P

But just going back now, I’ve just turned the recorder on now , because I think what we might do is record this memory and then I can type it up. You were telling me a story about Alfred Steiglitz in New York – his Gallery 291 – and your thoughts about this early gallery known for its photography – and how looking at these photographs of yours of the Observatory Gallery in Little Roma Street in 1986 and some of the photos of the Institute of Modern Art including artists engaged in the 1980’s artist-run scene prompted this memory somehow?

R

Hm, well I do hope I’ve got the facts right. But I believe [Laughs] it was Gallery 291 in New York, Steigletz, and it was a picture in a book illustrating this. And it was quite a surprise to me because from what I’d been reading I did not realise that it was a house and not a proper formal gallery. But I’d always imagined Steigletz [Laughs] doing this with a fully set up gallery. I did not realise it was being shown in a domestic situation. So I think it’s very important, you know, photograph, pictures as they’re seen in an environment. I’m not sure if you’ve ever done it or gone to another venue for the same exhibition and found it’s been quite different. And so it’s all part of the overall impression.

P

So the Steigletz 291, it’s interesting you’re saying, for a long while there was this sort of myth of the big and schmick Gallery 291 being a part of this big transition of contemporary art into photography – and into the canon of modern art in New York and the idea, for you at least,  an artist who has worked with photography for 50 years this year, was an early photo gallery which you felt was quite ornate and posh and well appointed…

R

Oh, well funded. [Laughs] Yeah.

P

[Laughs] So was it an exhibition… The point that I missed was when you said either you went to see an exhibition or you read a book, I just missed the point you made about how you realised that it  291 wasn’t this big spacious well-appointed gallery it was in fact simply a small apartment.

R

Oh reading, looking in the book it was quite obvious that it was the wall of a house, yeah. There was a bit more, you could sort of see a door and… oh I can’t even remember what it was. But it was very much a domestic situation. When I say domestic, I mean there might not have been anyone living there, but it was domestic scale.

P

And what did you like about seeing that image then, it has made on impact on you and your take on architectural spaces, over time by the sounds?

R

Oh it was the dawn sheer lights, basically. I mean I don’t have to like pictures when I look at them. I try to make a thing about not liking a particularism because if you’re a brute man you can’t appreciate anything that’s romantic, can you?

So I try to keep a very open mind about every show that goes through the IMA, for instance, I try to judge it by its own values not by superimposed values. So I try to keep my emotions out of it. I’m not sure how successful I am with the photographs, but I try to be very, very objective and not, you know, telling people what I think.

I like them to make up their own minds. This is as it was. And that means taking the photograph at standing eye height; not laying in the gutter to do it, to make it more dramatic, and not trying to compensate for things like fire hydrants or electric wires. I try to avoid them but I don’t, when they’re mixed up with something I don’t get rid of them.

P

So you feature them, you don’t hide them?

R

Well, you can feature them, you can really make a thing of them. And occasionally I will do that where I feel that they are in fact excessive, but normally I just think that they are part of a scene, and to be honest about this picture these irritants should be… And of course just recently looking at the first IMA, the floor, there’s all this knotty pine, with an incredibly strong visual message which competed with every show that went through the place, you know? And excessively, I felt. Occasionally, you know, well you can lift the frame of a picture up so you don’t have a floor in it, but sometimes it’s just inescapable that the floor is in fact competing with the picture.

P

Well the IMA when it was located in Market Street, 1975-1982, you know, historically, it was a market area in old Brisbane city.

R

That’s right. I was trying to work out what they were, there was a little basement-y thingy which I never went into. The general feeling was it was bad for your health down there.

P

Oh yeah, so under the stairs? Yeah.

R

Yeah. Which gallery…?

P

Market Street.

R

You were at Market Street?

P

Oh no, Market Street I visited when I was in high school. I worked at the IMA later on when it was located in Edwards Street, 1984 – 1988.

R

In Edward…

P

Was it 105 Edward Street? I’m just trying to remember. I think it was 109.

R

I’m not sure. Yeah something like that.

P

But I did go there when John Buckley was Director, when I was in high school to Market Street and Was it Andrew Arnatopolis? Who was the artist who did the market type installation of big boxes of crates?

R

Yeah, well Andrew did one of crates which were for transporting the Elgin marbles back to Greece, but that was in the first Fortitude Valley gallery. The one facing the Storey Bridge, it was in that, when Michael Snelling was running the place.

P

Yeah. I’m just trying to get the time right, because that’s a bit before my time. So I started going there about 78, 79, Market Street. Now, when it moved from Market Street to the Edwards Street 109, I’m blurry on that, but was that 81?

