Essay

Port Kembla to Paris (And Back Again): The Port Kembla prints of Roy Dalgarno.

"We fashion the material of our civilization..well maybe; but to us steelworking's just a job. Tough work but pretty sometimes."

In the years immediately preceding WWII the Australian social realist artist Roy Dalgarno, approached the 4 major Trade Unions of the time with regards to commissioning him to produce a series of works based upon the working life of the Unions members. The union leaders philistines, nearly to a man took on his project, perhaps due to vanity, and also to the success of a recent touring exhibition "Australians at War" organised by Hal Missingham, which had looked at the role played by workers on the home front, particularly in the mining, steel and associated trades.

With a stipend of roughly 70 pounds from 4 of the major trade Unions, the Waterside Workers, Iron Workers, Coalminers and Sheet Metal Workers, Roy began work on a series of on-site drawings and photographs that he eventually worked into prints and paintings.

The many works that Roy produced in this period contain some of the most profound images of the Port Kembla steelworks. They function not only as beautifully executed and spontaneous portrayals of working life but stand as important historical material documenting processes that are now superseded by new technologies and labour saving machinery. They bring the sanctity of male workers to the fore, individuals and small groups of archetypal working men personalising anonymous labour and placing the body as the centre of the act of producing. Dalgarno later described the steelworks as a huge modern cathedral and treats the workers as high priests turning secular base materials into the sacred products of late modernist life.

The works produced during this period were first exhibited at the SORA studio in July 1948, from which 3 drawings were purchased by the AGNSW. The exhibition also toured to Canberra as well as being exhibited in the various union offices.

Immediately preceding Roy's commissions for the Unions was a number of commissions that had led directly from it. One of which was providing illustrations for the SMH looking at aspects of Australian working life, and included another series of illustrations of the Port Kembla steelworks. Another the well known illustrations for George Farwells book, "Down Argent Street", a history of Broken Hill commissioned by BHP. Roy's involvement with the major employer of steelworkers, did not go un-noticed by members of the left and subsequently the book was viewed indifferently by more politically minded members of the Australian art community. Roy however escaped further involvement in this controversy as in 1949 he left for Europe, living briefly in Czechoslovakia, and then to Paris were in early 1951 he met the then studio - less master printer Wiliam S Hayter. Dalgarno was to be one of Hayters first students when he moved into the first of 3 studios after his return from the United States in 1950. It is here that the intriguing journey of Roy's Union inspired prints begin.

In "About Prints" Hayter states that in Atelier 17 work is originated in the plate itself and not copied from a drawing already existing. However in Dalgarno's case there is fairly direct correlation between the 1948 on-site drawings and the 1950s prints. The plates he etched in Atelier 17, included the works "Steel Worker", "Furnace Worker", "Foundry Workers" and "Wharfies", and can be traced back to corresponding drawings from the exhibition in 1948. As such it appears clear that the line from the original 1940s commissioned sketches stretches to the etching of the prints. However after that the lineage becomes cloudy.

In a catalogue statement for a 1980 exhibition of prints at the New Vision Gallery Auckland Dalgarno gives a version of the subsequent story of the Industrial prints:

"Though I did not stay long with Atelier 17 I must have learnt something as Hayter was then probably one of the most knowledgeable intaglio men in the world. I did a number of etchings and burin engravings, only making a few trial proofs as handmade etching paper was, even then, expensive. I left these plates with a friend and then last year, almost thirty years later, I got them back and printed some of them.7

At some point however Dalgarno had also begun to print editions in Paris from these plates, or had printed enough proofs to have a substantial number of each. It is also probable that these proofs were with the plates.

In late 1953 when Roy left Paris to work in India he left the now etched plates, and the proofs or aborted editions, with a friend. During his time in India, Roy maintained a steady output of works in different print mediums as well as teaching. He was to stay in India until 1974 when he then moved to Auckland and began etching again in earnest. This included a residency at the Pratt Graphic Centre in Manhattan in 1978. In 1978 Roy's son returned to Paris and Roy arranged for him to pick up the plates that were still in the hands of the friend he had left them with 25 years earlier. It must be assumed that Roy's son also picked up the trial proofs that had been printed in 53.

Although Roy's 1980 catalogue statement appears to explain his process fairly simply it appears that there is extant one numbered edition of the prints but of two distinct and different types.

Firstly there are those 1950s proofs that have been cropped up to the plate mark and then attached to BFK Rives paper procured during the early 1980s. There may be two reasons for this: 1) as trial proofs the edges may have been grubby or soiled, and 2) there was slight foxing on the paper. Foxing is also evident to a limited degree on the cropped prints themselves. These are then signed and dated with a 50s date.

The second category is a 1980s printed version that is dated with the 1950s date. These prints are solely on BFK Rives paper. This type is also dated with the earlier 50s date. To further add to the discrepancy in the dates there is also the fact that although Roy mentions being at Atelier 17 in 1951 where he begins etching three of the prints, "Furnace Worker", "Wharfies" and "Steelworker" are dated 1950, while "Foundry Workers" is dated 1953 when he was not working at the Atelier.

To further complicate the lineage of these prints in the early 1980s Roy again revisited the theme of industrial workers first with a series of paintings prints and drawings related to Broken Hill, exhibited at Rudy Komon Gallery in 1984, and then a series on the Port Kembla foundry workers, exhibited at Holdsworthy Gallery 1986. (From which a complete set of the 1986 etchings were purchased by the University of Wollongong Art Collection.)

These stoic and tough images again celebrated working class endeavour at a time when the places he depicted were suffering massive downturns in the labour market.

Using sketches from life and photographs taken on-site, the prints from this series use some of the classic archetypes of the industrial scene, the foundry and furnace workers. Figures drift in and out of a molten heat haze, the heat and light signified by large jagged patches of crisp untouched white paper. Large in scale these works take the lessons learnt over a lifetime of artistic production, the process in some ways reflecting the labour and workmanship which is the subject matter of the prints themselves.

References:
1. Newsreel filmed at Port Kembla steelworks, Australia 1953. Copy held by Illawarra Historical Society.

2. Gardiner , Alan. (editor)"Representing the Australian Working Class: Notes for an introduction to The Winking of an Eye: An Autobiography by Roy Dalgarno ", Unpublished manuscript.

3. Gardiner, Alan. (editor)"Representing the Australian Working Class: Notes for an introduction to The Winking of an Eye: An Autobiography by Roy Dalgarno ", Unpublished manuscript.

4. Grafton, Daniel. Figures of Elongation Representations of the Working Male Body in Australian Art Artlink, 16.1 (Autumn 1996).

5.Gardiner, Alan. (editor) "Representing the Australian Working Class: Notes for an introduction to The Winking of an Eye: An Autobiography by Roy Dalgarno", Unpublished manuscript.

6. Hayter, Stanley William. About Print, London Oxford University Press, 1962.

7.Dalgarno, Roy. Catalogue statement, Roy Dalgarno:Recent Etchings and Multimedia Print, New Visions Gallery, Auckland, 16 - 28th June 1980.

Glenn Barkley
Curator, University of Wollongong
Art Collection