The Estate of the Artist
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Norma Redpath
Flying Capital, Sydney Dattilo Rubbo Memorial, c. 1970
Catalogue number: 4
Bronze (Edition of 4, cast in 2018)
19.00 x 12.70 x 12.70
Alan McCulloch, Picking up the loose ends, The Herald, Melbourne, 24 April 1974, p. 17, b&w illustration of the large-scale version p. 17;
University of Melbourne Staff News, vol. 2, no. 3, April 1974, p. 1, two b&w illustrations p. 1;
'Professor Rubbo's memory honoured', University of Melbourne Gazette, vol. 30, no. 2, 1974, p. 9, b&w illustration p. 1;
'University of Melbourne Sculpture to Honour Professor Sydney Rubbo', The Medical Journal of Australia, 13 July 1974, p. 78, b&w illustration p. 78;
Ken Scarlett, Australian Sculptors, West Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1980, p. 547;
Philip Goad and George Tibbits, Architecture on Campus: A Guide to the University of Melbourne and its Colleges, Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2003. p. 89;
Lisa Sullivan, 'Sculpture on campus at the University of Melbourne', CSA News (Contemporary Sculptors Association magazine), vol., no. 18, July 2004, p. [2] and b&w illustration on front cover;
Robyn Sloggett, 'Impecunious magpies, or how to adorn a university with little ready cash; an interview with Ray Marginson, part III', University of Melbourne Collections, no. 7, 2010, p. 28, illustrated p. 29;
Helen Billman-Jacobe and Ann Westmore, ‘Flying Capital: Sydney Dattilo Rubbo Memorial’, University of Melbourne Collections, 9 December 2011, pp. 19-23, maquette illustrated p. 21.
Sydney Dattilo Rubbo (1911-69) was Professor of Microbiology at Melbourne University and a pioneering researcher in the development of antiseptics and disinfectants as well as treatments for tuberculosis and tetanus. He was one of two sons of the Italian émigré painter Antonio Dattilo Rubbo (later Dattillo-Rubbo), whose art school atelier was the breeding ground for the most progressive modern painting in Sydney prior to World War One. After completing his BS at the University of Sydney in 1934, he went to London to gain a Diploma in Bacteriology from the prestigious London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and went on to gain his PhD in microbiology from the University of London in 1937. In the same year he married artist Ellen Gray, with whom he had four children: Kiffy Rubbo, the innovative curator of the George Paton Gallery in Melbourne, 1971-79; architect Anna Rubbo of Columbia University, New York; Mark Rubbo, founder of the Readings Bookshops chain; and Mike Rubbo, cinematographer. Rubbo joined Melbourne University’s department of bacteriology, as it was then known, in late 1937 as senior lecturer, soon rising to Professor and later head of department. In that position he was responsible for overseeing the construction of the new Microbiology Building, completed in 1965. He was also responsible for the university’s Public Health Laboratory, which he made freely available to the general community for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. A prolific campaigner in the areas of public health and on moral issues — in particular opposing Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the use of biological and chemical agents — he was also active in the arts as president (1959-64) of the Melbourne branch of the Dante Alighieri Society, which fostered cultural relations between Australia and Italy.Rubbo and Redpath became acquainted in the 1960's: in 1965 Redpath loaned her Relief Fragment, 1964, to the new Microbiology Building shortly before its acquisition by the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and in 1967 Rubbo announced to his family that he was leaving to live with Redpath at Parkville.
After Rubbo’s sudden death in 1969, Redpath worked pro bono on this memorial, which was commissioned by colleagues, students and friends and cast at the Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan. Redpath described it as ‘a modern capital recalling the classic forms by the use of form fragments which in turn break away from the initial discipline into new forms, hinting at new ideas and a new order’ (Redpath cited in ‘Professor Rubbo's memory honoured', University of Melbourne Gazette, vol. 30, no. 2, 1974, p. 9). It was unveiled on 22nd March 1974, after which Alan McCulloch pronounced it ‘… outstandingly the work of the week’, finding it ‘a strangely original work, fully expressive of the Mediterranean culture from which Professor Rubbo sprang while expressing also in its massive, slotted sections the space age of science and the machine’
(The Herald, 24 April 1974, p. 17).
Exhibition Catalogue
Since its establishment in 1984, the Charles Nodrum Gallery’s exhibition program embraces a diversity of media and styles - from painting, sculpture & works on paper to graphics and photography; from figurative, geometric, gestural, surrealist & social comment to installation & conceptually based work.