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Walkthrough - 2 minutes long

Colin Rhodes: Hi, I'm here in Surry Hills with Rex Irwin ... the very prominent gallerist and art connoisseur. Rex is ... been in Sydney for forty ... four years now, permanently and even longer, if we look back to his first appearance over here in Australia, back in 1962. Um, he's someone who's had a fantastic career, um, known a lot of artist himself, uh, sort of well-known. And, uh, he's recently, um, moved after a 30, 30-year stint longer, actually.

Rex Irwin: 36-year.

Colin Rhodes: 36-year stint, um, in his own gallery and moved into partnership, uh, with Tim Olsen. And so, uh, a new era, uh, has just begun.

Colin Rhodes: Uh, Rex, can I begin by asking you to say, uh, a little bit about, uh, how you came here in the first place and, uh, and what made you go away and then come back and stay?

Rex Irwin: Uh, well, the first thing we have to establish is that I hate the word "gallerist." It reminds me of a florist. So, I would rather just be an art dealer. Um, but I was in the wine trade in England in the '60s, having left school, and an Australian friend of mine said, "Australia grows wine and instead of earning five pounds a week, you could earn 10 pounds a week. Why don't you go?" So, that's why I came.

Um, I was not a ten pound pom, I paid my own way. Arrived in Sydney, literally on my twenty first birthday and thought it was probably the most hideous city I had ever seen. I'd never seen bungalows or red liver blocks of flats like it.

However, um, it didn't take me too long to fall in love with it. But during my first summer -- I got here at the end of September, so probably in about February of the following year -- I got sunstroke and was unwell and then was told I could only work for three hours a day.

And in desperation, I said, "What can I do for three hours a day?" And a friend of mine said, my doctor said, "I have a friend who has a gallery. Maybe he will employ you." And it was Barry Stern and he did. And Frank Watters was working there at the time. And I have a feeling even John Peart was there, if not full time, but at some stage when I was there. So, I went from sort of army background to wine trade to the art world. Um, so finally, I suppose, from the reality of ordinary world, I went into the fantasy world of the art world.

Colin Rhodes: And had the, had the art world been something that had been prominent in your, your background before?

Rex Irwin: No, I'd never been to an art gallery in my life before I came to Australia, because my parents were in the army and I was at naval school. We used to go to castles, and we used to go to ships tied up on the Thames, but we never went to art galleries. But we did go to the theater a lot, so I was not entirely a Philistine.

Colin Rhodes: And of course, it always seems to me that, uh, there's often a direct link between the wine trade and the art trade.

Rex Irwin: The luxury trade. That's something that actually I'm hating about the art world at the moment. We are now thought to be a luxury business when in fact, if you talk to artists, we are the only way they can express themselves. So, I think, we are being undersold as it were. We are not a luxury trade. We are just, like being a writer or an actor; we are part of the Arts. And I think we should remember that.

Colin Rhodes: And do you think Sydney, in that sense, in recent times, has changed in the way they, the gallery sort of sector, um, has set itself up? I mean, it certainly used to be a very sort of varied, a varied set up, a varied, uh, sector with lots and lots of galleries catering to different taste, different people. Do you, do you feel that has changed or ...

Rex Irwin: I think it has changed, and I think partly, it's been changed by the big institutions. In the nineteenth century, early half of the twentieth century, institutions were provincial. Australian institutions showed Australian art. Brazilian institutions showed Brazilian art. Now, everybody has a Kiefer, most museums have a Freud and probably have a Hockney, too. So, we have been internationalized. And so, Sydney is, if not importing the international artist, we're certainly importing the international look.

And I think that is actually driven, not by the galleries themselves, but by the clients. We now don't do what we think would be interesting to do, we do what we think will sell. And that is one of the great sadnesses in my attitude to the art world, generally, at the moment.

Colin Rhodes: So, let's rewind to 1962. Um, you found, you found yourself, uh ...

Rex Irwin: Working for Barry Stern.

Colin Rhodes: By extraordinary strike of, of luck, I guess, um, working with Barry Stern, but also in an, an environment where you're actually at the center, really, the, the, the Sydney dealing world.

Rex Irwin: Well, at least, I wasn't just a tourist on the age of a city. And in those days, very few tourists spoke the way I spoke. So, people thought I was up myself and that was, in itself, rather alienating.

And I have to say, when I went to work for Barry Stern, he addressed this point. He thought my accent was a little bit extreme. And he said, "When you open the door to people, give them a catalog, catalogue, but please don't speak." So, I would open the door, thrust the catalog, and go [makes sounds], and run away and hide. And if speech was necessary, it was either Barry or Frank Watters that would talk to the client. So ...

Colin Rhodes: The accent clearly set in early and has never left.

Rex Irwin: It's ... I think one may run away from the upper middle classes, but they never leave you entirely.

Colin Rhodes: [laughs] So, 1962, you found yourself, um ... leaving and..

Rex Irwin: I found myself, first of all, I think, part of a very interesting part of the town. Barry Stern was a young Jewish dealer, and his clients were the young Jewish movers and shakers, many of whom are in the rag trade. And so, they actually embraced me in a way I think that they're slightly more up-market Gentile counterpart, might not have done. And maybe, that's why I desperately wished to be an honorary Jew. I was given great acceptance, uh, among the, the young clients we had.

And Barry, without being unkind, I don't think he ever sold scholarship, but he certainly sold excitement. And that is the job of any salesman, be they art, cabbages, houses. It's to sell excitement and need. And that's one thing I learned from him. That was terribly important.

Colin Rhodes: And it's interesting. I think the, the, the Jewish population in general have tended to be great art patrons, great collectors and collecting out of, um, a particular love of things that they like, you know. I notice you have some German expressionist images on your wall here in, uh, in, in, in your house. And again, it was really, it was really more than anything, uh, uh, uh a Jewish, um, clientele who were buying people like Heckel, Pechstein, Beckman.

Rex Irwin: Not in Australia at the time, of course. I mean, it's interesting, I, perhaps, these, these young Jewish families were brought up in tradition, either the Hungarian or the Viennese tradition, of being around the arts and collecting. And of course, when their families came here, they mostly had to abandon everything. And there they were in 1962 to 1970. Starting again, they were buying new pictures from the new country in which they were. They were also supporting the opera, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

And without being too ... vile, if the art world didn't have the Jews and the "faggots", we would have no punters and we must be eternally grateful to them both, because it is, uh, it's not a real world. It's, it is a little bit of a fantasy world. And, um, we need people who need. We don't want people to do it because it's a feather in your cap or it's an asset. We want ... The need has to be there, and that's what makes it wonderful to be a part of.

Colin Rhodes: That's fantastic. So, you find yourself back in London and spent most of the, the swinging sixties ...

Rex Irwin: Spending my money.

Colin Rhodes: Spending your money.

Rex Irwin: Yes. I inherited a modest fortune and went back, and actually went into a rather good art gallery that was showing the Vollard Suite. And I said, "Tell me about the Vollard Suite and tell me what an etching is." And I was twenty two years old. They rolled their eyes and thought, "Well, if you don't know what etching is, we're not going to tell you."

So, instead of buying wonderful things immediately, I went to where I was loved, which was a not very good gallery. So, my collecting started off as often people do, not very focused. But when I came back to Australia, I started to collect Australian art, I went to work for Barry again. And, um, then I moved to other things, which have become Freud, German Expressionists, David Hockney, that sort of thing, as well as Australian artists.

