Design and Art Australia Online

Laurence Collinson was born in Leeds, England in 1925, the only child of David and Sarah Collinson. After moving first to New Zealand, the family came to settle in Brisbane while Laurence was still a young child. David Collinson was an importer/exporter and the family lived in comfortable circumstances in a Kangaroo Point flat, although their fortunes fluctuated as David Collinson also gambled. Collinson was educated locally and, together with fellow students Barrie (later Barrett) Reid and Cecel Knopke, established the Senior Tabloid of the Brisbane State High School in 1943. In 1944 this student literary journal made the transition to a national bi-monthly magazine for youth. Under the name Barjai , the journal survived until 1949. After the famous Ern Malley hoax involving the Adelaide publication Angry penguins in 1945, Barjai became more directly involved with the visual arts.

Collinson’s interests were artistic as well as literary. During this time he took private art lessons and, as he became aware of the various modern art movements, produced paintings in different styles. A junior section of the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) had been established in 1941 and members exhibited in the annual exhibitions of the parent body. A watercolour painting by Collinson, View from Oxley Memorial Library , was included in the junior section in the Society’s 1944 annual exhibition. The junior members decided that they would hold an independent exhibition following that of the senior members in 1945 and received the approval of the Council to do so. They became the Younger Artists Group of the RQAS, and held their first exhibition 29 Oct. – 1 Nov. 1945. Earlier in the year Collinson briefly attended the Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney, where he lodged in a room above the Studio of Realist Art. The socialist concerns of that group probably inspired Collinson to become the polemicist of the group as reflected in his catalogue foreword to the Younger Artists Group exhibition:

Queensland art today is practically sterile. Year after year the same pretty still-lifes, the same pretty landscapes, the same pretty figure studies are disgorged in their hundreds. Technically pleasing many of these paintings are, but the ability to make a good representation of a natural object on canvas is no proof that the craftsman is also an artist. It would seem the discoveries and re-discoveries in art over the past fifty years, the wars, the revolutions, the terrible events that have taken place in that time, have made little or no impression on our local painters: they are working with their eyes closed.

This provocative statement caused considerable offence to the parent body so the RQAS Council imposed a 20 year upper age limit on group members, effectively removing Collinson from participation in the Younger Artists Group. This sparked the formation of the Miya Studio, which held its first exhibition in the basement of the School of Arts in Stanley Street on 12 December 1945 and was opened by Dr Gertrude Langer. The Miya Studio shared key members, including Collinson, with the Barjai literary grou

Collinson moved to Melbourne in the early 1950s and lived with his family in East St Kilda, where he began an extensive literary production that eventually included ten plays and books of poetry. It seems Collinson’s career as a painter did not extend much beyond his time in Queensland. After he returned to England in 1964 he became a prominent gay rights activist.

Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery

Writers:

Cooke, Glenn R.

Date written:

2002

Last updated:

2011