We met at ACCA in the morning. Some enthusiastic punters beat us to it, and were already milling around in the foyer. They had brought cute-looking picnic baskets and thermoses, and there was an excited feeling of agricultural anticipation. Field Trip!

Note that nice looking French Stick!

Like nerdy highschool students, we piled onto the bus…

Lucas admiring a picnic hamper

I quite like the period of calm which a short bus trip creates. Someone else is in charge of the navigation and the driving, and all you have to do is sit back and drowse, until you arrive.

…unless, of course, you’re on a bus with Ian and Lucas, armed with a funny old microphone furnished by the nice bus driver. In which case, you’re likely to be regaled with stories about Yeomans (and about ourselves) for most of the journey.

Ian and Lucas hoggin' the mike...

This, essentially, was our “artists’ talk” about the Yeomans Project – the sort of thing you usually get when you go to the gallery and the artist stands in front of his/her work and gives you a bunch of extra info which hopefully will help you understand or appreciate it better.

The great thing about rumbling along in a bus while you do this, is that you can have pauses to look out the window, and contemplate the landscape rolling by. These silences seem significant, not awkward.

While we had the mike, we picked on a few folks on the bus to get a bit of a random sample: who were these people, and why were they on this trip? When you organise a Field Trip to a farm, starting from an art gallery, it’s helpful to know these things.

Most of those we spoke to had some sort of affiliation with the art world. But like us, they were interested in agricultural processes – an interest distinct from (even if overlapping with) their interest in art. There were a few who said they had a particular enthusiasm for “social processes as art” – of which our Field Trip was an example – so I suppose for them, the tour itself was an item of study.

There were also some kids who just wanted to see the chickens.

...and some very handsome chickens they were too...

We arrived at Taranaki Farm around noon, and were greeted by the farmers: Ben Falloon, his partner Nina and their daughter Maya.

Ben welcomes us to Taranaki Farm.

Ben began his introductory statements by reminding us why we were visiting Taranaki, and not some other nice-looking Victorian farm: PA Yeomans.

Taranaki Farm has developed, over the last six years, from a conventionally run cattle farm, to a shining example of “regenerative agriculture”“. That is, land which is on its way to better things, rather than running down its biological resources until they are exhausted. Studying and applying Yeomans’ farm design principles is a key method in this shift for Ben and Nina.

We all tramped off for our first paddock walk. It took about forty seconds for my mesh sneakers to sink deep into muddy water, and I definitely wasn’t the only one with impractical footware.

Jumping the puddles in the paddock

Ben walked us up to where his cows were stationed for today. He pointed out an area of land which he was planning to develop according to Yeomans’ Keyline principles. The beginning of this process, he explained, was finding the contour of the land, and making it visible. This can be done with coloured pegs or stakes, or, as in this case, by fencing off along the contour and allowing the cows to graze up to the edge of one side:

The contour is the line between the lighter area and the darker area of grass. ..

This allows him to “see” where the water can be made to flow, along and just below the level of the contour. He can then start to think about how to link this particular water flow line with elements like roads and dams.

The basic principle here, Ben explained, is to keep the rain that falls onto his land, on his land, for as long as possible. Ultimately, that might mean that the rainfall landing on a hilltop could zigzag from dam to dam, following multiple channels, for a long time before it exits the property. In the meantime, it seeps into the soil, and fills up all those storage units – the dams.

I haven’t got a diagram of Taranaki Farm’s water design to show you, but here’s one from Yobarnie (one of Yeomans’ farms on the outskirts of Sydney) which clearly shows a whole bunch of dams situated at crucial points in the undulating landscape, linked by water channels running between them:

Yeomans' farm, "Yobarnie", showing dams and water flow channels

(And here’s an aerial photo of Yobarnie.)

According to Ben, the purpose of all of this is twofold. First, to improve the land itself: to bring extra moisture into the soil, increasing its capacity for growing pasture to feed cows and so on; and second, to build in a sort of water storage “buffer”, so that the land can better take care of itself during periods of drought.