Colin Rhodes: So, I think, you've, you've said, uh, uh, in, in various places that you don't really see yourself as a collector, as such, that you have a kind of collection but really, it's a repository around which the, the whole of your, your sort of your, your, your dealing, um, spins and that really, it's the collectors that you're, that you're, you're selling to, the, the, the, that are the collectors.

Rex Irwin: Well, the interesting thing is, I think we now don't have collectors. We certainly had collectors in the Sixties and I think until even the Nineties. Now, I think we have customers or clients. And in the old days, when I worked later for a gallery called Clune, Clune Galleries in the Macquarie Street, for whom I worked from about 1969 to 1973, um, or even four.

We had clients who would buy nineteenth centuries Australian paintings, and they might specialize in the, the very early twentieth century, people like Rupert Bunny, Phillips Fox, but they would also go back and look at Von Guerard and Piguenit. And if they had the means, Glover.

But in those days, pictures weren't expensive, so people didn't do, didn't collect because it was smart, it was whatever. They did it because of the either the intellectual wish or the need to have lovely things around them for themselves. And I think that's what I've slightly done. I've lived most of my life on my own. And most of my pictures, as you can see, are portraits. I've replaced my family with pictures of Max Beckmann and whatever. So, um, people collect for different needs, but I'm not thorough I don't pursue a line.

Colin Rhodes: In terms of the artists that you've shown over the years, there would be many, uh, people who have become a really quite prominent an artist? Others who you've taken on, um ... and, and ones I'm sure that have sunk without a trace. What, what has been your attitude towards the relationship with your artist in the gallery? I think it's always interesting to, to, um, to hear about how a dealer views the relationship between, between the artist and whether there are different kinds of relationships between different artists in the stable and ...

Rex Irwin: It certainly is that. Um, there are two sorts of [clears throat] -- excuse me -- the way artists, a gallery gets an artist. Some galleries get attracted ... Some artists get attracted to a gallery because of the other artists that the gallery shows. And then I, as a dealer, by looking around or meeting people, see somebody who I would like to attract to my gallery.

So, um, one is a slightly passive state when artists come to you and you, you know, it's like The Biggest Loser. You put them through the hoops. Do you want them ... It was, it was, it was a very degrading performance. And then there were artists who you sort of chose and you flirted with them and you charmed them and you try to persuade them that you were doing whatever it was better than other people.

Um, it was, of course, very much frowned on to steal other dealers' artists, but I have to say, the art world does a lot of things that are frowned on.

Um, however, perfect relationships came out of both sides of that sort of arrangement. And one of my favorite stories is, um, my friendship and my representation of Nicholas Harding now for, I think, fifteen years or probably more. Um, Nicholas came to me one day, slightly later than most artists were in those days. He was probably thirty one, two, three, four, something like that. And showed me some work, and I said, "Oh, it's very interesting. Where have you been for the last however many years?"

And he said, "Well, I have actually come to see you three times and you've told me to go away and get better. Does this mean I'm better?" Um, and, so, we ... That was it. I don't remember sending him away. I think he was, in fact, in a Faber Castell prize that I put on.

Rex Irwin: And I think he was hung. So, I wasn't completely rejecting him, but we've had, I think, a fairly flawless relationship. Uh, we don't seem to lose our tempers with each other. We each know what the other can do to benefit the partnership, as it were. And in moments of stress, each has asked the other one a favor and the other one has always come good. So, that's the ideal relationship.

Many relationship I've ... The one thing I have discovered, I have always been quite good with older artists who are, as it were, set up, professionals. Because as a dealer from the very beginning, I always paid my artist very quickly. And when you are living as an artist, however modestly, you need to eat, you need to pay your bills, you need to educate your children. And that is something that my gallery got a very good reputation for.

Perhaps I didn't, um, swish and swan around studios as much as I might have done. I was very much more on the professional side ... relationships. Um, one of the things that is odd about artist studios, a dealer seldom actually sees an artist put a mark on a canvas, because when I go to the studio, the coffee has been made, the children have been sent to school, and everything has been tidied up because they want to show you a new body of work or something.

But you don't ... The only time you see paint being put on is when you sit for portraits ... Which, for Nicholas, I've done lots. Not for portraits that were going to immortalize me or him, but just hand-eye coordination and, and time to work on something that isn't the work, maybe, for a show.

Colin Rhodes: And I guess the conversation comes with that as well. I know having been on both sides of the, the, the, the, uh, the equation of the painting and being painted, that sense of the conversation that takes place during that process ... Is often really fantastic.

Rex Irwin: Yeah. My favorite conversation, I think, was when I was sitting for Judy Cassab. Um, at the time -- this was probably fifteen years ago -- at the time, I was reading the autobiography of Leni Riefenstahl, who people refer to as Hitler's photographer, but I don't think she really was. And Judy was Jewish, and I had been in Germany in 1945, and it was an emotive thing.

And this woman, Riefenstahl, was apparently incredibly naïve. She would say, "Oh, and I met this person and they said, "Of course I can do that." And one of these people was Hitler. "And of course you can dig a hole in the Olympic track and do this." And I said, "Judy, could she have been naïve? Could she have been so selfish?" And Judy said, "Rex, if I had had the opportunity to go up the flagpole, I would have done so too."

And she completely accepted her as an artist rather than as a propagandist. So that was a really strange and surreal and, and marvelous time.

Um, another time with a, a very celebrated artist, David Hockney, who's a bit of a friend of mine, he was in Australia and he was, um, exploring his drawings through the lens, the prism. And, um, one day he rang and said, uh, "I'm thinking of doing a portrait of you, luv. What are you doing tomorrow morning at nine o'clock?" And I heard myself saying, "I'm having a haircut, David," and he said, "Cancel it, luv." So I canceled it and he did a drawing of me. So it was rather like walking downstairs. You, you can't be saying this to an artist of such importance.

So we had different relat-, relationships ... with different artists. Some are more needy. S- ... interestingly enough, many of the most, one would think, accomplished, secure artists, go into complete panic stations once the last brushstroke has been put on.

Then the picture's about to go to the framer. They're about to go the gallery. They're about to be looked at. And they go into a decline. They ring you every five minutes for no good reason at all. They look miserable when they come to the gallery. It's very odd. And it's still difficult to know what to say. You can't ... I mean, even if they know the pictures will sell out on opening night or they will get a wonderful review, the insecurity is tangible.

Colin Rhodes: And have any of your artists being people who actually find it hard to let go, that they know the work is going to sell and yet it's ... hard to see it, see it disappear from their hands?

Rex Irwin: No, actually. I think that is probably the exclusive ... excuse of the lazy. I've been very lucky. I have either attracted to myself artists who are very professional or I have been attracted to very professional artists. Having said that, there is a little school of artists in Melbourne at the moment who are lazy. They want to work to deadlines. They want the show. They want ...

They don't do what, for instance, someone ... Alun Leach-Jones, who is a man in his j-, eighties now, I think. We had an exhibition at the gallery of his sculpture and one morning I went home to see him and collect something at nine fifteen and he had been in his studio an hour.

And he wo- ... goes to his studio every morning regardless of whether he's got a show on or he's got nothing to do or he's got too much to do. That is what a certain generation of artists did.

