Carrick Hill Celebrates 30 Years with a Pearl of Program for 2016

Carrick Hill Springfield celebrates its 30th year of public opening this Wednesday 9 March when His Excellency The Honourable Hieu Van Le AO opens The Year of the Pearl program and the first exhibition for 2016 entitled Passion and Taste; a celebration of collecting. (The Governor's ceremony will take place at 2.30pm Wednesday 9 March).

The Governor's opening will recall the day of 9 March 1986 when Carrick Hill was formerly opened to the public by Queen Elizabeth II.

Governor Le will also be joined by thirty school children for the opening, a reference to the fact that many of the State's Jubilee (sesquicentenary) babies of 1986 are now parents and to ensure that today's children grow up having an understanding and appreciation of their birthright.

The Passion & Taste exhibition which will run until 12 June, is designed to reveal how the Haywards created their famous collection of art and antiques, and what part it played in their lives; from heirlooms to ashtrays to history-making art and the most precious of objects.

Passion and Taste includes six new 'soft intervention' works by acclaimed artists Jeff Mincham, Stephen Bowers, Nick Mount, Susan Sideris, Christopher Orchard and Andrew Bartlett. These new pieces are designed to provide a link between what the Haywards had collected and what they might collect now.

Some of the remarkable objects on display in Passion and Taste include:

• Eighteen 16th century drawings carefully removed by Artlab Australia conservators from the interior of a small draw in a piece of English oak furniture. They depict renaissance saints and bishops but what were they doing there and why were they so attractive to the Haywards?

• Also in this group called the 'conundrums' will be Grand Canal Venice Sir Edward's 'Turner' painting (freshly cleaned for its redisplay) and Robert Hannaford's reproduction of Joshua Smith, the William Dobell portrait that caused such a stir in 1943 when it won the Archibald Prize and was then denounced by a group of artists as a caricature and later irrevocably damaged by fire at Carrick Hill.

• Robin Stacey's Camera Obscura (a part of the Art Gallery of South Australia's 2016 Biennial of Australian Art) projecting the Carrick Hill garden into the house.

• A Renior portrait (of his son Coco) donated to the AGSA by the Haywards and specially loaned back for the exhibition.

• An Ivor Hele portrait of Edward Hayward hither to unknown to Carrick Hill which has been held in the St Johns Ambulance Museum in Unley for several decades.

• Some stunning items involving pearls as decoration and ornament loaned by private collectors and the David Roche Collection and the South Australian Museum.

Pearls feature in the Hayward Bequest but are also depicted in paintings in the Hayward's collection. The four hundred year old royal portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria wearing the Mancini pearls (in the portrait after Anthony van Dyck), came to the Haywards from Ursula's family the Barr Smiths but it is why unknown why they would have had such a picture.

The highlight of Carrick Hill's The Year of the Pearl will be an exhibition of national significance entitled Stanley Spencer: a twentieth-century British master to be held from 3 August to 4 December 2016.

Carrick Hill, 46 Carrick Hill Drive, Springfield
open Wednesday to Sundays and Public Holidays 10.00 am to 4:30 pm.

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