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Arts & Communication Realist art of Kenneth Jack and rural towns

home to go back to (or later to the urban home in an (1985 – 1988) located in Longreach, Queensland) . Jack
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Australian city) and comes with the authority of that home also revered the outback Australian spirit, as he perceived
as support. The colonist brings in an imported culture it, with its apparently admirable perseverance, generosity,
“underscored by the authority of his former home.” friendships, humor, warmth, care, and affection. In his
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Only the settler faces the real challenge of inhabiting an book on his Queensland art, he tells several stories of
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inhospitable land—the settler intends to stay permanently the times he and his wife visited certain towns, and these
and has no choice but to try their best to succeed. Allen revealed and assumed traits of the people are evident in his
states that these personas are ideal types to some extent. stories. One quote about his visit to Cracow, Queensland,
They also reflect movement in European thought in the is as follows:
corresponding period from the Enlightenment’s universal This small gold mining town is situated about
rationalistic norms to awareness of culture and cultural 200 km “as the crow flies” inland and west from
difference. The Aboriginal people appear in art during Bundaberg. It is one of those places I just love to
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times of social anxiety and are presented as a yardstick explore and in fact as one walks all around such
of European-origin people’s inability to become at home a place, making drawings and taking photographs,
in the land. one of course attracts the interest of the local
Allen suggests that the positive impressions of the residents. This place was no exception; the wife of
Australian rural hinterlands, as opposed to the more the Golden Plateau mine manager talked to me
remote outback, in the paintings of the Heidelberg School about my interests as an artist looking for new
(c. 1885 – 1910) helped create a national myth of settler subjects and asked where I came from. In my turn
potency and ruggedness against a hostile landscape. He I asked her about the town and its gold mine. Then
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argues that this myth inspired the Australian war effort in she asked my wife and me if we would like to see
the First World War because it had been internalized by the the mine; we followed in our car up a hill on the
soldier population. Thus, these paintings may have served edge of town to the mine where she introduced us to
an ideological function without this necessarily being her husband. He kindly drove us in his car around
intended by any of the artists. 49 the mine area. Such friendliness seems typical of
Queensland. In my small drawing I tried to show
There was always the idea or ideology in the work of the feeling of space one gets out beyond the deep
the Heidelberg School, prior to its declining years, about shade of the verandah and down the main street. 56
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the heroic nature of the work (labor) of the settler.
Work amounts to a historic struggle against nature and is This quote clearly shows how the creation of art is a
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what gives the settler the right to feel they belong in the social and cooperative activity, as Jack mentions the
land. Hence, this aspect was unique to the Australian assistance and comradeship of not only his wife but also
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impressionists of the Heidelberg School and was absent the local couple (the mine manager and his wife).
from French Impressionism. A classic painting from this Regarding Jack’s traditional realism, we should be
movement is Tom Roberts’ Shearing the Rams (1890). Its aware of Wolff’s statement that “traditional realism is itself
ideological basis is obvious as wool was Australia’s greatest ideological because it presents as fact and as “real” a world
export industry at the time. Australian art scholar Ian Burn which is in fact constructed in a particular discourse.”
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wrote about the Heidelberg School artists mediating “the Jack’s quote can be regarded as part of such a discourse
relation to the bush of most people growing up in Australia. relating to and revolving around his work. Rothenberg
[...] Perhaps no other local imagery is so much a part of writes the following:
an Australian consciousness and ideological make-up”. In Barthes’ view, realist literature (and one could
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th
However, by the end of the 19 century, most European- probably expand this view to realism in other
origin Australians lived in coastal cities and most of the media like film) is also ideological. It claims to
work of clearing the land was completed. Clearing trees describe reality “as it really is.” The language and
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takes on a melancholic glow in artwork after this time literary or visual devices used in realism pretend to
rather than the previous view of it being heroic. 54 have some natural correspondence to reality. 58
Through his artworks, Kenneth Jack wanted to access Jack’s work might be considered more clearly ideological
a remote, rural Australia and tried to capture its allegedly than Drysdale’s if being confronting and unsettling can
unchanging, or slowly changing, essence as an emotional be considered non- or anti-ideological, relative to the
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counterbalance to urban pressures and the depressing realist style, as with Foucault’s idea of decentering the
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nature of modern buildings (although he admired and
painted the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame building 3 The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame, Longreach.

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 5 doi: 10.36922/ac.3481