Art of Australia
Encyclopedia
Australian art incorporates art made in Australia or about Australian subjects since prehistoric
times. This includes Australian Aboriginal art
, Australian Colonial art, Landscape
, Atelier
, Modernist and Contemporary art
. The visual arts have a long history in Australia, with evidence of Aboriginal art dating back at least 30,000 years. Australia has produced many notable artists from both Western and Indigenous Australian traditions including the late 19th century Heidelberg School
impressionists, central Australian Hermannsburg School
watercolourists, Western Desert Art Movement, Heide Circle
of Modernists, and the expatriates who worked in London in the nineteen sixties. Mid twentieth century Modernist figuration prevails in the Australian art market, prominent artists are Ian Fairweather
, Sidney Nolan
, Arthur Boyd
, Russell Drysdale
, Brett Whiteley
, John Brack
, Jeffrey Smart
and Charles Blackman
. Rosalie Gascoigne
, John Olsen
and Fred Williams
are exceptions whose landscapes border on abstractions. Harold Cazneaux
and Max Dupain
are noted for their modernist photography. Most of the celebrated artists of past decades have become less noted after their deaths, such as painters John Perceval
, William Dobell
, Lloyd Rees
and Donald Friend
. Since the late Nineteen-nineties, senior Indigenous artists and Baby Boomer and Generation X contemporary artists have commanded a rapidly increasing share of the Australian art market.
Australia has a number of major museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Victoria
in Melbourne
, the National Gallery of Australia
, National Portrait Gallery of Australia
and National Museum of Australia
in Canberra, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales
in Sydney. Notable Indigenous sites have been set aside as UNESCO
listed areas such as those at Uluru
and Kakadu National Park
.
Aboriginal Australians are believed to have begun arriving in Australia as early as 60,000 years ago, and evidence of Aboriginal art in Australia can be traced back at least 30,000 years. Examples of ancient Aboriginal rock artworks can be found throughout the continent - notably in national parks such as those of the UNESCO
listed sites at Uluru
and Kakadu National Park
in the Northern Territory, but also within protected parks in urban areas such as at Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
in Sydney. The Sydney rock engravings
are approximately 5000 to 200 years old. Murujuga
in Western Australia has the Friends of Australian Rock Art advocating its preservation, and the numerous engravings there were heritage listed in 2007. Rock Art Research
is published twice a year and also covers international scholarship of rock art. In May 2011, the chair of the Rock Art Research Centre at Griffith University
, Paul Tacon, called for a national database for rock art.
In terms of age and abundance, cave art in Australia is comparable to that of Lascaux
and Altamira in Europe, and Aboriginal art is believed to be the oldest continuing tradition of art in the world. There are three major regional styles: the geometric style found in Central Australia, Tasmania, the Kimberley and Victoria known for its concentric circles, arcs and dots; the simple figurative style found in Queensland
and the complex figurative style found in Arnhem Land which includes X-Ray art. These designs generally carry significance linked to the spirituality of the Dreamtime
.
William Barak
(c.1824-1903) was one of the last traditionally educated of the Wurundjeri
-willam, people who come from the district now incorporating the city of Melbourne. He remains notable for his artworks which recorded traditional Aboriginal ways for the education of Westerners (which remain on permanent exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre
of the National Gallery of Victoria
and at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
. Margaret Preston
(1875–1963) was among the early non-indigenous painters to incorporate Aboriginal influences in her works. Albert Namatjira
(1902–1959) is one of the most famous Australian artists and an Arrernte
man. His landscapes inspired the Hermannsburg School
of art. The works of Elizabeth Durack
are notable for their fusion of Western and indigenous influences. Since the 1970s, indigenous artists have employed the use of acrylic paints - with styles such as that of the Western Desert Art Movement becoming globally renowned 20th century art movements.
The National Gallery of Australia
exhibits a great many indigenous art works, including those of the Torres Strait Islands
who are known for their traditional sculpture and headgear.
, the Botanical illustrator
on James Cook
's 1770 voyage that first charted the eastern coastline of Australia, made a large number of such drawings under the direction of naturalist Joseph Banks
. Many of these drawings were met with skepticism when taken back to Europe, for example claims that the platypus
was a hoax.
Despite Banks' suggestions, no professional natural-history artist sailed on the First Fleet
in 1788, so until the turn of the century all drawings made in the colony were by soldiers, including British naval officers George Raper and John Hunter, and convict artists, including Thomas Watling
. However, many of these drawings are by unknown artists. Most are in the style of naval draughtsmanship. Most of these drawings were of Natural history
topics, specifically birds, and a few depict the infant colony itself.
Several professional natural-history illustrators accompanied expeditions in the early 19th century, including Ferdinand Bauer
(who travelled with Matthew Flinders
), and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, who travelled with a French expedition led by Nicolas Baudin
. The first resident professional artist was John Lewin
, who arrived in 1800 and published two volumes of natural history art, while ornothologist John Gould
was renowned for his illustration's of the country's birds.
As well as natural history, there were some ethnographic portraiture of Aboriginal Australians, particularly in the 1830s. Artists included Augustus Earle
in New South Wales
and in Tasmania
.
Art in Australia from 1788 onward is often narrated as the gradual shift from a European sense of light to an Australian one. The lighting in Australia is notably different to that of Europe, and early attempts at landscapes attempted to reflect this.
Conrad Martens
(1801–1878) worked from 1835 to 1878 as a professional artist, painting many landscapes and was commercially successful. His work, though, is regarded as softening the landscape to fit European sensibilities. Martens is remembered for accompanying scientist Charles Darwin
on the HMS Beagle
.
Another significant landscape artist of this era was John Glover
.
S. T. Gill
(1818–1880) documented life on the Australian gold fields.
A few attempts at art exhibitions were made in the 1840s, which attracted a number of artists but were commercial failures. By the 1850s however, regular exhibitions became popular, with a variety of art types represented. The first such was in 1854 in Melbourne
. An art museum, which eventually became the National Gallery of Victoria
, was founded in 1861, and began to collect Australian works as well as gathering a collection of European masters. Some of the artists of note included Eugene von Guerard
, William Strutt
, and Louis Buvelot
.
The colonial art market primarily desired landscape paintings, which were commissioned by wealthy landowners or merchants wanting to record their material success. Knut Bull (1811–1889) was sentenced to fourteen years transportation in 1845, and after doing time at Norfolk Island
arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1846. From 1849 he was permitted to work as an artist and by 1853 had received a conditional pardon. Bull created such history paintings as The Wreck of the George III in 1850 and is noted for his scenes of early colonial Hobart
.
William Piguenit
's (1836–1914) "Flood in the Darling" was collected by the National Gallery of New South Wales in 1895.
Walter Withers
(1854–1914) won the inaugural Wynne Prize
in 1896.
Among the first Australians artists to gain a reputation overseas was the impressionist John Peter Russell
during the 1880s. Another notable expatriate artist of the era was Rupert Bunny
, a painter of landscape, allegory and sensual and intimate portraits.
The origins of distinctly Australian painting is often associated with the Heidelberg School
of the 1880s-1890s. Artists such as Arthur Streeton
, Frederick McCubbin
and Tom Roberts
applied themselves to recreating in their art a truer sense of light and colour as seen in Australian landscape. Like the European Impressionists, they painted in the open air. These artists found inspiration in the unique light and colour which characterises the Australian bush. Some see strong connections between the art of the school and the wider Impressionist movement, while others point to earlier traditions of plain air painting elsewhere in Europe. Sayers states that "there remains something excitingly original and indisputably important in the art of the 1880s and 1890s", and that by this time "something which could be described as an Australian tradition began to be recognized".
Key figures in the School were Tom Roberts
, Arthur Streeton
(1867–1943), Frederick McCubbin
, and Charles Conder
. Their most recognised work involves scenes of pastoral and wild Australia, featuring the vibrant, even harsh colours of Australian summers. The name itself comes from a camp Roberts and Streeton set up at a property near Heidelberg
, at the time on the rural outskirts of Melbourne
. Some of their paintings received international recognition, and many remain embedded in Australia's popular consciousness both inside and outside the art world. Jane Sutherland
(1853–1928), noted for her En plein air
technique, was a student of McCubbin.
Nature loving artists of previous generations are numerous, however some of the more idiosyncratic examples were Merric Boyd
(1862–1940) and Sydney Long
(1871–1955). Long's early paintings were influenced by the symbolists, art nouveau and partly by the Heidelberg School.
The early twentieth century saw some Australian artists making their careers in Europe. These include impressionist John Peter Russell
, bohemian painters like Rupert Bunny
(1864–1947) and Agnes Goodsir
, printmaker Hall Thorpe, a religious man who intended to make spiritually uplifting work, and the internationally renowned sculptor Bertram Mackennal.
Arthur Streeton was a plein air painter who continued to be highly successful in the first part of the twentieth century. The romanticist view of Australian rural scenes was shared with Hans Heysen
(1877–1968), an artist famous for his luminous watercolour paintings of River Red Gums, won the Wynne Prize nine times from 1904 to 1932.
Bertram Mackennal, (1863–1931) was a well known sculptor from this era, particularly for his rendition of Circe the Greek magic goddess.
Leading up to World War I
, the decorative arts, including miniature, watercolour painting, and functional objects such as vases, became more prominent in the Australian arts scene. Norman Lindsay
's (1879–1969) watercolours of baccanalian nudes caused considerable scandal around the turn of the century. One famous drawing, Pollice Verso (1904), caused his first scandal, as it depicted Romans
giving the thumbs down to Christ
on the Cross. There were the fashionable artists such as J.W. Tristram, who did misty Corot-influenced watercolors of the bush and beach.
George Washington Lambert
was a prominent painter and sculptor of early twentieth century Australia who moved between decorative arts and portraiture, and is a notable war artist (World War I).
After World War I
, early proponents of modernist art in Australia were cubist influenced Roy de Maistre
(1894–1968). and Margaret Preston
, and the post-impressionist Grace Cossington Smith
. European Modernist art had fierce critics such as Norman Lindsay, who wrote for the nationalist publication The Bulletin, and the idiosyncratic teacher Max Meldrum. Ironically the Max Meldrum
-led Australian Tonalism
movement, which rejected modernist art and promoted a unique form of painting in accordance with Meldrum's theories of art, has since been recognized as a precursor to Modernist forms of art, including Minimalism, and art historian Bernard William Smith
noted that Meldrum is perhaps the only Australian artist to develop and practice his own fully formulated theory of painting.
Meldrum's student Clarice Beckett
was rediscovered in the 2000s.
Popular illustrators of children's books were May Gibbs
, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
and Dorothy Wall
(1894–1942) (the creator of Blinky Bill
the Koala).
1921 saw the founding of the Archibald Prize
, Australia's most famous art prize, for portrait
ure, though defining portraiture has always caused controversy - most notably in 1943 when William Dobell
's semi caraciture portrait of an artist friend won the prize and was challenged in court on the basis that it was a caricature, not a portrait.
Art deco made its mark in advertising posters, architecture and consumer goods, as well as fine art. In 1934 the ANZAC Memorial
in Sydney's Hyde Park
was built and featured the sculpture "The Sacrifice" by Rayner Hoff
(1894–1937). The decorative art deco arches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge embody Australian fondness for the fashionable modernist style. Australia's most iconic Art Deco
painting, Australian Beach Pattern was painted by Charles Meere (1890–1961) in 1940. Modernism in the fine arts, however, continued to be a fledgling movement in the 1930s.
Works of watercolour or pastel on paper have for many years been less marketable than oil painting
s on board or canvas. This has been reflected in the historical cheaper pricing of key Australian artists who worked on paper, including expressionist-surrealist Joy Hester
, romanticist landscape painter Hans Heysen
, modernists Frank and Muriel Medworth, landscape painters Albert Namatjira
and Kenneth MacQueen, Bauhaus
trained teacher Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack
and the master printmaker Murray Griffin
, famous for his prints of birds.
Social realism
in the forties and fifties involved Herbert Badham, Jacqueline Hick (1919–2004), Noel Counihan
(1913–1986), Herbert McClintock
(1906–1985) and Roy Dalgarno
(1910–2001). Yosl Bergner
(1920-) worked in Australia in this decade.
Cubism
was an enduring influence on painting. Grace Crowley
is remembered as one of the key cubist influenced painters. Abstractionist Godfrey Miller (1893–1964) was influenced by cubism and the mystical writings of Rudolf Steiner
.
In the 1940s a new generation of artists began experimenting with styles such as surrealism
and other techniques. James Gleeson
(1915–2008) eventually became recognised as Australia's most significant surrealist painter. Robert Klippel
(1920–2001) a constructivist and surrealist influenced sculptor who was influenced by industrial settings. Klippel also collaborated with Gleeson.
In Melbourne Arthur Boyd
(1920–1999) and Albert Tucker
(1914–1999) were prominent, and a number of artists spent time at Heide
, a house in Heidelberg - the site of the Heidelberg school several decades before. Amongst the artists who spent time there were Joy Hester
(1920–1960) and, the internationally well known painter Sidney Nolan
(1917–1992), the best artist of the immediate postwar period, whose iconic Ned Kelly
images are probably better known than the artist himself. The effect of the Ern Malley
poetry case, its cover illustrated by Nolan, also reflected around the art world.
Olive Cotton
and Max Dupain
went onto successful photography careers after studying with the early modernist photographer Harold Cazneaux
. George Caddy
's beachobatics photography was influenced by what he saw in American Life magazine. Wolfgang Sievers
(1913–2007) arrived in Australia in August 1938. He specialised in architectural and industrial photography.
In 1946, Helmut Newton
(1920–2004) established himself as a fashion photographer in Melbourne
.
Mark Strizic, (born 1928, Berlin), migrated to Melbourne from Zagreb, Croatia 1950, was another major portrait and architectural photographer from the late fifties to the present day, noted for his documentation of many buildings that have now been demolished.
David Moore
(1927–2003) was a photojournalist. His 1966 photo Migrants Arriving in Sydney, originating from a commission by National Geographic, is one of the most famous works of modern Australian photography.
An art centre was established at Ernabella in 1948. Art centeres are an important factor in the story of the development of contemporary aboriginal art.
In the 1950s Scottish expatriate Ian Fairweather
(1891–1974) settled on Bribie Island, South-East Queensland, and produced calligraphic paintings influenced by the arts of China and Indonesia
. Various influences from Chinese art did not gain equal acceptance in Western art. The early acceptance of Fairweather as an artistic hero in the Forties is in sharp contrast to the resistance American composer John Cage
faced when he debuted his alleatory compositions to American audiences in the Fifties.
