The Stumpy Gully fire-brigade breaks down on the way to Moomba

Barbara BRASH
Australian 1925–1998

The Stumpy Gully fire-brigade breaks down on the way to Moomba c. 1963
colour screenprint
Geelong Gallery
Gift of Moira Eckel through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2017
© the estate of the artist

Brash regularly spent summer holidays at her family  beach house in Portsea on the Mornington Peninsula, about 40 kilometres from the town Stumpy Gully  referenced in the title of this lively work. The Victorian  coast proved to be an important source of inspiration for her work, Brash describing its seascapes and local news stories in her own idiosyncratic visual language.

This is one of Brash’s most unconventional works from the 1960s. It is potentially her only attempt to convey sound through imagery, filtering the imagined sirens, urgent dialogue and general melee caused by a fire truck breaking down in a shorthand consisting of a large spiral, exclamation points and a central asterisk. Newsprint is included, the reference to Melbourne’s Moomba festival underscoring the work’s carnivalesque mood.

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Read by a voluntary Geelong Gallery Guide