R

Well I don’t know, I just can inspect my negatives.

P

Yeah, anyway doesn’t matter. But I did see that one with the Elgin marbles, which was in, I think it was in Market Street.

R

Well there was the Boscott Riggs one.

P

Hilary Boscott Riggs and Martin Boscott.

R

They had a warehouse-y thing of wheat sacks in a sort of a warehouse environment idea.

P

And were there pallets?

R

Oh probably yeah.

P

Yeah. Anyway that’s just an interesting aside, but what I will pick up on is when we were looking at these proof sheets The Observatory Gallery, The IMA and Bureau which are part of artist-run heritage, which we were talking, what struck me about seeing these images was the way you’ve captured the Observatory Gallery space itself. And here we’ve got you know, this sort of stairwell on the right, you know the wall where there’s Jay Younger’s images, her political poster series, which were questioning visual arts craft board policy, arts policy at the time, the old windows with the light coming through on the floor, and the ceiling. You know, you’ve adopted an almost Albertian perspective, in a sense.

R

That’s the architect in me in that I do like geometry of a building. And I tend to like single point perspectives but without the vanishing point in the centre. It has to be the one side or the other, if you can understand that. And you can’t do that with an ordinary camera, you can only do it with a 5 4 camera.

P

And the other thing I’ve loved about your work for years is there’s a sort of, you know, there’s also a quality of asymmetry. There’s an interesting tension between asymmetry and symmetry. Now is that an intentional..?

R

Oh yeah, very much. It fascinates me, that sort of thing… And it’s, you know, it’s pure architecture, it’s the geometry of viewing things. And in fact it’s why architecture is made on drawing boards which are flat surfaces, and then they’re all, four of these elevations are stuck together and you’ve got a room. [Laughs] And also I think from the point of view of just the artwork itself; if you take it from a more or less frontal view it is more truthful about what it is. If you take it from an angle, you don’t want to get too oblique otherwise it finishes up looking like, not an anagram, what is it? Oh Mike Parr’s keen on them…

P

Anamorphic distortion.

R

Anamorphic, yeah. Anamorphic distortion. I love that too, actually,  but that’s something else.

P

Yeah sorry, I mean this is just bringing back so many memories, looking at these, these Observatory negatives. Do these conjure any memories for you about being in that space? Not just taking photographs but…

R

Yeah, I thought the whole building was rather tacky and the suffering from lack of maintenance probably exacerbated it. And yeah, I mean I do value old buildings, that’s another reason why I started doing it, taking photographs of buildings; because I did not like seeing quality buildings being demolished and replaced with inferior buildings. And so a lot of the old material that I could see, I could recognise was going to be knocked over, and if any of it was good I’d try to just get a record of it. But that’s outside you know, IMA stuff.

But the demolitions of Redcomb, you just looked at the concrete and how massive it all was and you realised that storing grain and agricultural stuff, it’s very weighty. It’s probably got the same floor loading, or bigger, than a library has. You know it’s like a book you could consider as a solid piece of wood, and when you think of that in all the shelves in the libraries, when the bookcase falls on you can suffer, fate. Although apparently that’s false, he didn’t do it… [Laughs] anyway. Yeah so that’s, just looking at the reinforcing, that was steel reinforcing and the column and so forth, you just realise how sturdy it would be. If they were gonna drop the bomb on Brisbane you probably would have been good, in the best place to be there.

P

Redcomb House. Uh kay now we’re looking at proof sheet of Redcomb House demolition 29^th of September in 1984. Do you remember that day?

R

Oh common knowledge. Oh it was being demolished and it would have taken two or three months to demolish that thing it was so massive. I mean there were silos and everything to come down. In fact the pictures of the Observatory, I think it’s a different building to the ones I’ve been photographing for the demolition. It’s a timber building. Oh not timber but timber partitioning and things like that.

P

Yeah that was in Little Roma Street. Cause that went down in 86, that was demolished in April 86. So that was two years after, yeah. But around the same time, I mean historically, yeah. But it’s interesting, going back to the Observatory photos, what I’d forgotten was that, see these windows that were facing onto Little Roma Street, I remember that I used to think it was quite similar to the IMA building with those windows at one end in Edwards Street. There was a bit of a similarity there. different space, but those windows. I remember at the time thinking, ‘Oh, it’s a bit like the IMA.’ And see here the stairwell that enters off Little Roma Street, these are Lindy Collins’ Buddhist prayer flags, she did a work called, ‘Brisbane’s Heritage Massacre,’ which is what these are. And then we were just taking about the light, how the doorway, there’s quite a lot of light on the flags. There was a bit of kerfuffle about the flags because according to Lindy they were supposed to be a public art work outdoors, hung over Little Roma Street, and they weren’t allowed to do that. So they were hung in the doorway and stairwell.