Abstract expressionism
was an influence in artists Ralph Balson (1890–1964), influential art teachers John Passmore and Desiderius Orban
, Carl Plate (1907–1977), Inge King
, Nancy Borlase
(1914–2006), William Rose, Tony Tuckson
(1921–1973) Tom Gleghorn, Ann Thomson, Stan Rapotec, Clement Meadmore
(1929–2005) and Yvonne Audette (1930-). Meadmore became a well known artist in New York. Tuckson's work is featured on the cover of the 2006 edition of the prestigious McCullouch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art.
George Johnson, a paragon of the Melbourne geometric abstractionist joked about in David Williamson
's Emerald City
(1987), held his first exhibition in 1956.
Bob Woodward's El Alamein Fountain
(1961) showed the public that small scale modernist public sculpture could enhance the appeal of inner city areas. The public sculptures of Tom Bass and Bert Flugelman
had mixed reactions.
Artists demonstratively concerned with Australian identity Albert Tucker
, Clifton Pugh
, Barry Humphries
, Sidney Nolan
, Arthur Boyd
, Fred Williams
, for example) had great success with the public. The Fred Williams
(1927–1982) exhibition "Fred Williams - Landscapes of a Continent" was held at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York in 1977. Williams is now regarded as one of the definitive painters of the Australian landscape. Williams is known for his aerial abstractions of the arid Australian inland, and suggest the viewer is in an aircraft, flying above the land. Russell Drysdale
(1912–1981), a painter of outback scenes, represented Australia at the Venice Biennale
in 1954. Drysdale, William Dobell
(1899–1970), Eric Thake
(1904–1982) and the cartoonist Paul Rigby
(1924–2006) helped to shape the visual archetype of the plain, hearty Australian.
Figurative artists popular in the sixties also included Ainslie Roberts
(1911–1993), Jeffrey Smart
, Charles Blackman
, Robert Dickerson
, Donald Friend
(1915–1989) and John Brack
who is one of the highest regarded figurative painters today.
Richard Larter
arrived in Australia in 1962 and started a long career in pop painting, with the female nude being the subject of many of his works. Mike Brown (1938–1997) and Peter Powditch were early Australian pop artists.
Psychedelia
in 1960s Australian art was not common, a famous example is the cover of the Cream album Disraeli Gears
(1967), created by Martin Sharp
. Vernon Treweeke
was briefly a star of psychedelic painting. Vivienne Binns
exhibition of paintings at Watters Gallery in 1967 was notoriously genre defying and established her position as a contemporary of the Feminist art movement
.
Definitive events in the late sixties included the exhibition of Hard Edged Abstraction The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria, Charlie Numbulmoore painting his famous Wandjina spirit figures, The Power Institute of Fine Arts
was established in 1968 eventually leading to the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
, and Christo and Jean-Claude's wrapping of Little Bay in Sydney.
In 1971-2 art teacher Geoffrey Bardon encouraged the Aboriginal people of Papunya to paint their Dreamtime stories on canvas, leading to the development of the Papunya Tula school, or 'dot art' which has become possibly Australia's most recognisable style of art worldwide. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
(1932–2002), Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra and William Sandy are some of the best known Papunya artists.
The abstractionist John Passmore (1904–1984) was part of the inspiration for the artist Hurtle Duffield in Patrick White
's novel The Vivisector
(1970). Decades later in 2003, Passmore's friends Elinor and Fred Wrobel converted a pub into the Passmore Museum. It is one of the few museums in Australia dedicated solely to one artist's life and work. Passmore was a teacher of John Olsen
(1928-), an innovative and original landscape painter. Patrick White's art collecting efforts are to this day generally unadmired but he was a collector of modernist art and an early collector of the sort of art that later came to be known as Postmodernism
, including art by James Clifford
, Imants Tillers
, Frank Littler, Robert Boynes, Patricia Moylan, John Davis
(1936–1999), and Tony Coleing.
Artists founded alternate practices apart from commercial galleries and art museums. Performance art and interactive art in communities throughout Australia saw the development of public art and community projects. Vivienne Binns
project "Mothers' Memories Others' Memories" at UNSW and Blacktown was a ground breaking participatory project. Other artists around Australia, such as Anne Newmarch in Adelaide were involved in these kinds of practices. Performance artists of the 70s included Ken Unsworth, Mike Parr
, Mike Kitching, Philippa Cullen (1950–1975), Ivan Durrant, Pat Larter (1936–1996) and Jill Orr. Installation artists of this decade included Kevin Mortensen, Rosalie Gascoigne
(1917–1999), Ti Parks and Tony Trembath.
Building on the innovations of photomontage
and artists such as Robert Rauschenberg
(1925–2008), Man Ray
(1890–1976), Gerhard Richter
and Richard Hamilton
, urban Australian artists were fascinated by the creative nexus of photography and painting. Painters combined painterliness with the look of photography (Carl Plate, Richard Larter
, James Clifford (1936–1987), Ivan Durrant, Tim Maguire, Jill Orr
, Ken Searle
, Susan Norrie, Annette Bezor, Robert Boynes, Kristin Headlam, Ken Johnson, Julie Rrap
, Louise Hearman
, John Young, Sally Robinson, Lindy Lee, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, Philip Wolfhagen, Leah King-Smith, David Wadelton). Those artists found limited but enthusiastic audiences. Contemporary Australian artists such as Patricia Piccinini
, Tracey Moffat and Bill Henson
were artistic leaders primarily using photography
, using techniques of drawing
, Scenic painting
and Chiarascuro respectively. Julia Ciccarone circumvented the trend with her Trompe-l'œil paintings. In the world of Rock music
, Richard Lowenstein
was creating similar graphic effects using grainy overlays, as he did for the Hunters & Collectors
video "Talking to a Stranger" (1982).
Experimental film and video was documented from the 1970s by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, a couple of filmmakers with an interest in surrealist films publishing Cantrill's Filmnotes. In this format, innovative art was made outside of the commercial and public gallery system. Innovative and internationally recognised art videos from this era were Despair (1982) by industrial music innovators SPK
and Human Jukebox (c.1986) by The Scientists
.
Some depictions of angst
and human suffering in the late 20th century were:
Peter Booth
's dystopia
n expressionist paintings.
George Gittoes
drawing and painting the anguish of the Rwandan Genocide
.
Steve Cox's Criminological paintings of youths and men lapsed into and out of True crime
.
David McDiarmid (1952–1995), Peter Tully (1947–1992) and society photographer William Yang used their art to raise awareness of the AIDS
epidemic. (Epidemic
levels within Australia). Figurative painters Nigel Thomson
(1945–1999), Stewart MacFarlane
and Fred Cress
(1938–2009) explored the seamy side of urban Australian life. Their styles were akin to cinematic Black comedy
. Tracey Moffatt's series "Scarred for Life" treated psychological suffering in a camp
but heartfelt way. Bill Henson's unsettling depictions of teenager's suburbia were grim depictions of revelry.
Ken Done
's work has featured on the cover of the weekly Japanese magazine Hanako
for over ten years. In 1999, Done was asked to create a series of works for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies programs of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Done and Hart became role models for artists who aspired to commercial success. Done's success is primarily as a designer of mass market goods, but he has gone on to be a painter, mainly of scenes of Sydney Harbour.
Redback Graphix produced some striking didactic poster art in the 80s and 90s, raising awareness of drink driving, sexually transmitted diseases, racism and workplace harassment.
The most famous performance piece of 1988 was Burnum Burnum
's planting of an Aboriginal flag on the white cliffs of Dover
in the United Kingdom
. Burnum Burnum (1936–1997) was an Aboriginal rights activist protesting the lack of legal recognition of Aboriginal ownership of Terra Australis
prior to British settlement.
The proliferation of Australia's big things
developed an ironic cult following, and Maria Kozic took the joke a step further with her schlock billboard "Maria Kozic is BITCH" (1989). On the serious side, cultural historians
in Australia joined the global vogue for writing about Car culture and roadside memorial
s. In public art there was the introduction of sculptural features on concrete noise barriers along freeways.
A grunge art movement occurred, mainly in Sydney in the 90s. It included Destiny Deacon, Nike Savvas, Hany Armanious and Adam Cullen
, amongst others. Cullen's works evolved out of an unfortunate place he calls "Loserville". There had been a proto-grunge music scene in the eighties with bands such as Lubricated Goat
and The Scientists
. Another angry artist was Gordon Bennett
, whose paintings were of white Australia's mistreatment of Indigenous Australians. Many artists chose distinctly more cheerful subject matter but they did not earn the esteemed reputation of Margaret Olley
, a painter of still life floral arrangements and domestic interiors.
Aboriginal artists using western medium such as Emily Kngwarreye
(c.1910-1996), Rover Thomas
(c.1926–1998) and Freddy Timms
have become known internationally and Emily Kngwarreye
is regarded as a "genius" by curator Akira Tatehata.
Ian Burn
, the leading conceptual artist, died in 1993. He was one of the few Australian artists to contribute to a new international art movement (Art and Language).
Expatriate artists made their mark in Britain. In 1979, Russell Mulcahy
directed the influential Video Killed the Radio Star
for The Buggles
. The story of that video is featured in a documentary by the same name. Leigh Bowery
(1961–1994) was a performance artist working in London, famously called "modern art on legs" by Boy George
. Ron Mueck
became known for his oversize lifelike sculptures. Marc Newson
is a particularly successful industrial designer.
Sculptor Rosalie Gascoigne
was increasingly well known for her assemblages of cut up wood, most distinctively cut up road signs.
Howard Arkley
(1951–1999), rediscovered culture in suburbia. Juan Dávila specialised in sensationalised statements about social hipocrisy. Guan Wei, an artist of the post-Tiananmen Square Massacre
era, delved into geopolitical issues of the Asia-Pacific. Tracey Moffatt
was arguably the most celebrated Australian contemporary artist of the 1990s, her work involved the slickness of advertising and accurately diverse artistic representations of women. Stelarc
is one of the country's most prominent performance artists and was known for his technology inspired transhuman pieces in the 1990s.
The late Arthur Boyd
had donated the Shoalhaven River property Bundanon
to the Australian people, and this property became a new focal point for artists in residence. Artist residencies began there in 1998. Michael Leunig
the cartoonist followed Arthur Boyd
's prolific lyricism.
Garry Shead
and John Kelly emerged as popular figurative painters in this decade.
A large proportion of artists work with paint on canvas, in styles such as classical realism, pop, magic realism, expressionism and abstraction.
A number of Australian artists have recently been official war artist
s for the Australian War Memorial
such as Wendy Sharpe
and Rick Amor
for the East Timor
peacekeeping mission; George Gittoes
in Somalia
; Peter Churcher
in the “War on Terrorism
”, and Lewis Miller in the 2003 Iraq War. Gittoes is also a documentary maker.
Ricky Swallow
represented Australia in Venice in 2005. Swallow became known for his wooden carvings of skulls and constructions of bicycles. Artists making lifelike models has been a growing trend, and Patricia Piccinini
's biotech
showstopper The Young Family was publicised in 2003. A counterpoint to this is artists making crude models, wallowing in the materials used for their construction. Soft sculpture
in Australian art may be traced back to Jutta Feddersen in the 1970s.
In 2006, the newly updated McCulloch
's Encyclopedia of Australian Art featured an extensive section on Aboriginal Art. Inclusion in the encyclopedia is dependent on the artist being included in a public gallery and or having won an art prize of note. The practice of carpetbagging has damaged the reputation of the Aboriginal art market and recently there has been the introduction of a royalty system for all Australian artists. Previously, the Australian Indigenous Art Trade Association and the Australian Commercial Galleries Association was formed to promote ethical standards across the art industry. Aboriginal art has also suffered from critics tending to compare it unfavourably to western ideals and standards. The art buying public has generally ignored these critiques. Collecting milestones in the noughties included the Molly Gowing donation to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, also the publication of Beyond Sacred: Recent painting from Australia’s remote Aboriginal Communities: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty. In 2011 the Felton Bequest gifted one of the greatest collections of Western Desert and Central Desert paintings to the National Gallery of Victoria.
Significant contemporary Indigenous Australian art
ists include Polly Ngal, Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek, Bronwyn Bancroft
, Barbara Weir, Naata Nungurrayi
, Kathleen Ngala, Shorty Jangala Robertson, Jimmy Baker, Tommy Watson, Kathleen Petyarre
, Gloria Petyarre
, Paddy Bedford (aka Goowoomji)
(circa 1922 - 2007), John Mawurndjul
, Minnie Pwerle
(c.1915-2006), Makinti Napanangka
, Ningura Napurrula, Nurapayai Nampitjinpa (Mrs Bennett), Dorothy Napangardi Robinson, Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri (circa 1920-2008), Regina Wilson, Angelina Ngal, Abie Loy Kemarre, Sarrita King, Ian Abdulla, Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty, Wintjiya Napaltjarri
, Josepha Petrick Kemarre
, Tommy Mitchell, Willy Tjungurrayi, Cowboy Lou Pwerle, Brook Andrew, Ken Thaiday. Anna Price Petyarre is one of the more dynamic mid-career painters.
Like their overseas counterparts, Australian artists of various generations have taken up the conveniences of the digital revolution with Electronic commerce
, artist blogging, photo sharing sites. Curating by computer, Modding
and street art
are shared over the internet. A new breed of artists have to some extent bypassed gallery hire spaces and the art world establishment, posting homemade manga
on DeviantArt
and displaying art on sites like RedBubble and MySpace
. Talented and unrepresented photographers often find their way onto Flickr
and similar sites. These practices are for commercial reasons and sometimes art for art's sake. Oleh Witer was one of the early artists to exhibit artworks in the virtual world Second Life
. Art auction houses began to hold auctions online. Art sellers started using sites not exclusively used for art such as EBay
.
Leading ceramacists and glass artists include Gwyn Hanssen Pigott
, Merran Esson, Thancoupie (1937–2011), Marea Gazzard
, Peter Rushforth, Noel Hart, Klaus Moje, Pippin Drysdale, Yasmin Smith and Cedar Prest. The ceramics scene in Australia is generally scholarly, restrained and less parochical than in other categories of Australian contemporary art. Studio glass artists tend to be more individualistic in comparison to potters.