So the art world is not just changing from our side -- the dealer side -- where my clients are becoming flashy; we're becoming tarty; we're just trying to sell things. The artists themselves are changing. The younger artists are aware of sales. I think people who are older than fifty five almost never expected sales. They expected to paint. That's what they did. And if I could do what I did, that was a blessing for all of us.

But the new generation not only ... They don't expect to paint, but they do expect to sell, and that is ... Makes it more complicated for me as an old fart to deal with a younger artist, because they don't, in my mind, have the same work ethic. They may, in the end, produce something magical. And some of them do.

But, um, it's that thing that I don't know who -- Tennessee Williams or somebody -- said that, you know, when you've got writer's block, you still sit in front of your typewriter with a piece of paper in it and you try and do something, because if you're not in the room with a typewriter, you're not going to make it work. So if you're not in the studio, you can't produce a work. You have to be in the studio. And I think that discipline is changing for a lot of the younger generation of artists.

Colin Rhodes: Mm-hmm. And I think, certainly, uh, a self-consciousness about, um, what for better or worse we call in the art schools, professional practice and professional studies, that is something that has changed over the last sort of twenty years or so, where at art school, part of the curriculum these days is thinking about, you know, what it means ...

Rex Irwin: How to fill in the grant application.

Colin Rhodes: ... to be entrepreneurial ... And all, all these sorts of things. And, and I guess that can't help but change some of the ways that, that artists then not only relate to, to dealers and prospective dealers, but also to the way they think about their own practice.

Rex Irwin: Yes, I'm sure. Interestingly enough, I used to be asked, say, twenty years ago, to give some of those professional practice talks. But obviously what I tell them is now totally out of fashion and no use. So I haven't been asked for some time. But I was for inst- ... interested ... Interestingly enough, I was at an opera do on Sunday last where the scholarship involved not only an amount of money but discussions with actors and agents how to help produce your career.

So it's spreading through the arts and interestingly, when we get -- we as a gallery -- get an artist who is a good self-promoter, it is marvelous, because I am selling something, I am selling an object. They're talking about their own work and about themselves, and so they can do an awful lot that seems, perhaps, more plausible and more exciting than the dealer who represents them. So I don't for any minute knock that aspect of the new artist. But sometimes it can be a lot of self-promotion and not very much work.

Colin Rhodes: Have there been artists, uh, in your gallery in, in, in times that have sort of been the opposite of that, where it's been someone that you have really believed in that you wanted to promote, um, but who had been very sort of backwards-in coming forwards?

Rex Irwin: Yes. And it doesn't make it impossible, but it does make it hard. Uh, you can't really drag somebody kicking and screaming, but in the end, I think, the reason that Sydney has, I think, for years been very well served by galleries and dealers, for a very small city is that each of us has our own personality.

You know, there is the great and glorious Ray Hughes. There is the somewhat nervy Roz Oxley. There's the, um, Pooh-Bah in Stuart Purves from Australian Galleries. And then there's darling Tim Olsen who is out and about, knows everybody; he's the son of a great artist. And as he said to me when we were talking about merging, he said, "Rex, I know the smell of an artist."

And so it's all of those various things that enable us to attract artists to ourselves who like the way we operate. I mean, I don't think I've yet had an artist come to me and say, "You are such a poisonous fart. I don't really like you, but you're very ... Be very good for my work." I mean, I would probably give them a show just for honesty.

So, um, we sort of get whom we deserve. But one of the points I'm wanting to make is that because I am now seventy two, I am a little bit out of touch with my clients and my artists who are thirty two. And that is one of the very important reasons that I went into business with Tim Olsen. I had sort of run my course. I don't think I've done my dash, but I've run my course, and in any business there comes a moment when you have to rethink, to move on, and think how best to do it.

I suppose there were two bay- ... two ways. One would be to employ the brightest, shiniest, cleverest, best-connected salesmen in the world, or to go to one of the brightest, shiniest, best salesmen in the world and go into business with them ... Which is what Tim and I have done. Um, I'm told I lend him gravitas. And I'm sure he lends me a bit of pizazz. It's quite a good combination.

Colin Rhodes: It's a great combination.

Rex Irwin: It is.

Colin Rhodes: Seems like a great segue to go back to seventy six, the moment that you ...

Rex Irwin: Started.

Colin Rhodes: ... Decided to go it alone, uh, and started, uh, started the, the Rex Irwin Gallery. How did that decision come about?

Rex Irwin: Well, I'd worked for one of the best people in the profession, Barry Stern. I then worked for one of the most scholarly people in the profession, who is a man called Frank McDonald, who wo- ... worked ... Who owned Clune Galleries, which was the first gallery to look back to the nineteenth century. He really showed Emanuel Phillips Fox, Rupert Bunny's for the first time since they'd died. He show- ... he f- ... discovered the Von Guerard sketch books. He knew who John Glover was. So he looked backwards.

And it was Frank that taught me that I'm not a scholar. It was Barry, I think, who taught me that I actually am a shopkeeper. And then I worked for a, a particularly dull but charming man called Chandler Coventry, who ran the Coventry Gallery. And I thought it was interesting at a period, but like many galleries of that age and stage, it lasted as long as the fashion for what he did lasted, I think. So I didn't stay with him very long, and I made the mistake of thinking, "Well, if he can do it, I can." But of course, he was immensely wealthy and I wasn't.

And so I started up on my own, and when you start on your own, you mostly take artists who are in a slightly disgruntled stage. They're fighting with their current dealer, and they want to go to somebody new, so they will come to you. Which is not necessarily the best way to start.

However, um, I started and they were very supportive. And we staggered along for a bit. And then quite early on, I started to go to London and build up a network with London dealers. I became great friends with ... Personally friends with Hockney, and I'd shown his work from the very beginning.

So that little extra foreign content, which was probably financially five percent, in time and energy ten percent, of what the gallery did, made me a little bit different from other galleries in Sydney at the time and made me able to put on a, a most extraordinary show we did that had paintings by Auerbach, Freud, Kossoff and just print by Bacon. But, I mean, it was the first time that London School, as it were, had been done here. We subsequently had two major painting shows of Frank Auerbach. On two occasions, I've shown the entire print work of Lucian Freud.

So that is something that has always interested me, not because I'm English. I think because I like figurative painting and most of the English people of that generation were figurative still. I mean, Auerbach is still figurative, whether heavy painting or not.

So that was the beginning of Rex Irwin art dealer. Um, I had a partner in that business who was a client who I had when I was with the Clune Galleries. And when I was thinking of starting up, I realized that you can't actually start up with no money. And so I rang this person and said, "Would you consider going into partnership with me?"

And they said, "How much will it cost?" And I said, "About the amount you would spend on one picture when you buy them from Clune Galleries." And, um, initially, they thought perhaps not because in Australia's life there was yet another recession on at the time. And then, they said, "Yes, of course." And that's how we started.

But we ha-, I was one of the comparatively few galleries that literally had to earn a living out of what it sold. There was no capital. And that is one of the reasons I've been very keen to, first of all, sell a picture, then send an invoice and get paid, and then pay my artists as quickly as possible, because we were all in the same boat together.

And the Coventry Gallery, for whom I worked and I don't think it's disloyal to say, Chaney ... I sold a picture the first week I was there and I sent out an invoice. And he thought it was rather common to send out bills. He used to wait for the moment of osmosis to come to the person that remembers that they bought a picture, and then pay.

