Published 13/11/09

Obituary:
Nick Waterlow, Curator and Mentor in Arts

Born 30 August 1941, Hitchin, England
Died 9 November 2009, Sydney, Australia

© Studio International

by MICHAEL SPENS

The death of Nick Waterlow, on Monday 9 November in Sydney, Australia, in a tragic incident, robs the international art community of a key individual who acted as a catalyst between artists and curators. He would invariably these days be seen at the opening of the Venice Biennale, or Documenta, or at major exhibition openings in New York. Aged 68 this year, he had established an itinerant routine: as a sage in his chosen world he made his name as a curator. He had been Director of three Sydney biennales and he had accumulated a unique knowledge of the shifts and changes in direction in the art world. His Sydney base was at the University of New South Wales, as Director of their Ivan Dougherty Gallery, which did much to sponsor emergent artists.

Nick Waterlow began his career in art galleries in London and Oxford. He first travelled to Australia in 1965, marrying Rosemary (Romy) O’Brien (who was Australian). They returned together to London, but they both settled in Sydney permanently, in 1977. By 1979 he had been appointed to direct the Sydney Biennale, which became then a key event not only for Australia, but also for the international art world by virtue of his insight and selectivity. No longer was Sydney, as described earlier by the film director Tony Richardson in the 1950s ‘the Manchester of the South’: it had global significance as a cultural pivot, both operatic with the new Opera House by Utzon, and firmly on the arts map with Waterlow’s biennales. Joanna Mendelssohn has observed Nick’s essential qualities at this early stage, ‘The theme was “European Dialogue”. It became clear from the start that this director believed in dialogue. Local artists wanted greater participation, women wanted a more equitable representation, and many artists still had their eyes firmly focused on the US as the major centre of culture. Nick discussed, negotiated and compromised, and the final exhibition was the stronger for it.’¹

His further biennales were in 1986 and 1988, the latter one of the most important exhibitions in Australia, perhaps informed by the private and heartfelt loss of his own father when he was still an infant: ‘The 1988 biennial, “From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art c.1940–1988”, was one of the defining exhibitions for Australian visual culture. It connected Australian artists to European and American counterparts in a grand, complex narrative of art. At the heart of the exhibition stood The Aboriginal Memorial: 200 grave posts from Ramingining in the Northern Territory; one for every year of European settlement. Waterlow had been approached by Djon Mundine, then Ramingining art adviser, about the possibility of developing a project to mourn Aboriginal loss. Mundine says "he understood it right away" and linked his idea of the grave posts to the crosses on the burial fields of World War I. The memorial was bought by the National Gallery of Australia and is now on permanent view.’²

Over less than 12 years he had transformed the world of a new generation of artists, expanding in the post-Greenberg era. Later he was on the selection panel for the 2000 biennale. He remained professional but unassuming, and others have commented on his nurturing, caring attitude to artists and friends alike, ‘his interest was in the greater good, as opposed to his own self-interest in promoting himself, and that deep quietness about it’, said Dr Gene Sherman, of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation.

Waterlow achieved his success not as a writer and critic, but as a cultural diplomat and much- valued teacher. He built up a unique network around the world of curatorial colleagues, who valued highly his verdict or opinion. The house in Willoughby Street, Kirribilli became a centre where visitors to Sydney could acclimatise and meet Australian artists. Romy was always welcoming, but she also had a vocational side when she took up social work, working with AIDS victims. Like Nick, she revealed a gentle humanitarian caring nature. In Nick’s case he was concerned to advance those he felt needed support for their work, and this affected two generations of aspiring artists and curators. Romy, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, died in 1998 after a long battle with cancer. The University-based Ivan Dougherty Gallery may have been an art gallery, but was also a mentoring centre for artists: never far away was Nick’s immediately recognisable soft laughter to lift the spirits.

Most recently Nick Waterlow had expanded further his interest in Australian Indigenous Art. Such developments were summarised by him in his essay, The Contemporary and Aboriginal Art, placing each side-by-side in current critique, in Beyond Sacred (2008) an excellent publication on the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty. This author remembers visiting with Waterlow a superb Aboriginal human figure, rock-carved outside Sydney in spring 1983. His deep interest in the field was already burgeoning. He soon became a long-term friend and contributor to Studio International.

A particularly severe loss through Nick’s demise is his documentation, whether taken down in note or case-study form, or from subsequent recording. It could be a unique compilation from his half-century in the global curatorial world. It is to be hoped that records survive, and can form the basis of a unique account of the international art developments of such a span of time and their impact on Australian art. In 1990 he became OAM, honoured by the Australian Government. He had been Director of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council (1980–1983), Chair of the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts, Visual Arts and Craft Committee (1999–2003) and Deputy Chair of the Arts Advisory Council (2000–2003). It is possible, given that he had raised significant funding for a major gallery extension to the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in the precinct of the University of New South Wales’ College of Fine Arts, that the all-embracing new building might be named the Nick Waterlow Gallery in his commemoration. But to include that would never have occurred to that most self-effacing of men. He is survived by his partner, Juliet Darling.

References

1. The Australian, 12.11.09.

2. Ibid.