I thought I knew the way and would easily recognise it once I was in Heidelberg, a semi-rural area on the outskirts of Melbourne near the Yarra River.
I was wrong. Both Heide and the local area have changed since I was last there, so we arrived late to meet our friend from Melbourne.
My friend had never been to Heide, so she was of no help.
Heidi, with its six hectares of parkland, extensive gardens, including heritage gardens, sculpture park, five galleries and a restaurant, is now hidden among major road works.
Thank heavens for the huge sign.
It is no longer just called Heide, the name John and Sunday Reed gave their farm in the 1930s because of its location near the Heidelberg School of Impressionist artists.
It is now the Heide Museum of Modern Art since its latest gallery opened in 2005, and the address is Bulleen.
John and Sunday became patrons of the Modernist movement.
They were artists, also known as the ‘Angry Penguins’, who lived, created, debated and wrote about their new art there.
Even the café, which was remodelled in 2009, has a new name.
It is now called Heide Kitchen because it uses organically grown produce from the two on-site kitchen gardens first established by the Reeds.
It also uses produce grown off-site by the Mulberry Group.
Lunch was simple but lovely. We were there to see the spectacular photographic exhibition of works by surrealist photographer Lee Miller (on display until April 14).
To see her work and learn of her story was even more exciting than any of us expected.
It is no accident that this exhibition is at Heide because Lee Miller’s unusual personal story has similarities with the creative journey undertaken at Heidi.
She knew Picasso, Man Ray, Dora Maar, and others in Europe and elsewhere, then gave up her photography after World War II to become wife, mother and hostess of the artistic members of the Bloomsbury set who lived and created in Sussex, England.
Her husband was artist, poet and art historian Roland Penrose. Their son knew nothing of her extraordinary photographic career until he found 60,000 undeveloped reels of her photographs in the attic after she died.
The exhibition has 100 of Lee Miller’s surrealist photographs taken in Paris, New York and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s. They show portraiture, fashion, landscapes, and war. One extraordinary photograph is actually of her in Adolf Hitler’s bath taken the day he died. She was well-connected.
Each photograph is the same size, with the same frame, light, and shade.
They are fabulous, simple yet detailed. I am not an art critic. I just loved them. We all did.
Then we visited the Reeds’ original weatherboard farmhouse with works by Sydney Nolan, Sam Atyeo, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, Joy Hester, Mirka Mora, Albert Tucker and Danila Vassilieff who variously lived and created there.
Sydney Nolan’s Rosa Mutabilis, a love gesture to Sunday is there.
The rose is possibly still on the lawn.
Finally, we explored the Reeds’ very different second home, built in 1963, to exhibit their extensive collection of works and have them closer to their vegetable gardens and the river.
Never liking to go home the same way we arrived, we visited Montsalvat, 10 minutes away, at Eltham, for another very different experience of an artist’s colony and buildings.
In the 1930s, Justus Jorgensen began building a location for artists to live, work and be free to express themselves. It is still an artist-in-residence location today.
Gough Whitlam and the Rolling Stones were among its visitors in the 1970s. It was here that Gough became interested in artists creating abstract expressionist or modern paintings, which led to his purchase of Blue Poles by American artist Jackson Pollock in 1973 for the Australian people.
We dawdled home, talking all the way past the Bridge Hotel/Motel at Bonnie Doon and making a note to go back there for lunch soon because Lake Eildon is lapping its lawn, and it looks so pretty.
Day trips never begin and end in just one day.
– Suzie Pearce
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