But it meant some of the artists were restless because they weren't getting paid for quite a long time. I made it a point that, you know, you paid your artists upfront. And then, of course, as you go along, people are attracted to you. The greatest attraction, I have to say, we had was the Picasso Estate.

The most exciting thing, I was able to go to Geneva and choose the drawings that I was going to include in my show from the Picasso Estate. And I thought, "How am I going to do this? I am in a room of 2,000 drawings worth for, twenty million dollars, whatever they were. How am I going to put together a show of twenty five things?"

And I just thought, "Oh, I'll do it like going to a young artist studio." I went through the racks, fishing out things that were interesting and ended up with a hundred of them. And I went back again and pushed some back and I had fifty. And then I pushed some more back, took a deep breath, and that was it. And it was the most extraordinary show. To have that quality show in Australia was remarkable. And that helped me getting on to doing other things.

Colin Rhodes: And that, I think, is being one of your particular strengths, hasn't it? I think that, that mixing up of, you know, really great Australian art and particular choices of international stuff, which you know, as you say i ...

Rex Irwin: In my case is merely go figurative.

Colin Rhodes: Yeah, but, but nevertheless, uh, a great mixture of things which delivers something special from somewhere else into Sydney, but also delivers something special that is of Sydney.

Rex Irwin: Yeah. I mean, you know, behind you is, are four Lucian Freuds and two Nicholas Hardings. They sit perfectly together. Um, the artist needs to see that and my client needs to understand that you don't just collect Australian pictures. You don't just collect as some people do, collect one picture buy it through, "Oh, I have a Fred Williams." You don't want a Fred Williams. You want three Fred Williamses, oils. You want some gouaches and you want some prints because they were all aspects of the artist's work.

Colin Rhodes: And this comes back, I suppose, gain to the, uh, the typology, if you like, of the collector that I've heard it said by a few people lately that the collectors who like something in collecting depths seem to becoming rare and rare and people are ... They're doing a sort of National Gallery of Australia thing ... have one or two of everything and ...

Rex Irwin: It's an accumulation rather than a collection. But going back to attracting artists, um, I did a very small commercial show of Fred Williams' work, probably only ten things, not in the gallery, in my sort of private dealer's room. And Mrs. Williams saw it and she then offered me my first taste of the Williams' Estate, which in Australian terms is about as important as one can get. And that has been a collaboration that's gone on now for twenty years and it's magical. And I'm sure I've sold more pictures since Fred died than Rudy Komon sold when he was alive.

Colin Rhodes: Yeah, this brings me to, uh, a question about the, the actual space for the gallery that it was never ... It was never just a white cube, but so many other spaces are in Sydney and have been in Sydney. I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about why that was, how it became, and how that functioned differently and, and effectively for you.

Rex Irwin: Well, I suppose if one has money, one can make a white cube. If you have to rent something, you have to rent something that exists. And I rented this wonderful space in a Victorian building, which was inexpensive, but it also was twenty stairs up from the street, which in itself was different from any other gallery in Sydney at the time.

And so the architecture defined, to some degree, what we did. It was a wonderful excuse not to show heavy, rusty sculpture. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. We can't get it up the stairs and it would probably fall through into the shop," which got me out of all sorts of awkward situations.

But after thirty five years in that space, thirty six years in that space, perhaps it was beginning to look a little old-fashioned compared to the wonderful new galleries that are being built and perhaps I was looking old-fashioned. And the whole thing was looking old-fashioned. And so the move to Tim Olsen is wonderful because Tim has the most beautiful contemporary sunlit gallery, which is wonderfully flexible.

And it is only two steps up from the street, which makes an extraordinary amount of difference. I mean, at the end of my career at Queens Street, Margaret Olley, for the last three years, couldn't make the stairs. And as Margaret bought Picasso, Freud, Nicholas Harding, Amanda Ma ... anybody you can think of from me, I was losing out on a good client.

And there was always a joke that Lord Duveen said about his clients that by the time they could afford him, they only had ten years left to live. And his clients were Frick, Morgan, Mellon, Rockefeller, but they never discovered him till they were in their seventies because they really weren't rich enough for him.

I don't ... I think many of my clients have been much richer than I am. This is interesting enough, it's something I had to explain to a young colleague of mine, who now has his own business in the art world -- and I won't tell you which one -- who, at one stage, was seeming a little envious of some of our clients. And I said, "But the definition of our clients is they have to be richer than we are to buy what we do."

So envy is not something that is at all welcome in the art world. I don't think artists should be envious of other people's successes. I don't think dealers need to be envious about the people's spaces. We just all need to get on with doing what we're doing and trying to make the town a little bit more exciting.

Colin Rhodes: And I think the, that sense of, of the excitement of, of the gallery spaces, maybe that's a good moment to talk about some of your other interests, your interest in theater and the opera and so on. I think that sense of Sydney ... Sydney's often lambasted and the popular mind is ...

Rex Irwin: For being a cultural desert.

Colin Rhodes: the cultural desert. And it seems to me that's just not true. I'd love to hear you all take ...

Rex Irwin: Well, going back to the "faggots" and the Jews, um, we have just had in Melbourne the entire Ring cycle of Wagner. Not that I liked it or wanted to go to see it, but I don't think cultural deserts put on Ring cycles. They don't even think of it. So, Sydney has always had, um, even before the Opera House, it had very interesting recital life, symphony life.

I remember seeing John Bell playing "Hamlet" in the Cell Block Theater, which is now part of the National Art School. I equally saw him a year later, when I was in Stratford, playing "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." But we had things to do. We had Rudy Komon. We had Barry Stern. We had Gallery A. And that was only in Sydney.

So I think we've always had lots of excitement, but it is inclined to be in little boxes. And if you look at the patrons of, um, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Opera, the Art Gallery New South Wales, they are the same twenty seven and a half people. They are the great donors to and the patrons of.

But we ... In, I don't think I set about trying to make Sydney more interesting at all, except for myself. Perhaps it was a totally selfish thing. I wanted to be ... To live in this town and enjoy it. So, very early on, I started to go to the opera, which I'd done in London. I started to go to the theater. I then got involved a little bit with NIDA. I got involved ... The gallery got involved with sponsorship of singers with the Australian Opera.

And it's just a thing that people who enjoy what we enjoy do. And I think that is part of, not just excitement of the town, but the civilization of the town. And of course, going back to real estate, the Opera House helped enormously. It was big. It was unsatisfactory. It was beautiful and it was there. And it enabled things to happen that would never have happened before it came.

And I think that is, of course ... The Opera House is not having exactly the same challenge that Rex Irwin art dealer is having. It is no longer the right size and shape for what is being done and what must be done to carry the art form into the future. And it is, has just discovered that throwing six hundred million dollars at it isn't going to solve that problem.

So there have to be other ways to make it work. And one of the ways I've always ... Two ways I've wanted the opera to change a little bit is the Opera in the Park used to attract everybody in Sydney, not just art people, but people who came from all the suburbs. And they would get back eight o'clock in the morning. And they would sit there till eight o'clock at night until the performance started.

There were 40,000 people, almost forty yards from the Opera House. Surely it's logical to think, "How do we get the stone to roll down the hill?" And one of my suggestions has been, for the last ten years, we get a rich person to sponsor the people who actually move from the park to the Opera House.

So, give them a program, when they go to the park. If they take it to the box office, they get twenty percent off the ticket prize at any ticket they want. And then, the man only has to pay for the people who actually show up. He doesn't have to give three million dollars. He just has to pick up the twenty five percents of whatever.

