The Chimes

The New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery has three exhibitions currently showing.

Dreaming Spires

Originally planned by the late Joy Legge, Dreaming Spires tells the story of cathedrals at New Norcia that might have been, but were never realised. Starting with Monsignor Hawe’s early thoughts in 1918, through Abbot Gusi’s dream in 1938 and on to Fr Urbano Gimenez’ ambitious project for a Gothic-style cathedral in 1946, the exhibition concentrates mainly on renowned liturgical architect, Pier Luigi Nervi, and his design for a new monastery and cathedral during the 1950’s.

The archives are fortunate to have many plans and drawings of Nervi’s creation, including a model that was created in Rome and shipped to New Norcia and which forms the centre piece of the exhibition. Nervi’s plan, like those before him, never came to fruition but the dream continued under Perth architects Henderson and Thompson. The exhibition features many of Nervi’s as well as Henderson and Thompson’s plans and drawings, together with full colour illustrations of the beautiful cathedral windows, which were said to have been created in Rome and which are rumoured to be still there.

Also on show, in a continuous loop, is a computer-generated film, made by University of Western Australia architecture students in 2016 as part of the Unbuilt Western Australia project, showing what the Nervi cathedral might have looked like if it had been built.

Rinske Car Retrospective

New Norcia’s textile collection includes an 18th century Italian cope and chasuble, 19th century pretiosa mitre and a 1640 Dutch burse, among other precious textiles. The display, named the Rinske Car Retrospective, features delicate items which have been meticulously conserved by Rinske Car of the Denmark River Textile Conservation Studio. A large flatscreen TV adjacent to the exhibition also has a PowerPoint presentation on the restoration of the cope.

Rinske Car is Western Australia’s most experienced and accomplished textile conservator, with more than fifty years’ experience covering all types of historic and ancient textiles. Trained in the Netherlands, she interned in London and did extraordinary work on a range of modern and old textiles before emigrating to join the Western Australian Museum to conserve textiles from the Batavia shipwreck (1629). Since moving to Denmark, Rinske has spent almost a decade developing new methods for conserving and stabilising the remarkable collection of ecclesiastical textiles which are seen on display at New Norcia.

Essence of Country

Essence of Country is an exhibition of paintings by Albert Namatjira and members of his family, who were esteemed artists in their own right. The majority of the paintings were donated to New Norcia by the Michael Jones’ estate in 2018, and they join New Norcia’s own collection and one other kindly loaned to the Museum and Art Gallery by Jillian Passmore. Michael Jones was an old boy of St Ildephonsus’ College who later went on to be a grazier in Kojonup and it is because of his very generous bequest to New Norcia that we are able to mount this significant exhibition of fifteen paintings. We are also indebted to Ruth Ellis for the significant contribution she made in providing background information on the Namatjira family.

Albert Namatjira, born Elea Namatjira, was a Western Arrernte-speaking Aboriginal artist from the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, he was the most famous Indigenous Australian of his generation. In 1956 his portrait, by William Dargie, became the first Aboriginal person to win the Archibald Prize. Namatjira was also awarded the Queen’s Coronation Medal in 1953, was elected an honorary member of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales (1955), and was honoured with an Australian postage stamp in 1968.