Len and Kath Shillam Papers
The papers of Brisbane sculptors Len and Kath Shillam were donated to the State Library of Queensland by Len Shillam in 2003 and include photographs, notes, exhibition catalogues and press cuttings. The latter are as much a history of the art and times as specifically about the Shillams, charting their intense interest in environmental issues, sculpture and art, and also including issues of topical and general interest.
A guide to the papers is available through Manuscripts Queensland. Many of the photographs, often with the Shillam’s home and studios as a backdrop, can be found on these web pages and through Picture Queensland.
A video interview with Len Shillam was taped for the State Library of Queensland in 2005, and has provided an important oral history dimension to the material available about them. A transcription and selected video excerpts are available.
The donation also included five maquettes for sculpture, and an early original sculpture by Kathleen, and these add significantly to the Len and Kath Shillam Papers as a resource for researchers, sculpture students and art historians. It adds depth and interest particularly to the documentation of the public art made by Len Shillam in and around south east Queensland.
Kath Shillam (O’Neill)
Torso, 1937
Clay sculpture
13.5 x 25 x 18 cm
This is the original sculpture from which bronzes were cast and polished by Philip Perides in 1990.
“In the 1930s abstract art was to me an exciting new discovery. Torso was made in clay and hollowed so that it might be fired. However the polished surface of the dried clay was so attractive I was loath to change it and the work was stored until 1991 when it became possible to have the sculpture cast in bronze and polished in harmony with the original intent”. The bronze edition of this work is recorded as being 14 x 25 x 17 cm, edition of 2, cast 1990, exhibited Bloomfield Gallery, 1991. (Kath Shillam, Len and Kath Shillam Papers: 6015/1, p. A3.)
Len Shillam described this sculpture as “the first fully twentieth century sculpture ever done in Australia”. (Interview for State Library of Queensland, 2005) It is an abstracted female torso, rising out of a flat base, conjuring in its curves and forms the essence of femininity. In the original clay sculpture, the forms appear even more beautiful than in the later bronze casts in which the reflections on the surface of the work distract from the simplicity and strength of its shape.
Kath’s own comments about this sculpture place Torso into the “firmly based category”. She wrote, “in contrast to elevated forms, these sculptures are part of the earth, they emerge from the ground like outcrops of rock, hills and mountains.”
Kath Shillam
Archaic horse, 1972
Plaster maquette
36 x 53.5 x 11.5 cm
Designed to be cast in a sand mould, later cast in bronze by Philip Perides using lost wax technique. This edition sold out.
Series I, sandcast in an edition of three. Exhibited Johnstone Gallery, 1972.
Series II, lost wax cast in an edition of five. Exhibited Victor Mace Gallery, 1991.
Archaic horse is an elegant small horse, the forms elongated and stylised, the sculpture fine boned and elegant. Grooves in the clay define the shapes of the horse’s most powerful muscle groups.
Len Shillam
Exile, ca.1966
Wire maquette
43 x 40 x 80 cm
This maquette was made for a larger work which was part of the Society of Sculptors and Associates (New South Wales) exhibition held in Hyde Park, Sydney in 1966. Len’s own reading of this work is illuminating. He wrote,
‘Exiles’ (sic) is constructed of welded steel plate and steel rods fused by the oxy-acetylene flame. It is not an ‘easy’ method, rather slow and painstaking.
I do not like to present a too cut and dried interpretation of the symbolism, which is deliberately equivocal and may be ‘read’ in a variety of ways. The obvious representation is of two armed and armoured figures, fearful in an alien or hostile environment, snatching at the little comfort of a friendly fire. This suggests a wide applicability to past, present or future, and to war, to the existentialist situation, to flight from peril, etc at many levels; in a word ‘Exile’.
(quoted in letter from Brian Johnstone to Sir James Plimsoll 29 May 1969: Johnstone Gallery Archive, Shillam Correspondence File: RBHARC 7/3/83)
Exile, in welded steel, was shown at the Johnstone Gallery, Len and Kathleen Shillam, 27 June to 13 July 1968.
Len Shillam
Threshold, ca. 1966
Plaster maquette
33.5 x 38 x 42 cm
Commissioned by the National Capital Development Commission, 1966 for site at Canberra Technical College, Canberra
Threshold is the maquette for the finished work at Canberra Technical College, Canberra. It was carved from a six ton block of Helidon sandstone and for the first time Len chose to utilise mechanical tools. It was carved in Brisbane after Len viewed the site in Canberra and transported to Canberra in its finished state. It was subtitled, “Symbol of the latent strength and vigour of youth” (Len and Kath Shillam Papers: 6015/25, ‘Threshold on the door step’, Canberra Times, 6 October 1966.)
Len Shillam
Flight, 1972
Aluminium and wood maquette
81 x 24 x 13.5 cm
Commissioned for Brisbane Boys Grammar School
This maquette describes Len’s initial idea for the cast aluminium sculpture made for the Brisbane Grammar School. These parallel flying birds explore the arc of the wingspan in space.
In Shillam Sculpture, 2000, Len wrote about the large ocean birds which inspired both Frigate Bird and Albatross 2. These were “… symbolic of flight and designed simply to suit sand mould casting in aluminium.” (Shillam, L & S 2000, Shillam sculpture, CopyRight Publishing, Brisbane, p. 59.) In the maquette for Flight, Len combines two birds similar to Frigate Bird and Albatross.
Notes from the Brisbane Grammar School Calendar state, “Originally a single bird, Albatross, it represented an image of freedom. Shillam intended the bird to be placed over a reflecting pool, a device used by the National Gallery of Australia to reflect Brancusi’s birds in 1982. However, the final solution was to sculpt another bird as a companion to the original piece and place them on a plinth in front of the School’s Centenary Library. (Len and Kath Shillam Papers: 6015/27 “Flight”, from Brisbane Grammar School Calendar.)
Len Shillam
Union, ca.1959
Cast aluminium maquette
20.5 x 15 x 9 cm
This is the maquette for the large stone sculpture commissioned for the Student Union Building, University of Queensland, St Lucia campus.
The empathetic treatment of the figures draws, perhaps, on Len’s fond memories of his own student days at Brisbane Central Technical College, the long discussions about new discoveries he had with Kathleen, and the bond they both shared with fellow art enthusiasts Francis Lymburner and William Smith. As Joanna Besley suggests, “The sculpture at the UQ Union … is a depiction of fellowship among students and like other pieces by Leonard Shillam, it works to humanise the built environment by introducing the human figure into the landscape, albeit in an abstract way”.
(UQ News, September 2004, p.20.)
Browse pictures from the Leonard and Kathleen Shillam Papers.
Last updated: 24th June 2011
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