And I just think that would have been an interesting solution. And the next one, I've just said to the new man who's running the Australian Opera, a many called Craig Hassall, who's an Australian, who's worked in arts administration here, with the Bell Shakespeare Company, with the Opera House, went to England, worked with the English National Ballet, and has now come back to work with the opera.

So he's doing what we do. We go away. We come back and we learn in the process. And I said to him, "Craig, there are all those stone steps outside, opposite to rock face. Can't you drop a sheet from the rock face and put a video of what's happening in the House and people could sit on the steps on their cushions? Can't it be possible?" And he said, "It's all right, Rex, I've already thought of that."

So, as in Covent Garden does now, they play the opera once a season or once an opera into the Piazza of Covent Garden, we should be able to sit on those very uncomfortable stone steps and look at something in real time that's happening from the Opera House. It can't be too difficult to put a camera there and maybe the sound won't be perfect, but the excitement will be absolutely at fever pitch.

And you won't have to pay for it, like the Opera on the Harbor, that's wonderful, a great success. Every big city in the world does it. And you pay through the nose and you have events. You have an event. But this other thing would be just what happens outside the House.

Colin Rhodes: And Sydneysiders love festivals and they love their outdoor events and so on. Which brings me, I guess, to the Biennale. I'm very interested to hear your thoughts about the Biennale. It's been going only slightly longer than the Rex Irwin gallery. It's one of those events which, especially in recent years, has become, you know, very much a national or international sort of destination event, a party, a festival event. What are your views in relation to it ... in that that also is, if you like, an art event.

Rex Irwin: It is certainly an art event. It's -- I have to say -- mostly an art event I don't enjoy. It's a little bit like Wagner. I've tried it and I don't go anymore. And then, I say to myself, "Does it actually sell a picture?" So maybe it doesn't, but that side of the art world is completely necessary. It is important that one does Wagner. It's important that one does, um, the newest Australian composer, and it's important one does the Biennale.

I ... It is not to my taste. I don't get it. I now, I have to say, don't really try very much. And I don't think, equally, going back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier that the art world has to be so internationalized. I don't think we all need to do it. I can think of myself, perhaps, as it were, as an old master dealer who doesn't deal with that aspect of it.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be lots of patronage and money spent on it. It just isn't for me. I'm not sure for how many of my artists it is either. Because when you're painting on a canvas, you are probably by nature not the Biennale sort of person because Biennales do other things. It's important to do other things. It's important to know that when you're seventy two, life is calming down.

So, that is sort of fairly boring old fartish, I agree. But, um, it's necessary. It's part of our world. I have to say a lot of it is part of our world that frightens me. I was recently at the Hong Kong Art Fair, standing on the steps of the opening night, trying to meet somebody. And when 20,000 people an hour were coming in or something, it's very difficult.

And I was, first of all, delighted by the flood of people going to see art, horrified by the wealth they represented, and intimidated by the glam, the beauty, and the chic. And I think the art world needs to be a little bit suspicious of glam, beauty and chic, which are becoming very much evident and I think, perhaps, biennalizing a little bit.

It's becoming performance ... an art as a sort of ... art as a party, perhaps rather than art as a totally intellectual pursuit or even art as just a practice. It is art as taking it out and it's all tits and ass and show. Getting in the people, I would ... It's like that crowd of 40,000 in the park for the opera. I would love to know how many dribble down the hill into the Opera House.

I would love to know how many Biennale people start going to Martin Brown's nice gallery or Roslyn Oxley's gallery or Tim Olsen and Rex Irwin's gallery. If we start getting them as part of our lifeblood, that is wonderful. I think almost we are mutually exclusive. I'm not sure.

Colin Rhodes: There's an interesting, um, distinction perhaps in terms of a kind of a, uh, an art as spectacle and art as something that, that people might live with, you know? It strikes me that so many of the artists that you've worked with over the years and that they ... The setup of your galleries has been about art that people can live with. It's about ... the domestic space?

Rex Irwin: Hmm, um, uh, it's interesting. I mean, in, at the back of the house there's a small Henry Moore, but the small Henry Moore was actually part of the big Henry Moore's practice. He started it off little as a maquette. If it worked, he would take it to the next scale, which was the working model. And then, if somebody paid a lot of money, it would get blown up.

And so, yes, I have dealt in the domestic side of art. I have also dealt in the possession side of art, so I shouldn't be precious about the money involved. But I've also dealt, I think, in the intellectual side of art. Art is not just a thing. It is an idea, but the reason I'm against Biennales, I think it is more than idea. I think it is the idea -- it's like god, it is the word made flesh. It is the idea made tangible.

And on the level of God, I have to tell you, just 'cause a beautiful day, I was walking my dog in the part at the crack of dawn, wonderful morning, and I was talking to a little old lady walking her dog. And I looked and I said, "Isn't God good?" And she said, "Yes, but when's He coming back?" So maybe the art world has to ask itself that. We're waiting for God to come back to us.

Colin Rhodes: It's an interesting proposition.

Rex Irwin: Uh, so the art world is like the real world. Time marches on. Um, it is all sorts of things that make a whole. And without one of them, it can survive. Without two of them, it is reduced, but it can't be exclusively one thing or another. It can't be just be Biennales. It can't be just old master paintings. It can't be just whatever one does in galleries. It must be the excitement, the idea, that we are all part of something in life that is greater than us.

A lot of it may not live on. A lot of it will be reassessed. But, the sheer ... from our point of view, the living process of it is the thing I get at the end of the week, as well as the cheque. It is that ... It's actually that which takes you to the gallery every morning. And I think it's probably that which takes the artist to their studio, or to their word processor, or to whatever it is.

Colin Rhodes: And how far do you have an eye on posterity, when you're thinking ...

Rex Irwin: How far do I have ... ?

Colin Rhodes: ... An eye on posterity when you're thinking about your artists, and, um, giving them shows, and taking things forward. I mean do you ... Do you ... Feel a desire or a hope that they will be something else? That they will all be something else? You know, we talked about you have some people disappearing.

Rex Irwin: No, I don't ... I don't really think of it in those terms. I think of it as ... the heartbeat of what we are doing at the time. We haven't yet invented life after death. We had ... There is not perpetual youth, perpetual life. So I think one mustn't expect it. But, some things will happen.

Lou Klepac used a lovely simile, metaphor -- no simile -- when he opened an exhibition for me. He said, "Art is like pollen. You brush past a flower, it stays one your jacket, and when you pass another flower, maybe you cross-pollinate." Sadly, he continued the simile for a long time, and it got a bit wooly towards the end. But that was the premise of it. And that's a little bit what I see.

Interestingly enough, when the gallery, my gallery closed in Queen Street, I gave thirty years of our archive to the Library of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, thinking that maybe a letter from Jeffrey Smart, talking about something will be of interest to somebody else later. And it ... I also gave my little personal archive of presents, letters, and things that I've had from artists.

And one of them actually would turn out to be quite valuable, it transpires, which was a, a rejection slip from Ansel Adams, the great American photographer. I wrote many years ago, after having had a very successful show of photography, saying, "Dear Mr. Adams, would you be interested in showing at my very beautiful gallery, in a very beautiful city called Sydney?"

