Celia Winter Irving: An Obituary

Zimbabwe Tue 04-08-2009

Celia Winter Irving: An Obituary
By Jonathan Zilberg

'Celia Winter Irving: An Obituary'

Celia was a constant supporter of Zimbabwean artists and especially the Tengenenge community. She spent the last decades of her life avidly doing her best through her tireless writing and presentation towards that end.

She was deeply passionate about Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean art and I am certain will be much missed by a great many artists and friends. They will remember her for her extreme generosity of spirit and for her expressive and passionate writing.

Hers is an interesting story. Her engagement with Zimbabwean art came about by pure happenstance. As many know it came about when Roy Guthrie organized a show at the Irving Gallery and brought Tom Blomefield along. Being birds of a feather, Tom and Celia immediately developed a deep affection for each other - a bond of love which never wavered.

At the suggestion of Uli Beier, a friend of hers, she decided to go to Zimbabwe and write a book about the stone sculpture there.

She was commissioned by Craft Arts for which she wrote the then landmark article "Contemporary Stone Sculpture from Zimbabwe" in 1986 at the height of the post-independence renaissance of the First Generation.

In time she was duly appointed as a research affiliate at the National Gallery by the late Cyril Rogers who was also committed to the community's revival.

It goes without saying that her happiest days were at Tengenenge with Tom writing her first book on Zimbabwean art "Stone Sculpture in Zimbabwe: Context, Content and Form" published by Roblaw in 1991 and reprinted in 1995.

I still hold with great affection the memory of that period and remain grateful for the materials she so happily collected at Tengenenge. Few are the people who would share their primary data as she so generously did.

Celia and Sculptor Takawira

Celia wrote a great many articles and books over the next years. Her proudest years were those last premature years of her life when she was curator at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 2004 through 2007.

None shall forget the image of Celia in her Australian designer clothes and signature make up holding court with diplomats and her beloved artists. Celia was indeed a rare individual.

Of all her work, perhaps the most whimsical and compelling will remain her writings on Sootie the Cat, the story of herself perhaps as a cat exploring the surrealist world of art and life at Tengenenge.

In the last year of her life, despite great pain, she never gave up the hope that she would live to return to Zimbabwe and see the publication and launch of her final book written under the auspices of the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe in 2007 and 2008 after being appointed a fellow there.

To the very end she also diligently worked towards bringing future exhibitions of Zimbabwean stone sculpture

The recent article on her many achievements in Zimbabwe in the Sydney Herald with that powerful parting photograph was sadly in retrospect a farewell though she had hoped that it was simply the start of a new phase in her life in which she would indulge her love for painting and continue to promote Zimbabwean art abroad and "at home" one might say - as the tireless contributor to The Herald and Skyhost she was.

Her last wishes, as we joked in the final email communications, which I already miss greatly, were that there would be a great masked nyau dance at Tengenenge to celebrate her life and the lives of the artists she had befriended there, and as I added, that there should be a bronze plaque placed in the wall of the Tengenenge museum or in the granite wave behind it overlooking the Horseshoe Block.

It was a place where our mutual friend the late Bernard Matemera used to love to watch the sunset and from where on rare occasion, one will see the cinimwali antelope nyau figure leaving the village and returning to the sacred graveyard grove, led by the red flag waving high above the long dry yellow winter grass.

Tengenenge was without a doubt her spiritual home.

Celia was a great friend to many of us involved in Zimbabwean art. Her compassion and willingness to share her information and her insights was unfailing. As an African, I am certain that her spirit has already found its way home to Tengenenge.

May her soul rest in peace. We shall miss her greatly.

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