R

Oh you can be revolutionary, you’re not allowed to, you know, be noticed, that’s all.

P

[Laughs]

R

Well it really did feel to me like a voice crying into the wilderness when I was at that show. That alright, you can have a protest just so long as it didn’t stop the building from being knocked over. I think we have that attitude right through. Dick Smith spoke out about it yesterday, good on him. Did you hear what he said?

P

No, but I did see on the news about the Dick Smith, the liquidation…

R

About Woolworths?

P

No what did he say?

R

About, you know, the collapse of it. He said it was pure greed, pure greed that caused it to happen, which we all know.

P

Well that’s the story about, you know, all of this, isn’t it?

R

Yep, yep.

P

You know, the 80s, the Dean Brothers, the National Party, the midnight demolitions. I mean, this was not midnight demolition at Red Comb?

R

Oh no it couldn’t be, too big. No, well I did not go to the Bellvue Hotel demolition. I knew it was on. I thought I could be much more convincing if I photograph things so people can see what they were. And of course that means getting access to places, so I didn’t want to be seen as a rampant fire brand. I prefer to get the message across more in a way that people don’t feel threatened, but do understand, you know?

P

Well it’s interesting you say that because you know, there was I having a little bit of sentimentality around CloudLand, when I saw your Gallery 14 show in 2013. And City Hall, you know the top of the City Hall. And then this is quite a very different sort of image, to see that in amongst the ones that are more formal. And discovering those sort of secrets of Cloudland and secrets of City Hall, and those sort of architectural spaces. And then to see this which is…

R

Yeah that’s why I tried to avoid any manipulations or anything and people could look at it and they were credible photographs, there was no attempt to dramatize it. The thing itself had its own drama, there was no need to try and, what’s it, guild the lily or whatever.

P

Yeah and then Bureau Art Space, in 1988-89 .So Bureau, well that we used to call City Plaza in Adelaide Street. Here are the photos you took of John Stafford and Wayne Smith’s installation.

R

I thought it was very enterprising of John Stafford to do that. I remember doing it at night too for some reason.

P

Yeah so these shots, see the lighting in the… I can’t remember what that old shop was, I think there was a bakery, or an old cheesecake shop. You might remember.

R

No…

P

I think it was an old cheesecake shop. But I think what John Stafford and Wayne were doing there was using quite theatrical lighting, and so that they did have a particular presence at night time. And we often had openings at night time. But you’ve documented this on a night when clearly it was, you know, it had that, ‘Look at that! Factor.

R

Yeah there was nobody, it was empty. You know, we went in and did it without any patrons or anything there.

P

And that idea in your work with documenting spaces with no people, is that an intentional thing?

R

Oh quite yeah, because human beings have a disruptive influence when you’re trying to document something. You finish up looking at the person instead of the thing you’re documenting because we’re naturally, atavistic, is that the word?

P

Voyeuristic. [Laughs] Atavistic and voyeuristic.

R

You know, you see a nice looking girl you know, selling a thing, and you think, ‘Oh boy, she looks nice. I’ll buy… You know, maybe if I find a girl like that I can have her in that house.’

M

Sucked in.

R

[Laughs] Sucked in. So no, you are influenced by the people you see in the photographs. And then, so the first thing you go to, friend or foe, and then you might look at the item itself, and then you come back and have another look at the person just to make sure you did make the right judgement in the first place, in view of the location that they’re in. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a joint like this?

M

It’s a total diversion.

P

No it’s interesting. See cause I always wanted to ask you that question, because when I look at your documentation shots of the IMA in particular, and there’s no people, I thought it was perhaps, like a mandate from the original board. Or that, you know, Richard was to document the IMA with no people, no artists.

M

No, you made your own mandate.

R

Yeah, I made my own mandate. But no, occasionally though, you will see John Buckley in a corner or… and occasionally sometimes when someone’s having a nice leisurely view of something I will have them in because they are useful from the point of view of scale.

P

Oh great.

M

Or the workman in the City Hall for instance?

R

Oh yeah.

P

Yes that’s… exactly. Cause that’s what struck me about that, Marguerite, was that of Richards work.

M

But it’s so integral.

P

Yes and you get a sense, and as you say, scale, but the humanity in that. So they were the two images in that survey of your work that I was saying to Richard that the Red Comb House demolition, which was really very destructive documentation is very different, sort of an anathema to what you’ve documented over the years. So that was quite odd to see that with the other stuff. I mean…

M

Oh I don’t know…

P

I mean as in…

M

Well it’s different, but it’s not… I mean it’s still within the total sort of purview of Richards work. Seeing and doing.