And he wrote back saying, "Dear Mr. Irwin, how very kind of you to invite me, but I no longer show at commercial galleries, but I do wish you the best of luck. Sincerely, Ansel Adams." And it was on the back of the great photograph of Yosemite Valley. And that, as a tangible ... intangible object, will be interesting to somebody, you know, in, whenever they're doing the history of whatever happens in Sydney.

Um, there has recently been an Ansel Adams show in Sydney. So I think that showed, in a funny way, perhaps my aspirations for the gallery. I wanted it to be bigger and better than I was, and I wanted to show nice things to people. But I don't think it will necessarily make me immortal. In fact, I joke with my artists that they become immortal. I just pay their bills on the way through. Um, but maybe something will remain, I don't know.

Colin Rhodes: Though it is interesting that there are dealers whose names people know. And there are ones whose names people don't know. And I think you're one of the ones that people know. I mean, you mentioned a couple of others, Ray Hughes for example, who kind of think they know who Ray Hughes is. They think they know who Rex Irwin is. Um, maybe you have a view, uh, about those things.

Rex Irwin: And wha-what makes people think of us, or what ... What do people think of us?

Colin Rhodes: Well ... Well, even wh-why perhaps your, your name, your names, uh, are more ... in the-the public ...

Rex Irwin: Well, as a very great French dealer said about Ray Hughes, "So Rex, if he didn't exist, ve vould have to invent him."

Rex, Rex ... Ray is one of the, not just great characters of the art world. He's one of the great minds of the art world. He knows his stuff. He is terribly good at getting people interested in things. Um, we fight a lot, because his tastes are very different from mine. But, he has a taste, and if you look at all of Ray's eccentric shows, his German expressionist shows, whatever, and you put everything in the line, you would see the logic of the eye that is behind it, or the intellect behind it.

And I think that is what we have done. I mean if you look at what Roslyn Oxley, compared to what Martin Brown does, both do contemporary things, a hundred yards from each other, both in lovely spaces. Each of them does something different, cause of their own eye.

I think it actually is almost down to the eye. It is what that person observes, that dealer observes and thinks is interesting or important. And so they decide just to -- in extension of that -- to put it into their gallery.

Um, I have, when I first started, a number of the artists that came from Coventry to me were buying New Guinea art in the days when you went to the Paulian Society and you spent two hundred dollars and you bought a wonderful mask or a lovely thing. And in my eyes, I rationalized it down to not liking Australian sculptures of the period, but I needed the sculptural thing in my life.

And so I started to buy New Guinea artifacts and then I moved a little bit on to African artifacts. And I think they make up a world of what we do. Then, of course, you realize that when Picasso saw an, uh, an African mask, he became a cubist painter. So it all makes sense in the scheme of things.

And in a funny way, it also shows you what the art world does. It almost does nothing original. It just thinks it's original and then they look back and they go, "Somebody did that forty five years ago."

So, um, maybe that is the rhythm of ... I suddenly was thinking of fashion in that little flow, thinking that in the end the trouser has been invented, but the shape of the trouser and the cut of the trouser and the color of the trouser will probably still go on for another hundred years or so from the last three hundred years.

So I think the art world will do that. And that is, as younger dealers come along, they will find different things that engage them. I mean, there are in theory already dealers that just show video art or whatever. Um, in my mind, it's whatever. I don't quite get it. But ...

Colin Rhodes: Has there ever been a temptation to arrive in the world of moving image and this kind of thing?

Rex Irwin: No, but having said that, the moving image was one of the few saving graces of the recent Australia Show at the Royal Academy in London. One entered into, excuse me, a darkened room. And in front of you was the celebrated Shaun Gladwell, of him on a motorcycle with his arms out stretched in this vast Australian countryside.

And the poster that the Royal Academy had been using to advertise this show was Ned Kelly. So it had a man in a helmet wearing armor, on a means of transport, in a vast landscape. And that is what Shaun Gladwell gave us and the curators gave us. And I thought, "Whoop-de-do, this is going to be an exciting show that makes me engaged with things that I haven't engaged with before."

It was downhill from there onwards. If they put the Kelly and the Shaun Gladwell beside each other, it would have made people shriek with delight. And I think it would have probably flattered Shaun Gladwell and not upset the Nolan Estate. It could have been done -- and this is the other side of the art world is what in profession is known as the "fucking curators."

They are the bane of our existence and we the dealers have to struggle on without them. We must do what we do because they're going to make life as difficult as possible. And there's quite a lot of truth in that.

Colin Rhodes: The curator is an interesting creature.

Rex Irwin: I have never found so. But ...

Colin Rhodes: How many visits from -- since you mentioned curators -- how many visits from curators do you get in the gallery? Because they're always -- theoretically at least -- they're always poking about and they're looking for stuff.

Rex Irwin: They're always out and they're always too busy to take a telephone call. When I was at Rex Irwin Art Dealer, in the last fifteen years, I would have had .5 of one percent of a curator from the Art Gallery of New South Wales through a year. Never.

We used to get Edmund Capon in often, frequently, because Edmund was walking around the town playing tennis, and he was often passing the gallery, and he would come up and he, or he would see the invitation and he would say that as an excuse to pass by the gallery.

Um, we never saw them, getting the curator in was a nightmare. You had to almost be rude to them. And, and, with one curator who will remain nameless, I actually made, I think, six telephone calls, left messages, wrote a letter and finally rang the Art Gallery of New South Wales switchboard and said, "Would you remind so and so that he is a public servant and I am a member of the public. I want him to return my telephone call."

I was required to be rude. And I didn't want to sell him a picture, I quite wanted him to come in occasionally. And that is soul destroying. It really is soul destroying.

Colin Rhodes: And they are, they're the gate keepers into the public constitution.

Rex Irwin: They ought to be. Yes, they are. In fact, they're more like Cerberus. They keep people out rather than like Gabriel who let people in.

Colin Rhodes: So having, having open that particular calls ...

Rex Irwin: ... can of worms.

Colin Rhodes: ... Is irresistible now for me to, to ask you about the art schools and what relationship you might have had with ...

Rex Irwin: Do we have? What do we do? Well, there is an interesting case at the moment -- and I won't go too closely into it -- of an art student who regularly came to all the galleries when he was a student.

He was not unattractive to look at and was noticeable in certain ways, but he would come to nearly everything, which was very unusual. And when he had his first exhibition some four years later at, uh, a rented space in Oxford Street, all the dealers were there, including Dennis Saville.

And I thought, that is what actually art students should be doing when they're at art school. They should be going round, if only in self-defense to say, "Who do I actually want to end up showing with?" Um, if all, to engage with the art, uh, because we show more. We -- the commercial dealers -- show many more interesting pictures than probably happens in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in a year, in a calendar year, with things changing.

So, it ought to be part of their world. I think, institutions, even presume me calling myself an institution to some degree are entirely dependent on their leader, how they are led, how, what is the culture? Is the culture that you are taught by Alan Leach Jones, you should go and see his show. But you are taught by Alan Leach Jones and he says you should actually go and see that show because I think it's interesting because he is an artist who's been to see it.

At the moment, we get very few art students. Um, I try to encourage some by giving them lots of free drinks, um, just to get them going to galleries. Um, you'd think it would be part of their DNA.

Um, I have, I think the art schools are not unlike the art galleries. There is the National Art School, which is quite conservative, which you might say is the Rex Irwin of this world. There is COFA, which is I don't know quite who. And then there is Sydney College, which is perhaps more Roslyn Oxley than Stuart Purvis.