After this explanation we tramped over to look at an actual dam that Ben recently created. It’s a beautiful piece of land engineering:

A new dam on Taranaki Farm

Ben showed us – this time with peg and string lines – where the water flow channels will join this dam to future dams he will make. This is hard to get your head around. As one lady on the Field Trip remarked – sometimes the water flow channels seem, to the naked eye, to travel up hill! But Ben explained that the eye can play all sorts of tricks, and it’s his trusty laser level that he relies on to tell the truth about where the water will really flow.

The charismatic Ben Falloon

There’s a tale about PA Yeomans, that whenever it rained, he would race outside to see how all his dams and channels were working, and from this he would know how they could be improved. It was a constant cyclical process of observation and action. Ben, almost foaming with glee, told us that he is the same. The rain tells the truth about whether his Keyline design plan is working or not.

After a visit to another dam, the crowd was ravenous, and so we sloshed back to the farmstead for our picnic lunch.

Picnickers enjoy the orchard at Taranaki

This was lovely. Though it’d been threatening to rain all day, the sun shone feebly for just long enough for us to spread out our blankets in Taranaki’s ramshackle orchard, and recline for our luncheon au plein air.

The picnic was a good chance for the Field Trippers to get to know each other a bit better, share some snacks, and chat about what they’d seen and heard. For those who knew had hitherto heard little of Yeomans’ Keyline principles, Ben’s rapidfire introduction needed to be calmly digested, so to speak.

Small clusters of picnickers organically composed themselves within the orchard. The whole thing was very bucolic. (But why hadn’t we thought to bring wine?!)

Picnic at Taranaki Farm

And then it was off again, for the second half of the day, to the “bottom paddock”, where some of Ben’s Keyline experiments are a bit more established. We rolled down the hill and crossed a sort of bog, where Ben had constructed a makeshift bridge so our woefully inadequate shoes wouldn’t have to suffer any more indignities.

Crossing the bog, single file...

Crossing this bog – which to a farmer might present itself as an irritating inconvenience – was, to us cityfolk, an adventure in itself. (“Sophisticated” urban dwellers, perhaps, don’t get the chance to wobble and play and risk getting mucky very often.)

...and safely across to the other side...

At the bottom paddock, we got to see an example of Keyline design in action. Ben showed us two dams which were strategically positioned in relation to one another. I’ve tried to label the photo collage below to show how the water flows work.

So, the water comes down the hill on the right hand side of the photo, flows along a road (which has been bulldozed in that position on purpose) and winds up in the big dam on the left hand side. This dam, when full, will overflow and the water will run along a channel to the second dam, on the top right hand side of the photo.

A Keyline Dam System at Taranaki Farm - Click on the image to see it bigger

(if you want to zoom right in massively on that photo, click here)

This system is pretty nifty. It satisfies the intellect – physics and all that. But there’s more. Part of the reason for doing this is that you can predict where water will be a lot of the time, and therefore start to plan the landscape accordingly. For example, you don’t have to wait for the dam to overflow – you can release some of the water whenever you like. In this way, irrigation can happen, and the areas below the channels can begin to support things like intentionally planted forests.

This is exactly what Ben has started to do, just on the other side of the crest from this system. Here you can see the beginning of his mixed forestry plantation:

Ben striding towards Taranaki Farm's Keyline Forest plantation - which you can see growing on the right hand side of the picture

The following photo shows quite well how the forested land drops away below the contour where the road we’re all standing on is situated:

Field Trip group inspecting Taranaki Farm Keyline Forest

Importantly, Ben’s forest is not just for “feel good” purposes. He intends to harvest the timber. Having a forest performs a host of other services too, like providing shelter for the cattle.

Oh the cattle, we haven’t even got onto them yet!

One of Taranaki Farm's handsome cows

Because, besides a bit of timber, the product which sustains this entire enterprise is, of course, beef. And so it’s worth mentioning, before I sign off here, the amazing system of “cell grazing” which ties in with this whole Keyline farming business.

