Venture into Melbourne’s back streets and smoky salons to discover the daring artists, visionaries, rebels and rock stars who have pushed against convention in life and art.
From Vali Myers and Nick Cave to Heide and the Black Cat cafe, these vibrant images of people and places from our 2014 exhibition pay homage to Melbourne's enduring counterculture.
Self-portrait by Antoine Fauchery, albumen silver photograph, State Library Victoria
Immortalised as Marcel in Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème, French photographer and writer Antoine Fauchery played a crucial role in transmitting Parisian bohemian culture to Melbourne. After a stint on the Victorian goldfields in 1852, Fauchery ran the short-lived Café Estaminet Français in Little Bourke Street, a haven for European expatriates. He then travelled between Europe, Asia and Australia, writing plays for Parisian theatres and running a photography studio in Melbourne before dying of dysentery in Japan, aged 38. Fauchery’s character in Murger’s novel attracted French artist Mirka Mora and her husband Georges to Melbourne in 1951.
Marcus Clarke, 1866, albumen silver photograph, State Library Victoria
Marcus Clarke – writer, journalist and later a librarian at the Melbourne Public Library – is generally celebrated as the father of bohemian Melbourne, though he was more like its wild child. After a privileged start in England, a turn in the family fortunes saw 16-year-old Clarke emigrate to colonial Melbourne in 1863. Here he took to strolling the streets as a flâneur, an observer of the city spectacle. Clarke's bohemian ways attracted other young journalists and writers who joined him at his clubs, the Yorick and the Cave of Adullam.
Saddle-back chairs (made up of bundles of newspapers), from Hugh McCrae, Story-book only, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1948, State Library Victoria
Members of Marcus Clarke’s Yorick Club included fellow writers Henry Kendall, George Gordon McCrae and Adam Lindsay Gordon. With a human skull for a mascot and rules that parodied the gentlemen’s clubs of establishment Melbourne, Yorick members gathered in rooms adjoining the offices of Melbourne Punch to smoke clay pipes, drink from pewter mugs, recite poetry and generally engage in horseplay. Money was tight so they constructed club chairs, appropriately, from bundles of newspapers.
Members of the Ishmael Club, c 1900, gelatin silver photograph, State Library Victoria
Left to right, back row to front row: Percy Lindsay, Will Dyson, Norman Lindsay, Lionel Lindsay, Ray Parkinson; Godfrey Elkington, John Elkington, Randolph Bedford, Edward Dyson; John Tremerne, 'Joss', Herman Kühr.
Founded in the late 1890s by writer and publisher Randolph Bedford and the Lindsay and Dyson brothers, the Ishmael Club brought together a group of artists and writers who proudly saw themselves as outsiders. Naming themselves after the outcast son of Abraham, the Ishmael members gathered together to write and perform poems, songs, debates and plays, and to mock the establishment. They began each meeting with rituals around Joss, an idol inspired by Richard Marsh’s popular supernatural novel The Joss: a reversion (1900) and created by Norman Lindsay.
Edwin Neild, Mary, Norman and Percy Lindsay, Will Dyson, Pearl Lindsay, by Lionel Lindsay, c 1900, photographic negative, State Library of New South Wales
The Lindsay brothers, together with sisters Ruby, Mary and Pearl, enjoyed fancy dress and theatrical horseplay. They would invite friends from the Ishmael Club, such as Will and Ed Dyson, to the family home in Creswick to perform and photograph historical theatricals and tableaux that often had Greek and Roman mythical themes. Norman generally acted as director, and Lionel as photographer. Ruby had trained as an artist and was a successful book and newspaper illustrator. She later married artist Will Dyson and they moved to London with her brother Norman.
Christmas at Heide, by Albert Tucker, 1946, Albert Tucker Photographic Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art and State Library Victoria
From left: Sidney Nolan, Sunday Reed, John Sinclair, John Reed.