So, in a funny way, we, we are all being served in a different way by the art schools. And I think that also goes for the theater companies. You have the Bell Shakespeare. You have the, whatever, the Sydney Theater Company. You have different things doing different people.

I think the arts must not become homogeneous. They must remain desperate. They must remain, um, they must even fail sometimes, but they must try, but they mustn't all begin to look alike. We don't want to actually end up all in the white cube, because if you know Jean Paul Satre, um, his white cube was a hotel where everybody met and hell was other people. Hell is in fact white walls in the art world, I think.

Rex Irwin: Does that help to answer that question?

Colin Rhodes: That answers that question very well. Now, in terms of the, uh, the art that, that you have, the, the art that you live with, um ...

Rex Irwin: Have, I have personally or the art that I ...

Colin Rhodes: Yes, yes, that, that, that, that you have personally. I think, uh, it was interesting to me to walk, um, into your, your front room, uh, and immediately be presented with, um, some things that I'm particularly interested in, which is, uh, the, the German expressionist, uh, prints that you have, the, the Beckmann, the, the Heckel, uh, the Christian Rohlfs.

Um, and then to spin around and see, as this you've mentioned already, um, some, uh, some oceanic and African, um, work as well. These are things which, you know, I think, to me are very interesting. And then peppered with, you know, a bunch of other things which fit into ...

Rex Irwin: Queen Anne writing desk.

Colin Rhodes: the Queen Anne writing desk, this was gorgeous, so fantastic, candlesticks as well and the ...

Rex Irwin: Why?

Colin Rhodes: How does ... Yeah, why? How does all this fit together?

Rex Irwin: Um, well, the most recent departure of mine, I think, was into the world of German expressionist prints, which if I had been logical and perhaps I was sublimely logical, would've been completely logical when you think I have this shown Lucian Freud for twenty years, because Lucian, had he remained behind and not had to leave Germany because of the Nazis, would've become the German expressionist of our time.

As it is, he went to England and his mark making is the same as the mark making of Beckmann, as is Auerbach, as is Kossoff. So, the German expressionists, um, followed that sort of slightly logical thing. The other thing that I love about particularly German expression is, first of all, the print. I love the bit of paper on which somebody does something.

And it is interesting as a dealer, the bit of paper almost becomes more impress ... important than what's on it, the state of disrepair or whatever of the bit of paper. And I love that feel of it and of course, I love the feel of the woodblock print, which is particular, and peculiar to German expressionism.

There is not only the power of the mark they made, this black mark in this black period of history, but then the intensity that the strong line, because of the nature of the woodblock, gives it, is just magical.

Upstairs, I actually have two woodblock prints by Gauguin, which followed the woodblock backwards but also celebrates, um, my partner in life, who is from South, from Tonga, from the South Seas.

I've got a good line. White cubes and Biennales, to me, can be a little bit like Ikea. They are of the moment. Art is not of the moment. Art is actually history.

I'm not saying we are making it, but it becomes history. And so, I am sitting on a chair that is two hundred years old, because ... And it has survived because people sit on it. If you start standing on things that should be shat, sat on, not shat on, um, they will collapse. But it is possible to use old things and beautiful things for exactly what they were intended.

This was built about, about 1705. It is still being used for the same thing. And this, I think, happens with art. The Henry Moore, the Nicholas Harding, if it doesn't fall to pieces, will still be enjoyed for possibly initially the same sensations for which they were made, but then they will have slipped into a historical context.

So, suddenly when you talk of German expressionism, you're not just talking about the mark, you're talking about the gore-y period of history. So, that is not just a beautiful object, it is a beautiful object that is leading your lie ... your eye and your mind back to something profound. And therefore, by default, it becomes profound.

And with all my flippancy about the art world and pictures and things, there is a profundity in these things we involve ourselves in. I don't think we necessarily have to intend to be profound when we start. I don't think most artists make a mark thinking it is going to change the world. Some artists make marks that certainly change peoples' lives.

But I think they are possibly unintentional. They want it to be a wonderful sculpture. They want it to be wonderful picture. They want it to be a lovely book. But they don't know that it is going to change the way anybody looks at anything greater. But the thing that we involve ourselves in the art world does that.

And I think, going back to the great and glorious Wagner who I can't abide, people seeing Wagner for the first time where the music remains the same, but the interpretation on the stage changes, will get different things from it than people got when Hitler was in the audience. Or before Hitler got to the audience that would've been the interesting thing, to see the attitude to Wagner among people who saw the early operas before he got there as what he was.

And then it became something else. It shouldn't ... I mean, I suppose it became something else because it was a work of art. The fact that it was manipulated to be something even more something else is one of those things.

Um, this is going back to my particular remarks with Judy Cassab about Leni Riefenstahl. Judy saw her as an extraordinary photographer, an extraordinary maker of films. She just was there at the time and she was recording the time.

The fact that other people used what she had done to their own ends, nefarious or other wise, was not necessarily her intention.

And this is where we go back to the whole Marcel Duchamp thing of the intent, which takes me to another intent, of course, which involves the art world, which is fraud. And one of the great problems of fraud is to prove fraud, you have to prove the intent to defraud, which is very difficult, which is why fraud exists.

So, the art world is all over the place really, isn't it? And, you know, Monsieur Duchamp's intent is this, the artist intends it to be work of art, it is a work of art. The policeman says, "If the person intends to defraud, then it is a fake. But the areas between are the grey areas of the art world in which we all live and work."

Colin Rhodes: And have you found yourself at any point faced with that, uh ...

Rex Irwin: The horrors of a fake?

Colin Rhodes: The horrors of the fake or even the, you know, the, the awful moral dilemma of being offered something that is a fantastic fake, which you know it to be a fake.

Rex Irwin: That, that's interesting. Um, it will sound pompous, but no, I've never had that moral dilemma. I have seen some very good things, but the other day, I did have the most marvelous moment. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, uh, gets, gives opinions on works to general public once a month or once every two months.

And if they're non-Australian things, they're usually sent to me if they're Picassos, maybe Picassos, maybe prints, maybe lithographs, maybe whatever. So, a woman rang the other day and said, "I have a very rare Picasso. The art gallery has not seen it. It's from the Rose Period. They think it's valuable. Would you have a look at it? I'm told you're the man."

And I said, "I would certainly have a look at it for you. And may I tell you my fee?" And there was an intake of breath, because I've done this for nothing for years. I said, "My fee is the most extravagant bottle of cognac or armagnac you can justify." And that's fine. And so, I forgot all about it. And one Saturday, a woman with a brown paper ... two brown paper parcels came to the gallery.

And she said, "I am the ... " I said, "You're the Picasso woman?" "Yes." So, out of the brown paper parcel, I fished this Picasso, which was a cheap reproduction of a Rose Period painting and in terribly bad condition. And I said, "I'm terribly sorry. It's a reproduction. It's in bad condition. It's worthless." Popped it in the bag and gave it back to her.

And the whole process took four seconds. At which point, she thrusts this rather rattling parcel into my bosom and I said, "What's that?" She said, "That's your fee." And I said, "No, no, no. I really didn't spend long." And she said, "No, we had an arrangement. Thank you very much for telling me the truth."

So, that was lovely. She left. As soon as she left, I rummaged in my parcel to see what it was and it wasn't an armagnac, it wasn't a cognac. It was probably made in Korea. And I suddenly thought, "Here I have seen the fake, given an opinion on it, and been paid for with a fake. It's just God again. He's everywhere." It was the most marvelous moment.