Taranaki employs a version of Joel Salatin’s beef management method.

Essentially, this means keeping the cows in a really tight area (a “cell”), and moving them every day to a new piece of pasture. This way, the cows intensively graze – eating almost everything – including weeds – shit all over it, and move on. The grass has a shock to its system, and starts to regenerate rapidly. By the time the cows come back again, some months later, the grass has fully recovered, and has deeper roots than before.

In an ideal world, a mobile chicken shed (or “eggmobile”) follows behind the cows, pecking at all the bugs in the cow manure, and adding even more diversity to the nutrient mix. (Taranaki’s chicken shed is built, it just doesn’t have wheels yet!)

According to Joel Salatin, this method mimics the traditional movement of animals through land:

Herbivores in nature exhibit three characteristics: mobbing for predator protection, movement daily onto fresh forage and away from yesterday’s droppings, and a diet consisting of forage only – no dead animals, no chicken manure, no grain, and no fermented forage. Our goal is to approximate this template as closely as possible. Our cows eat forage only, a new pasture paddock roughly every day, and stay herded tightly with portable electric fencing. This natural model heals the land, thickens the forage, reduces weeds, stimulates earthworms, reduces pathogens, and increases nutritional qualities in the meat.

Below is an aerial shot of Taranaki Farm, from Nearmaps. You can see the radiating lines coming from the dam in the bottom middle of the picture – these correspond to individual cells used on a rotating basis, day by day. Ben is able to shift one thin electric fence wire each day and the cows cheerfully shift to the next cell for a fresh day’s foraging.

Aerial View of Taranaki Farm showing lines left by cell grazing

Unfortunately, our day had come to an end. We were already running behind time, so we skipped back to the bus to head back to Melbourne.

Tired Field Trippers trudging back up the hill

I had prepared a special CD of (rather crappy but topical) farming songs for our weary Field Trippers to listen to (if anyone wants a copy, let me know), and there was much animated chatting about all we had seen and heard (and, I noticed some drowsing) on the bus.

One last thing, which I have been meaning to draw your attention to – amazingly, Ben, Nina and Maya have been farming at Taranaki for six years. What’s more, they started with Yeomans’ Keyline methods just three years ago.

It’s fantastic to be able to witness this transformation as it happens, with one’s own eyes. And it’s thrilling to be able to feel the land’s undulations, with one’s own legs. Of course, any narrative and photographic account can only be a shadow of the embodied experience we had on our Field Trip.

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Field Trip was organised by Ian Milliss and Lucas Ihlein, facilitated by ACCA. It was presented as part of Yeomans Project, which is featured in the exhibition Power to the People: Contemporary Conceptualism and the Object, curated by Hannah Mathews. Many thanks to Hannah, and to the Falloon family for making time to show us around their world.

Lucas with the first print photo Louise Anderson

But one fact about the original Yeomans Project as envisaged back in 1975 was that it would never have contained prints, or anything else resembling conventional art works. The original proposal was an exploration of the idea that if you regard cultural innovation as the essential characteristic of artists then a lot of people working in areas that would not conventionally be regarded as art media (like farming) could be seen as artists. As a consequence their work should be collected, analysed  and presented in cultural institutions.

But that was 1975 and the art world has passed a lot of water since then. In the ensuing twenty years the cultural institutions expanded in size, wealth and power until, tag teaming with the art market, they seemed to have a complete stranglehold on the entire cultural debate and dissenters like myself had long been kicked aside. Previously the institutions had collected and presented artefacts that had come into existence out in the world, now they incestuously manufactured their own, artists made art for the institutional world alone and the institutions and the art market promoted only the work which supported and promoted their power.

