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Leonard Shillam

Leonard (Len) George Shillam was born in Brisbane on 15 August 1915. He went to art school in 1931. This was his father’s idea, and the interest in art his father ascribed to him in his preliminary interview came as quite a surprise to Len. While art had been of little interest to him at school, after six months at the art branch of Brisbane Central Technical College under the tutelage of F. J. Martyn-Roberts, he was enthused. Len noted in 2005, “If my father had known what was going to happen he may not have taken me there! For me, [art school] was an absolute turning point.” (Len Shillam, Interview for State Library Of Queensland, 2005)

Len met Kathleen O’Neill when she enrolled at art school in his second year. Len and Kath became firm friends as part of a group of dedicated students that also included Francis Lymburner and Will Smith. After leaving art school, this group pooled resources to rent a studio in Brisbane. Here they worked, drawing and acting as models for each other so that they could do life drawing. They became a little art family, only disrupted when Len was selected as the “promising young student” to receive a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to cover two years of overseas study.

In 1938 Len started studying sculpture with Eric Schilsky at the Westminster School in London. He also studied drawing with Leon Underwood at St Martins before moving over to the Central School of Arts and Crafts where he studied with John Skeaping (1938-39). Skeaping was involved in the modern sculptural movement in London which included Henry Moore. He was encouraging of Len’s existing interest in modernism.

Many of Len’s modernist ideas he had gleaned from books in the Carnegie Art Fund library in Brisbane. This donation of art books, prints and other artifacts played a crucial role in Len and Kath’s conversion to modernism. According to Len, it was “a profound influence”, providing an introduction “for the first time to twentieth century art which the art school we were attending did not do.” (Len Shillam, Interview for State Library Of Queensland, 2005)

In England, Len became Skeaping’s assistant on commissioned sculpture. He was in touch with the new sculptural abstraction as practiced by artists like Skeaping, Moore and Barbara Hepworth. This formative time further developed the ideas and techniques to which Len remained faithful throughout his artistic career.

In 2000, he wrote, “… the significant spirit of twentieth century sculpture has been firmly based upon the power, whether open or only implied, of geometric abstraction.” (Shillam, L & S 2000, Shillam sculpture, CopyRight Publishing, Brisbane, p.6.)

In 1983 he wrote, “I regard my sculptures as first and foremost shapes. I am extremely interested in the subjects which I choose to sculpt. And also in the technical and material content of each work. In other words, how I say it is just as significant to me as what I’m saying.” (From Space Within, Society of Sculptors, Queensland, St John’s Cathedral, September 8 to 28, 1983. Len and Kath Shillam Papers: 6015/28).

When war was declared in September 1939, the art schools closed and Len returned to Australia. He joined Kath in Sydney and they returned to Brisbane. They went home to their own families and continued to work on their sculpture. In the early 1940s they started a chicken farm on a family property as a means of earning a living whilst continuing to make art. After their marriage, in 1942, they continued farming until about 1960, when they became the first sculptors in Australia to be able to make a living from their work. (Len and Kath Shillam Interview with Louise Martin Chew, 1996)

By this stage Len had won some major commissions, including, in 1958, the Queensland Centenary competition for sculpture, which was part of the extension to the Public Library building in William Street. Len Shillam’s public artworks have been extensive, and in themselves significant generators of controversy.

From 1951 the Shillams began showing at the Johnstone Gallery, and it was to this relationship which Len attributed their financial viability. While they also taught workshops and vacation schools, Leonard Shillam remembered their involvement with Brian and Marjorie Johnstone with fondness:

It would be equally unnatural for me to remember the Johnstones without thinking of the wonderful days of the Johnstone Gallery and its growth over the period of my friendship with these two people which began in 1951 and continued until Marjorie's death … I and my wife very early on came to regard them as very special people, who exhibited a degree of understanding and warmth towards artists that rarely failed to win reciprocation; and that says a lot, because artists are not always people who are easy to get along with-especially if you are in the business of selling their work in a gallery.
(Len and Kath Shillam Interview with Louise Martin Chew, 1996.)

Between 1961 and 1964 Len and Kath travelled overseas. Len had unfinished business in the sense that his two year stint in the 1930s had been cut short by the war, and there were also new skills to learn. He completed a course at the Academia di Firenze, and another in bronze casting in London at the foundry for the Royal College of Art.

Back in Australia they prepared for an exhibition of work at the Johnstone Gallery to re-establish their financial status. The Shillams were unquestionably important artists to Brian Johnstone, who scheduled regular shows of their work but also used it to launch new initiatives with his galleries. In a letter to Kathleen Shillam in 1974, Brian wrote, “Have just been studying a book about the Animaliers of the 19th and 18th centuries – mostly French – and am quite convinced that you and Len are far superior! So there!” (Johnstone Gallery Archive, RBHARC 7/3/83 Shillam Correspondence file, letter from Brian Johnstone to Kathleen Shillam, 16 July 1974)

The Shillams remained loyal to the Johnstones, and after the closure of the gallery did not immediately seek other exhibition opportunities. When Victor Mace (who had assisted Brian Johnstone) opened in what had been part of the Johnstone Gallery in 1974, the Shillams chose to show with him. Later selected works were also shown at the Maria Perides Gallery at Newstead, a byproduct of their relationship with Philip Perides whose foundry cast all of their work after 1985.

Len took on a full time teaching position in 1975, heading the new sculpture course at Queensland College of Art. While his experience was of enormous value to students, and many cite him as a formative influence on their careers, he concluded that his own work suffered as a result, his energies drained by being “called on to solve other people’s problems” (Len Shillam, Interview for State Library Of Queensland, 2005). 

Len and Kath wrote extensively about their work in their publications, but were also articulate interviewees for the press. In 1986 Len was quoted as saying, “A sculpture is essentially a work in stone or wood or metal or some other substance which has its own qualities and imposes its own limitations,” he said. “A living subject is shaped to function in its own environment. There is a constant tug of war between visual and technical factors which has to be resolved happily before a unified work of art results. One’s joy and fascination in the study of nature must lead to a translation into the medium, in the terms of that medium, expressing the joy whilst doing so.” (Len and Kath Shillam Papers: 6015/26, “Sculptors set for Pine Art exhibition”, Pine and Caboolture Suburban Express, vol.5 no 20, 28 May 1986.)

Len Shillam was a founding member of the Society of Sculptors, Queensland and the Queensland Wildlife Artists Society. He and Kathleen were also a force behind the establishment of the Redcliffe City Art Collection and Gallery, which opened in 2000. Len Shillam was appointed a Member in the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day honours in 1986 for services to sculpture and education. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy for services to the arts, notably sculpture, from the University of Queensland in December 2000.

Len died on 1 September 2005.

Browse pictures from the Leonard and Kathleen Shillam Papers.