GOULBURN as the avant-garde cultural capital of Australia? Don’t scoff at the unlikelihood of such a thing – it’s about to happen out at South Hill homestead.
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Right now, local tradesmen are refurbing part of the rundown 1860s pile so its former Sydney lawyer owners, Roland and Linda Gumbert, can move in next month to live there permanently.
More importantly – for the Gumberts, Goulburn and the wider cultural world – the builders are also working on special exhibition and performance spaces to house eye-popping art, film and musical works that will make South Hill a must-see destination. In pride of place will be a permanent Martin Sharp “museum.”
This is a remarkable coup for South Hill, because the famously diffident pop artist, cartoonist, poster designer, poet, songwriter and film-maker has hitherto ignored other galleries and collectors who’ve tried to capture his internationally important output. How it has come about is a story straight out of the Swinging Sixties, when a young Martin Sharp advertised for a girl to pose nude for a photo collage he had in mind. Sharp, founder of the counterculture Oz magazine, hired a 15- year old schoolgirl who applied for the gig, paid her 40 bucks, shouted her lunch, and never saw her again. Until a few weeks ago.
That saucy teenager matured into now 60-ish Linda Gumbert. No longer given to posing nude - for counter-culture magazines, especially – this (former) blonde bombshell has developed into an enthusiastic and sharply (sorry!) knowledgeable collector-exhibitor- promoter of works by progressive Australian artists, musicians and photographers.
Having bought South Hill about six years ago, Linda and French-born Roland Gumbert wondered what they might do with the place. They weren’t farmers and had no wish to join the often-risible Southern Tablelands-Highlands nouveau squattocracy.
Slowly, over many weekend visits, they came to love Goulburn and its burgeoning arts, crafts, music and educational scene. Recently, they’ve staged well-attended exhibitions at South Hill, but they wanted something much grander and permanent if they were to bite the bullet, sell up their modern Oxford Falls home, and shift to South Hill for good.
Or ill – whatever. Then Linda remembered posing for Martin Sharp, who over the years had become at least as influential as Andy Warhol in the eyes of many pop culture fiends.
Well, she never really forgot, but was somewhat awed by his reputation as a difficult-to-know artistic guru. Eventually, she plucked up the courage to contact Sharp and outline her vision for a sort of publicly accessible salon-gallerymuseum at South Hill. And what do you know?
Sharp liked the idea, and, it must be said, the Gumberts. Sharp’s acceptance of South Hill as a permanent home for some of his better works from a vast output quickly led to other notable artists joining in the South Hill Movement.
Many of these mellowed painters, lighting gurus, designers, photographers and musicians trace their formative years back to when Martin Sharp encouraged and inspired them at his “Yellow House” in Potts Point. This large Victorian terrace house was “headquarters” for many participants in Australia’s late 20th Century cultural revolution.
And, yes. It was painted a garish yellow and stood out from its sombre neighbours. Those days are past: Sharp now lives in a Harbourside mansion. Linda Gumbert is characteristically blown away with enthusiasm – even though she and Roland fret over the four large truckloads of Oxford Falls stuff they’re moving to Goulburn.
“It’s very exciting to get so much enthusiasm for what I call the upcoming South Hill Cultural Explosion With A Psychedelic Underlay,” she says.
Precisely how this translates into non-Gumbert speak is best left to experts in superlatives... but it’ll be big, apparently. Why not, with names like these already following Pied Piper Gumbert waving the Martin Sharp flag, or at least warming to the idea? Old Yellow House habitués Jon Lewis, Dick Weight, Reg Mombassa, Max Cullen, Ellis D. Fogg, William Yang, Reg Livermore.
Further schlokko news: Richard Neville and Jim Anderson, the Establishment-baiting Australian Oz magazine partners of Sharp before they took it to London and everlasting fame/infamy of the 1971 Obscenity trial at the Old Bailey, have been casing South Hill and like what they see.
So much so that Anderson will have an art show there when the place reopens in September – another great coup for Goulburn. It will be curated by Archibald Prize-winning water colourist Cherry Hood, who now lives in Goulburn.
If the Gumberts are so enamoured of Goulburn and all it has to offer, their drive and enthusiasm, and willingness to back their own judgment, will rub off on others.
And if anyone doubts their sincerity when they say Goulburn is the place to be, listen to Linda again as she recounts how they went school-seeking for their young “daughter” – actually grand-daughter, whom they’re raising after her mother died of cancer aged just 31.
“Roland and I kept looking at schools off and on for six months, then one day we said ‘Why are we doing this . . .the best school is right here in Goulburn? That’s why she’ll be going to Mulwaree High.”
Finally, if you’re still sceptical about South Hill’s astonishing future, be reassured by this. The Gumberts might be admirers of Martin Sharp and his Yellow House, but they have no intention of painting South Hill yellow. For some things need to be kept in decent Goulburn perspective.