But then, suddenly, everything started to change because the internet came along. What the internet provided was an almost free distribution mechanism that could potentially reach anyone in the world, a far greater reach than any institution. Most important of all, the internet had no gatekeepers and the key to the institution’s power was their usurpation of the role of cultural gate keeping – either you played it their way, limited yourself to the forms and issues they found acceptable, or you were locked out of the game entirely. On the internet, however, suddenly all the barriers to entry were gone. Although there are innumerable people out there who still don’t get it, the reality is that the art world has been stood on its head and increasingly the galleries and institutions position resembles that of big box retailers in an age of online shopping- their audience may drop in occasionally  to get a sense of the physicality of the objects but the really enhanced experience is online where you can get infinitely more information and even view the object more comfortably and in greater detail.

Detail from Holbein's The Ambassadors, National Gallery London

All of that was in our minds as we set about this project. The institution had its priorities and we had ours, how could we both get a reasonable result out of this? The solution to some degree was to use exactly what had been the original criticism of the project back in 1975 – we treated it like a trade show. In other words, we treated it as a form of advertising for something that was happening somewhere else – the sustainable farming movement that has built up around P A Yeomans work – and we produced a range of merchandise for the occasion. Hence the prints.

There are six prints: two by me, two by Lucas and two by Yeomans, so to speak.

The first “Yeomans” print is based on the Google Earth view of Nevallan, the property we visited early in the project. I rotated the image to place the river parallel to the bottom of the frame but other than that it has only been manipulated by printing it as a duotone.

The second and third prints, which I produced, are the interviews Lucas and I did in which we each discussed the development of the project in term of our personal artistic histories. LouiseTheIntern (Louise Anderson) while helping with the printing rather cruelly observed that when I was being interviewed I gave lengthy answers and when I was doing the interviewing I gave lengthy questions so that overall there is much more of me talking than Lucas. Sadly, that is completely true and my only defence is that I talk too much and Lucas is too polite to tell me to shut up. In terms of design, I have spent far too much of my life laying out newspapers and magazines where I had to align every last column. In this case, I didn’t. In fact I ignored almost every conventional print nicety because just for once I could and guess what, it hardly makes any difference to the readability or lack of it. The contours and dam shape are based loosely on illustrations in Yeomans books and have been sprayed over the finished print using stencils in a sort of gentle parody of the artists’ authentic touch – yes folks every single one has been graffitied by me.

The two interviews can be downloaded in their lengthy entirety here (Ian interviewed by Lucas & Lucas interviewed by Ian).

The fourth print is by Lucas but is not a print at all and we don’t even have photo of it although you can see it in the background of the exhibition photo in the previous post. It is in fact the original that will be made into a print because in the rather haphazard tradition of this project Lucas’s partner Lizzie gave birth to a daughter Alberta May only two weeks before the exhibition and just when the print was to be produced, which was a bit of a distraction. It is a diagram illustrating some of the ideas of Stuart Hill, Professor  of Social Ecology at the university of Western Sydney. Stuart has written extensively on Yeomans and has developed many of his ideas in innovative ways. We’ll talk more about his work later.

The next  rather beautiful print is by also Lucas, made by cutting and pasting, word by word, quotes from Yeomans books over one of his keyline contour drawings. It’s my favourite of the prints I think.

The final print is Yeomans again, it’s an enlarged page from the 1970s sales pamphlet for his plows, in this case advertising one of his specialised tynes but very much in the optimistic mode of that era when everything still seemed possible.

It includes an image of an earlier version of the plow we feature in the exhibition and the plow deserves a discussion all of its own.

So there it is our merchandise, our collectibles. We thought of doing some Tshirts because you’ve always gotta have Tshirts, we thought of mugs, then we thought no, stay classy, it’s an art gallery, make it look like art – whatever that is.

The Yeomans Project installation at ACCA photo Andrew Curtis © ACCA

Of course the Yeomans  Project overall consists of this blog which will continue as we put in more of the mountain of research we have accumulated, the work in the Power To The People exhibition and the bus tour to Taranaki Farm on October 8. We’ll talk about the bus tour later but in the exhibition we have a recently manufactured Yeomans Plow, a vitrine of Yeomans publications, signage of Yeomans logos, six prints recently made at Big Fag Press  and the AGNSW Trustees minute book, kindly lent by AGNSW and showing a snippet of the exhibition’s history. Let’s talk about the prints first.