Installation art
ists include Fiona Hall, Guan Wei, Nike Savvas, Fiona Foley
, Scott Redford, Asher Bilu
, Justene Williams, Lauren Berkowitz, Chronox, and Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro.
Performance art: Jeremy Hynes, Mark Shorter.
Regional galleries became crucial players in the contemporary art scene. Significant shows at regional galleries included a survey of contemporary outsider art
at Orange Regional Gallery, and a survey of the important commercial Gallery A and Anne Judell at Campbelltown Regional Gallery, Lawrence Daws
at Caloundra Regional Art Gallery and the Janet Dawson survey at Bathurst Regional Gallery. Boofheads and Scrubbers Revenge at Penrith Regional Gallery reflected shifting patterns of wealth and social mobility during the noughties.
The major new private art galleries were the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, White Rabbit and MONA (Museum of Old And New Art). These galleries are predominantly devoted to contemporary art.
is a problem in Australian art. There is no public database of known fraudsters to date, although they are known to come from Australia and other areas ranging from Europe, China to southeast Asia. In addition to the growing number of faked paintings of artists including Minnie Pwerle, Charles Blackman and Robert Dickerson, sometimes galleries and art dealers are impersonated over the internet. The major commercial art magazines have websites with the correct links to their client's websites.
Shoddy auction practices are common, for instance low attention to provenance, pseudo collections where art market dross is implied to be part of a collector's personal effects, and ramping, where prices for artworks are manipulated (inflated at auction).
Plays
Australian novels about artists
Novels with an artist as a main character
Prehistory of Australia
The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the first definitive sighting of Australia by Europeans in 1606, which may be taken as the beginning of the recent history of Australia...
times. This includes Australian Aboriginal art
Australian Aboriginal art
Indigenous Australian art is art made by the Indigenous peoples of Australia and in collaborations between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians . It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpture, ceremonial clothing and sandpainting...
, Australian Colonial art, Landscape
Landscape
Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of...
, Atelier
Atelier Method
Atelier is the French word for "workshop", and in English is used principally for the workshop of an artist in the fine or decorative arts, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students and apprentices worked together producing pieces that went out in the master's name...
, Modernist and Contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
. The visual arts have a long history in Australia, with evidence of Aboriginal art dating back at least 30,000 years. Australia has produced many notable artists from both Western and Indigenous Australian traditions including the late 19th century Heidelberg School
Heidelberg School
The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. The movement has latterly been described as Australian Impressionism....
impressionists, central Australian Hermannsburg School
Hermannsburg School
The Hermannsburg School is an art movement, or art style, which began at the Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s. The most well known artist of the style is Albert Namatjira...
watercolourists, Western Desert Art Movement, Heide Circle
Heide Circle
The Heide Circle was a loose grouping of Australian artists who lived and worked at "Heide", a former dairy farm on the Yarra River floodplain at Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne, counting amongst their number many of Australia's best-known modernist painters....
of Modernists, and the expatriates who worked in London in the nineteen sixties. Mid twentieth century Modernist figuration prevails in the Australian art market, prominent artists are Ian Fairweather
Ian Fairweather
Ian Fairweather was an Australian painter. Fairweather was born in Scotland in 1891 and arrived in Melbourne in February 1934...
, Sidney Nolan
Sidney Nolan
Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC was one of Australia's best-known painters and printmakers.-Early life:Nolan was born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, on 22 April 1917. He was the eldest of four children. His family later moved to St Kilda. Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and...
, Arthur Boyd
Arthur Boyd
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, AC, OBE was one of the leading Australian painters of the late 20th Century. A member of the prominent Boyd artistic dynasty in Australia, his relatives included painters, sculptors, architects or other arts professionals. His sister Mary Boyd married John Perceval,...
, Russell Drysdale
Russell Drysdale
Sir George Russell Drysdale, AC was an Australian artist. He won the prestigious Wynne Prize for Sofala in 1947, and represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1954...
, Brett Whiteley
Brett Whiteley
Brett Whiteley, AO was an Australian artist. He is represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries, and was twice winner of the Archibald Prize...
, John Brack
John Brack
John Brack was an Australian painter, and a member of the Antipodeans group.-Life:...
, Jeffrey Smart
Jeffrey Smart
Jeffrey Smart , is an expatriate Australian painter, who is known for his modernist depictions of urban landscapes.His first goal was to become an architect; however, he went on to become an art teacher after studying at Adelaide Teacher's College and the South Australian School of Art and Crafts...
and Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman is one of the best known Australian artists still living today, especially for the famous Schoolgirl and Alice in Wonderland series of the 1950s...
. Rosalie Gascoigne
Rosalie Gascoigne
Rosalie Gascoigne was a New Zealander-Australian sculptor. She showed at the Venice Biennale in 1982, becoming the first female artist to represent Australia there. In 1994 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to the arts.-Life:Gascoigne was born Rosalie Norah King Walker in...
, John Olsen
John Olsen (artist)
John Henry Olsen, AO, OBE is an Australian artist. Olsen's primary subject of work is landscape.-Biography:John Olsen was born in Newcastle on 21 January 1928 and moved to Bondi Beach with his family in 1935, which began his lifelong fascination with Sydney Harbour...
and Fred Williams
Fred Williams
Frederick Ronald Williams OBE was an Australian painter and printmaker. He was one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century’s major painters of the landscape...
are exceptions whose landscapes border on abstractions. Harold Cazneaux
Harold Cazneaux
Harold Cazneaux was and Australian pictorialist photographer; a pioneer whose style had an indelible impact on the development of Australian photographic history. In 1916 he was a founder of the Pictorialist Sydney Camera Circle...
and Max Dupain
Max Dupain
Maxwell Spencer Dupain AC was a renowned Australian modernist photographer.-Early life:Dupain received his first camera as a gift in 1924, spurring his interest in photography He later joined the Photographic Society of NSW, and when he left school, he worked for Cecil Bostock in Sydney.-Early...
are noted for their modernist photography. Most of the celebrated artists of past decades have become less noted after their deaths, such as painters John Perceval
John Perceval
John de Burgh Perceval AO was a well-known Australian artist. Perceval was the last surviving member of a group known as the Angry Penguins who redefined Australian art in the 1940s...
, William Dobell
William Dobell
Sir William Dobell, OBE was an Australian artist .The electoral Division of Dobell is named after him.- Life :...
, Lloyd Rees
Lloyd Rees
Lloyd Frederic Rees AC CMG was an Australian landscape painter who twice won the Wynne Prize for his landscape paintings....
and Donald Friend
Donald Friend
Donald Stuart Leslie Friend was an Australian artist, writer and diarist.- Early life :Born in Sydney, precociously talented both as an artist and a writer, Friend grew up in the artistic circle of his bohemian mother...
. Since the late Nineteen-nineties, senior Indigenous artists and Baby Boomer and Generation X contemporary artists have commanded a rapidly increasing share of the Australian art market.
Australia has a number of major museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, the National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
, National Portrait Gallery of Australia
National Portrait Gallery (Australia)
The National Portrait Gallery of Australia is a collection of portraits of prominent Australians that are important in their field of endeavour or whose life sets them apart as an individual of long-term public interest...
and National Museum of Australia
National Museum of Australia
The National Museum of Australia was formally established by the National Museum of Australia Act 1980. The National Museum preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation....
in Canberra, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...
in Sydney. Notable Indigenous sites have been set aside as UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
listed areas such as those at Uluru
Uluru
Uluru , also known as Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory, central Australia. It lies south west of the nearest large town, Alice Springs; by road. Kata Tjuta and Uluru are the two major features of the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park....
and Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin.Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It covers an area of , extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over 100 kilometres...
.
Indigenous Australian art
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
listed sites at Uluru
Uluru
Uluru , also known as Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory, central Australia. It lies south west of the nearest large town, Alice Springs; by road. Kata Tjuta and Uluru are the two major features of the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park....
and Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin.Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It covers an area of , extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over 100 kilometres...
in the Northern Territory, but also within protected parks in urban areas such as at Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
Ku-ring-gai Chase is a national park in New South Wales, Australia, 25 km north of Sydney located largely within the Ku-ring-gai, Hornsby, Warringah and Pittwater municipal areas. Ku-ring-gai Chase is also officially classed as a suburb by the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales...
in Sydney. The Sydney rock engravings
Sydney rock engravings
Sydney rock engravings are a form of Australian Aboriginal Rock Art consisting of carefully drawn images of people, animals, or symbols, in the sandstone around Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
are approximately 5000 to 200 years old. Murujuga
Murujuga
Murujuga , is a peninsula often known as Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, adjoining the Dampier Archipelago and near the town of Dampier...
in Western Australia has the Friends of Australian Rock Art advocating its preservation, and the numerous engravings there were heritage listed in 2007. Rock Art Research
Rock Art Research
Rock Art Research is the journal of the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations and of the Australian Rock Art Research Association Inc - . Based in Melbourne, Australia, and founded in 1984, it has since been the world's premier academic journal in the fields of pre-Historic art...
is published twice a year and also covers international scholarship of rock art. In May 2011, the chair of the Rock Art Research Centre at Griffith University
Griffith University
Griffith University is a public, coeducational, research university located in the southeastern region of the Australian state of Queensland. The university has five satellite campuses located in the Gold Coast, Logan City and in the Brisbane suburbs of Mount Gravatt, Nathan and South Bank. Current...
, Paul Tacon, called for a national database for rock art.
In terms of age and abundance, cave art in Australia is comparable to that of Lascaux
Lascaux
Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be...
and Altamira in Europe, and Aboriginal art is believed to be the oldest continuing tradition of art in the world. There are three major regional styles: the geometric style found in Central Australia, Tasmania, the Kimberley and Victoria known for its concentric circles, arcs and dots; the simple figurative style found in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
and the complex figurative style found in Arnhem Land which includes X-Ray art. These designs generally carry significance linked to the spirituality of the Dreamtime
Dreamtime
In the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation.-The Dreaming of the Aboriginal times:...
.
William Barak
William Barak
William Barak , was the last traditional ngurungaeta of the Wurundjeri-willam clan, based around the area of present-day Melbourne, Australia...
(c.1824-1903) was one of the last traditionally educated of the Wurundjeri
Wurundjeri
The Wurundjeri are a people of the Indigenous Australian nation of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin alliance, who occupy the Birrarung Valley, its tributaries and the present location of Melbourne, Australia...
-willam, people who come from the district now incorporating the city of Melbourne. He remains notable for his artworks which recorded traditional Aboriginal ways for the education of Westerners (which remain on permanent exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre
Ian Potter Centre
The Ian Potter Centre houses the Australian part of the art collection of the National Gallery of Victoria , and is located at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia...
of the National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
and at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian Heritage Registerand by the National Trust of Victoria.The...
. Margaret Preston
Margaret Preston
Margaret Preston was a well-known Australian artist. She was highly influential during the 1920s to 1940s for her modernist works as a painter and printmaker and for introducing Aboriginal motifs into contemporary art.-Early life:...
(1875–1963) was among the early non-indigenous painters to incorporate Aboriginal influences in her works. Albert Namatjira
Albert Namatjira
Albert Namatjira , born Elea Namatjira, was an Australian artist. He was a Western Arrernte man, an Indigenous Australian of the Western MacDonnell Ranges area...
(1902–1959) is one of the most famous Australian artists and an Arrernte
Arrernte people
The Arrernte people , known in English as the Aranda or Arunta, are those Indigenous Australians who are the original custodians of Arrernte lands in the central area of Australia around Mparntwe or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The Arrernte tribe has lived there for more than 20,000 years...
man. His landscapes inspired the Hermannsburg School
Hermannsburg School
The Hermannsburg School is an art movement, or art style, which began at the Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s. The most well known artist of the style is Albert Namatjira...
of art. The works of Elizabeth Durack
Elizabeth Durack
Elizabeth Durack Clancy CMG, OBE was a Western Australian artist and writer.-Early life:Born in the Perth suburb of Claremont on 6 July 1915, she was a daughter of noted Kimberley pioneer, Michael Patrick Durack and his wife, Bessie Johnstone Durack. She was the younger sister of writer and...
are notable for their fusion of Western and indigenous influences. Since the 1970s, indigenous artists have employed the use of acrylic paints - with styles such as that of the Western Desert Art Movement becoming globally renowned 20th century art movements.
The National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
exhibits a great many indigenous art works, including those of the Torres Strait Islands
Torres Strait Islands
The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands which lie in Torres Strait, the waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea but Torres Strait Island known and Recognize as Nyumaria.The islands are mostly part of...
who are known for their traditional sculpture and headgear.
1770-1900
The first artistic representations of the Australia scene by European artists were mainly "natural-history art", depicting the distinctive flora and fauna of the land for scientific purposes. Sydney ParkinsonSydney Parkinson
Sydney Parkinson was a Scottish Quaker, botanical illustrator and natural history artist.Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks to travel with him on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific in 1768. Parkinson made nearly a thousand drawings of plants and animals collected by Banks and Daniel...
, the Botanical illustrator
Botanical illustrator
A botanical illustrator is a person who paints, sketches or otherwise illustrates botanical subjects such as trees and flowers. The job requires great artistic skill, attention to fine detail, and technical botanical knowledge...
on James Cook
James Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
's 1770 voyage that first charted the eastern coastline of Australia, made a large number of such drawings under the direction of naturalist Joseph Banks
Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...
. Many of these drawings were met with skepticism when taken back to Europe, for example claims that the platypus
Platypus
The platypus is a semi-aquatic mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young...
was a hoax.
Despite Banks' suggestions, no professional natural-history artist sailed on the First Fleet
First Fleet
The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts , to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales. The fleet was led by Captain ...
in 1788, so until the turn of the century all drawings made in the colony were by soldiers, including British naval officers George Raper and John Hunter, and convict artists, including Thomas Watling
Thomas Watling
Thomas Watling was an early Australian painter and illustrator. Originally from Scotland, he was transported as a convict to Sydney, in the newly established Colony of New South Wales, in 1792 for forging banknotes. In Sydney he worked with John White, the colony's Surgeon General, copying...
. However, many of these drawings are by unknown artists. Most are in the style of naval draughtsmanship. Most of these drawings were of Natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
topics, specifically birds, and a few depict the infant colony itself.
