A
MOTHER'S WORK IS NEVER DONE
Edited version published: Frankie #27 (Jan/Feb 2009)
One of a series of profiles on mothers and daughters who
work together.
EMILY McCULLOCH CHILDS & SUSAN McCULLOCH
(of
McCULLOCH & McCULLOCH)
In Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula,
there’s a studio that artist Arthur Boyd built over 50 years ago.
Nowadays, it’s headquarters for the art publishing house McCulloch & McCulloch,
where mother-daughter team Susan McCulloch and Emily McCulloch Childs
are in pre-launch mode, organising mail-outs. “So we’re surrounded
by piles of brochures and books—all this glamorous stuff,” Emily
jokes. “Actually, it’s not very glamorous,” mother
Susan deadpans.
The parent-child working relationship harks back a generation
too. Susan was the only child of renowned art critic Alan McCulloch,
who founded McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian
Art—a book that
has since become an iconic art reference. As a teenager, Susan
would help out on typing duties, as her dad put together the original
editions.
Working alongside her father set a precedent for how Susan
approaches work with Emily nowadays. “It taught me that if you
love what you do, it’s hard work,” she says. “But there’s
no real difference between work and anything else. It’s all integrated.
We’re not going to make a lot of money out of it, but it’s
all enriching, wonderful stuff that people would probably pay a lot of
money to do.”
Although Emily has siblings on her father’s
side, she’s Susan’s only child. So in the years Susan worked
as an arts writer and critic for metropolitan newspapers, Emily would
accompany her to art galleries, left to her own devices. “As an
only child on Mum’s side, I needed to become pretty self-reliant,” Emily
says.
She recalls packing a bag of supplies every time she ventured out
to a new exhibition. (“Her gallery survival kit,” Susan calls
it.) By the time Susan had finished talking to everyone, she’d
go over to Emily and chat. “Many times Emily would come out with
something really perceptive about the work,” she says. “I’d
look at her in astonishment and say, ‘How did you know that?’ She’d
respond, ‘Mum: while you were talking, I was looking at the art.’
So
when it came to scouting research assistants for the latest Encyclopedia,
Susan immediately thought of her daughter. Emily didn’t make an
immediate decision, but her boss at a gallery for Aboriginal art insisted
she’d be a right match for her mother’s work, since it would
involve a heavy update of the Aboriginal art section. In hindsight, Susan
said Emily was the perfect choice, and allowed the Encyclopedia to expand
its perspectives into genres like street art.
Road trips were also involved.
In muscling up the Aboriginal art sections, the two women embarked on
a massive roadtrip through the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara (PY) and
Ngaanyatjarra/Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara (NPY) regions, across Australia’s
western tri-state border. The pedometer clocked over 2,500 kilometres
in total.
“I knew it’d be great,” Emily says. “It’d
be honouring my grandfather’s work, helping artists, and working
with my Mum.” Since then, Emily and Susan have collaborated on
the guide McCulloch’s Contemporary Aboriginal Art, as
well as working on their predominantly solo projects. Emily’s book New
Beginnings—on
a 21st century Aboriginal art collection—was recently launched
by Thérèse Rein.
“All my life, people would tell
me, ‘Your mother works so hard. She’s got so much on her
mind,’” Emily says. “And working with her, I realised: ‘Yeah:
more than I thought.’ Now I know why she didn’t make my school
play costumes. It’s because she was running a publishing company,
and doing 50 million things.”
“Between the two of us, we
make a really good arts writer,” Emily says, before both women
break out laughing. “We’ve got different strengths. Mum was
a journalist for many years, and I’m more of an academic. I’m
a more slow-moving researcher; Mum’s got a knows-a-good-story,
engaging journalistic style. We have different body clock timing things.
She’s a morning person, and I’m a night-owl.”
“It’s
always been our problem—always,” Susan says. Emily adds, “I’ll
be having breakfast at lunch-time, and she’s having dinner. But
we do manage to meet around wine time. That’s sort of our meeting
place, about 5 o’clock in the afternoon.”
www.mccullochandmcculloch.com.au
BACK TO SELECTED WORKS INDEX
Last
Updated :: 19 April 2009
All Content ©
Benjamin Law 2009