Just look at this early photo of Yobarnie, Yeomans’ first property

and this recent shot from Google Earth.

The figures are that Australia’s population in 1950 when Yobarnie was being developed by Yeomans was around 8.3 million and in 1975 when this project was originally proposed it was around 13.9 million, a 67% increase. Now in 2011 the population is  around 21 million, a 153% increase.

Sydney’s population was 1.7 million in 1950 at which time Yobarnie was well out in the country, now in 20011 when it is over 4.5 million (165% growth) Yobarnie is probably closer to the geographical centre of Sydney than it is to the outer edge which in reality is probably the western escarpment of the Blue mountains near where I live and nearly 150 kilometres from the coast. Much of the land that is being swallowed up in urban sprawl was among the most fertile agricultural land in the country and crucial to food security.

But, as Kirsten asks in her email,:

What was the story with P.A.’s wife? I was thinking about the sons this evening and realised I had no idea about her, or where she intersected with Yeoman’s work, the sons’ take on things, etc…

Good question Kirsten!

Well, when I opened up a copy of the book The Challenge of Landscape, 1958, I discovered that the foreword was in fact written by Rita Yeomans. She begins:

This book of my husband’s is the natural outcome of the results of “The Keyline Plan”, published in 1954.

So there you go! Yeomans’ wife WAS heavily involved in what was going on in the “family business”. This is evidenced by the rest of the foreword. (You can read the whole thing here. Check out the handsome book cover, here).

It’s clear that Rita had a really clear understanding of the importance of the Keyline principles of landscape design:

The interest shown in [P.A.'s] efforts over the last four years has been outstanding, and visitors from all over the world have continued to visit our places.
His Keyline Plan has been admired, condemned, criticised, accepted in part and even pirated in part. Many have tried out sections of his plan on various types of properties and farms, and where faithfully carried out, has yielded results that have been more than satisfactory.

It also seems that Rita had a significant “public relations” role (as we would call it these days). She received visitors to the various Yeomans farms and showed them around, explaining the transformation of run-down, neglected or abused landscapes to good green pastures and water-filled dams. Her interactions with female visitors are particularly insightful:

My experiences [...] have been interesting, sometimes exasperating, and often amusing. There was the woman who arrogantly demanded to be shown through the “Nevallan” home and became quite indignant when politely told it was a private property. A charming old lady in her eighties tramped around the paddocks and her interest and enthusiasm were infectious. Another, a woman doctor, became so keen during a visit that she vowed on her return to the country practice her land-owning patients should receive large doses of Keyline with her course of treatment whenever she visited them. Others arrive for a quick inspection, checking their watches on arrival and allotting perhaps a fifteen minute “stay”. These people usually are on their way from the city to their inland properties and the visit to our place is to be “just a passing look”. They generally remain for hours. One couple had four young children and a long journey ahead of them. They arrived about lunch time, but it was dark before the husband finally agreed to leave. His wife had my sympathy that day.

In her Foreword, a portrait emerges of Rita as – how should I put it? pragmatically loyal – to her man:

On first inspecting Kencarley” [at Orange] as prospective buyers the weather was hot, the country dry, and the area altogether extremely discouraging and uninviting. I looked at its rundown, neglected appearance, heavily covered with scrub and trees, the barren soil, and broken fences – even the house was uninhabitable. My husband said to me, “Well, what do you think of it?” and my answer was, “If it wasn’t for Keyline and tractors I wouldn’t want to touch it.”

