Pam Hallandal (16 January 1929 - 25 September 2018) was an Australian artist, best known for her work in drawing and print making.
Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1929 Hallandal was the daughter of an amateur painter and architect who encouraged her interest in art. Enrolling in 1946 at RMIT, initially sculpture in sculpture, she was discouraged from attending because of her small stature and minimal limp, a result of childhood polio, so moved to ceramics. She received her Associate Diploma in 1950. During the later part of her study Hallandal also took evening classes with Ola Cohn.
In the 1950s and in her early twenties, Hallandal set up her own sculpture studio, producing small scale modernist sculpture in ceramics and wood, and showing her work at the Victorian Artists Society 1949âÂÂ1965, and competed beside male artists, Cohn, Anita Aarons, Tina Wentscher and others in 1952 to have her Monument for the Unknown Political Prisoner selected for an international exhibition in London, judged at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and won by Margel Hinder. She was employed from 1952âÂÂ56 at the Coonac Rehabilitation Centre in Toorak.
Traveling to London, Hallandal studied for a Post Diploma at the Central School of Art in London from 1956 - 1957. She toured galleries and museums in England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Norway.
After her return, Hallandal's practice largely shifted focus to drawing but she produced utility ceramic ware to finance her sculpture. She was a member of the Victorian Sculptors Society. Over 1964âÂÂ66 she traveled throughout Southeast Asia, and in 1970 visited Thailand, then during 1974 taking study leave, she toured colleges and galleries in U.S.A. and Mexico.
From 1958 Hallandal taught sculpture, ceramics and drawing at Prahran Technical College, meanwhile gaining her Trained Technical Teachers Certificate in 1960 and teaching briefly at the George Bell School, before being appointed by Alan Warren, who taught her at RMIT, as Senior Lecturer in Charge of Drawing. In 1964 she completed a Fellowship (F.R.M.I.T.) in sculpture at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
It was her experience of teaching drawing, Hallandal said, that led to her devoting her career to the two-dimensional medium rather than sculpture: "I found it hard to teach drawing seriously and make sculpture. Some people argue that it is better to teach outside your own area, but in order to be good enough to teach drawing well, you have to spend a lot of time and energy and be able to hold the concepts sufficiently tautly"
The institution became Victoria College Prahran in 1980, and after its amalgamation in 1991 with the Victorian College of the Arts, Hallandal continued her long career in education as Head of Drawing there, compulsorily retiring aged 70 in 1993.
Hallandal contributed in 1981 to curriculum design for drawing in secondary schools. She championed observational drawing, draftsmanship and drawing education, actively fighting to keep the practice alive within the tertiary syllabus in Victoria.
Hallandal's drawings are figurative charcoal, pastel and ink works on paper. Using dramatic effects through contrasting light and shadow, gestural overdrawing and pentimento, Hallandal's works are dark and expressive. She recorded her distinctive vision of the world and the life that took place around her, from prosaic details of suburban life to tragic and cataclysmic world events. In portraits, self-portraits, global and daily scenes like the triptych To the tune of the cash register, 1991, or the rondos Tsunami (2005) depicting the Indonesian disaster, Hallandals's works are bold, gestural and often foreboding. Sasha Grishin, reviewing in 1992 the survey show Contemporary Australian Drawings at the Nolan Gallery, Canberra, singled out her work:<blockquote>A highlight of the show is the quite exceptional triptych by the Melbourne sculptor, Pam Hallandal, titled 'To the tune of the cash register, 1991'. There is something claustrophobic in her construction of space with a nervous expressive line that is reminiscent of Joy Hester's work several decades earlier. It is a work about urban angst and despair observed from a woman's perspective.</blockquote>
Pam Hallandal was awarded: