Posts Tagged ‘Michael Cartwright’

We are honoured to announce the family, Nunan-Cartwright, have been invited by the High Commissioner, The Honourable Alexander Downer, to exhibit our sculptures at the Centenary celebrations of Australia House in London, 2018.

We are so proud to be showing our art in the iconic Australia House, with our two beautiful boys, both men now, and esteemed artists in their own right, Jacob and Sollai. Amazing to be showing as a family and to feel the history of ourselves and the language we have each built up in our art, emerging into this exhibition. Michael and I have been dedicated since we met in 1981 to our path as artists, always allowing our dreams to be our guiding light in our uncertain world. I guess the family lineage of artists on both sides has made it easier to ignore conventional boundaries and we have all pursued a path suited to our own creativity and joy of being.

Our pathways have led us overseas to many beautiful countries where we have been influenced by the ancient cultures and traditions that peek through modern living and also an abundant natural world that connects us to the earth we live on. Currently, Michael and I live between Italy, France and Australia, while Jacob lives in Tuscany, Italy and Sollai lives in Berlin, Germany. As recent Australians, we have somehow emerged artistically free, without attachment to the cultural mores of the civilizations our families left behind from Europe. The culture we had to observe in Australia was the one belonging to the original people and this we have been deeply influenced by, though it is not our own. The source of this culture, its earthiness and honouring of earth, water and sky, has given each of us our strength in our own work, referring always to it and adding to it the significant archetypal meanings of life discovered throughout the world in all the great ancient civilizations.

Thus, with our connection to Australia deeply held in our work, the themes of our sculptures for this exhibition at Australia House honour the elements of earth, sky and water, the essence of our Journeys.

Tags: , , , , ,
The restaurant - please click on the images for detail

Beijing is monumental.  Masculine, strong and tough, some of the finest buildings in the world are here.  Just arriving at Beijing airport is an amazing experience. Designed by Foster and Partners, the airport is massive and looks like it has just lifted itself gently from the earth, the roof line soft and undulating, but in its underworld, it vaults and soars effortlessly, like billowing material, pinned on towering white pillars.

Beijing airport

 

 

 

One enters the city, vast as it spreads out over the plain and dotted with some fantastic contemporary buildings,  to see the Forbidden City and its colossal walls and gateways, the great Tiananmen Square stretching before it towards the Temple of Heaven,  broad strokes of rich colour and repeated pattern work, lifting the grey stonework from the earth.

 

Mike in front of the Forbidden City Wall

Food is not all that makes the restaurant, and this is never more clear than at Capital M Beijing Restaurant.  Situated on a corner of Tiananmen Square overlooking the monumental Gates to the Forbidden City, Capital M Beijing has not only a unique and rarified position but an ambience from design that makes the experience romantic and memorable and `the place to be’.  The terraces outside are set up like little gardens, roses and ivy dripping and complementing teacups in pink rose and turquoise colours, pebble pathways and twirly iron chairs, the flower pots are hand designed and incised with Chinese cloud images and the views of the old city are wonderful, especially as sunset adds grace to the iron grey of Tiannamen.  Inside, the restaurant is even more spectacular.

Shona Nunan, Michael Cartwright, Roger Hackworth, Debra Little celebrating the opening

The designers, Debra Little and Roger Hackworth, (Dialogue ltd and Collaborate ltd) were faced with a huge task to transform a great ugly low ceilinged concrete space into what is today a wonderfully eclectic mix of mirrors and brass and geometric terrazzo black and white flooring, crazy fireplaces and designed furniture lifted from the forties.  Michael Cartwright was commissioned to create a fifty metre mural on canvas, to be inspired by an old Chinese tapestry, to feature along the spinal wall of the restaurant.  Red swirling Chinese clouds, giant blossoms and tortured trees, a rushing turquoise river sometimes burning from the sky above, wildflowers, grasses and rushes, thick fresh paint, all of it reflecting and double reflecting in mirrors and brass.  It brings a lushness to the eating places whose colours are otherwise subdued and revives the hues of the Forbidden City, the rich reds and greens and yellows and provencal blues.  The toilets are an absolute delight.  The floors and walls in white terrazzo are incised in brass with a lovely old Chinese pattern.  The cubicle doors are blood red and the outer doors in brass are adorned with blood red handles like old vines, these also commissioned from Michael.  The bar is beautiful in brass and luminous green resin, the glasses rimmed in red, twinkling against the mirror ceiling. The place is sensuous.  Attention to detail even in the etched metal pillars and the carved wood ceiling in the one high space of the restaurant.  Absolutely gorgeous – and the food was pretty good too!