Over here, in a book by Allan Yeomans, I found another trace of Rita. She was, it seems, a trustee of The Keyline Research Foundation. Here’s a picture of her (at far left) in August 1955. I’ve copied Allan’s full caption for the photo beneath, as it describes many of the things Rita did, and shows the illustrious Keyline team, in which she was an accepted full member:

The Ten Trustees of the Keyline Research Foundation taken at the second meeting of Trustees, August 1955.
From left to right: Mrs. Rita Yeomans (my mother), who entertained, advised and catered for often up to one hundred unexpected visitors at the Nevallan farm – almost every week. In addition she was involved with the Flying Doctor Service, the English Speaking Union and the Country Women’s Association. She also managed the Brahman stud operation on the farm. Mrs. Anthony Horden, Jnr., managed her own Southdown stud at Culcain (N.S.W.) Anthony Hordern Jnr, President of the N.S.W. Sheepbreeders’ Association. A grazier running Merino and Romney Mash stud sheep, and also a beef cattle breeder. Professor J.R A McMillian, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Sydney. C.R. McKerehan, President of the Rural Bank of New South Wales. P.A. Yeomans (my father), President of the Keyline Foundation, Grazier, Mining Engineer, Originator of Keyline Plan, author of several books on agriculture. Professor Sir C. Stanton Hicks, Professor of Human Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Adelaide, Scienti?c Food Consultant to the Australian Army and founded the Australian Army Catering Corps during World War II. David R McCaughey, (Sir) Chairman N.S.W. Elder Smith Goldsborough Mort, grazier of Borambola Park Beef Shorthorn stud, Wagga (N.S.W.). John Darling, Chairman and Managing Director of Darling and Co.Ltd (?our milling and stock-food ?rm). He was also director of various companies including British Petroleum Co. of Australia, Alcoa of Australia, Perpetual Trustees Australia, Consolidated Metals, and Commonwealth Mining Investments. Harold N. Sarina, Organizing Secretary Keyline Research Foundation. (former long term secretary of the Sydney Royal Agricultural Society, (R.A.S.) where he was Executive Of?cer and Registrar from 1933 to 1955. He was also an agriculture and livestock consultant. And G.B.S. Falkiner (not shown), of Haddon Rig Merino Stud, Warren (N.S.W.), Vice President of N.S.W. Sheepbreeder’s Association, chairman of the Industrial Committee of the Nuclear Foundation and a member of the Council of the N.S.W. Bush Nursing Association.

Here she is, blown up a bit:

There is a less cheerful ending to this story, I’m afraid. According to this account, Allan Yeomans says that after writing the Foreword to The Challenge of Landscape, his mother lived for only another six years:

Rita Yeomans died 1964 and the two original Keyline properties at North Richmond N.S.W. were sold to pay death duties.*

… and later on, Yeomans had another family:

P. A. Yeomans married Jane Radek in 1966 and they had two daughters, Julie and Wendy.

I’ve not seen mention of Jane, Julie and Wendy elsewhere (which doesn’t mean there’s nothing out there – I’m no expert and haven’t seen all of Yeomans’ books yet…)

Anyway, at least this meagre piece of research goes a little way to answering Kirsten’s question about Yeomans’ wife/wives. It’s an important question to have asked, because this farming business can seem to be very much dominated by male forces (especially when big handsome pieces of earth-shaping machinery are in question).

I hope more on Rita and Jane comes to light for us, while we continue to explore the world of Yeomans.

- – -
*[I have to say, I don't know enough about taxation law to properly understand this. Two pieces of land had to be sold, just because Rita died?? That seems a bit unfair. There's what looks like a good essay here about death duties (and their 1978 abolition) here, for anyone who might make better sense of them than I...]

But seeing Donald reminded me that he also had ideas that were torpedoed by the cultural gatekeepers that now look increasingly prescient. Take a look at this project that failed to get funding.

I finally heard of one about a year back from Diego Bonetto via Lucas, the incredible Italian artist Gianfranco Baruchello and his small farm outside Rome, ‘Agricola Cornelia’, which he assembled in the 1970s by buying back, one by one, the small plots of a fairly unsuccessful real estate development subdivision.

I suppose the cancellation of the exhibition was the clear omen that redefining who was an artist and what activities were legitimate forms for generating cultural change was not going to happen here any time soon, in fact probably not until it had already been done many times in Europe or the US for a few decades. As I always say, Australians don’t really like art but they like stuff that looks like art and what I mean is that if something is a genuine example of “memetic innovation” as Donald Brook says, then it is going to be different, probably a bit threatening to the existing order and certainly not necessarily easy to come to grips with.

