coleman and Albert Tucker's connections.Simon Pierse and I had a good old time swapping photocopies of stuff about Tucker, almost as exciting as swapping cards when I was a kid. I'll get to this later on in this blogging business - the photocopies not the card swapping.
Incidently, I grew up only about a mile away (there you are I'm giving away my age with this 'miles' reference). John Reed was a shopper in the Heidelberg village and I sometimes saw him, neat and dapper with his shopping basket over his arm. The local shop keepers had a high regard for his custom, and one would run quickly to another saying "Mr Reed is on his way". Later on when Heidi II finally opened as a gallery I would walk over the river, take a short cut through the river parklands and over style into the back of Heide. It was much more rural then, lots of horse and cow paddocks, and the gardens far less manicured. Maudie Palmer (the first director) was friendly and relaxed, and it still felt very much like the Reed's had just walked out and if one looked in the kitchen the teapot might still be warm. Very different now, and the changes, necessary as I am sure they have been, have lost some of that special quality that Heidi II once had.
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