Chau Chak Wing Museum – the concrete behemoth shrouded in trees, inhumed next to Fisher – currently offers Union Made: Art from the University of Sydney Union. A combined project between the University of Sydney Union (USU) and CCWM, the exhibition toasts 150 years of the USU, consisting of work from its century-old art collection.
The Sydney University Union was established in 1874 as a debating union only for men. The Union was a professional body of wealthy, academic men, eagerly modelled off their Oxbridge counterparts. Almost a century later in 1972, the debating union combined with the Women’s Union to create the modern-day USU.
At first, it may seem odd for a debating union to want to develop a collection. Still, one must remember its history: through art, the Union could imitate the European tradition of debating unions, cement its elite status and create a legacy. The Union’s collection began in 1914, with the commission of a mural for the Reading Room in the newly-built Holme Building. As the first label recalls annual reports, the Union intended accession as an “a definite scheme of artistic decoration”.
In 2019, the collection was donated to the CCWM for preservation and accessibility reasons. This exhibition offers us 36 works of the collection’s total of 536 works. Shown non-chronologically, These are split into four themes and acquisitional periods, presenting an array of art styles, from Australians like Emily Kame Kngwaree, John Coburn, Arthur Streeton and international figures Albrecht Dürer and Maurice de Vlaminck.
The collection creates its history, imposing importance and institutional value on certain types of creative expressions, certain forms and abstractions. The collection engages with Australia’s ever-confusing ‘art market’; the well-oiled coffers of the Union purchased art in the promise it would accrue value. Elsewhere, various leaders were undoubtedly forward-thinking, helping to build curatorial breadth and depth.
The exhibition isn’t about the artworks, not really. It’s a history of a collection, and its relation to the Australian artworld. What encouraged the union to commission, collect and preserve these pieces? Art history exists on a continuum, the Union’s collection both conforms and challenges the contours of Australia’s artistic landscape.
Protest(ing) art (1990s)
The opening wall comprises two works and the first theme: Student Activism. The Union acquired John Young’s May Day March (1974) when the artist was still studying at Sydney College of the Arts. The work depicts a melee of students protesting among a recognisable George St. The second activist work is Robert Campbell Jnr’s Charlie Perkins (1987), purchased from the Boomalli Aboriginal Cooperative in the 1990s.
Bought from artists and community, these works signify a participatory and visionary accession process. Vickers ran the USU art collection committee where students, artists, and board members played a role in decision-making, challenging the hegemony of curatorial professionals. They reflect a Union willing to support student activism within its time, instead of belatedly.
There’s a deep irony here. The incorporation of protest materials in the University’s official, institutional histories and locations is fraught, amidst the organisation’s ongoing clear distaste for activism.
Art and Architecture become one (1970s)
The second wall comprises modernist work commissioned and acquired for the Union’s new brutalist building: Wentworth. This was a new age for the University and the Union, both unions amalgamated in 1972, and under Whitlam’s 1974 legislation, university was free.
Designed by Ken Woolley and Peter Webber, and finished in 1972, this section directly locates these works in the space and place they were acquired. Aided by Dupain’s photographs, taking up a small part of the wall underneath the label, the audience is invited to see the works in situ. One can imagine Wentworth’s “angular brutalism” harmonising with these figurative colourful works including John Coburn’s screen-printed organic shapes, in Fiesta (1970) and Sentinel (1987), Col Jordan’s Oxide break (1971) and Barrie Goddard’s tessellating Solar split (1970). Some form lyrical landscapes, like Richard Larter’s Pluto the playful pup (1967), while others emerge into jarring colourways and shapes.
Again the acquisition details provide insight. Most of these abstract pieces were purchased in 1972, from Australian artists. Interestingly, now-renowned artist John Coburn, donated Sentinel to the collection in 1987 — indicative of the collection’s esteem.