And despite claims to the contrary, the Australian art world doesn’t really like anything that is actually different in underlying thought, they just like the window dressing to change regularly because that’s all part of business as usual. Today I saw a quote by Cocteau making a similar point:

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

If an artwork instantly looks like the most brilliant work of its time that will be because it conforms to an already well digested meme and will probably be completely forgotten in a few decades – but not before a lot of mug punters have been fleeced. There are a whole range of human cognitive biases that come into play in the art world that then get dressed up as “connisseurship” or “having a good eye” – things like the bandwagon effect, the mere exposure effect, status quo bias, availability cascade – and none of them are helpful in terms of understanding cultural innovation. But since I find cognitive bias the most interesting subject imaginable I’ll back off immediately before I get completely diverted.

photo by Sacha Fernandez under Creative Commons Licence

But faced with ponderous bureaucratic might of  the AGNSW I must confess I didn’t expect to find anything much on our trip. I thought the archives might have, say, a list of proposals and then a later list without the Yeomans show. But it turned out there are several mentions, two of which are fairly detailed. That is  probably because of one of the first things you notice reading through the minutes, the fact that the Trustees in the mid 1970s were incredibly intrusive and overbearing to a degree that these days would  earn them a fail in any Institute of Management corporate governance course.

It is now taken as standard practice that boards are there to give an organisation direction, to inform policy and also to help generate necessary linkages to the wider world, particularly in the case of art institutions for fund raising. They aren’t there to dictate which exhibitions will be programmed, how the exhibitions will be managed or to vet every phone call a curator makes yet back in the 1970s that seems to be what they were doing. No wonder that a number of key staff took off to the NGA and NGV in the mid 70s including all the people involved in my proposed exhibition – Daniel Thomas, Francis McCarthy (now Frances Lindsay) and Rob Lindsay.

But as Lucas points out, it wasn’t simply my exhibition, it was presented as PA Yeomans’ exhibition with myself and Frances as the organisers. This was of course always the point, he had produced everything that was to be in the exhibition, it was just that by putting it in the AGNSW we were raising issues about cultural innovation and cultural change – that if you defined artists as the producers of cultural change then in fact they weren’t necessarily, or even commonly, going to be found in the art world. We were arguing that it was the role of art museums to cast a wider net both in terms of how they defined art and culture and who they exhibited.

It was also interesting that the backing for the exhibition went to the top. The minutes mention specifically that the director and deputy director argued strongly for the exhibition, as if they had insisted that it be noted.  The incredible thing about that is that in preceding years I had waged a very public campaign against the director, Peter Laverty, an artist and former head of East Sydney Tech, accusing him of being a timid and unimaginative bureaucrat who was not up to the job. I had such an effect that I was summoned by George Freudenstein, the Minister for Cultural Activities, to a lengthy meeting in his office to explain exactly what my complaints were. Laverty has certainly been overshadowed in public memory by his successor, the flamboyant Edmund “Fast Eddie” Capon, but it seems I owe him and his deputy director Gil Docking an apology in this case. If you ever see this Peter accept my genuine thanks even if it is thirty six years late.

The other interesting thing in the minutes, well actually there were a lot of interesting things if you understood the implications of what you were reading, was another exhibition proposal that didn’t get up. It was by Terry Smith and Ian Burn, to set up a room at AGNSW with a telex (them were the days, high tech communication at the cutting edge) direct to them in New York where they would discuss regionalism on line with all comers. I hope I misunderstood this, since they were both my friends, but sadly there seemed to be not the faintest hint of irony involved. If you read this Terry, please explain?

An amusing story has it that Ian Milliss met his now-wife, Wendy, because she was a keen art historian rummaging through the archives at Sydney University’s Power Institute. Wendy was researching the legacy of conceptual art in Australia, and found a few traces of this rather elusive character, who seemed to have disappeared from the art scene in the mid 1970s. Wendy somehow found some contact details for Ian, and went to visit him, digging through his piles of paperwork for a more detailed version of his role in (and out of) the Australian art world.