Several professional natural-history illustrators accompanied expeditions in the early 19th century, including Ferdinand Bauer
Ferdinand Bauer
Ferdinand Lucas Bauer was an Austrian botanical illustrator who travelled on Matthew Flinders' expedition to Australia.-Biography:...
(who travelled with Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders
Captain Matthew Flinders RN was one of the most successful navigators and cartographers of his age. In a career that spanned just over twenty years, he sailed with Captain William Bligh, circumnavigated Australia and encouraged the use of that name for the continent, which had previously been...
), and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, who travelled with a French expedition led by Nicolas Baudin
Nicolas Baudin
Nicolas-Thomas Baudin was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer.Baudin was born a commoner in Saint-Martin-de-Ré on the Île de Ré. At the age of fifteen he joined the merchant navy, and at twenty joined the French East India Company...
. The first resident professional artist was John Lewin
John Lewin
John William Lewin was an English-born artist active in Australia from 1800. The first professional artist of the colony of New South Wales, he illustrated the earliest volumes of Australian natural history.-Early life:...
, who arrived in 1800 and published two volumes of natural history art, while ornothologist John Gould
John Gould
John Gould was an English ornithologist and bird artist. The Gould League in Australia was named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
was renowned for his illustration's of the country's birds.
As well as natural history, there were some ethnographic portraiture of Aboriginal Australians, particularly in the 1830s. Artists included Augustus Earle
Augustus Earle
Augustus Earle was a London-born travel artist. Unlike earlier artists who worked outside Europe and were employed on voyages of exploration or worked abroad for wealthy, often aristocratic patrons, Earle was able to operate quite independently - able to combine his lust for travel with an...
in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
and in Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
.
Art in Australia from 1788 onward is often narrated as the gradual shift from a European sense of light to an Australian one. The lighting in Australia is notably different to that of Europe, and early attempts at landscapes attempted to reflect this.
Conrad Martens
Conrad Martens
Conrad Martens was an English-born landscape painter active in Australia from 1835.-Life and work:Conrad Martens' father was a merchant who came originally to London as Austrian Consul; Conrad was born in "Crutched Friars" near Tower Hill...
(1801–1878) worked from 1835 to 1878 as a professional artist, painting many landscapes and was commercially successful. His work, though, is regarded as softening the landscape to fit European sensibilities. Martens is remembered for accompanying scientist Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
on the HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803. In July of that year she took part in a fleet review celebrating the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom in which...
.
Another significant landscape artist of this era was John Glover
John Glover (artist)
John Glover was an English/Australian artist in what is known as the early colonial period of Australian art. In Australia he has been dubbed the father of Australian landscape painting.-Life in Europe:...
.
S. T. Gill
S. T. Gill
S. T. Gill , also known by his signature S.T.G., was and English-born Australian artist.sheet 20.2 x 25.7 cm...
(1818–1880) documented life on the Australian gold fields.
A few attempts at art exhibitions were made in the 1840s, which attracted a number of artists but were commercial failures. By the 1850s however, regular exhibitions became popular, with a variety of art types represented. The first such was in 1854 in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. An art museum, which eventually became the National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
, was founded in 1861, and began to collect Australian works as well as gathering a collection of European masters. Some of the artists of note included Eugene von Guerard
Eugene von Guerard
Johann Joseph Eugene von GuérardHis first name is variously spelled "Eugen", "Eugene", "Eugène", one source mentions "Jean" ; his surname is spelled "Guerard" or "Guérard". The most frequent combination is that used by the National Gallery of Australia: "Eugene von Guérard"...
, William Strutt
William Strutt
William Strutt was an English artist.Strutt was born in Teignmouth, Devon, England, and came from a family of artists, his grandfather, Joseph Strutt, was a well-known author and artist, his father, William Thomas Strutt, was a good miniature painter...
, and Louis Buvelot
Louis Buvelot
Louis Buvelot , born Abram-Louis Buvelot, was a Swiss-born landscape painter who emigrated to Australia in 1865 and influenced the Heidelberg School of painters.-Early life:...
.
The colonial art market primarily desired landscape paintings, which were commissioned by wealthy landowners or merchants wanting to record their material success. Knut Bull (1811–1889) was sentenced to fourteen years transportation in 1845, and after doing time at Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. The island is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, but it enjoys a large degree of self-governance...
arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1846. From 1849 he was permitted to work as an artist and by 1853 had received a conditional pardon. Bull created such history paintings as The Wreck of the George III in 1850 and is noted for his scenes of early colonial Hobart
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
.
William Piguenit
William Piguenit
William Charles Piguenit was an Australian landscape painter.-Early life:Piguenit was born in Hobart, Tasmania, to Frederick Le Geyt Piguenit and Mary Ann née Igglesden. Frederick had been transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1830, with Frederick's fiancee, Mary Ann, following him...
's (1836–1914) "Flood in the Darling" was collected by the National Gallery of New South Wales in 1895.
Walter Withers
Walter Withers
Walter Herbert Withers was an Australian landscape artist and a member of the Heidelberg School of Australian impressionists.- Biography :...
(1854–1914) won the inaugural Wynne Prize
Wynne Prize
The Wynne Prize is an Australian landscape painting or figure sculpture art prize. One of Australia's longest running art prizes, it was established in 1897 from the bequest of Richard Wynne...
in 1896.
Among the first Australians artists to gain a reputation overseas was the impressionist John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell was an Australian impressionist painter.-Life and work:John Peter Russell was born at the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, the eldest of four children of John Russell, a Scottish engineer, his wife Charlotte Elizabeth, née Nicholl, from London. J. P. Russell was a nephew of Sir...
during the 1880s. Another notable expatriate artist of the era was Rupert Bunny
Rupert Bunny
Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny was an Australian painter, born in St Kilda, Victoria. He achieved success and critical acclaim as an expatriate in fin-de-siècle Paris....
, a painter of landscape, allegory and sensual and intimate portraits.
The origins of distinctly Australian painting is often associated with the Heidelberg School
Heidelberg School
The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. The movement has latterly been described as Australian Impressionism....
of the 1880s-1890s. Artists such as Arthur Streeton
Arthur Streeton
Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was an Australian landscape painter.-Early life:Streeton was born in Mount Duneed, near Geelong, and his family moved to Richmond in 1874. In 1882, Streeton commenced art studies with G. F. Folingsby at the National Gallery School.Streeton was influenced by French...
, Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin was an Australian painter who was prominent in the Heidelberg School, one of the more important periods in Australia's visual arts history....
and Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts
Thomas William Roberts , usually known simply as Tom, was a prominent Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School.-Life:...
applied themselves to recreating in their art a truer sense of light and colour as seen in Australian landscape. Like the European Impressionists, they painted in the open air. These artists found inspiration in the unique light and colour which characterises the Australian bush. Some see strong connections between the art of the school and the wider Impressionist movement, while others point to earlier traditions of plain air painting elsewhere in Europe. Sayers states that "there remains something excitingly original and indisputably important in the art of the 1880s and 1890s", and that by this time "something which could be described as an Australian tradition began to be recognized".
Key figures in the School were Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts
Thomas William Roberts , usually known simply as Tom, was a prominent Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School.-Life:...
, Arthur Streeton
Arthur Streeton
Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was an Australian landscape painter.-Early life:Streeton was born in Mount Duneed, near Geelong, and his family moved to Richmond in 1874. In 1882, Streeton commenced art studies with G. F. Folingsby at the National Gallery School.Streeton was influenced by French...
(1867–1943), Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin was an Australian painter who was prominent in the Heidelberg School, one of the more important periods in Australia's visual arts history....
, and Charles Conder
Charles Conder
Charles Edward Conder was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer. He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art.-Early life:Conder was born in Tottenham, Middlesex, the second son,...
. Their most recognised work involves scenes of pastoral and wild Australia, featuring the vibrant, even harsh colours of Australian summers. The name itself comes from a camp Roberts and Streeton set up at a property near Heidelberg
Heidelberg, Victoria
Heidelberg is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 11 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Banyule....
, at the time on the rural outskirts of Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. Some of their paintings received international recognition, and many remain embedded in Australia's popular consciousness both inside and outside the art world. Jane Sutherland
Jane Sutherland
Jane Sutherland was an Australian landscape painter pioneer of the plein-air movement in Australia, she was also notable for her advocacy to advance the professional standing of women artists....
(1853–1928), noted for her En plein air
En plein air
En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the mid-19th century working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism...
technique, was a student of McCubbin.
Nature loving artists of previous generations are numerous, however some of the more idiosyncratic examples were Merric Boyd
Merric Boyd
William Merric Boyd was an Australian artist active as a ceramicist, painter, and sculptor.Merric Boyd is credited as the father of studio pottery in Australia; he is also known for his drawing, painting and sculpting...
(1862–1940) and Sydney Long
Sydney Long
Sydney Long was an Australian Artist.Born on 20 August 1871 at Ifield, Goulburn, New South Wales, Sydney Long began formal art classes at the New South Wales Art Society in 1890. in 1894 his Heidelberg School-influenced painting 'By Tranquil Waters' caused a small scandal, but was purchased by the...
(1871–1955). Long's early paintings were influenced by the symbolists, art nouveau and partly by the Heidelberg School.
20th century
The early twentieth century saw some Australian artists making their careers in Europe. These include impressionist John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell was an Australian impressionist painter.-Life and work:John Peter Russell was born at the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, the eldest of four children of John Russell, a Scottish engineer, his wife Charlotte Elizabeth, née Nicholl, from London. J. P. Russell was a nephew of Sir...
, bohemian painters like Rupert Bunny
Rupert Bunny
Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny was an Australian painter, born in St Kilda, Victoria. He achieved success and critical acclaim as an expatriate in fin-de-siècle Paris....
(1864–1947) and Agnes Goodsir
Agnes Goodsir
Agnes Noyes Goodsir was an Australian portrait painter who moved within lesbian circles in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s....
, printmaker Hall Thorpe, a religious man who intended to make spiritually uplifting work, and the internationally renowned sculptor Bertram Mackennal.
Arthur Streeton was a plein air painter who continued to be highly successful in the first part of the twentieth century. The romanticist view of Australian rural scenes was shared with Hans Heysen
Hans Heysen
Sir Hans Heysen, OBE was a well-known German Australian artist. He was particularly recognized for his watercolours of the Australian bush. He won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting a record nine times.-Biography:...
(1877–1968), an artist famous for his luminous watercolour paintings of River Red Gums, won the Wynne Prize nine times from 1904 to 1932.
Bertram Mackennal, (1863–1931) was a well known sculptor from this era, particularly for his rendition of Circe the Greek magic goddess.
Leading up to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, the decorative arts, including miniature, watercolour painting, and functional objects such as vases, became more prominent in the Australian arts scene. Norman Lindsay
Norman Lindsay
Norman Alfred William Lindsay was an Australian artist, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeler, and boxer. He was born in Creswick, Victoria....
's (1879–1969) watercolours of baccanalian nudes caused considerable scandal around the turn of the century. One famous drawing, Pollice Verso (1904), caused his first scandal, as it depicted Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
giving the thumbs down to Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
on the Cross. There were the fashionable artists such as J.W. Tristram, who did misty Corot-influenced watercolors of the bush and beach.
George Washington Lambert
George Washington Lambert
George Washington Thomas Lambert ARA was an Australian artist, known principally for portrait paintings and as a war artist during the First World War.-Early life:...
was a prominent painter and sculptor of early twentieth century Australia who moved between decorative arts and portraiture, and is a notable war artist (World War I).
After World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, early proponents of modernist art in Australia were cubist influenced Roy de Maistre
Roy De Maistre
Roy de Maistre CBE was an Australian artist of international fame. He is famous in Australian art for his early experimentation in "colour-music", and is recognised as the first Australian artist to use pure abstractionism. His later works were painted in a figurative style generally influenced by...
(1894–1968). and Margaret Preston
Margaret Preston
Margaret Preston was a well-known Australian artist. She was highly influential during the 1920s to 1940s for her modernist works as a painter and printmaker and for introducing Aboriginal motifs into contemporary art.-Early life:...
, and the post-impressionist Grace Cossington Smith
Grace Cossington Smith
Grace Cossington Smith AO OBE was an Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting in Australia and was instrumental in introducing Post-Impressionism to her home country...
. European Modernist art had fierce critics such as Norman Lindsay, who wrote for the nationalist publication The Bulletin, and the idiosyncratic teacher Max Meldrum. Ironically the Max Meldrum
Max Meldrum
Duncan Max Meldrum was a Scottish born Australian painter. He is known as the founder of Australian Tonalism, a representational style of painting, as well as his portrait work, for which he won the Archibald Prize in 1939 and 1940.-Early Life and Training:Meldrum was born in Edinburgh, Scotland,...
-led Australian Tonalism
Australian Tonalism
Australian Tonalism was an art movement that emerged in Melbourne during the interwar period. Its main exponent was Max Meldrum, whose theory of building "tone on tone" and objective optical analysis led to the development of a unique style of painting characterized by a "misty" or atmospheric...
movement, which rejected modernist art and promoted a unique form of painting in accordance with Meldrum's theories of art, has since been recognized as a precursor to Modernist forms of art, including Minimalism, and art historian Bernard William Smith
Bernard William Smith
Bernard William Smith was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic.-Biography:Smith was born in Balmain, Sydney to Charles Smith and Rose Anne Tierney on 3 October 1916. In 1941, he married his first wife, Kate Challis, who died in 1989. Smith married his second wife, Margaret Forster,...
noted that Meldrum is perhaps the only Australian artist to develop and practice his own fully formulated theory of painting.
Meldrum's student Clarice Beckett
Clarice Beckett
Clarice Majoribanks Beckett was an Australian painter born in Casterton, Victoria. Her works are featured in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia....
was rediscovered in the 2000s.
Popular illustrators of children's books were May Gibbs
May Gibbs
Cecilia May Gibbs MBE was an Australian children's author, illustrator, and cartoonist. She is best-known for her gumnut babies , and the book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie....
, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Ida Rentoul Outhwaite was an Australian illustrator of children's books. Her work mostly depicted fairies....
and Dorothy Wall
Dorothy Wall
Dorothy Wall was a New Zealand-born author and illustrator of children's fiction books. She is most famous for creating Blinky Bill, an anthropomorphic koala who was the central character in her books Blinky Bill: the Quaint Little Australian , Blinky Bill Grows Up and Blinky Bill and Nutsy...
