Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Collection of the artist
Private collection, Sydney

LITERATURE
Barry Pearce and Lou Klepac, Hodgkinson, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 1994, cat. 98, p. 116 (illus.)


"No matter where - I am instinctively drawn to certain forms. Rugged simplicity in vast, brooding space. Original awareness occurred naturally in Australia, but these forms are universal. repeating themselves in the topography of Spain and California.

Though this terrain nourishes me I do not use it directly, nor even as a point of departure. It is simply an immediate reminder of the fact generating a totality of experience. An action in paint which began in the past and continues in the present moment...I like to create a surface, dig into it, penetrate behind the veil of reality, open it up until new space is revealed then explore this space. With every advance from the known to the unknown the mystery increases. It is a wrestle to extract the mystery - to find the essence of its ecstatic silence. One knows, without knowing why this daily exercise of placing myself in the position of primitive man rather than being led by his findings, brings me closer to my original self."1

During the mid-70s, after travelling and living abroad, Hodgkinson realized he knew little of Northern Australia and planned a trip to Arnhem Land. On Hodgkinson's first trip to the Northern Territory he met with Colin Jack Hilton, the director of the Museums and Art galleries of the Northern Territory. The two men, inspired by the bush, devised a plan to 'resuscitate' the Australian tradition of the artist camps. Hodgkinson, the driving force behind the scheme, introduced younger colleagues, such as Colin Lanceley and John Firth-Smith, to the breath-taking territory of Northern Australia. He encouraged them to see past the eastern seaboard and explore the interior as earlier artists, such as Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan and Russel Drysdale had done. Hodgkinson was deeply inspired by Arnhem Land, returning to it time and again. It is here that he painted A Place For Ritual.

1. Frank Hodgkinson in Barry Pearce and Lou Klepac, Hodgkinson, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 1994, p. 80