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... Nick was a creator. He was always pondering, deciding, choosing. He knew that artistic truth resists paraphrase and prefers to show rather than to tell or explain. He wanted to create exhibitions with open endings. He trusted his instincts, his eye. He was one of the few independent curators who, in this cluttered world of research and knowledge, was equally interested in what could be left out. His exhibitions were never a catalogue or an inventory as so many are. For Nick art was alive. His higher purpose was to choose works that, through careful juxtaposition, could speak to one another, be seen through the other, to help the viewer understand each work for itself while at the same time gaining a sense of the whole.

When Nick first came to Australia in 1965 he perceived what he thought was a particularly Australian syndrome: a general indifference to the life of the soul or spirit. The feeling unsettled him and placed him outside his comfort zone yet gave him an inroad when it came to looking at the contemporary art of this country. At Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996 he and Ross Mellick created an exhilarating exhibition that helped me understand my country and myself. 'Spirit & Place: Art in Australia 1861-1996' broke all the rules. It was conceived as a poem, with each work a line, and with a rhythm imposed by the sequence and shape of the rooms. With over ninety artists the exhibition made startling juxtapositions, such as Rover Thomas with Colin McCahon, Howard Taylor with Peter Booth, Joseph Beuys and Wolfgang Laib with Indigenous art. It invited the viewer to share the experience of the artist. It reached into our souls ...

Nick could help artists because he loved them. He used his brain to exercise the heart and the imagination, searching to find works that render ourselves bare, exposing our desires and fears, uniting the dualities of life and reminding us that we are all in the process of becoming. What I most appreciated about Nick was the way he encouraged this general expansiveness of feeling ...

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the entire article in Art & Australia's Winter 2010 issue.