After John and Sunday Reed purchased their property Heide in 1934, they opened it up to artists, writers and intellectuals. Their patronage provided this generation of radicals, the modernist Heide circle, with an environment that nurtured and stimulated their individual and collaborative creative projects. Sunday cultivated a female-friendly salon, where gardening and craft punctuated a bohemia of rustic domesticity.
Self-portrait with Joy Hester, by Albert Tucker, 1939, Albert Tucker Photographic Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art and State Library Victoria
Albert Tucker and Joy Hester were central figures in the Heide circle. Hester was largely overlooked as an artist during her lifetime but is now widely recognised as a significant modernist painter. Like many Heide relationships, her marriage to Tucker was troubled. Hester left him for fellow artist Gray Smith after she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, aged just 27, and gave Sweeney, the son she had with Tucker, to John and Sunday Reed. Tucker took to the road, travelling widely; Hester continued painting until her death at 40. A keen photographer, Tucker captured many intimate views of the Heide group.
Arthur Boyd’s Studio, Open Country, by Albert Tucker, c 1945, State Library Victoria, gift of Mrs Barbara Tucker under the Cultural Gifts Program, 2010
From left: Matcham Skipper, Myra Skipper, Joy Hester, Yvonne Lennie, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd.
A member of an artistic dynasty and one of Australia’s leading 20th-century painters, Arthur Boyd was active in the Angry Penguins group but deliberately stayed on the fringe of the Heide circle’s emotional politics. He was a founder – with John Perceval and Charles Blackman – of the Antipodeans, reasserting figurative art in response to the postwar vogue for abstract expressionism. Open Country, Boyd’s home in Murrumbeena, was (like Heide) a popular bohemian gathering place. He is pictured with wife and fellow artist Yvonne Lennie, brother David (a potter), friends Matcham Skipper (a Montsalvat jeweller and sculptor) and Myra Skipper and Heide habitué (Tucker’s wife) Joy Hester.
Danila Vassilieff, Stonygrad, Warrandyte, by Albert Tucker, 1944, State Library Victoria, gift of Mrs Barbara Tucker under the Cultural Gifts Program, 2008
Russian émigré Danila Vassilieff arrived in Melbourne in 1937 after periods in northern Queensland and Sydney. Young rebel artists of the Contemporary Art Society, including so-called Angry Penguins artists Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker and others, soon embraced Vassilieff’s expressionist paintings of street life. Tucker recorded Vassilieff’s building of Stonygrad, his home and studio of rough-hewn logs and stone at Warrandyte, across the creek from the experimental Koornong School. Vassilieff had assisted with building Koornong and became its art teacher. His lover, Helen Macdonald, was employed as the music teacher.
Opening of Mirka Café, 1954, gelatin silver photograph, courtesy of Heide Museum of Modern Art and William Mora Galleries
Jewish immigrants Mirka and Georges Mora arrived in Melbourne from Paris in 1951, bringing much of bohemian Europe with them. The artistic and learned pair brought ideas, food and chic style to a postwar Melbourne ready for new influences and energy. They opened Mirka Café in 1954, followed by Café Balzac in 1958 and Tolarno Restaurant and Galleries in 1965, where Georges consolidated his career as a dealer in contemporary art. The Moras’ restaurants were great meeting places for Melbourne’s bohemians, as were their home and studio in Grosvenor Chambers at the ‘Paris end’ of Collins Street.
Marlene and Clifton Pugh at Dunmoochin, by Sue Ford, 1964, exhibition print from digital file, courtesy of the Sue Ford Archive, copyright of the Estate of the artist
The areas north-east of Melbourne have been sites of several collective experiences of art and life, such as Justus Jörgensen’s Montsalvat and Clifton Pugh’s Dunmoochin. In 1951, with assistance from potter Alma Shanahan and painter Myra Skipper, Clifton Pugh began to buy acres of scrub at Cottles Bridge. This would be the beginning of the Dunmoochin Artists’ Society, a community of painters and potters that owned 200 acres of land and that continues today through the Dunmoochin Foundation. This photograph of Clifton and Marlene Pugh, his partner of 20 years and a painter and potter, was taken by artist-photographer Sue Ford, who lived in Eltham for about 14 years.