P

Oh yeah, the architectonic sort of stuff. But in terms of documenting a building being destroyed, you know, you see in your photographs different states of, you know some architecture in your work is incredibly pristine, some, lots of weathering. To me that’s quite a strong, and that’s to do with my attachment to demolition, which was a bit part of, you know, what we were about then was trying to save things. And to see a document like that… my apologies I’m not explaining myself very well.

M

No, no. Yeah, it’s interesting.

R

Yeah, I think I decided it wasn’t necessary to show protesters being arrested by policemen to get the message across; all you had to do was photograph the wreckage. Not only that, but your tripod didn’t get damaged. [Laughs]

M

[ Laughs] Used up plenty of those anyway, ( unclear here on tape) demonstration.

P

And when I was looking at that wonderful survey exhibition, looking at all these other images of yours, I was thinking, ‘Did you get dust all over your camera?’ that was what I was thinking.

R

Oh yeah, that was a consideration. In fact one of the photographs I did, I called it Machine for Making Dust. It was a quarry crushing plant up near Gympie, it wasn’t in the show but… I do like to name pictures, not with numbers but, not with things like Study Number 5022 which could be something, it’s almost like 521. But giving them a very distinctive name so it’s very obvious that it belongs to that particular picture and you don’t confuse it with any of the other, you know, like Nude with Violin, you know it’s quite explicit. And occasionally you start adding a few more things, Bill Robinson does that, you know, Table with Croissants and Aubergines, and…

M

And chooks. [Laughs]

R

…and chooks. Yeah.

P

Yeah, they’re almost like, you know the surrealists used to have really long titles with their works. Speaking of William Robinson I used to go to Ray Hughes when I was in high school to look at William Robinson. I used to love those titles and they were those, you know, cause the surrealists used to love long titles and lots of detail and absurd sort of stuff in there. But for me, I don’t know, it could be you know, cause of the emotional stuff for me that the demolition invokes, that’s why I had such a strong reaction to seeing that work, amongst these other works. And the work with the City Hall with the ornate pediments and the people, I hadn’t seen that work before. And so I was like, ‘Oh there’s people in one of your photographs.’ And I hadn’t seen… Not that I’ve seen all of your work, but do you know what I mean? So that was quite interesting.

R

Yeah. There’s one other one that you might have seen. It’s about the building of the bridge across Melbourne Street between the art gallery and the performing arts building. It’s taken very architecturally, single point perspective and all that sort of thing, but there’s the cranes and there’s a workman watching it all. You know, I mean you do find people are very useful on occasion. Well it’s catalysing a particular point in time. And I feel a lot of the thing with architecture, I think architecture should not be confined to one particular day. A building is useful for a long period of time and so I don’t want to get in things like last week’s Holden or a person wearing a particular modish dress that’s sort of saying… I do not like lots of cars in things, because they very definitely date a building. And whilst looking at the olden day pictures like that, I’m not wanting to talk about the romance of time, I’m wanting to talk about the stability of buildings in our life. I mean, they’re unstable in point of fact, but I can hear Mcgrath Roberts at the architecture school in St Lucia saying, he said he in fact was governed by its opened spaces, not by its buildings. The buildings go up and down, the spaces remain. But obviously trees yeah, and all those sort of things, gardens change.

P

Well Marguerite, during this 80’s period when there was all this you know, midnight demolition, the Dean Brothers and, you know, what was your feeling at the time?

M

I was heavily involved with the kids, and so it was all just happening out there. My main aim was to just sort of keep a bit of sanity in the whole thing. Cause I mean it was very emotive, the whole scene. But no, my role was here.

P

Yeah well that’s what I mean, like seeing that Red Comb House during your survey show, it was very emotional for me. I mean I was saying to Richard, to you guys earlier on, I remember dancing in CloudLand on that sprung dance floor. Now I don’t know if you guys went there when you were young?

M

Graduation ball.

P

Yep, so you did too. And it was an incredible feeling, that dance floor?

M

Oh yeah. I bet you didn’t hear ( friends name) up on the stage though. [Laughs]

P

Who’s that?

R

One of her friends.

M

(friends name) She was one of the kids that I went through arts with. (friends name) had this deep voice, and all the boys thought she was fantastic.

R

She was.

M

And (friends name)’s up there on the stage singing some (type of song) song at some graduation? Ball. [Laughs] It was such fun. But I mean, yeah they just pull them down.

