By Professor Gerard Bodeker,
Green Templeton College, University of Oxford,
March 2021.
GALLIANO FARDIN – AN ARTISTIC JOURNEY
Galliano Fardin, a highly-regarded, contemporary artist with a number of awards to his name, was born in Italy and has been resident in Australia since his mid-twenties. Galliano’s work is held in many prestigious collections, including the Art Gallery of Western Australian, the Kerry Stokes Collection, The Bankwest Art Collection, and the National Gallery of Australia.
VENETO
Mogliano Veneto, a town formerly part of the Venetian Republic, now in the province of Treviso, Veneto, northern Italy, was, in 1948, the birthplace of Galliano Fardin. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), the 18th century architect, archaeologist and engraver, is the famed son of Mogliano Veneto. Piranesi, a master of linear perspective, diverged from the single-view perspectives of his training and of his hero, Palladio, and often used triple-view perspectives when engraving Roman ruins, creating a fuller, if subtly disorienting, realism. ‘Reality is not what it seems’ was the message that came through as he journeyed through his labyrinthine Carcere (Prison) engravings, hinting at shifting realities underlying the surface appearance of life.
In church as a child, then later as a teenager in various Veneto centres, Galliano would see the works of Tintoretto, Giorgione, Titian, Piranesi and other Italian masters – “so close you could touch them”. What became ingrained from an early age was that “in Italy, there’s an obsession with structure. It affects everybody – it’s part of our bones. You can’t escape it”.
By the age of seventeen, having left school three years earlier to contribute to the family income, Galliano, inspired by old postcards, produced his own hand-drawn book of Piranesi-style drawings. Like an old folio, each page has a decorative border framing a meticulous drawing that mirrors the architectural and rural themes favoured by classical Italian artists. Structure and tradition had taken root.
NATIONAL SERVICE
By the age of 20, Galliano was doing his National Service in the Italian Army – training as a paratrooper. “I loved being in the paratroopers. Freedom”. And having a sky-view of Italy “opened up a whole new sense of freedom.” Part of the training was in Pisa and Livorno. “Being in Tuscany, the area was surrounded by castles, cathedrals and the presence of Etruscan ruins. This opened up a whole new range of experiences for me – I was a provincial young person and hadn’t had much experience of the world beyond Veneto”.
The highlight of that period was spent in Sardinia. Aside from the war games, the newness of space dawned: “As I was travelling on a train, we stopped at the Nuoro station and, there, TV screens were showing directly the first landing of astronauts on the Moon. Interestingly enough, many of the local travellers on the train were wearing traditional costumes. The contrast between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ was surreal.”
Transformed by his new experiences, yet having returned to his old manual job, Galliano, on the way to work one day, saw a billboard at Mestre Station advertising assisted flights to Australia. At 24, he spread his wings for full freedom.
“In my first few months in Australia, I was given the chance to go to full time English classes and get paid for it.” A year later, Nancy Neumann who had grown up in Lincoln, Massachusetts, came from the USA to visit a high school friend now living in Melbourne. Her friend gave Nancy a pass to the Melbourne Bushwalking Club and, as she waited at the bus stop which was the meeting point for the bushwalkers, she met Galliano, who was also going on his first walk. That was in 1973 – five decades, three sons and five grandchildren ago.
FORMAL STUDY
In the 1980s, Galliano realised a lifelong dream to study fine art. “In Italy as a child I was mesmerised by the art of Giotto, Piranesi and Titian. At Curtin University, I loved art history because I could reconnect with my childhood.” Subsequently, Galliano studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
STRATEGY
Getting started: For Galliano, “a white canvas is intimidating”. It is a universe of possibilities – “primordial chaos” Overwhelming fear of unbounded space was given voice by the 17th century philosopher, Blaise Pascale, who wrote: Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. (The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.)
The undifferentiated space of the canvas represents something universal. And a challenge – i.e., to find what forms it holds. What will it express at this moment in time? “Primordial chaos is an incentive”. This is key to understanding the artistic approach of Galliano Fardin: to not start with a plan, an image, a sketch.
The starting point for Galliano is “to go in with a strategy not an image. First you mess around and then you get some clues”. “When starting, you have no idea where you are going. Then, like magic, something evolves and it begins to talk back to you. You get clues where to follow up”. There is “no vision, but a set of steps to break the ice. For example, painting the surface with random patterns and colours. Primordial chaos. Primordial soup. Yet, in the face of primordial chaos, these random patterns and colours, the points of entry into the infinite, are invariably geometric. Imbibed from Italy’s artistic traditions during Galliano’s childhood, structure serves as his stepping point into a dynamic interaction with infinity framed within the canvas.
“Art is a form of controlled madness, where you try to manage madness. If it only comes from the brain, it is preconceived, stillborn”.
NOTHINGNESS
“In the rational world you’re dealing with certainties. If getting nowhere, don’t mess it up. Leave it. Come back from time to time.
If you’re in a mood, feeling lost, having a bad day, toxic thinking-nothing is possible. So, take a walk. Leave it behind. Then start anew.
The quantum doesn’t come through struggle. But the struggle is a process of finding the right angle in. Slowly, slowly, the painting tells you where it wants you to take it. It’s a bit like a labyrinth. Slowly, slowly you feel like you have a map in your head and you get your clues.”
This clear-minded meditative approach is central to Eastern philosophy and art.