Percy Grainger at White Plains, New York, 1936, gelatin silver photograph, Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne
From an early age, Percy Grainger showed signs of individuality and talent in both art and music. Grainger marched to the beat of his own drum. He designed his own unconventional clothes, was a vegetarian who didn’t like vegetables, engaged in sexual practices such as self-flagellation and, as a fitness devotee, often walked from town to town during his concert tours. He was also a tireless performer and a champion of composition and folk music. His great energy produced more than 3000 concerts and ensured the preservation of music that might have otherwise disappeared.
Val Eastwood at Val's Coffee Lounge, c 1950s, gelatin silver photograph, Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives
Melbourne in the 1950s could be a rather dour affair but it was also a site for vibrant underground cultures. This was particularly the case for gay and lesbian, or ‘camp’, culture, as it was known at the time. Due to their illegal status, homosexual men and women developed alternative bohemian cultures and communities with their own covert venues, house parties, secret languages and dress codes. Restaurants such as Val’s Coffee Lounge, presided over by its gregarious and stylish founder Val Eastwood, were rare meeting places for those who didn’t fit the mould – not just the camp crowd but actors, activists, artists and dancers.
Portraits of actor Frank Thring, by Henry Talbot, 1963, composite of black and white negatives, gift of Henry Talbot, 1974–75, State Library Victoria, copyright of the Estate of the artist
It has been said of Frank Thring that he could make most stages or foyers seem small. His larger-than-life personality was almost matched by his frame, often decked out in imposing black and with flamboyant jewellery. Son of Frank Thring snr, founder of Efftee Films and 3XY Radio, Thring jnr earned fame as an actor in London’s West End and in Hollywood films like Ben Hur, often playing sinister or decadent characters. In the 1950s he would recite poems laden with innuendo and hold court at the ‘head table’ at Val’s Coffee Lounge. To be welcome at his table was a sign one was part of the ‘in’ crowd.
Portrait of Vali Myers, by Norman Ikin, c 1949, gelatin silver photograph, State Library Victoria, gift of Michael Shmith, 2000
Vali Myers was an artist and dancer who lived life true to herself. In 1949, at age 19, she left Melbourne to forge a career as a modern dancer in Paris. Unable to find work, she barely survived, living on the streets and dancing for tips. She left Paris and settled in the remote Italian valley of Il Porto, which became her home and studio for the next four decades. Myers would regularly travel to Amsterdam or New York to show and sell her meticulously detailed drawings. With distinctive Dali-esque facial tattoos and often based at New York’s famously bohemian Chelsea Hotel, she was feted by the rich and famous of the art and music worlds.
Vali Myers in her studio in the Nicholas Building, by Liz Ham, 1997, gelatin silver photograph, State Library Victoria, copyright of the artist
In 1993, after 43 years away, Myers returned to Melbourne where she set up a studio in the Nicholas Building, on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane. The Nicholas Building has been described as a ‘vertical laneway’ with its fascinating warren of small studios occupied by artists, designers, jewellers, shoemakers and milliners. For the remaining decade of her life Myers painted, drew, drank and danced here with those who came to be in the presence of this unique free spirit.
Barry Humphries, by Mark Strizic, 1969, State Library Victoria, copyright Estate of the artist
Not since Marcus Clarke has Melbourne had such an imaginative flâneur, making art from its people and cityscape, as Barry Humphries. Born in 1934, in the manicured eastern suburbs of a Melbourne that later provided material for his performances, Humphries began his theatrical career in university revue. Around this time he also began his career as a surrealist artist and Dadaist-about-town. Notoriously, this involved performing pranks in public places, such as pretending to eat vomit from a paper bag or kicking a ‘blind’ man (an accomplice) on a tram. The mockery of mainstream and, in particular, suburban society would become his life’s work.
