JOHN DOWIE RETROSPECTIVE

Last week on Postcards, we visited Veale Gardens just off South Terrace where John Dowie's pan fountain takes pride of place amid the roses. Coming across one of this nationally acclaimed artists works is no coincidence, in Adelaide they're everywhere. They're to be found in State Parliament where a Dowie bust of former premier Sir Thomas Playford keeps watch in the corridors of power.

In the Festival Centre patrons can still rub shoulders with Sir Robert Helpmann, his statute, a constant reminder of one of our artistic greats. And just outside Government House - Sir Mark Oliphant in bronze, bushy eyebrows and all.

It's a statue the current Governor Sir Eric Neale would have seen quite a bit on his travels around the city, along with others that he recently visited as a prelude to opening John Dowie's exhibition at Carrick Hill.

"I then visited the Richardson Gates at the Adelaide Oval. The sculpture works seems not to be identified. Dare I suggest these gates will ultimately commemorate two great South Australians, albiet from different fields, Richardson and Dowie".

From Governors to Rundle Mall shoppers, we all know his work, like the girl on the slide and the fountain, which dominates Victoria Square. But a third of what's now on show at Carrick Hill has never been shown publicly and it reveals a very different artist. In World War II, Sir Edward Hayward, of John Martin's fame and the man who built all this, was John's transport officer. After the war their friendship blossomed, and it seems only fitting that this stately mansion should now house Dowie's retrospective.

On the walls, some of his paintings recalling the experiences of war which have never left this gentle man. But when you see others, depicting fair grounds and the scramble for an ice-cream, it's hard to imagine that he endured several months in the siege of Tobruk and later the horrors of jungle warfare in tropics.

"The horrid things that one saw, like the six months in New Guinea with the stink of rotting flesh in your nostrils the whole time. You don't see that in the pictures. The clawing sweet smell of human being,s and whole landscapes of dead bodies, this kind of thing. Well, it's shocking and yer, I suppose I had a hard time getting over that period which I got over by boozing and I drank far too much, and that inaugurated my great skill at having gout".

Tracey Lock-Weir, is co-author and editor of a book on the life of John Dowie and she relates a war time story which he's too modest to tell, about how he was offered a way out of the siege to Tobruk, to assist a war artist in Cairo, but chose to remain.

"And he declined the offer and he preferred to stay where he was with his mates and endure the siege, so you get a sense of the amazing sort of integrity that he had".

But despite his experiences, most of the pieces in the retrospective are about happier times, like days at Port Willunga and days with the Queen, as he gives himself over to an artistic urge, which is impossible to explain.

"Where does your compassion come from, to do your work? I mean, obviously you are a very passionate man"

"I don't know. It's an appetite, like why are you hungry just about mealtime. You don't have to explain it - you just are"

And he just is - Adelaide's sculptor laureate. To sum up his impact on our surroundings, then the Governor should have the last word.

"It brings to mind the inscription commemorating Wren in St Paul's Cathedral - Ci Momentum Requiris Circum Spece. If you seek his monument look around you".

The John Dowie Retrospective is on at Carrick Hill until June 30th. The book "John Dowie - A Life In The Round", is available from Carrick Hill and the Art Gallery of SA Bookshop and sells for $35.00. For more information email info@postcards.sa.com.au