Western philosophical traditions view nothingness as emptiness – that emptiness which terrified Blaise Pascal. Jean Paul Sartre’s seminal work of existential philosophy, L”Etre et Le Neant (Being and Nothingness) developed the idea that there can be no form of self that is “hidden” inside consciousness.
In Eastern traditions, by contrast, “no thing” represents positive attributes – infinite possibility, balance, tranquillity, dynamism, a field of consciousness within which everything is contained.
REFINING THE WORK
Galliano takes breaks when painting – sometimes weeks or months. “This avoids repetitiveness coming into the work. The worst thing is to lock yourself into what you know. It’s bad. If you feel you are doing what you know, you need to step outside it, reach into theMay 2021 unknown. Instead of looking into something that you know, you step into something that re-kindles you, gives you a new start”. Re-working paintings – “it’s like being lost and finding your way”. And there can be five or six reworkings of ‘finished’ work.
Living in isolation by the shores of Southwest Australia’s Lake Clifton, with its 2,000- year-old thrombolites, ancient living rocklike organisms: “I incubate in my head. Then … there it is. It’s as if it became alive. Came to life. The resultant feeling is that it was worth spending all the time… It doesn’t happen all the time”. “I’m lucky when I am surprised by the result”.
RENEWAL FROM THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT
“We are isolated here in the bush”. Across three decades, “we’ve turned paddock into bush and we’re committed to greening up this place and having a habitat for wildlife. There’s no boundary between this and the art. One reinforces the other”.
Galliano has created installations on his and Nancy’s property at Lake Clifton. The approach is the same as with canvas – make a start and see what is revealed. By excavating ancient seabed tunnels and riverbeds, a honeycomb of limestone reefs has been exposed, juxtaposed with minimal art statements, reiterating the view that the surface of things is underlain by far more mysterious and challenging realities than superficial impressions might suggest.
“I love this land. It shows us things that other places don’t. When you think of its geological history, its quantum source. Its indigenous people ride on this. The dreaming is quantum”.
IN THE DESERT
Galliano, his wife Nancy, and their three sons lived, worked and studied with indigenous communities in the central desert areas of Western Australia from 1990 to 1997 and then again from 2000 to 2002 – a total of nine years.
“While working with indigenous artists, even those who had no previous experience, I realised what an amount of cultural wealth they possess in their land. From within their own cultural context, they all seemed to have the ability to transfer what we call “the dreaming” into images, songs etc. We non-indigenous have a totally different way of looking at the fundamental aspects of being alive. The major difference is that we are citizens of countries but do not belong to the land. Indigenous people have an affinity with the land that is beyond our grasp. Their stories and songs and the images they create give us an insight into their ‘wealth’.”
Moving between remote settlements of Tjukurla, Warburton, Wanarn, Parnngurr and Punmu in the Central and Gibson Desert regions, Galliano worked as an art teacher in government schools. In the independent school system in the communities of Parnngurr and Punmu, he worked in language centres with the cooperation of indigenous teachers. Nancy, who taught primary school, was school principal at Tjukurla, Wanarn, Parnngurr and Punmu. And their three sons received their primary education where their parents were working, and then attended secondary school in Alice Springs.
“In the desert, I’ve seen people doing amazing art work. And it’s contagious. One person has a breakthrough and others suddenly have breakthroughs.
When the young people saw their elders doing important work, they were really proud of them. And it started a fire in them that had something beneficial.
Galliano returned regularly to conduct art workshops for a further dozen years.
THE IMAGE FLICKERS BRIGHTER THE LESS YOU SEARCH
Walter Isaacson, former chair and CEO of CNN and former editor of TIME, in his acclaimed biography of Leonardo da Vinci writes of the Mona Lisa: “When we look at an object straight on, it appears sharper. When we look at it peripherally, glimpsing it out of the corner of our eye, it is a bit blurred, as if it were farther away. With this knowledge, Leonardo was able to create an uncatchable smile, one that is elusive if we are too intent on seeing it …. The result is a smile that flickers brighter the less you search for it”.
Viewed straight on, some of Galliano’s works may seem ‘minimalist’ or ‘abstract’, as they have been described on occasion. Viewed in passing, a sideways glance, a look at one part of the work and another part begins to vibrate, two dimensions can spring into four. And then, something more – a spin through time and space…
The terms ‘minimalist’ and ‘abstract’, then, seem less than adequate descriptions of something that is neither attempting to minimalize nor to abstract anything. Is there a better term for forms accessed and activated from formless “primordial chaos”?
LET THE MIND SETTLE – UNTIL IT IS CLEAR
Galliano’s art has a unique starting point. As noted, rather than start with a plan, an image, or a sketch, Galliano starts with a strategy: “When starting, you have no idea where you are going. Then, like magic, something evolves and it begins to talk back to you. You get clues where to follow up. There is no vision, but a set of steps to break the ice”.
“It’s not psychotherapy”, says Galliano. “Leave moods and feelings behind. Let the mind settle. Until it is clear”. This clear-minded, meditative approach is more typical of Eastern philosophy and art.
While Western philosophical traditions have tended to view nothingness as emptiness, in Eastern traditions, as noted, “no thing” represents positive attributes – an infinite possibility of things, balance, tranquillity, dynamism, a field of consciousness within which everything is contained and with which everything is imbued. Here the blank canvas is replete with possibilities. Given the right time and the right mindset, these will begin to express themselves through the artist. The artworks emanate the learning and spirit of their masters.
This is the approach that Galliano has experienced in Indigenous Australian art. And it is the approach that drives his own artistic expression.
