Present Tense: Anna Schwartz Gallery and Thirty-Five Years of Contemporary Australian Art
Doug Hall
‘Present Tense’ is a record of the journey and contribution Anna Schwartz has made with several contemporary Australian art galleries and her unwavering advocacy for artists and ideas. It is not only a recollection of events but also the active element by which 35 years of artistic alchemy is enacted – the relationships one forms. The book communicates an oeuvre of personal and professional creativity, perhaps these are inextricable, through historical vignettes, interviews, photographs and artworks traversing key figures in Australian art and culture, at home and as they take international stage
The book opens with a rich family history, imparting how Schwartz’s personal and family’s ideological compass and experience of Modernism in Australia foregrounded bold experimentation in the arts. As Schwartz shares, ‘A defining moment [for me] was the installation in the side room at City Gallery of a pail of potatoes, a work by John Nixon signifying labour and the earth. Defending this work to the local sceptics was formative in the representation of an artistic practice I considered to be salient.’ Author, Doug Hall describes her as ‘an important catalyst in Melbourne’s cultural life’, noting her ‘intellectual altruism’. Schwartz’s story parallels and is at points intertwined with the advent of a more socially and culturally progressive Australia.