Colin Rhodes: Wonderful, wonderful.

Rex Irwin: So, um, yes, we have come across fakes. The difficult, the, the, the major difficulty with fakes, and I know this from an artist point of view, from the Dickerson's family point of view where they have occasion fake drawings come up and fake prints come up and even fake paintings. They can say to the police, "It is a fake, it is not real."

But ... the work cannot be destroyed. It has to be given back to whoever bought it in and they are either, if they were perpetrating a horror, they get sued by the police.

Or it just goes back onto the circus of the market, except once the Dickersons when to court, and I don't know how they arranged it, but their deal was with the lawyer or whatever. But if they won the case, they could destroy the object. And I think that is the only way we're ever going to take fakes off the market.

But because some people pay quite a lot money for a fake, they're never going to want that to happen. What I have done in the past and what I would do now with Tim Olsen is that if we something that we know to be a fake, we photograph it, we put down any details we have gleaned in the process and we put it in the file, which has now been lodged with the Art Gallery of New South Wales. So, at least, you keep a track on them.

I was comparatively recently asked ... I'm often asked to look at Henry Moore's, and I was asked by somebody to look at a Henry Moore in an auction house. It was a Henry Moore. It was about ten inches long of a reclining figure ... on the telephone this was.

My first reaction is, "I don't know any Henry Moore's that are ten inches long. They are four inches, eight inches, but never ten inches." And yes, it's a reclining figure, and I went to see it. But it was a reclining figure who's lying on her tummy. And I have never ever seen a Henry Moore lying on her tummy.

It didn't follow that it wasn't a Henry Moore, but it just was a matter of looking in the books. It was beautifully made, it had a completely convincing signature stamp on it, numbered, everything. Marvelous patina ... knocked your socks off.

And you just think, "If you're forging with such dexterity, why would you go and do the one thing that nobody's ever done before the ... Even a fool from the wilds of Australia would know, probably wasn't going to be a Henry Moore.

Sadly, I told the people, it was put into the auction I think as in the manner of ... I don't know it whether it was bought also, but it will still be on the circuit. And when I tell the Moore Foundation and ask their advice about this, they said, "Ah, yes. That was last seen in Johannesburg fifteen years ago."

And they, then ... They actually build a map of the fakes, of where they are around the world, whether they are the same piece that is moving across borders or whether, in this case, because it was a sculpture, there may have been six, ten, thirty, one doesn't know.

So, it's, it's something to be very aware of. But interestingly now, and nobody who sees this must sue me, but experts in the real world now no longer give opinions, because even if you have a fake Andy Warhol, you may have paid twenty five million dollars for that fake. And if in the opinion of an expert, it is not an Andy Warhol, you have lost twenty five million dollars and there is a case going through the courts where you are, somebody is suing the expert for that.

Even though they are right it is not a Henry Moore, they are not suing them over the fake, they are suing them over the loss of twenty five million dollars because of that opinion. So, we, in Australia, must learn very quickly. And I must be less amused by fakes, because it is dangerous.

Colin Rhodes: So, speaking about opinions, how have you fed in the, the, the hands of the, the art critics over the, the years?

Rex Irwin: Over the years? Well, I've never fed, because they mostly don't write about the shop.

Colin Rhodes: Well, your, your, your office.

Rex Irwin: But my artists, um ...

Rex Irwin: Not, not, not too badly actually. Not too badly at all. Um, I don't think ... Yes, we did. We had one bad review. I remember now of one of my most favorite artist, a man called Sam Fullbrook.

I don't quite know why it was a bad review, but someone who was there, an older person in their fifties, came in, brought in by the illustration that was on the newspaper. And they said, "I thought that was so beautiful. Is it $50,000? I'll have it."

They were wrong. And so, I thought, "Well, if that's what a bad review does, well, let's have more." Yes. The interesting thing is now with reviewers, is their brief is not to really review private galleries. They review institutions. So, we are losing traffic.

I don't know, with the exception of that bad review, whether reviews ever sell a picture, where they certainly bring in traffic and part of the gallery's job is to get an artist work seen. So, that is something we're missing at the moment. But in theory, blogs and emails and Twitters and whatever else there is might pick it up, but it isn't at the moment.

Colin Rhodes: Thereby hangs a challenge.

Rex Irwin: Indeed, yes.

Colin Rhodes: Now, I think we're, we're coming to the end of, uh, of, of our conversation, but before we do, I'd really love if I can just briefly to, just go back sort of to beginnings. Um, you were born in India to a, a, a, an, an, a military, uh, family.

Rex Irwin: First person in three hundred years not to be in the army or the navy.

Colin Rhodes: Fantastic.

Rex Irwin: Um, spent Christmas 1945 in, in Hanover with the army of occupation. So, my first images strange enough, of German Expressionism as it were, through what I saw, was formulated there.

Went to school in England for ... From the age of six to the age of eighteen, to Naval Boarding School. Came out, wasn't going to go into the Army or the Navy. Went into the wine trade which brought me to Australia, and I suppose, which brought me to, as it were, the finer things in life.

But we read books in our family, but we read novels, we didn't read biographies. We went to the theater, but we probably went more to be amused than to be challenged. But, at the age of fifteen, I spent fifteen shillings on buying a stall to see Turandot at Covent Garden. I have no idea why.

I think it's the Lou Klepac pollen thing. Something brushed off of me and I just did it. And so that started that world. But as a child, we went to castles not galleries. We didn't have a library at home, but we had books.

And we were not intellectually thoughtful. I think we were upper middle class, and we literally probably were reactionary. We reacted to things, rather than, um, made them happen, which perhaps made me the good person about the boring bits of an art gallery.

The boring bits are getting it out on time, getting it hung on time, paying the artist on time, being correct, being just a little bit ... I used to always run down the middle classes, but I think, they ain't half bad.

And I think that middle classiness, has probably stood me in quite good stead, just making ... We're trying to make this world of airy fairy things and people, into a profession. And we have to approach it sensibly, honestly, thoughtfully and correctly.

Colin Rhodes: And having started your life sort of peripatetic so to speak, what ... ?

Rex Irwin: Peripatetic? I've lived in this house since 1968.

Colin Rhodes: ... what made you ... having started your life, this is my ... Having started your life peripatetic, what is the thing that made Sydney home that made Australia home for you? That is being the great abiding part of your existence.

Rex Irwin: Strangly enough, I would think ... this house ... As a child I never lived for more than two years in any one house, in my entire life. So suddenly when I bought this, I suddenly discovered I'd been here, and you didn't have to chop and change, you didn't have to make new friends.

And maybe that's why possessions became a little bit important, because you took those with you, even if you didn't take your friends. And I have to say my possessions as things, not as just value, are very important to me. I like that ... I sort of nest a little bit.

And the other thing that keeps me in Sydney is that every day the sun shines, I look at it and I feel I'm on holiday. It's left over from years of freezing to death in England. I still cannot believe it. And I blame God for it every day.

Colin Rhodes: I can sympathize entirely with that. Rex Irwin, this has been wonderful. Thank you very much.

Rex Irwin: It's been a pleasure.

Credits

Interviewer: Professor Colin Rhodes

Camera, lighting & sound: Cameron Glendinning

Vide editing: Dr. Bob Jansen

Technical & assembly: Dr. Bob Jansen