‘Art now is therapy, art is entertainment’: Wendy Whiteley in conversation

A great interview has range and depth, humour and pathos – and who better to deliver that than Wendy Whiteley. Here, the former wife of the late artist Brett Whiteley and creator of Wendy’s Secret Garden in Sydney’s Lavender Bay chats with her friend, journalist Ashleigh Wilson, who has just written a book – A Year with Wendy: Conversations about Art – to be released next week by Text Publishing.

On the latest episode of Good Weekend Talks – a “magazine for your ears”, featuring conversations with captivating people – Whiteley opens up about everything from the way great women are hidden within our histories (including hers), to the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” of 1960s London and New York, to the rubbish dump out the front of her home in Lavender Bay that she turned into a heritage-listed garden.

Wendy Whiteley in conversation with writer Ashleigh Wilson at her Lavender Bay home.Credit: Mclean Stephenson

One of her first points: “When you look at family trees, usually the women just disappear because they get married and change their names.” Whiteley, of course, went to art school intending to become an artist like her great aunt, impressionist painter Kate O’Connor. That stint was foreshortened however by Brett’s desire to get her out of school. “I had a lot more freedom than he had,” she says, “and he really resented that.”

She describes her former husband as “fairly speedy” – someone who today she suspects would be given an ADHD diagnosis and a script for lithium. “I probably would have got one too, but that’s what I liked about him – that extraordinary energy and the fact that he had the discipline to focus that energy into his work,” she says. “He was only difficult when he wasn’t working – when he didn’t have that that focus. He was no good on holidays, drove everybody nuts.”

The pair, along with daughter Arkie, captivated the Australian media in the 1970s. “Here we were, this artist who lived in the Chelsea Hotel, who had this good-looking wife and a beautiful little daughter, we looked like hippies, all of us – and then he got busted for drugs in Fiji. Wow, that’s the full banana, isn’t it? It’s like, what a feast.”

Whiteley says that era’s art world was different to how it is today. “Art now is therapy, art is entertainment, everybody mixes in and does something and makes a contribution,” she says. “That’s not the world I came from. I don’t think it was elitist, but it was certainly fewer people involved.”

The garden in front of her home on Lavender Bay came much later, following the death of Brett from a heroin overdose in 1992, and Arkie from adrenal cancer in 2001. The space between Whiteley’s home and Sydney harbour was disused railway land when she decided to clean it up. “I couldn’t have a plan because you couldn’t see what was there. The first few years it was a physical, hard slog, and I loved it. I think it actually really grounded me again and gave me a sense of what I could do on my own,” she says. “But the fact that you can’t control it, I think that’s very attractive. Gardens do their own thing, and I find that fascinating.”

Good Weekend Talks offers readers the chance to dive deep into the definitive stories of the day, exploring the events and individuals capturing the interest of Australians, through weekly conversations with an array of special guests. Listen to more episodes by subscribing to Good Weekend Talks wherever you get your podcasts.

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