Besides the very narratable fact that all this librarianship led to romance, one of the things that tickles Ian the most is that a whole lot of his dishevelled paperwork ended up in carefully coded white cardboard folders, like the one pictured above.

I’m working my way through this, the “IM 1975/Yeomans” folder (aka Pr198.436-444) right now. As to what that complex code could mean, I have no idea, but it does seem to lend some authority to the scraps of paper, carefully wrapped in glassine, inside. (Ian has referred to some of these scraps in a previous post).

For the moment, I just want to draw attention to this one letter addressed to “Mr Melliss”, from Jeff Moss, the Managing Director of Random Writers. It is unclear as to what kind of arrangement Mr Moss might have had with Mr Melliss.

Our only clue: “I will be very interested to discuss the Yeomans project with you but will not be in Sydney from Thursday, September 18 to Sunday, October 12, inclusive. My wife and I are taking a trip to Malaysia”.

Who was this Jeff Moss? (The use of the word “inclusive” in the letter suggests he must have had a secretary to help him “put pen to paper” with his typewriter.)

Anyway, the answer surely is not hard to find. Up in Wallewerang, on t’other side of the Blue Mountains, sits Mr Melliss himself. I’m hoping my posting of the letter here will prompt him to reveal all.

If, that is, he can recall! (If not, perhaps Wendy can jog his memory).

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[ps - you can read Wendy Carlson's essay about Ian, entitled the invisible artist, here.]

A lot of Yeomans’ criticisms of city design are based around the idea that we’ve lost our ability to “see” the landscape. (I’m still exploring ideas from his book The City Forest, 1971…)

His argument is that a farmer living on an acreage for some time (if s/he is that way inclined) can get to know it intimately: the topography of the land, the different minerals, soil-types, and micro-climates which prevail within the property boundaries. This knowledge of the land (the ability to see it properly) comes from a lot of time spent living and working on it.

In cities, by contrast, the density of buildings often distracts from our capacity to read the rise and fall of the land. We are tempted to see vast areas of space as largely undifferentiated, even thought they do still consist of ridges and valleys which determine water flows. The much smaller parcelling up of land boundaries contributes to this problem – it’s that much harder to see “the bigger picture”.

Besides which, no individual (or team) is ever given the jurisdiction over the design of the bigger picture:

The professions have produced many masterpieces of design within the environment, but for the landscapes of town and country, which should have been planned to last indefinitely, there is no logical basis of design. The best of cities appear to be Topsy planned – they just grew and grew out of a series of accidents into the malignancies they are now.

(Note Yeoman’s use of the words “planned to last indefinitely”. These days, the term “sustainable” would surely be used to signify the same thing.)

Much of Yeomans’ teachings, then, are an attempt to get us to “read” landscape topography, as this will aid in our development of more intelligent urban/rural designs.

I have to say I agree with him about the difficulty in reading urban land. When Ian and I visited the Nevallan property, I could see (or least I imagined I could see) the contours of the land. (This perception was, of course, assisted by the inscribed lines in the landscape formed by strips of trees, and the judicious placement of dams.)

But in the city, it’s much harder to see this topography. Take downtown Sydney, for instance. The only reason I know that there are ridges and valleys in Sydney is because, when I ride my bike through town, I feel gravitational resistance. But apart from that, my perception of the city horizon is muddled by tall buildings, and water flows are sequestered underground through drainage. The natural undulations of the land have been experienced by urban designers as an inconvenience to be tolerated or flattened, rather than as a potential asset.

I reckon it’s reasonable to suggest that Yeomans’ work here — attempting to educate the public (and professionals) in techniques of perception — is a good example of what we’re trying to call “art”.

He uses his skill and experience to push us to see the world with fresh eyes; his work grants us an improved intimacy with our immediate environment; it expands our horizons of understanding. It’s a kind of landscape-literacy.