(1894–1942) (the creator of Blinky Bill
Blinky Bill
Blinky Bill is an anthropomorphic koala and children's fictional character created by New Zealand-born Australian author Dorothy Wall. The character of Blinky first appeared in Brooke Nicholls' 1933 book, Jacko - the Broadcasting Kookaburra, which was illustrated by Wall...
the Koala).
1921 saw the founding of the Archibald Prize
Archibald Prize
The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919...
, Australia's most famous art prize, for portrait
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
ure, though defining portraiture has always caused controversy - most notably in 1943 when William Dobell
William Dobell
Sir William Dobell, OBE was an Australian artist .The electoral Division of Dobell is named after him.- Life :...
's semi caraciture portrait of an artist friend won the prize and was challenged in court on the basis that it was a caricature, not a portrait.
Art deco made its mark in advertising posters, architecture and consumer goods, as well as fine art. In 1934 the ANZAC Memorial
ANZAC War Memorial
The ANZAC War Memorial, completed in 1934, is the main commemorative military monument of Sydney, Australia. It was designed by C. Bruce Dellit, with the exterior adorned with monumental figural reliefs and sculptures by Rayner Hoff....
in Sydney's Hyde Park
Hyde Park, Sydney
Hyde Park is a large park in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Hyde Park is on the eastern side of the Sydney central business district. It is the southernmost of a chain of parkland that extends north to the shore of Port Jackson . It is approximately rectangular in shape, being squared at the...
was built and featured the sculpture "The Sacrifice" by Rayner Hoff
Rayner Hoff
Rayner Hoff was a sculptor who worked in Australia.Born on the Isle of Man, Hoff was the son of a stone and wood carver of Dutch descent. He began helping his father on architectural commissions at a very young age and briefly attended the Nottingham School of Art where he studied drawing, design,...
(1894–1937). The decorative art deco arches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge embody Australian fondness for the fashionable modernist style. Australia's most iconic Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
painting, Australian Beach Pattern was painted by Charles Meere (1890–1961) in 1940. Modernism in the fine arts, however, continued to be a fledgling movement in the 1930s.
Works of watercolour or pastel on paper have for many years been less marketable than oil painting
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
s on board or canvas. This has been reflected in the historical cheaper pricing of key Australian artists who worked on paper, including expressionist-surrealist Joy Hester
Joy Hester
Joy St Clair Hester was an Australian artist who played an important, though sometimes underrated, role in the development of Australian modernism, though her works could also be considered Abstract Expressionism....
, romanticist landscape painter Hans Heysen
Hans Heysen
Sir Hans Heysen, OBE was a well-known German Australian artist. He was particularly recognized for his watercolours of the Australian bush. He won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting a record nine times.-Biography:...
, modernists Frank and Muriel Medworth, landscape painters Albert Namatjira
Albert Namatjira
Albert Namatjira , born Elea Namatjira, was an Australian artist. He was a Western Arrernte man, an Indigenous Australian of the Western MacDonnell Ranges area...
and Kenneth MacQueen, Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
trained teacher Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack was a German/Australian artist.His formative education was 1912-1914 at Debschitz art school in Munich, and 1922 at the Bauhaus-University Weimar where following Kurt Schwerdtfeger he further developed "Farblichtmusiken" , a light and colour modulator...
and the master printmaker Murray Griffin
Murray Griffin
Vaughan Murray Griffin was an Australian print maker and painter. Commonly known as Murray Griffin, he was born in Malvern, Melbourne, Victoria to parents Vaughan and Ethel Griffin. Griffin spent most of his life living in the Eaglemont and Heidelberg area in Melbourne although he travelled around...
, famous for his prints of birds.
Social realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
in the forties and fifties involved Herbert Badham, Jacqueline Hick (1919–2004), Noel Counihan
Noel Counihan
Noel Counihan was an Australian social realist painter.Counihan was born in Albert Park, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne. He attended Caulfield Grammar School in 1928...
(1913–1986), Herbert McClintock
Herbert McClintock
Herbert McClintock was a social realist Artist born in Perth, Western Australia in 1906, died 1985.Studied at the National Gallery of Victoria School from 1925 to 1927 and again in 1930, where he met fellow social realists Noel Counihan and Roy Dalgarno. Earned a living as a signwriter and...
(1906–1985) and Roy Dalgarno
Roy Dalgarno
Roy Dalgarno is a social realist artist, born in Melbourne, Victoria in 1910, died February 2001 in Auckland, New Zealand.-Education and Training:* Secondary education at Ballarat Grammar School....
(1910–2001). Yosl Bergner
Yosl Bergner
Yosl Bergner is an Israeli painter.-Biography:Yosl Bergner was born in Vienna in 1920 and grew up in Warsaw.With rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation was formed in July 1935, to search for a potential Jewish homeland...
(1920-) worked in Australia in this decade.
Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
was an enduring influence on painting. Grace Crowley
Grace Crowley
Grace Crowley was an Australian artist and modernist painter.-Early life:She was born Grace Adela Williams Crowley in 1890 on May 28, at Forrest Lodge, Cobbadah, in North-Western New South Wales. She was the fourth child of Henry, a grazier, and Elizabeth...
is remembered as one of the key cubist influenced painters. Abstractionist Godfrey Miller (1893–1964) was influenced by cubism and the mystical writings of Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...
.
In the 1940s a new generation of artists began experimenting with styles such as surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
and other techniques. James Gleeson
James Gleeson
James Timothy Gleeson was Australia's foremost artist. He was also a poet, critic, writer and curator. He played a significant role in the Australian art scene, including serving on the board of the National Gallery of Australia.-Early life:Gleeson was born in the Sydney district of Hornsby and he...
(1915–2008) eventually became recognised as Australia's most significant surrealist painter. Robert Klippel
Robert Klippel
Robert Klippel AO was an Australian constructivist sculptor and teacher. He is often described in contemporary art literature as Australia's greatest sculptor. Throughout his career he produced some 1,300 pieces of sculpture and approximately 5,000 drawings.-Biography:Klippel was born in Potts...
(1920–2001) a constructivist and surrealist influenced sculptor who was influenced by industrial settings. Klippel also collaborated with Gleeson.
In Melbourne Arthur Boyd
Arthur Boyd
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, AC, OBE was one of the leading Australian painters of the late 20th Century. A member of the prominent Boyd artistic dynasty in Australia, his relatives included painters, sculptors, architects or other arts professionals. His sister Mary Boyd married John Perceval,...
(1920–1999) and Albert Tucker
Albert Tucker (artist)
Albert Lee Tucker , a pivotal Australian artist, was a member of the Heide Circle, a group of leading modernist artists and writers that centred on the art patrons John and Sunday Reed, whose home, "Heide", located in Bulleen, near Heidelberg , was a haven for the group...
(1914–1999) were prominent, and a number of artists spent time at Heide
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Heide Museum of Modern Art, more commonly just Heide, is a contemporary art museum located in Bulleen, east of Melbourne, Australia. Established in 1981, the museum comprises several detached buildings and surrounding gardens & parklands of historical importance that are used as gallery spaces to...
, a house in Heidelberg - the site of the Heidelberg school several decades before. Amongst the artists who spent time there were Joy Hester
Joy Hester
Joy St Clair Hester was an Australian artist who played an important, though sometimes underrated, role in the development of Australian modernism, though her works could also be considered Abstract Expressionism....
(1920–1960) and, the internationally well known painter Sidney Nolan
Sidney Nolan
Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC was one of Australia's best-known painters and printmakers.-Early life:Nolan was born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, on 22 April 1917. He was the eldest of four children. His family later moved to St Kilda. Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and...
(1917–1992), the best artist of the immediate postwar period, whose iconic Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly
Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...
images are probably better known than the artist himself. The effect of the Ern Malley
Ern Malley
Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley was a fictitious poet and the central figure in Australia's most celebrated literary hoax. The poet, and his entire body of work, were created in one day in 1944 by writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart as a hoax on Max Harris, Angry Penguins, the modernist magazine he...
poetry case, its cover illustrated by Nolan, also reflected around the art world.
Olive Cotton
Olive Cotton
Olive Cotton was a pioneering Australian modernist female photographer of the 1930s and 40s working in Sydney. As a female photographer in Australia of that era, she was overlooked and her work at the Dupain studio was considered "art" rather than commercial. Cotton only became a national "name"...
and Max Dupain
Max Dupain
Maxwell Spencer Dupain AC was a renowned Australian modernist photographer.-Early life:Dupain received his first camera as a gift in 1924, spurring his interest in photography He later joined the Photographic Society of NSW, and when he left school, he worked for Cecil Bostock in Sydney.-Early...
went onto successful photography careers after studying with the early modernist photographer Harold Cazneaux
Harold Cazneaux
Harold Cazneaux was and Australian pictorialist photographer; a pioneer whose style had an indelible impact on the development of Australian photographic history. In 1916 he was a founder of the Pictorialist Sydney Camera Circle...
. George Caddy
George Caddy
George Caddy was an Australian dancer and photographer. Caddy emerged as a significant photographer of social activities on Bondi Beach in his day, only when hundreds of his photographs were re-discovered in 2007, among them the only existing documentation of an historic beach acrobatic...
's beachobatics photography was influenced by what he saw in American Life magazine. Wolfgang Sievers
Wolfgang Sievers
Wolfgang Georg Sievers, AO was an Australian photographer who specialised in architectural and industrial photography.Seivers was born in Berlin, Germany...
(1913–2007) arrived in Australia in August 1938. He specialised in architectural and industrial photography.
In 1946, Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."-Early life:Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara...
(1920–2004) established himself as a fashion photographer in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
.
Mark Strizic, (born 1928, Berlin), migrated to Melbourne from Zagreb, Croatia 1950, was another major portrait and architectural photographer from the late fifties to the present day, noted for his documentation of many buildings that have now been demolished.
David Moore
David Moore (photographer)
David Moore was an Australian photojournalist.Moore was educated at Geelong Grammar School. He began his career in the studio of Russell Roberts in Sydney, moving on to work with Max Dupain soon after...
(1927–2003) was a photojournalist. His 1966 photo Migrants Arriving in Sydney, originating from a commission by National Geographic, is one of the most famous works of modern Australian photography.
An art centre was established at Ernabella in 1948. Art centeres are an important factor in the story of the development of contemporary aboriginal art.
In the 1950s Scottish expatriate Ian Fairweather
Ian Fairweather
Ian Fairweather was an Australian painter. Fairweather was born in Scotland in 1891 and arrived in Melbourne in February 1934...
(1891–1974) settled on Bribie Island, South-East Queensland, and produced calligraphic paintings influenced by the arts of China and Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. Various influences from Chinese art did not gain equal acceptance in Western art. The early acceptance of Fairweather as an artistic hero in the Forties is in sharp contrast to the resistance American composer John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
faced when he debuted his alleatory compositions to American audiences in the Fifties.
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
was an influence in artists Ralph Balson (1890–1964), influential art teachers John Passmore and Desiderius Orban
Desiderius Orban
Desiderius Orban OBE was a renowned Hungarian-born Australian painter, printmaker and teacher. He was influenced by the paintings of Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne.-Biography:...
, Carl Plate (1907–1977), Inge King
Inge King
Inge King is a prominent Australian sculptor, who has many significant public, commercial, and private sculpture commissions to her credit....
, Nancy Borlase
Nancy Borlase
Nancy Wilmot Borlase AM was a New Zealand-born Australian artist, well-known for her landscape-based abstract paintings and portraits, and as a critic and commentator...
(1914–2006), William Rose, Tony Tuckson
Tony Tuckson
John Anthony Tuckson , was an Abstract Expressionist artist, an art gallery director and previously a war-time Spitfire pilot...
(1921–1973) Tom Gleghorn, Ann Thomson, Stan Rapotec, Clement Meadmore
Clement Meadmore
Clement Meadmore was an Australian-American sculptor known for massive outdoor steel sculptures.-Biography:...
(1929–2005) and Yvonne Audette (1930-). Meadmore became a well known artist in New York. Tuckson's work is featured on the cover of the 2006 edition of the prestigious McCullouch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art.
George Johnson, a paragon of the Melbourne geometric abstractionist joked about in David Williamson
David Williamson
David Keith Williamson AO is one of Australia's best-known playwrights. He has also written screenplays and teleplays.-Biography:...
's Emerald City
Emerald City (play)
Emerald City is a 1987 play by Australian playwright David Williamson, a satire about two entertainment industries: film and publishing.-Story:...
(1987), held his first exhibition in 1956.
Bob Woodward's El Alamein Fountain
El Alamein Fountain
The El Alamein Memorial Fountain is a fountain and war memorial in the city of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located in the Kings Cross area, at the entrance to the Fitzroy Gardens on the corner of Darlingurst Road and Macleay Street...
(1961) showed the public that small scale modernist public sculpture could enhance the appeal of inner city areas. The public sculptures of Tom Bass and Bert Flugelman
Bert Flugelman
Herbert 'Bert' Flugelman is a prominent Australian visual artist who has had many of his works publicly displayed. He is known for his stainless steel geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
had mixed reactions.
Artists demonstratively concerned with Australian identity Albert Tucker
Albert Tucker (artist)
Albert Lee Tucker , a pivotal Australian artist, was a member of the Heide Circle, a group of leading modernist artists and writers that centred on the art patrons John and Sunday Reed, whose home, "Heide", located in Bulleen, near Heidelberg , was a haven for the group...
, Clifton Pugh
Clifton Pugh
Clifton Ernest Pugh AO, was an Australian artist and three-time winner of Australia's Archibald Prize. He was strongly influenced by German Expressionism, and was known for his landscapes and portraiture...
, Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...
, Sidney Nolan
Sidney Nolan
Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC was one of Australia's best-known painters and printmakers.-Early life:Nolan was born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, on 22 April 1917. He was the eldest of four children. His family later moved to St Kilda. Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and...
, Arthur Boyd
Arthur Boyd
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, AC, OBE was one of the leading Australian painters of the late 20th Century. A member of the prominent Boyd artistic dynasty in Australia, his relatives included painters, sculptors, architects or other arts professionals. His sister Mary Boyd married John Perceval,...
, Fred Williams
Fred Williams
Frederick Ronald Williams OBE was an Australian painter and printmaker. He was one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century’s major painters of the landscape...
, for example) had great success with the public. The Fred Williams
Fred Williams
Frederick Ronald Williams OBE was an Australian painter and printmaker. He was one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century’s major painters of the landscape...