We are reminded once again of the ideological power of art and architecture. While the 1970s marked this idea of ‘progression’ and ‘advancement’ in art but also social politics, the Union chose to name their new, costly building after William Charles Wentworth, a key figure in the 19th colonial project.
Colonial impositions (1914-1960s)
Notably, the ‘European Tradition and Regional Landscapes’ comprises the majority of the exhibition’s works. These works were largely decorative, purchased for the Union’s two buildings, Holme and Manning (built in 1917). These landowning, academic types couldn’t simply welcome the illustrious compatriots, alumni, and esteemed Federation figures into their cigar-smoking sojourns, without some cultural expression. Imbued with antipodean cringe, the Australian intelligentsia were keen to show their artistic appreciation, in the form of international accessions. Accordingly, the Men’s Union presidents were able to choose a painting during their term.
This section is uncomfortable – here we see the creation of Australian and European landscapes justifying the new colonial project. The Union’s intent in procuring this pastoralist, Edwardian landscape complies with the ideological purposes of art during the early 1900s — developing an attachment to the Australian land. The colonial belonging was at least partially, advanced by such displays.
Here, the depiction of the Antipodean coastline reaffirms colonial attachments. Herbert Badham’s La Perouse Holiday (c. 1936) is probably the most pertinent example. The oil painting depicts the southern Sydney beach as a site of leisure, with post-great depression crowds lapping up the sun. But it’s simultaneously a historical erasure, near the beach shacks a Union Jack flies. Falling into this category as well, Elioth Gruner’s [Beach scene] (1918) and Normal Lloyd’s Musgrave Street Wharf, Mosman (1938) capture the Australian coastline, possessed by Anglo-Australians or British architecture.
Elsewhere this section includes internationally renowned works, like Fauvist Maurice de Vlaminck’s gloomy work Paysage (After the Storm) and Albrecht Dürer’s small woodcut print, Christ before Caiaphas (c. 1508).
Recognising Indigenous Art (1980s-2000s)
The show then moves from the cramped European section to a breathing wall of contemporary Indigenous art. In 1980, the Union began acquiring works from First Nations women artists in Utopia Station and male artists in Arnhem Land. The process was respectful, collaborating with Indigenous curator Djon Mundine, in comparison to prevalent issues within Australia’s ‘secondary market’.
These works display First Nations’ ways of knowing and being, especially custodianship of Country. Many are bark paintings, including Thompson Yulidjirri’s Kangaroo with joey, portion of cooked kangaroo (c. 1984), Philip Gudthaykudthay’s Minytji (landscape) (1985), George Milpurrurru’s Mewel – Honey Spirit (1988), John Mawurndjul’s Barramundi and Catfish (1997), and Terry Ngamandarra’s Gulaidj, waterlillies (1990). Some stick to traditional and found materials like ochre, plant fibre and charcoal, but others deploy materials like synthetic polymer.
The exhibition concludes with the prominent orange ochres of Emily Kngwarreye’s Untitled (1992). This acquisition was visionary — Kngwarreye has come to be one of, if not the most, successful Australian artist.
Unmaking the Union?
With the imposition of VSU, the USU’s coffers were stripped, storage space became problematic, and by 2009, the collection was inactive. The USU’s artistic purposes are carried out by Verge Gallery. Yet elsewhere; the student perspective is missing. Both CCWM and the University’s current public art committee include no student representation.
The exhibition is a little curatorially confused. These acquisitions barely reflect an engagement with student life, or activist movements, but instead trends in Australian art history. ‘Union Made’, alongside its promotional protest aesthetics, becomes semantically disingenuous. The selected accessions reveal how elite culture engages with art, and how certain curatorial forward-thinking can stand outside of that.
Thematically the show is jarring, but emerges later, to exist as a whole. Each acquisition gives us a historical glimpse, from which we can extract meaning and interpret the organisation’s intentions. Maybe, this show allows us to unmake the student union. Our current corporatised Union is historically contingent, it’s changed and will change again.
Union Made shows at Chau Chak Wing Museum until 16 March 2025.