Sweeney Reed at Strines Gallery, Carlton, c 1967, colour transparency, State Library Victoria
A quintessential child of Heide and Australian modernism, Sweeney Reed was fostered and then formally adopted by John and Sunday Reed after the marriage of his parents, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester, broke down. Returning to Melbourne after two years working in London’s contemporary art scene, Reed opened Strines Gallery in 1966, followed by Sweeney Reed Galleries in Fitzroy. As gallerist, publisher, poet and printmaker, Reed championed concrete poetry as a serious art form, supporting the careers of luminaries such as Shelton Lea, Alex Selenitsch and Russell Deeble. Sweeney Reed, named for TS Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes, took his own life at the age of 35.
The Great Stumble Forward at the tower of the Pram Factory, by Ponch Hawkes, c 1976, gelatin silver photograph, State Library Victoria, copyright of the artist
Recorded live at the Pram Factory in 1976, The great stumble forward album was a collaboration between Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band and the Australian Performing Group (APG). Musically the album was driven by brothers Mic and Jim Conway, and songs reflected the political concerns of the time, such as the Indigenous land rights movement and the spoken word larrikinism of Soapbox Circus. Performers and musicians included Jane Clifton, Carol Porter, Robin Laurie, Lindzee Smith and Greig Pickhaver. Photographer Ponch Hawkes was an active participant of the groups and activities she photographed, being a founding member of Circus Oz and the Women’s Theatre Group, and a member of the APG.
Soapbox Circus – the Fabulous Spagoni Family, by Ponch Hawkes, c 1977, gelatin silver photograph, State Library Victoria, copyright of the artist
Soapbox Circus was an eclectic mix of performers that emerged from the political inclinations of the idiosyncratic Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band and the Australian Performing Group. Created for ‘Popular, Pointed, Political, Physical Theatre’, Soapbox Circus held its first meeting in North Fitzroy’s Edinburgh Gardens. With a mix of music and madcap circus performance, the group toured nationally, performed at political demonstrations and was a regular on trade union tours performing to multicultural workforces. In 1978 Soapbox Circus famously fused with Adelaide’s New Circus to form the iconic Circus Oz.
Melantroppos, Circus Oz, Princes Park, by Ponch Hawkes, 1979, gelatin silver photograph, State Library Victoria, copyright of the artist
After forming in 1978 Circus Oz quickly gained national and global interest for its quirky, ‘new wave’ style of circus without animals. The Melantroppos regularly appeared in early Circus Oz shows. Dressed loosely as traditional circus strongmen with fake Victorian-style moustaches, the performers played with ideas of gender identity and androgyny – themes that have continued throughout the life of Circus Oz. Under the direction of founding member Tim Coldwell, the first Circus Oz tent, pictured here, was stitched together by circus members in the basement of the Pram Factory.
Mic Conway, by Elizabeth Gilliam, 1989, gelatin silver photograph, State Library Victoria, copyright of the artist
Mic Conway is best known as the lead singer of Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, but he is also a multi-talented actor, tap-dancer, magician and circus performer. In 1973 he helped set up the Melbourne Artists Workshop, a collective of musicians, actors and visual artists. He was instrumental in creating Soapbox Circus in 1976 by bringing together members of the Australian Performing Group and Captain Matchbox, and was a founding member of Circus Oz in 1978. Conway continues to present his unique view of the world by creating zany shows for children and adults alike.
Henry Maas and Peaches La Crème at home, by Rennie Ellis, 1978, colour transparency, State Library Victoria, copyright of Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
Henry Maas has been an influential figure in Melbourne’s independent music and nightclub scene for a number of decades. In the 1970s, together with Peaches La Crème and Noel Busby, he formed the Busby Berkeleys – a group described by photographer Rennie Ellis as having ‘touches of Berlin of the '30s and the Tivoli of the '50s, cabaret and vaudeville’. After a number of years living and performing in Amsterdam, the band was the resident act at Melbourne’s Last Laugh comedy restaurant for four months. Maas and La Crème were photographed in the curio-crammed living room of their Prahran house by Rennie Ellis in 1978 for POL magazine.