(1927–1982) exhibition "Fred Williams - Landscapes of a Continent" was held at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York in 1977. Williams is now regarded as one of the definitive painters of the Australian landscape. Williams is known for his aerial abstractions of the arid Australian inland, and suggest the viewer is in an aircraft, flying above the land. Russell Drysdale
Russell Drysdale
Sir George Russell Drysdale, AC was an Australian artist. He won the prestigious Wynne Prize for Sofala in 1947, and represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1954...
(1912–1981), a painter of outback scenes, represented Australia at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
in 1954. Drysdale, William Dobell
William Dobell
Sir William Dobell, OBE was an Australian artist .The electoral Division of Dobell is named after him.- Life :...
(1899–1970), Eric Thake
Eric Thake
Eric Thake was an Australian artist. Like his contemporaries Peter Purves Smith and Russell Drysdale, Thake used elements of surrealism to capture the mood of the Australian landscape...
(1904–1982) and the cartoonist Paul Rigby
Paul Rigby
Paul Crispin Rigby AM , usually working under the name Rigby, was an award-winning Australian cartoonist who worked for newspapers in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States....
(1924–2006) helped to shape the visual archetype of the plain, hearty Australian.
Figurative artists popular in the sixties also included Ainslie Roberts
Ainslie Roberts
Ainslie Roberts was an Australian painter, photographer and commercial artist. He is best known his for interpretations of Aboriginal legends in his Dreamtime books, written in collaboration with ethnologist/anthropologist Charles Mountford.-Early life:Ainslie was born in London, England in 1911...
(1911–1993), Jeffrey Smart
Jeffrey Smart
Jeffrey Smart , is an expatriate Australian painter, who is known for his modernist depictions of urban landscapes.His first goal was to become an architect; however, he went on to become an art teacher after studying at Adelaide Teacher's College and the South Australian School of Art and Crafts...
, Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman is one of the best known Australian artists still living today, especially for the famous Schoolgirl and Alice in Wonderland series of the 1950s...
, Robert Dickerson
Robert Dickerson
Robert Dickerson is an Australian figurative painter and former member of the Antipodeans group of artists. Dickerson is one of Australia's most recognised figurative artists and one of a generation of influential artists who include Ray Crooke, Charles Blackman, Laurence Hope, Margaret Olley and...
, Donald Friend
Donald Friend
Donald Stuart Leslie Friend was an Australian artist, writer and diarist.- Early life :Born in Sydney, precociously talented both as an artist and a writer, Friend grew up in the artistic circle of his bohemian mother...
(1915–1989) and John Brack
John Brack
John Brack was an Australian painter, and a member of the Antipodeans group.-Life:...
who is one of the highest regarded figurative painters today.
Richard Larter
Richard Larter
Richard Larter is an Australian painter, often identified as one of Australia's few highly recognizable pop artists. Larter has also frequently painted in a Pointillist style. He took advantage of unusual techniques with painting: using a syringe filled with paint to create his early works, and...
arrived in Australia in 1962 and started a long career in pop painting, with the female nude being the subject of many of his works. Mike Brown (1938–1997) and Peter Powditch were early Australian pop artists.
Psychedelia
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
in 1960s Australian art was not common, a famous example is the cover of the Cream album Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears is the second album by British supergroup Cream. It was released in November 1967 and went on to reach #5 on the UK Albums Chart. It was also their American breakthrough, becoming a massive seller there in 1968, reaching #4 on the American charts...
(1967), created by Martin Sharp
Martin Sharp
Martin Sharp is an Australian artist, underground cartoonist, songwriter and film-maker. Sharp has made contributions to Australian and international culture since the early 60s, and is hailed as Australia's foremost pop artist...
. Vernon Treweeke
Vernon Treweeke
Vernon Treweeke is an Australian psychedelic artist. He has been termed the "father of psychedelic art in Australia". In the late 1960s he was deemed to be "Australia's leading practitioner of abstract eroticism."...
was briefly a star of psychedelic painting. Vivienne Binns
Vivienne Binns
Vivienne Joyce Binns OAM is an Australian artistBorn in Wyong, New South Wales, Binns studied art at East Sydney Technical College and the National Art School. Her first solo exhibition was in 1967 at Watters Gallery in Sydney. During the 1970s she worked in vitreous enamel, was active in the...
exhibition of paintings at Watters Gallery in 1967 was notoriously genre defying and established her position as a contemporary of the Feminist art movement
Feminist art movement
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within...
.
Definitive events in the late sixties included the exhibition of Hard Edged Abstraction The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria, Charlie Numbulmoore painting his famous Wandjina spirit figures, The Power Institute of Fine Arts
Power Institute of Fine Arts
The Power Institute of Fine Arts is a teaching and research department, encompassing the fields of art history and theory, within the University of Sydney. Founded in 1968, the institute was established out of a bequest from the expatriate Australian abstract artist John Wardell Power...
was established in 1968 eventually leading to the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia is an Australian museum solely dedicated to exhibiting, interpreting and collecting contemporary art, both from across Australia and around the world...
, and Christo and Jean-Claude's wrapping of Little Bay in Sydney.
In 1971-2 art teacher Geoffrey Bardon encouraged the Aboriginal people of Papunya to paint their Dreamtime stories on canvas, leading to the development of the Papunya Tula school, or 'dot art' which has become possibly Australia's most recognisable style of art worldwide. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri was an Australian painter, considered to be one of the most collected and renowned Australian Aboriginal artists...
(1932–2002), Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra and William Sandy are some of the best known Papunya artists.
The abstractionist John Passmore (1904–1984) was part of the inspiration for the artist Hurtle Duffield in Patrick White
Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
's novel The Vivisector
The Vivisector
The Vivisector is the eighth published novel by Patrick White, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. First published in 1970, it details the lifelong creative journey of fictional artist/painter Hurtle Duffield...
(1970). Decades later in 2003, Passmore's friends Elinor and Fred Wrobel converted a pub into the Passmore Museum. It is one of the few museums in Australia dedicated solely to one artist's life and work. Passmore was a teacher of John Olsen
John Olsen (artist)
John Henry Olsen, AO, OBE is an Australian artist. Olsen's primary subject of work is landscape.-Biography:John Olsen was born in Newcastle on 21 January 1928 and moved to Bondi Beach with his family in 1935, which began his lifelong fascination with Sydney Harbour...
(1928-), an innovative and original landscape painter. Patrick White's art collecting efforts are to this day generally unadmired but he was a collector of modernist art and an early collector of the sort of art that later came to be known as Postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, including art by James Clifford
James Clifford (artist)
James Clifford was an Australian Modernist painter.He was born in Muswellbrook and in the 1960s moved to Sydney where he began exhibiting at Watters Gallery. He worked in various styles and became distinctive early on, combining hard edge abstraction with Art Nouveau and surreal elements, later...
, Imants Tillers
Imants Tillers
Imants Tillers is an Australian visual art artist, curator and writer. Born in Sydney in 1950, Tillers currently lives and works in Cooma, New South Wales. In 1973 he graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture , and the University Medal...
, Frank Littler, Robert Boynes, Patricia Moylan, John Davis
John Davis (sculptor)
John Davis was an Australian sculptor and pioneer of Environmental art.-Early life:He studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Caulfield institute of technology and Melbourne Teachers College before becoming a lecturer at Prahran College of Advanced Education.-Work:An Australian...
(1936–1999), and Tony Coleing.
Artists founded alternate practices apart from commercial galleries and art museums. Performance art and interactive art in communities throughout Australia saw the development of public art and community projects. Vivienne Binns
Vivienne Binns
Vivienne Joyce Binns OAM is an Australian artistBorn in Wyong, New South Wales, Binns studied art at East Sydney Technical College and the National Art School. Her first solo exhibition was in 1967 at Watters Gallery in Sydney. During the 1970s she worked in vitreous enamel, was active in the...
project "Mothers' Memories Others' Memories" at UNSW and Blacktown was a ground breaking participatory project. Other artists around Australia, such as Anne Newmarch in Adelaide were involved in these kinds of practices. Performance artists of the 70s included Ken Unsworth, Mike Parr
Mike Parr
Mike Parr is an Australian performance artist and printmaker. Parr's works have been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including in Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States.-Early life:...
, Mike Kitching, Philippa Cullen (1950–1975), Ivan Durrant, Pat Larter (1936–1996) and Jill Orr. Installation artists of this decade included Kevin Mortensen, Rosalie Gascoigne
Rosalie Gascoigne
Rosalie Gascoigne was a New Zealander-Australian sculptor. She showed at the Venice Biennale in 1982, becoming the first female artist to represent Australia there. In 1994 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to the arts.-Life:Gascoigne was born Rosalie Norah King Walker in...
(1917–1999), Ti Parks and Tony Trembath.
Building on the innovations of photomontage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
and artists such as Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
(1925–2008), Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
(1890–1976), Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style.- Biography :Gerhard Richter was born in...
and Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton (artist)
Richard William Hamilton, CH was a British painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the...
, urban Australian artists were fascinated by the creative nexus of photography and painting. Painters combined painterliness with the look of photography (Carl Plate, Richard Larter
Richard Larter
Richard Larter is an Australian painter, often identified as one of Australia's few highly recognizable pop artists. Larter has also frequently painted in a Pointillist style. He took advantage of unusual techniques with painting: using a syringe filled with paint to create his early works, and...
, James Clifford (1936–1987), Ivan Durrant, Tim Maguire, Jill Orr
Jill Orr
Jill Orr is a contemporary artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Orr is best known for her works in performance, photography, video and installation works that often explore the body, and its positioning within social, political and environmental contexts...
, Ken Searle
Ken Searle
Ken Searle is an Australian artist who was born in Sydney and grew up around Cooks River in the south-western suburbs of the city.Searle is a self-taught artist who began exhibiting his paintings and drawings in the mid 1970s and has held at least 24 solo exhibitions since...
, Susan Norrie, Annette Bezor, Robert Boynes, Kristin Headlam, Ken Johnson, Julie Rrap
Julie Rrap
Julie Rrap is a contemporary Australian artist. Born in the regional town of Lismore, New South Wales, in 1950. Rrap is the sibling of well established performance artist and photographer Mike Parr. Her surname Rrap, is her actual surname Parr in reverse...
, Louise Hearman
Louise Hearman
Louise Hearman is an artist from Melbourne who has been painting and drawing from a very young age. She attended Victorian College of the Arts from 1982-1984...
, John Young, Sally Robinson, Lindy Lee, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, Philip Wolfhagen, Leah King-Smith, David Wadelton). Those artists found limited but enthusiastic audiences. Contemporary Australian artists such as Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist and hyperrealist sculptor. Her art work came to prominence in Australia in the late 1990s. In 2003 she was selected as the artist to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale....
, Tracey Moffat and Bill Henson
Bill Henson
Bill Henson is an Australian contemporary art photographer.-Background:Henson's art has been exhibited in many locations, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Venice Biennale, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in...
were artistic leaders primarily using photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, using techniques of drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
, Scenic painting
Scenic painting
Theatrical scenic painting includes wide-ranging disciplines, encompassing virtually the entire scope of painting and craft techniques. An experienced scenic painter will have skills in landscape painting, figurative painting, trompe l'oeil, and faux finishing, be versatile in different media such...
and Chiarascuro respectively. Julia Ciccarone circumvented the trend with her Trompe-l'œil paintings. In the world of Rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, Richard Lowenstein
Richard Lowenstein
Richard Lowenstein is an Australian film director. He has written, produced and directed the feature films He Died With A Felafel In His Hand, Dogs In Space, Say a Little Prayer, Strikebound and Ghost Story, as well as numerous ground-breaking and award-winning music videos for bands such as INXS...
was creating similar graphic effects using grainy overlays, as he did for the Hunters & Collectors
Hunters & Collectors
Hunters & Collectors were an Australian rock music band formed in Melbourne in 1981, fronted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Seymour, they developed a blend of pub rock and art-funk...
video "Talking to a Stranger" (1982).
Experimental film and video was documented from the 1970s by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, a couple of filmmakers with an interest in surrealist films publishing Cantrill's Filmnotes. In this format, innovative art was made outside of the commercial and public gallery system. Innovative and internationally recognised art videos from this era were Despair (1982) by industrial music innovators SPK
SPK (band)
SPK, formed in 1978 in Sydney, Australia, was a 1980s and early 1990s industrial music and noise music group. One member, Graeme Revell, would later go on to become a successful Hollywood movie composer.-History:...
and Human Jukebox (c.1986) by The Scientists
The Scientists
The Scientists are an influential post-punk band from Perth, Australia, led by Kim Salmon, initially known as Exterminators and then Invaders. The band had two primary incarnations: the Perth-based punk band of the late 1970s and the Sydney/London-based swamp rock band of the 1980s...
.
Some depictions of angst
Angst
Angst is an English, German, Danish, Norwegian and Dutch word for fear or anxiety . It is used in English to describe an intense feeling of apprehension, anxiety or inner turmoil...
and human suffering in the late 20th century were:
Peter Booth
Peter Booth
Peter Booth is an Australian figurative and a surrealist painter, and one of the key late-20th century Australian artists. His work is characterised by an intense emotional power of often dark narratives, and esoteric symbolism.-Life:Born the son of a steelworker, the industrial surrounds of...
's dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n expressionist paintings.
George Gittoes
George Gittoes
- Subject matter :With global vision, George Gittoes has set up mobile studios for three decades, creating works in regions of conflict and upheaval around the world...
drawing and painting the anguish of the Rwandan Genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
.
Steve Cox's Criminological paintings of youths and men lapsed into and out of True crime
True crime
True crime is a non-fiction literary and film genre in which the author examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people.The crimes most commonly include murder, but true crime works have also touched on other legal cases. Depending on the writer, true crime can adhere strictly to...
.
David McDiarmid (1952–1995), Peter Tully (1947–1992) and society photographer William Yang used their art to raise awareness of the AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
epidemic. (Epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
levels within Australia). Figurative painters Nigel Thomson
Nigel Thomson
Nigel Thomson , Australian artist who won the Archibald Prize twice. Known for satirical paintings of Australian society. He studied at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney and later taught artistic composition at that institution....