P

And you were talking about that, you know, one of your things Richard is being to…

M

Yeah, but not quote her name. [Laughs]

P

Oh, you’re getting a copy of this and we’ll just edit it, we might just do a transcript up, it’s interesting talking about the architectural stuff and this will serves as a prompt for you to add to, nuance edit to your needs and so on and email back to me a few weeks later.

Picking up on the Observatory. And you were saying that you thought the Observatory building was actually a bit tacky, for example. And that one of your integrity or conceptual things, to document things, you know buildings, that is, that are quite beautiful in their own right, and solid, and sturdy, and the light you know, and all that sort of stuff. But the Observatory was an example of a space that you documented because it was in fact an IMA annexe show, clearly.

R

Yeah. Basically I very much believe in modern architecture. But it has to be done well, and I do not like modern rubbish. My thing is about quality rather than what age it is. And at one stage a lady wanted to, had a very nice 18^th century mansion and she was wanting to put in a fountain in front of it. And she wondered if there were any off the hook fountain available. A nice Cole Brookdale photograph for her, fountain or whatever, and I said, ‘Well no,’ and I wasn’t aware of that but I think Norma Redpath was going to Italy to learn the bronze casting for an Italian foundry and I said, ‘Why don’t you commission her to do a fountain for you? Because it’d only be 100 years difference to the building you’ve got, and then the overall frame, it would work. You’d be matching it with quality, not by a date which in the passage of time becomes insignificant.’ And so anyway, she did find one off the hook which… [Laughs] yeah but it wasn’t particularly great quality. But it was wet, yes.

P

Yeah the other thing that you were saying was just a few moments before we were recording, you know sort of what not infuriated you but you know was disappointing was when you know, interesting architecture was pulled down to build inferior, well, your feeling about what is inferior… and that was a collective feeling. And that’s part of this project, is that we all collectively, there’s so many of us that were united in that idea of this apathy towards heritage because what we saw was the desecration of heritage, and not just our built environment but the communities inhabiting these built environments, their stories. You were told one lovely little story about your shared history and day that that young lady got up on stage with the deep voice. You know, that’s in there, in your memory, and in the shared memory as well.

R

Well it’s more than just history, it’s also the structuring of amenity.

M

Yeah, that’s still happening.

R

And that’s going on right now. You know, and that all comes back to, what do we have governments for three or four year terms…

M

[Laughs] Better keep off the (unsure). Now lunch, we usually have something like a peanut butter sandwiches…

P

Well I – thank you Marguerite, I just realised that I’ve got to be at photography at Griffith university and I’m just not sure what the time is.

R

Oh, how are they struggling along?

M

It’s half past one.

P

Wow, so I should probably call a cab soon. So thank you, I won’t join you for lunch, but I will come back with the transcript at some point in the next month or so, if that’s okay.

R

Yep.

P

I didn’t quite follow the story last year because they were going to close it down.

R

What?

P

The photography department.

M

[Laughs]

R

Yeah go on.

P

Well, I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t be saying.

R

Oh no, it doesn’t surprise me.

P

Cause I don’t really know the story…

M

You’d better turn it off.

 

 

END OF TRANSCRIPT

 

 

 

 

 

Biography

Richard Stringer was born in 1936 and grew up in Victoria. His father, Walter Stringer, worked as a dance photographer. He attended the Melbourne Grammar School and later Melbourne University where he studied for a Bachelor of Architecture. During his student years Stringer moved north to Brisbane with fellow student Danny Mészáros. In Brisbane Stringer worked for architect James Birrell (1928-) for six months in 1959, during Birrell’s time as City Architect for the Brisbane City Council. Stringer was involved in student events at Brisbane’s University of Queensland but eventually returned to Melbourne to complete his degree, he graduated in 1960, his final-year design thesis was for a new Queensland Art Gallery. Stringer returned to Brisbane in 1963 and worked again for Birrell and then for the architecture firm, Cusick Edwards and Bisset. Stringer was involved with National Trust of Queensland, this led to work in the Queensland regional centre, Townsville with Laurie Culley. Richard Stringer married his wife Marguerite, in 1966 and in the late 1960s masterminded the inaugural Architects Revue event at UQ with local architect John Railton. His interest in photography began during his time at university when he used photography as a tool to examine interesting buildings. Stringer first began to exhibit his work in 1966 with the exhibition A Photographic Essay of Possible Influences on Present Day Building and has since held a number of solo and group exhibitions. Richard Stringer has, over his career accumulated a broad body of work and a reputation for evocative and high-quality photography; he continues to work as a photographer and continues to explore similar architectural themes. His most recent exhibition: Pleasure of Place: Photographs by Richard Stringer was held in the Queensland Art gallery in 2013.

 

https://qldarch.net/architect/summary?

 

 

 

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