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Rod McNicol: Eulogy
Gael Newton, 26th October 2025
The following essay is a reworked and expanded version of the short talk I delivered at the gathering with close family and friends to honour Rod McNicol who died in his studio on 8th October 2025. The memorial gathering was in Rod McNicol's Loft – his Smith Street studio.
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| Photograph of Rod's home - taken in 2023 |
I first visited Rod’s studio-home and gallery of 47 years in the 1980s. His studio was a loft of an old industrial building in Smith Street Fitzroy. I can recall only a few occasions that we ever met anywhere else. Many others have known this glorious and welcoming space given that they are the subjects of his photographs and as family or friends.
The experience of visiting never lost its charm. You press the buzzer besides the non-descript door on Smith Street, then there was the clunk of the door releasing, you then walked down past peeling paint of the corridor up the grand staircase and through the austere door into another time and space.
Everyday life was left behind once that door closed – but now the birds were singing and plants could be seen out the back stairway door. Rod’s loft was flooded with light from the former warehouse’s clerestory windows. It could be the well-worn rooms of a late 19th century photographer. The distinctive camouflage green walls introduced as background to colour works are part of the memory.
As long as I knew him, Rod had his signature and generous moustache, so he looked a bit of an old timer.
I salute the good fortune that led Rod to living in his ‘loft’, a place so suited to a photographer in 1977 and even more amazing was that he kept it through various financial ups and downs. With so much development now happening through the inner-city areas here in Melbourne, I mourn the loss of this type of space and any like it in the Smith Street area. It is a real shame that somehow our society’s priorities do not include the future provision for such artistic-oriented affordable dwellings.
Everything Rod did flew in the face of what a gallerist or mentor might have said had to be done to make a life in art – let alone to be celebrated (as he would be) as a nationally significant artist. Rod pursued his art with a clear vision of what he wanted. It was a privilege to see his work evolve.
While he is no longer here with us today, he is and always will be in memory and in his images. The framed and pinned prints around the studio of his ‘village’ people look across at us today at this ceremony as they did on any visit. His ancestors and childhood photos and a charming painting after a photograph of his family are still on the wall behind me. There are lush plants, intriguing small objects and things all around to catch your eye. His cat was always watching.
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| Photograph inside Rod's home - taken in September 2025 |
My move to Melbourne in late 2023 meant that my partner and I had regular and very enjoyable visits. Rod was always alive, interested and curious and we engaged in many conversations about the arts and society. His interests were wide even though photographically he ploughed a small perimeter making most of his portrait and still life work here in the studio.
For instance, we swapped notes on our readings on the Golden Age of Dutch art– in particular the portraits and still life works from that rich period of painting. We watched as his powerful distilled flower studies unfolded in his last year or so. We purchased one and it is now a favourite on our walls at home. His friendship was an important part of my life.
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| Photograph inside Rod's home - taken in September 2025 |
Rod’s engagement with life remained until the last conversation when we talked about the details of a picture – with Rod ended by saying ‘I’m working to the end that’s how I like it’.
He said not to be sad when he was gone. I couldn’t promise that but the curator in me is pleased that he was cherished and was able to make provision for his archive. His life and work have been well documented and published.
Looking around the portraits on the wall of his loft and having seen his portrait work in books, in exhibitions and as submitted for awards, I have to say that the significance of his village people portraits is yet to be fully appreciated. These works are about the people in Rod’s village and his wider circles, but they are very much about the real mix of the people who live in this beautiful country.
For more on Rod McNicol - click here
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