(1945–1999), Stewart MacFarlane
Stewart MacFarlane (artist)
Stewart MacFarlane is a figurative Australian painter who depicts strong individuals in a highlit urban environment. He catches them in the act of doing, feeling, thinking something that is as intense as it is mysterious. His style is a pared-down realism combined with a surreality of lighting...
and Fred Cress
Fred Cress
Frederick Harold Cress AM was a British painter who migrated to Australia and won the Archibald Prize in 1988 with a portrait of John Beard....
(1938–2009) explored the seamy side of urban Australian life. Their styles were akin to cinematic Black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
. Tracey Moffatt's series "Scarred for Life" treated psychological suffering in a camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
but heartfelt way. Bill Henson's unsettling depictions of teenager's suburbia were grim depictions of revelry.
Ken Done
Ken Done
Ken Done, AM is an Australian artist best known for his design work. His simple, brightly coloured images of Australian landmarks have adorned a very popular range of clothing and homewares sold under the "Done Design" brand.-Early life:...
's work has featured on the cover of the weekly Japanese magazine Hanako
Hanako (magazine)
Hanako is a Japanese magazine for young women, published by Magazine House since 1988. It features shops, fashion, restaurants and theaters in Tokyo and abroad...
for over ten years. In 1999, Done was asked to create a series of works for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies programs of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Done and Hart became role models for artists who aspired to commercial success. Done's success is primarily as a designer of mass market goods, but he has gone on to be a painter, mainly of scenes of Sydney Harbour.
Redback Graphix produced some striking didactic poster art in the 80s and 90s, raising awareness of drink driving, sexually transmitted diseases, racism and workplace harassment.
The most famous performance piece of 1988 was Burnum Burnum
Burnum Burnum
Burnum Burnum was an Australian Aboriginal activist, actor, and author. He was born a Woiworrung and Yorta Yorta man at Wallaga Lake in southern New South Wales...
's planting of an Aboriginal flag on the white cliffs of Dover
White cliffs of Dover
The White Cliffs of Dover are cliffs which form part of the British coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliffs are part of the North Downs formation. The cliff face, which reaches up to , owes its striking façade to its composition of chalk accentuated by streaks of black flint...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Burnum Burnum (1936–1997) was an Aboriginal rights activist protesting the lack of legal recognition of Aboriginal ownership of Terra Australis
Terra Australis
Terra Australis, Terra Australis Ignota or Terra Australis Incognita was a hypothesized continent appearing on European maps from the 15th to the 18th century...
prior to British settlement.
The proliferation of Australia's big things
Australia's Big Things
The Big Things of Australia are a loosely related set of large structures or sculptures. There are estimated to be over 150 such objects around the country, the first being the Big Scotsman in Medindie, Adelaide, which was built in 1963....
developed an ironic cult following, and Maria Kozic took the joke a step further with her schlock billboard "Maria Kozic is BITCH" (1989). On the serious side, cultural historians
Cultural history
The term cultural history refers both to an academic discipline and to its subject matter.Cultural history, as a discipline, at least in its common definition since the 1970s, often combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and cultural...
in Australia joined the global vogue for writing about Car culture and roadside memorial
Roadside memorial
A roadside memorial is a marker that usually commemorates a site where a person died suddenly and unexpectedly, away from home. Unlike a grave site headstone, which marks where a body is laid, the memorial marks the last place on earth where a person was alive - although in the past travelers were...
s. In public art there was the introduction of sculptural features on concrete noise barriers along freeways.
A grunge art movement occurred, mainly in Sydney in the 90s. It included Destiny Deacon, Nike Savvas, Hany Armanious and Adam Cullen
Adam Cullen
Adam Cullen , Australian artist, most known for winning the Archibald Prize in 2000 with a portrait of actor David Wenham. He is also known for his controversial subjects or work...
, amongst others. Cullen's works evolved out of an unfortunate place he calls "Loserville". There had been a proto-grunge music scene in the eighties with bands such as Lubricated Goat
Lubricated Goat
Lubricated Goat was an Australian noise rock band of the 1980s.They achieved brief notoriety for playing on a television program naked, wearing only their instruments and shoes...
and The Scientists
The Scientists
The Scientists are an influential post-punk band from Perth, Australia, led by Kim Salmon, initially known as Exterminators and then Invaders. The band had two primary incarnations: the Perth-based punk band of the late 1970s and the Sydney/London-based swamp rock band of the 1980s...
. Another angry artist was Gordon Bennett
Gordon Bennett (artist)
Gordon Bennett is an Australian artist of Aboriginal and Anglo-Gaelic descent. Born in Monto, Queensland, and now working in Brisbane, Bennett is a significant figure in contemporary Indigenous Australian art.-Biography:...
, whose paintings were of white Australia's mistreatment of Indigenous Australians. Many artists chose distinctly more cheerful subject matter but they did not earn the esteemed reputation of Margaret Olley
Margaret Olley
Margaret Hannah Olley AC was an Australian painter. She was the subject of more than 90 solo exhibitions.Margaret Olley was born in Lismore, New South Wales. She attended Somerville House in Brisbane during her high school years...
, a painter of still life floral arrangements and domestic interiors.
Aboriginal artists using western medium such as Emily Kngwarreye
Emily Kngwarreye
Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. She is one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of contemporary Indigenous Australian art.-Life:Born in 1910, Kngwarreye did not take up painting seriously until...
(c.1910-1996), Rover Thomas
Rover Thomas
Rover Thomas Joolama was an Indigenous Australian artist.-Early life:He was born at Gunawaggi in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. At the age of 10 Rover and his family moved to the Kimberley where, as was usual at the time, he began work as a stockman...
(c.1926–1998) and Freddy Timms
Freddy Timms
Freddy Timms is a leading Australian Indigenous artist from the Kimberley region.-Life and art:Timms commenced painting on canvas in the 1990s at Turkey Creek / Warmun in the Kimberley region of Western Australia....
have become known internationally and Emily Kngwarreye
Emily Kngwarreye
Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. She is one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of contemporary Indigenous Australian art.-Life:Born in 1910, Kngwarreye did not take up painting seriously until...
is regarded as a "genius" by curator Akira Tatehata.
Ian Burn
Ian Burn
Ian Burn was an influential Australian conceptual artist. He was a notable member of the Art and Language group that flourished in the 1970s. Ian Burn was also an art writer, curator, and scholar.-Biography:...
, the leading conceptual artist, died in 1993. He was one of the few Australian artists to contribute to a new international art movement (Art and Language).
Expatriate artists made their mark in Britain. In 1979, Russell Mulcahy
Russell Mulcahy
Russell Mulcahy is an Australian film director. His work is easily recognized by his use of fast cuts, tracking shots and use of glowing lights.- Music videos :...
directed the influential Video Killed the Radio Star
Video Killed the Radio Star
"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song by the British synthpop/New Wave group The Buggles, released as their debut single on 7 September 1979, on Island Records from their debut album The Age of Plastic. It celebrates the golden days of radio, describing a singer whose career is cut short by...
for The Buggles
The Buggles
The Buggles were an English New Wave band consisting of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes . They are remembered chiefly for their 1979 debut single "Video Killed the Radio Star" that was #1 on the singles chart in 16 countries. Its music video was the first to be shown on MTV in the U.S...
. The story of that video is featured in a documentary by the same name. Leigh Bowery
Leigh Bowery
Leigh Bowery was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, actor, pop star, model and fashion designer, based in London. Bowery is considered one of the more influential figures in the 1980s and 1990s London and New York art and fashion circles influencing a generation of artists and...
(1961–1994) was a performance artist working in London, famously called "modern art on legs" by Boy George
Boy George
Boy George is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by...
. Ron Mueck
Ron Mueck
Ronald "Ron" Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in the United Kingdom.-Early work:Ron Mueck began his career working on the Australian children's television program Shirl's Neighbourhood...
became known for his oversize lifelike sculptures. Marc Newson
Marc Newson
Marc Newson was born in Sydney, Australia. Now based in London, he is a successful industrial designer who works in aircraft design, product design, furniture design, jewellery, and clothing. He incorporates a design style known as biomorphism to his various designs...
is a particularly successful industrial designer.
Sculptor Rosalie Gascoigne
Rosalie Gascoigne
Rosalie Gascoigne was a New Zealander-Australian sculptor. She showed at the Venice Biennale in 1982, becoming the first female artist to represent Australia there. In 1994 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to the arts.-Life:Gascoigne was born Rosalie Norah King Walker in...
was increasingly well known for her assemblages of cut up wood, most distinctively cut up road signs.
Howard Arkley
Howard Arkley
Howard Arkley was an Australian artist, born in Melbourne, known for his airbrushed paintings of houses, architecture and suburbia. His mothers side of the family was Jewish and his father was German...
(1951–1999), rediscovered culture in suburbia. Juan Dávila specialised in sensationalised statements about social hipocrisy. Guan Wei, an artist of the post-Tiananmen Square Massacre
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
era, delved into geopolitical issues of the Asia-Pacific. Tracey Moffatt
Tracey Moffatt
Tracey Moffatt is an Australian artist who primarily uses photography and video.Born in Brisbane in 1960, she holds a degree in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art, graduating in 1982....
was arguably the most celebrated Australian contemporary artist of the 1990s, her work involved the slickness of advertising and accurately diverse artistic representations of women. Stelarc
Stelarc
Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete...
is one of the country's most prominent performance artists and was known for his technology inspired transhuman pieces in the 1990s.
The late Arthur Boyd
Arthur Boyd
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, AC, OBE was one of the leading Australian painters of the late 20th Century. A member of the prominent Boyd artistic dynasty in Australia, his relatives included painters, sculptors, architects or other arts professionals. His sister Mary Boyd married John Perceval,...
had donated the Shoalhaven River property Bundanon
Bundanon
Bundanon is a large home near Nowra, New South Wales, Australia. It was the home of the painter Arthur Boyd.-Description and history:Bundanon started as a single-storey weatherboard structure built circa 1840. In 1866, a two-storey sandstone house, made of locally quarried stone, was built...
to the Australian people, and this property became a new focal point for artists in residence. Artist residencies began there in 1998. Michael Leunig
Michael Leunig
Michael Leunig , typically referred to as Leunig, is an Australian poet, cartoonist and cultural commentator. His best known works include The Adventures of Vasco Pyjama and the Curly Flats series...
the cartoonist followed Arthur Boyd
Arthur Boyd
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, AC, OBE was one of the leading Australian painters of the late 20th Century. A member of the prominent Boyd artistic dynasty in Australia, his relatives included painters, sculptors, architects or other arts professionals. His sister Mary Boyd married John Perceval,...
's prolific lyricism.
Garry Shead
Garry Shead
Garry Shead is an Australian artist and filmmaker who won the Archibald Prize in 1992/93 with a portrait of Tom Thompson, and won the Dobell Prize in 2004 with Colloquy with John Keats....
and John Kelly emerged as popular figurative painters in this decade.
Early 21st century
A large proportion of artists work with paint on canvas, in styles such as classical realism, pop, magic realism, expressionism and abstraction.
A number of Australian artists have recently been official war artist
War artist
A war artist depicts some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how "war shapes lives." War artists have explored a visual and sensory dimension of war which is often absent in written histories or other accounts of warfare.- Definition and context:A...
s for the Australian War Memorial
Australian War Memorial
The Australian War Memorial is Australia's national memorial to the members of all its armed forces and supporting organisations who have died or participated in the wars of the Commonwealth of Australia...
such as Wendy Sharpe
Wendy Sharpe
Wendy Sharpe is an Australian artist. Winner of the Sulman Prize in 1986 with Black Sun - Morning and Night and the Archibald Prize in 1996 with Self Portrait - as Diana of Erskineville, she has entered the Archibald Prize at least 6 times and been hung at least 3 times...
and Rick Amor
Rick Amor
Rick Amor is an Australian artist and figurative painter. He was an official war artist.-Life and work:Rick Amor was born in Frankston, Victoria, Australia. He has a certificate in art from the Caulfield Institute of Technology, and Associate Diploma in Painting from the National Gallery School,...
for the East Timor
East Timor
The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...
peacekeeping mission; George Gittoes
George Gittoes
- Subject matter :With global vision, George Gittoes has set up mobile studios for three decades, creating works in regions of conflict and upheaval around the world...
in Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
; Peter Churcher
Peter Churcher
Peter Churcher is an Australian artist. He paints portraits and figures in a realistic style.-Life and work:Peter Churcher was born in Brisbane, Queensland. He is the son of Betty Churcher, who was the director of the National Gallery of Australia from 1990-1997. Churcher is currently living and...
in the “War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
”, and Lewis Miller in the 2003 Iraq War. Gittoes is also a documentary maker.
Soundtrack to War
Soundtrack to War is a 90 minute documentary by Australian war artist George Gittoes. Filmed throughout 2003-2004, Gittoes bypassed the U.S. military's media lockdown on the war in Iraq to capture an authentic account of the human experience of the war. Gittoes interviewed American soldiers...
Ricky Swallow
Ricky Swallow
Ricky Swallow is an Australian sculptor , who lives and works in Los Angeles. He creates detailed pieces and installations in a variety of media, often utilising objects of everyday life as well as the body . He first came to prominence in Australia when he won the Contempora 5 Prize in Melbourne...
represented Australia in Venice in 2005. Swallow became known for his wooden carvings of skulls and constructions of bicycles. Artists making lifelike models has been a growing trend, and Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist and hyperrealist sculptor. Her art work came to prominence in Australia in the late 1990s. In 2003 she was selected as the artist to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale....
's biotech
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
showstopper The Young Family was publicised in 2003. A counterpoint to this is artists making crude models, wallowing in the materials used for their construction. Soft sculpture
Soft sculpture
Soft sculpture is a type of sculpture made using cloth, foam rubber, plastic, paper, fibers and similar material that are supple and nonrigid....
in Australian art may be traced back to Jutta Feddersen in the 1970s.
In 2006, the newly updated McCulloch
Alan McLeod McCulloch
Alan McCulloch was one of Australia's foremost art critics for more than 60 years , art historian and gallery director, also cartoonist and painter.-Life:Born in Melbourne and brought up in Sydney, returning to Melbourne as a teenager, he initially worked in banking but...
