The Art Life joins with Australia’s art community in extending our deepest sympathies to Nick and Chloe Waterlow’s families and friends.
Update, Wednesday November 11:
“Martin Sharp and Sydney’s art world were in shock yesterday. He had had a long association with Nick Waterlow, who had championed his work and was a co-curator of his 2006 solo show, The Everlasting World of Martin Sharp, at Ivan Dougherty Gallery.
Only last Saturday night, Sharp said, Waterlow had been dancing with his partner, the filmmaker, writer and artist Juliet Darling, at a party at the University of NSW Roundhouse.
”He was just having a great time,” Sharp told the Herald. ”It’s hard to think of these things as memories now. But I think highly of him – in memory, now.”
Waterlow had also curated For Matthew and Others: Journeys with Schizophrenia, in October 2006. Sharp had worked with him on the show, which featured artists whose lives had been touched by the mental illness that affects one in 100 Australians. Few realised it was a cause close to Waterlow’s heart.
”I never knew about it until this show came up,” Sharp said, ”but he did mention to me that he had a son who suffered from a mental illness.”
Tributes to the Waterlows continued to flow today from friends and prominent figures in the Sydney art world.
Gene Sherman, the chairman and executive director of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, said Mr Waterlow’s “nurturing attitude” made him stand out.
“(It was) his generosity … the interest in the greater good as opposed to his own self interest in promoting himself, and that deep quietness about it,” Dr Sherman told 2UE.
“There was very little fanfare about (him).
“One could never have anticipated that such a gentle soul as Nick could have met such a violent end.” […]
Nick Waterlow was the subject of an Archibald Prize finalist, Wang Xu, last year. Eleonora Triguboff, editor of Art and Australia, said: ”It would be hard to meet anyone kinder, gentler, or more giving than Nick. Nick was a true gentleman with a twinkle in his eye.”
He was passionate about all forms of art and suspicious about people who claimed to have all the answers. A great mentor, he encouraged the asking of questions at the college.
In an interview last November in The College Voice, he said: ”I was English-born and probably I should have gone to university like my predecessors. But I flunked that, and thank heavens I did, because it took me to Paris in the early ’60s at a time of an extraordinary avant-garde activity.
”The first moment that an artist spoke to me in every conceivable way that I ever needed was Goya. He asked some very hard questions of everything that was happening in his world at that particular moment. And that is what I am interested by, and demand from artistic practice.”
New information and detail on the unfolding story.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
“A Sydney community is in shock today after a cookbook author and her father were found dead in a Randwick home last night, and a young girl was discovered with wounds to her throat.
Police are expected to make a statement soon on the killings.
The Clovelly Road semi was purchased by cookbook author Chloe Waterlow, 37, and her husband, a digital consultant, Ben Heuston, 2½ years ago.
Ms Waterlow is the daughter of Sydney curator Nick Waterlow OAM, 68. He directed Sydney’s third Biennale and is the curator of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Darlinghurst.
It is believed the family had been considering moving to Britain, but had recently decided against it.
The injured girl, believed to be the couple’s four-year-old daughter, was in a serious condition at Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick this morning.
Police were alerted just before 6pm yesterday when someone, believed to be a friend of the family, phoned triple-0.
They entered the premises through a side window and discovered the two bodies and the injured girl.
Another child, an eight-month-old boy, believed to be the girl’s brother, was taken to hospital without injuries.
Last night, he was in the care of the Department of Community Services. Acting Superintendent Shayne Woolbank said the baby was not found inside the house.
The couple’s third child is also in the temporary care of DOCS, a spokeswoman for Community Services Minister Linda Burney said.
Mr Waterlow’s sister-in-law, Anne O’Brien, told the Herald Ms Waterlow was “a vivacious young mother who adored her littlies”.
Police established a crime scene and questioned neighbours.
“We are still trying to piece together what happened,” acting Superintendent Woolbank said.”
From the NSW University College of Fine Art wesbite:
“It is with immense shock and distress that we heard news this morning of the death of Nick Waterlow, Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at COFA and a much loved and respected member of staff.
The death of Nick and his daughter are being investigated by police […]
Nick was a leading member of Australia’s arts community, having curated three Sydney Biennales. He has been Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery since 1991 and was a senior lecturer in COFA’s School of Art History and Art Education. His current projects included a book exploring the place of Australian art internationally and he was of course closely involved in the planning for COFA’s new art museum.”
