Gary Catalano
Because of its gloomy appearance the building is like a defeated army, and the gloom is so heavy it makes handling difficult and postage quite out of the question.
... (read more)Paul Hetherington reviews 'Collected Prose Poems' by Gary Catalano
The poetry community in Australia, as in the United Kingdom, has been slow to accept prose poetry as a legitimate poetic form. Yet there have been celebrated exponents of prose poetry over nearly two centuries – and even longer if the prose component of the Japanese Haibun, developed by Matsuo Bashō (1644–94), is understood as prose poetry.
... (read more)Julian Croft reviews 'Fresh Linen' by Gary Catalano, 'The Hooded Lamp' by Roland Robinson, and 'At Valentines' by Ken Taylor
These three volumes, reprints of books published in the 1970s and 1980s, appear in the Art Box Series by Picaro Press. Reasonably priced, they will give contemporary readers a sense of the seedbed of Australian poetry a few decades ago. These volumes do just that. It would be hard to imagine a ...
... (read more)Gary Catalano was, by profession, a writer about art. But he was also a fine poet with a distinctive style. On no account was he neglected – he appears in most anthologies that ought to include him – but he often seemed to be writing in an entirely different idiom from that of his contemporaries. He was difficult to place and thus, perhaps, difficult to appreciate.
... (read more)Bernard Smith reviews 'The Solitary Watcher: Rick Amor and his art' by Gary Catalano
This is one of the most satisfying and fascinating monographs on an Australian artist that I have read. Only Franz Philipp’s monograph on Arthur Boyd can be compared to it, and for quite other reasons. Catalano, lucidly and meticulously, unravels the complex physical and intellectual life of Rick Amor from the time of his boyhood. He discloses how Amor’s paintings depend on his ability to make his past the vehicle and inspiration of his creative achievements. It is a reflexive art embodying the omnipresent power of a memory touched with a redolent melancholy. His past is revealed as a strange presence that is not to be found in the work, in my experience, of any other Australian artist.
... (read more)
Barbara Giles reviews 'The Most Beautiful World' by Rodney Hall, 'Tide Country' by Vivian Smith, 'Heaven of Rags' by Gary Catalano, and 'Song of the Humpbacked Whales' by Jill Hellyer
The Most Beautiful World is somewhat of a conundrum at first look. I spent a long time trying to penetrate the surface of this latest book of poetry by Rodney Hall. I had just been reading his exciting, original, and well-sustained novel Just Relations, I guess I was looking for the same excitement here. It didn’t arrive on schedule.
... (read more)Mary Eagle reviews 'The Years of Hope: Australian Art and Criticism 1959–1968' by Gary Catalano
Gary Catalano’s book, which I admire greatly, is a readjustment. His standpoint, so far as I can tell, is an ideal he has of what might be the suitable creative situation for artists, and he reviews the 1960s with this in mind.
... (read more)Gary Catalano reviews 'Conrad Martens in Queensland: The Frontier Travels of a Colonial Artist' by J.G. Steele and 'A few Thoughts and Paintings' by Ted Andrew
I don’t quite know what to make of J.G. Steele’s dull, parochial catalogue of sketches and watercolours by Conrad Martens. The ‘frontier travels’ of one of our better colonial artists should, you expect, make interesting copy – especially when the artist in question happened to be prolific and the area of his travels the sparsely settled pastoral area of what is now South-eastern Queensland.
Gary Catalano reviews 'Ian Fairweather: Profile of a painter' by Nourma Abbott-Smith and 'Conversations with Australian Artists' by Geoffrey de Groen
‘To paint’, Ian Fairweather once observed, ‘one must be alone.’ True enough, you think, though hardly deserving of quotation. Down the years all kinds of artists have made the same observation, yet not many of them have been as consistently forthright when essaying the value and aesthetic nature of their lonely activity. Fairweather was an exception. ‘I paint for myself,’ he went on to add, ‘nor do I feel any compulsion to communicate, though naturally I am pleased when it seems I have done so.’
... (read more)