The Black Cat Cafe, 1988, by Michael Leunig, pen, ink and white correction fluid, State Library Victoria, copyright of Michael Leunig
The Black Cat Cafe, created by Henry Maas with Toni and Brian Edwards, opened on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, in 1982. Its European-style coffee, retro furniture and bric-a-brac defined Melbourne cafe culture for decades to come and created a space for Melbourne’s poets, artists, philosophers and musicians to congregate over a short black or a Bodgies’ Blood (ice-cream spider). Michael Leunig, much-loved Melbourne cartoonist for The Age, has here captured the regular parade of bohemian types. Maas went on to open the Night Cat nightclub on Johnston Street, and the Blue Diamond cocktail and cabaret bar in Queen Street.
Punk woman in Greville Street, Prahran, by Rennie Ellis, 1987, colour transparency, State Library Victoria, copyright of Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
Bohemians live their art. In addition to their individual cultural practices, many express themselves through their clothing, hairstyles and attitudes. From the dandyism of Marcus Clarke, Charles Conder and Barry Humphries to the terry-towelling suits of Percy Grainger and the facial tattoos and flaming red hair of Vali Myers, bohemians have often set themselves apart from the mainstream by creating artworks of themselves. In recent decades bohemia has been present on the streets and in the nightclubs of Melbourne through punk, goth and steampunk fashion.
Studies for portrait of Nick Cave, by Howard Arkley, 1999, synthetic polymer paint, felt-tipped pen, pencil and photocopy, State Library Victoria, copyright of the Estate of Howard Arkley, courtesy Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art
Art, music and fashion were closely intertwined in the DIY post-punk world of inner Melbourne. Artists Howard Arkley and Jenny Watson were regulars in the anarchic crowds that followed bands like The Boys Next Door and Whirlywirld at venues such as St Kilda’s Crystal Ballroom. Nick Cave had been one of Watson’s art students at Caulfield Technical College and she introduced him and his music to her circle of artist friends. In 1999, Arkley was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint Cave’s portrait, the only true portrait that he would ever create and one that captures an essence of rock-star heroism as much as an accurate likeness.
Portrait of poet, Si, from This city speaks to me, by Luke David Kellett, 2011, black and white Polaroid photograph, State Library Victoria, copyright of the artist
'There exists in Melbourne an elusive community of artists, musicians, poets, flâneurs, fringe-dwellers and radicals who have created a complex and dynamic social network which revolves around numerous converted-warehouse-come-arts-spaces, live-in studios and grass-roots arts venues. This is the rumbling in the background … Melbourne … continues to be a haven for Australia’s independent arts and radicalism whose philosophy and lifestyles find expression in the city’s warehouse movements, its festivals and in the enclaves of the rag-tag theatrical, musical and circus communities. What has evolved is a significant social and artistic movement; an independent micro-society that organizes itself in accord with anarchistic principles and is without dogma or guiding manifesto.'
Entrance to the Bohemian Melbourne exhibition at State Library Victoria, digital photograph by Patrick Rodriguez, 2014, copyright of the photographer
The Bohemian Melbourne exhibition was presented in the Keith Murdoch Gallery at State Library Victoria from 12 December 2014 to 22 February 2015. Visitors to the exhibition were met by Norman Ikin’s striking portrait of the young Vali Myers, taken in Melbourne in 1949 before she left for Paris. The empty bird cages with their doors flung open encapsulated the idea of a bohemian as free spirit, unfettered and unconstrained by societal norms.
Installation view of Bohemian Melbourne exhibition at State Library Victoria, digital photograph by Patrick Rodriguez, 2014, copyright of the photographer
A number of areas in the Bohemian Melbourne exhibition provided opportunities for visitors to be creative, and to contribute their ideas of what it means to be a bohemian. This area, set up like the living room of a 1980s share house or an artist’s studio, included a fridge on which visitors could create poetry using magnetic words. A soundtrack played a dozen tracks by independent Melbourne bands from the postpunk era of the late '70s and early '80s.