Inspiration from the Forbidden City, Beijing

It was great going back this time to see the restaurant and Mike’s painting.  When we were here before, setting up the painting, caught in the frazzle of tempers and undoing and redoing the installation of the painting, it was hard to put aside the emotions of two years of work finally going into its resting place.  The anxiety at rest when finally we saw it all up, complete and beautiful and giving something truly magical to the space, working bountifully with the richness of design around it.  But still, to arrive as a customer several years later, and to be greeted by its warm presence in the foyer and into the restaurant which had worn in a little and had acquired a personality through the maitre’d, was to see it with clear eyes.  And we had heard such a lot about it from our own collectors and friends who had been in to dine, all declaring it to be a really special restaurant and the one they frequented always for special events.

Michael painting
Michael in his studio

Every day Mike would go down to the studio from six o’clock in the morning to paint this painting.  He felt urgent about it.  Anxious to catch the season as it awoke to greet the summer.  He’d go out to the river to examine the new buds comparing them to his finds and sketches in the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace.  Michelle Garnaut, the creator of the M restaurants,  prepared him for the painting, taking the time to show him the colours and the special trees in the walls and gardens of the palaces.  On a wintry Easter she arrived at the studios with Debra Little, the designer, to inspect the painting so far.  Michael was really nervous.  He loved the painting and didn’t want to have to tell them that this is the way it had to be if they didn’t like it.  They loved it.  Michelle declared, ‘He knows what he’s doing – lets leave him alone’ and they did – just a few small objections from time to time to trees a little too stark for their liking.  As things go with design, the wall measurements changed, especially after one of the big bureaucratic delays in working in the space, and some of his painting got discarded and others grew taller.  One space grew to 5 metres high and Mike was forced to hand stitch new canvas to the original.  At this time he rented an old theatre that had the height for his work and for several months he was up on scaffolding before he could see it whole again.

Touching up after installation at Capital M, Beijing

Its a great thing to create.  In something like a restaurant or a building, there is such a lot of collaboration to be considered.  It is not the master work of one – somehow the master has to be awoken individually in each collaborator so that the whole can be a masterpiece.  And Capital M Beijing is a masterpiece. It is the collaboration of the dreamer, the designers, the artists, the artisans, the workers, the managers, the chefs and waiters and all in all it comes together to create a feeling of deep pleasure for the diner who remarks, the meal was fantastic!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Overhead, on the verandah, Sollai is cementing the patch work of canals made for recent wires and plumbing, cheerful and gung ho, cement is flying from his flailing spatula. The garden is water ridden and the river is swollen and brown, but today the sun is shining and we pull the geraniums back out onto the walls – they had become so water logged we thought they’d drown. Glorious to see the swallows swoop and glide over the river, gobbling insects in the fresh glowing light.

Michael is standing back absorbing the triptych he has just completed for Morgon Stanley in Hong Kong. Its beautiful. A river scene. The bank full and pulsating with wildflowers and lush green herbs. The river gushing past, and on the canvas it looks fast, the colours almost tripping over themselves, glinting and dashing with that special light at sunset. The energy of the paint is fantastic and you feel part of early summer and its bountiful delights. He’s a mad man in the studio. How can he work so fast? At the end of every session he’s exhausted but emerges victorious, eyes shining, and then dumps on the couch and naps as quickly and intensely as he works. He says he doesn’t think about it – just does – complete trust.

Tags: , , ,