Opening an art gallery might be compared to undertaking an ocean voyage in the age of Magellan. Maps are inconclusive, compass errors abound, there are reefs and doldrums, the destination may be uncertain — even wholly phantom. Thus Rex Irwin, the proud captain of an entirely seaworthy vessel: Rex Irwin Art Dealer, is celebrating its safe passage of thirty years. He has much to be elated about — and of course, many stories to tell.

The gallery opened in 1976, and from the outset would be responsive to the plastic and design arts in addition to painting, drawing and printmaking. Irwin remembers well — and a television station was there to record it — the opening show, in which painters and light fitters struggled to ready the space while he soothed the artists. There was some irony that he was showcasing determined abstractionists Bill Brown, Syd Ball and Royston Harpur, whose work he suggests he didn’t exactly understand, and further, it was being presented at a moment when photo-realism was suddenly de rigeur. Minutes before the opening, he discovered there were no red stickers and a quick sprint to the local newsagent secured little green dots — they have remained green to this day.

While there was, behind the scenes, a loyal business partner in Melbourne, Irwin had no money to speak of when he opened his doors in the same first- floor, light-filled space the gallery still occupies at 38 Queen Street Woollahra. He had, on the other hand, accumulated a deal of knowledge of a kind that can only be gleaned from the experiences of working in someone else’s establishment. The first was Barry Stern’s in Paddington in 1962. Then, after Frank McDonald bought Clune Galleries and moved it to Macquarie Street in the city, Irwin joined him and stayed for seven years. There was a lightning stint with Coventry Gallery. ‘One also learns what not to do’, suggested Irwin, who remembered that Coventry thought it vulgar to ask clients for money. Irwin on the other hand, is quite strict and businesslike with his clients.
Irwin has witnessed many changes in the art world. ‘In the old days , each gallery had, I think, five people who paid all the bills — and it was building that nucleus of five people that mattered. Now it’s different, we probably have 40 people, and then another 140 who make life comfortable — regularly.’ Of today’s art world which has become a larger, more expensive arena and a lifestyle marker, Irwin remarked: ‘Unfortunately, it’s also that for some dealers, so some of them are quite short term… they treat it as a lengthy social event — not a business.’

Upstairs from the main gallery is a generous and hushed space (a small piece of theatre as it were) where clients can examine works brought forward and presented in a leisurely fashion, an idea ‘stolen from Duveen’, quips Rex. ‘We never, never let clients go through stock.’ It has also been for many years, the scene of highly focussed lunches. And how did these start? A client who happened to be a caterer, had over -extended herself for a very large painting. ‘We ate our way through our profit for two years!’

Over the decades, the gallery has shown established and ascendant Australian artists, such as Graham Kuo, Fred Williams, Cressida Campbell, the Delafield Cooks (father and son), Bob Dickerson, Sam Fullbrook, John Brack, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Nicholas Harding, Amanda Marburg and Peter Booth, but its tandem achievement is its solid relationship with a number of galleries abroad. Irwin’s relationship with London dealers began with James Kirkman who was, for a long time, Lucian Freud’s agent, and from 1982 Irwin was offered the newest batch of Freud’s etchings and drawings to exhibit on a sale or return basis. But times change. When Kirkman ceased to be Freud’s agent, there was no more sale or return. ‘Now we have to pay through the nose — up-front before they’re published.’

Irwin has had dealings with Leslie Waddington, Colnaghi, Bernard Jacobson (who introduced him to Henry Moore) and Andras Kalman who provided works by Ben Nicholson and L. S. Lowry. Other international artists he represents include Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff and David Hockney (who has exhibited since 1977). Irwin remembers some hair raising moments — most particularly an exchange with Jan Krugier, a New York dealer who represents that portion of Picasso’s estate held by Marina Picasso. Would he be interested in showing Picasso’s works on paper in Sydney? ‘Of course’, said Rex before he realised he’d have to sign a guarantee of sale for a substantial amount of money. The show went ahead and resulted in a ‘startling year’, followed as it was by an exhibition of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele works on paper which London’s Fischer gallery had offered him. ‘That year really put us on the map internationally!’

There could be local frights too. After the Bottom of the Harbour Tax Scheme sprang a leak in 1980 and washed away certain clients, distressed collectors appeared on his doorstep with top drawer works by Ian Fairweather and Drysdale among others, and this was Irwin’s introduction to the secondary market.

There is much that is serendipitous in the art world, and Irwin has had his share of it. ‘That was a wonderful fluke’ he suggested, of the time Lyn Williams, the widow of Fred Williams, came upstairs to look at a small exhibition of his work Irwin had mounted in conjunction with another local dealer, and suggested he represent her husband’s estate, thus solving the dilemma of possible ill will if she singled out one Melbourne dealer above the others.

He remembers well, his long and occasionally turbulent relationship with Queensland painter Sam Fullbrook. ‘I used to look after him when I was at Clune Galleries. When he came into the gallery drunk … he would just be put at my desk to sober up because I was the junior. When I opened here, after about six months, this smart man came into the gallery. He said: ‘You don’t know who I am do you?’ ‘Yes I do, you’re Sam Fullbrook’. And Sam said: ‘You were very nice to me once, would you like some pictures?’ ‘And that’s how it started’.

Being something of a nomad, Fullbrook moved around a bit, but seemed to always return. And this story reminds us that artists and their galleries have a marriage of sorts, with all the affection, simmering dissatisfactions, dogged loyalties, and intricate compromises that the latter entails. None of his dealers ever quibbled over the quality of his works, but everyone thought his prices were too high. Irwin’s delight in Fullbrook’s radiant, deliquescent works, brought forth another reminiscence. One summer in Brisbane, he visited Fullbrook who was drying out in a ward for inebriates. ‘He seemed catatonic’. Irwin combed Brisbane for the right two dozen flowers in ‘Sam Fullbrook colours’ and put them in his lap. ‘He sat there, and suddenly tears started to pour down his face, and he looked at me and said: “You’re Rex aren’t you?” The colour got through! From that minute onwards he sobered up and whenever I went to stay with him, there would be wine in the fridge for me, but he never touched it.’

The art world is a wonderful and mysterious place. And how people arrive there is no less so. Who would have imagined that Rex Irwin, born in India in 1941, taught to be a ‘good chap’ at the naval establishment Pangbourne in England, briefly in the wine trade, and thence on his way to Australia aboard the Castel Felice, would create an establishment which would endure so robustly, establish seamless exchanges with English, European and American cousins, and even provide a training ground for another generation of art dealers such as Tim Olsen, David Cook, Georgina Pemberton, Brett Stone and Brett Ballard. Does he have a philosophy? Of sorts. He insists that the dealer doesn’t make the artist — ‘the artist makes the gallery’. His artists, clients, friends and colleagues would no doubt wish him another thirty years.


Patricia Anderson