's Encyclopedia of Australian Art featured an extensive section on Aboriginal Art. Inclusion in the encyclopedia is dependent on the artist being included in a public gallery and or having won an art prize of note. The practice of carpetbagging has damaged the reputation of the Aboriginal art market and recently there has been the introduction of a royalty system for all Australian artists. Previously, the Australian Indigenous Art Trade Association and the Australian Commercial Galleries Association was formed to promote ethical standards across the art industry. Aboriginal art has also suffered from critics tending to compare it unfavourably to western ideals and standards. The art buying public has generally ignored these critiques. Collecting milestones in the noughties included the Molly Gowing donation to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, also the publication of Beyond Sacred: Recent painting from Australia’s remote Aboriginal Communities: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty. In 2011 the Felton Bequest gifted one of the greatest collections of Western Desert and Central Desert paintings to the National Gallery of Victoria.
Significant contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians. It is generally regarded as beginning with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory in 1971, involving artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri...
ists include Polly Ngal, Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek, Bronwyn Bancroft
Bronwyn Bancroft
Bronwyn Bancroft is an Aboriginal Australian artist, notable for being the first Australian fashion designer invited to show her work in Paris...
, Barbara Weir, Naata Nungurrayi
Naata Nungurrayi
Naata Nungurrayi is an Australian Aboriginal artist who was born at the site of Kumil, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia...
, Kathleen Ngala, Shorty Jangala Robertson, Jimmy Baker, Tommy Watson, Kathleen Petyarre
Kathleen Petyarre
Kathleen Petyarre is an eminent Australian Aboriginal artist, known for her paintings displaying an extremely refined layering technique with intricate dotting. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings, concepts that may be difficult to grasp for the non-Aboriginal viewer...
, Gloria Petyarre
Gloria Petyarre
Gloria Petyarre is an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Anmatyerre community, just north of Alice Springs...
, Paddy Bedford (aka Goowoomji)
Paddy Bedford
Paddy Bedford was a major contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from Warmun in the Kimberley, and one of eight Australian artists selected for an architectural commission for the Musée du Quai Branly....
(circa 1922 - 2007), John Mawurndjul
John Mawurndjul
John Mawurndjul is an Australian contemporary Indigenous artist. Mawurndjul's artwork is highly regarded internationally. He uses traditional motifs in innovative ways to express spiritual and cultural values....
, Minnie Pwerle
Minnie Pwerle
Minnie Pwerle was an Australian Aboriginal artist...
(c.1915-2006), Makinti Napanangka
Makinti Napanangka
Makinti Napanangka was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from Australia's Western Desert region...
, Ningura Napurrula, Nurapayai Nampitjinpa (Mrs Bennett), Dorothy Napangardi Robinson, Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri (circa 1920-2008), Regina Wilson, Angelina Ngal, Abie Loy Kemarre, Sarrita King, Ian Abdulla, Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty, Wintjiya Napaltjarri
Wintjiya Napaltjarri
Wintjiya Napaltjarri , and also known as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1, is a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region...
, Josepha Petrick Kemarre
Josepha Petrick Kemarre
Josepha Petrick Kemarre is an Anmatyerre-speaking Indigenous Australian from Central Australia. Since first taking up painting around 1990, her works of contemporary Indigenous Australian art have been acquired by several major collections including Artbank and the National Gallery of Victoria...
, Tommy Mitchell, Willy Tjungurrayi, Cowboy Lou Pwerle, Brook Andrew, Ken Thaiday. Anna Price Petyarre is one of the more dynamic mid-career painters.
Electronic commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, eCommerce or e-comm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. However, the term may refer to more than just buying and selling products online...
, artist blogging, photo sharing sites. Curating by computer, Modding
Modding
Modding is a slang expression that is derived from the verb "modify". Modding refers to the act of modifying a piece of hardware or software or anything else for that matter, to perform a function not originally conceived or intended by the designer...
and street art
Street art
Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives...
are shared over the internet. A new breed of artists have to some extent bypassed gallery hire spaces and the art world establishment, posting homemade manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
on DeviantArt
DeviantArt
deviantART is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. It was first launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, Angelo Sotira and others. deviantArt, Inc...
and displaying art on sites like RedBubble and MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
. Talented and unrepresented photographers often find their way onto Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
and similar sites. These practices are for commercial reasons and sometimes art for art's sake. Oleh Witer was one of the early artists to exhibit artworks in the virtual world Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
. Art auction houses began to hold auctions online. Art sellers started using sites not exclusively used for art such as EBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
.
Leading ceramacists and glass artists include Gwyn Hanssen Pigott
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott is a contemporary ceramic artist. With a career spanning over 45 years, influences from her early apprenticeships with English potters Ray Finch, Michael Cardew and Bernard Leach are still apparent in her current work...
, Merran Esson, Thancoupie (1937–2011), Marea Gazzard
Marea Gazzard
Marea Gazzard AO, CBE is an Australian sculptor and ceramicist.-Life:She studied at National Art School from 1953 to 1955, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design from 1955 to 1959, and National Art School, with Lyndon Dadswell.In 1960, she opened a studio in Paddington, New South Wales....
, Peter Rushforth, Noel Hart, Klaus Moje, Pippin Drysdale, Yasmin Smith and Cedar Prest. The ceramics scene in Australia is generally scholarly, restrained and less parochical than in other categories of Australian contemporary art. Studio glass artists tend to be more individualistic in comparison to potters.
Installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
ists include Fiona Hall, Guan Wei, Nike Savvas, Fiona Foley
Fiona Foley
Fiona Foley is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from Badtjala, Fraser Island, Queensland.She studied at the Sydney College of the Arts. She has travelled as an artist internationally and to remote communities in Northern Territory...
, Scott Redford, Asher Bilu
Asher Bilu
Asher Bilu , is an Australian artist who creates paintings, sculptures and installations. He has also contributed to several films by Director Paul Cox as production designer. He was born in Israel, and began his career as an artist soon after arriving in Australia in 1956. From the start, his art...
, Justene Williams, Lauren Berkowitz, Chronox, and Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro.
Performance art: Jeremy Hynes, Mark Shorter.
Regional galleries became crucial players in the contemporary art scene. Significant shows at regional galleries included a survey of contemporary outsider art
Outsider Art
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
at Orange Regional Gallery, and a survey of the important commercial Gallery A and Anne Judell at Campbelltown Regional Gallery, Lawrence Daws
Lawrence Daws
Lawrence Daws is an Australian painter and printmaker, who works in the media of watercolour, drawing, screenprints, etchings and monotypes.In the 1980s he started making computer prints, and was probably the first artist to use this medium....
at Caloundra Regional Art Gallery and the Janet Dawson survey at Bathurst Regional Gallery. Boofheads and Scrubbers Revenge at Penrith Regional Gallery reflected shifting patterns of wealth and social mobility during the noughties.
The major new private art galleries were the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, White Rabbit and MONA (Museum of Old And New Art). These galleries are predominantly devoted to contemporary art.
Fraud
Like the larger art markets in the northern hemisphere, fraudFraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
is a problem in Australian art. There is no public database of known fraudsters to date, although they are known to come from Australia and other areas ranging from Europe, China to southeast Asia. In addition to the growing number of faked paintings of artists including Minnie Pwerle, Charles Blackman and Robert Dickerson, sometimes galleries and art dealers are impersonated over the internet. The major commercial art magazines have websites with the correct links to their client's websites.
Shoddy auction practices are common, for instance low attention to provenance, pseudo collections where art market dross is implied to be part of a collector's personal effects, and ramping, where prices for artworks are manipulated (inflated at auction).
In popular culture
Films- Age of Consent (1969) dir. Michael Powell (director)Michael Powell (director)Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...
. - Lust and Revenge (1996) dir. Paul CoxPaul CoxPaulus Henriqus Benedictus "Paul" Cox is an award-winning Australian film director.Cox was born in Venlo, Limburg, the Netherlands, the son of Else , a native of Germany, and Wim Cox, a documentary film producer. Cox emigrated to Australia in 1965...
. - SirensSirens (film)Sirens is a 1993 film, written and directed by John Duigan, and set in Australia between the two World Wars.Sirens, along with Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bitter Moon—all released in the U.S...
(1994) dir. John DuiganJohn DuiganJohn Duigan, is an Australian film director.Duigan emigrated to Australia in 1961, having been born to an Australian father...
.
Plays
- Up For GrabsUp for Grabs (play)Up For Grabs is a play by Australian playwright David Williamson.Set in the booming international art market from 1990, which was fuelled by the dot com boom, it involves scenes of an alternate sexual nature...
(2000) by David WilliamsonDavid WilliamsonDavid Keith Williamson AO is one of Australia's best-known playwrights. He has also written screenplays and teleplays.-Biography:...
.
Australian novels about artists
- Harland's Half Acre (1984) David MaloufDavid MaloufDavid George Joseph Malouf is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, he won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008, and he was...
. - The VivisectorThe VivisectorThe Vivisector is the eighth published novel by Patrick White, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. First published in 1970, it details the lifelong creative journey of fictional artist/painter Hurtle Duffield...
(1970) Patrick WhitePatrick WhitePatrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
. - The Sitters (1995) Alex MillerAlex Miller (writer)Alexander McPhee Miller is an Australian novelist. Born in London, England to Scottish parents, he migrated to Australia at the age of 16. After working and travelling he graduated from the University of Melbourne in English and History in 1965...
. - Miles Walker, You're Dead (1999) Linda Jaivin.
- Prochownik’s Dream (2005) Alex MillerAlex Miller (writer)Alexander McPhee Miller is an Australian novelist. Born in London, England to Scottish parents, he migrated to Australia at the age of 16. After working and travelling he graduated from the University of Melbourne in English and History in 1965...
. Allen & Unwin
Novels with an artist as a main character
- The Spare RoomThe Spare RoomThe Spare Room is a novel by Australian writer Helen Garner, set over the course of three weeks while the narrator, Helen, cares for a friend dying of bowel cancer. The Spare Room was published in 2008.- Plot summary:...
(2008) Helen GarnerHelen GarnerHelen Garner is an award-winning Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.-Life:Garner was born in Geelong, Victoria, the eldest of six children. She attended Manifold Heights State School, Ocean Grove State School and then The Hermitage in Geelong... - Time Enough Later (1945) Kylie TennantKylie TennantKathleen Kylie Tennant AO was an Australian novelist, playwright, short-story writer, critic, biographer and historian.-Life and career:Tennant was born in Manly, New South Wales; she was educated at Brighton College in Manly and Sydney University, though she left without graduating...
. - Riders in the ChariotRiders in the ChariotRiders in the Chariot is the sixth published novel by Australian Author Patrick White, Nobel Prize winner of 1973. It was published in 1961 and won the Miles Franklin Award in that year...
(1961) Patrick WhitePatrick WhitePatrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
. - Prelude to ChristopherPrelude to ChristopherPrelude to Christopher is a 1934 novella by Eleanor Dark . Dark was awarded the ALS Gold Medal for Prelude to Christopher. The storyline is nonlinear and of interest to those interested in the establishment of modernism in the arts in Australia. The story centers around a Eugenicist experiment...
(1934) Eleanor DarkEleanor DarkEleanor Dark was an Australian author whose novels included Prelude to Christopher and Return to Coolami , both winners of the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for literature, and her best known work The Timeless Land .-Life and career:Eleanor Dark was born in Sydney...
.
Art museums and galleries in Australia
Australian visual arts in other countries
The museum for Australian Aboriginal art "La grange" (Neuchâtel, Switzerland) is one of the few museums in Europe that dedicates itself entirely to Aboriginal art.See also
- Arts in AustraliaArts in AustraliaThe Arts in Australia refers to the art produced in the area of, on the subject of, or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Indigenous Australian art, music and story telling attaches to a 40-60,000 year heritage and continues to affect...
- Australian artist-run initiativesAustralian artist-run initiativesAustralian artist-run initiatives and galleries are found throughout the country. A few key spaces include Firstdraft, MOP , KINGS ARI, TCB , Clubs Project inc, West Space, Seventh Gallery, Platform artists group , Blindside, , Breadbox ARI and FELTspace...
- Australian Cartoonists' Association
- Australian Feminist Art TimelineAustralian Feminist Art TimelineAustralian Feminist Art Timeline lists exhibitions, artists, artworks and milestones that have contributed to discussion and development of feminist art in Australia. The timeline focuses on the impact of feminism on Australian contemporary art...
- Biennale of SydneyBiennale of SydneyThe Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is the largest and best-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country...
- Culture of AustraliaCulture of AustraliaThe culture of Australia is essentially a Western culture influenced by the unique geography of the Australian continent and by the diverse input of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and various waves of multi-ethnic migration which followed the British colonisation of Australia...
- Photography in AustraliaPhotography in AustraliaThe first photograph taken in Australia, a view of Bridge Street is believed to have been taken by a visiting naval captain, Captain Augustin Lucas in 1841, as indicated by a note published in the Australasian Chronicle for 13 April of that year...
- Power Institute of Fine ArtsPower Institute of Fine ArtsThe Power Institute of Fine Arts is a teaching and research department, encompassing the fields of art history and theory, within the University of Sydney. Founded in 1968, the institute was established out of a bequest from the expatriate Australian abstract artist John Wardell Power...
Further reading
- Australia Council report. Don't Give Up Your Day Job: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia. 2003 Don't give up your day job: an economic study of professional artists in Australia
- Australian Art Collector's Guide to Aboriginal Art Centres http://www.artcollector.net.au/Page.aspx?category=19&element=149
- Cosic, Miriam: Fabric of the desert revealed in new creative form. The Australian 5 January 2009 The Arts | All the latest Arts news | The Australian
- Cullen, Max and Marianne Latham (producer): Artist profile: Dean Bowen. Sunday, Nine Network. (Televised Current Affairs) 19 July 1998 Channel nine
- Drummond, Peter (Producer) : Five Australian artists (motion picture). Melbourne : Cinevex Film Laboratories (production company), 1979.
- Frost, Andrew: In art, it's a long way to the beret. Sydney Morning Herald 18.09.08 In art, it's a long way to the beret - Opinion - smh.com.au
- Hewitt, Helen Verity: Partick White, Painter Manque. Carlton, Vic. : Miegunyah Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-522-85032-1
- Isabel Hogan and Shirley Kennard: Auntie's artist who gave us that squiggle (orig. in Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 2001) Milesago - Obituaries- Bill Kennard MILESAGO - Obituaries - Bill Kennard
- Humphries, Barry: Barry Humphries' Treasury of Australian Kitsch. South Melbourne, Vic. : Macmillan, 1980. ISBN 978-0-333-29955-5
- Kabov, Valerie: Renaissanceaic (e-newsletter) 2008
- Knox, Sara: The serial killer as collector. in Acts of Possession: Collecting in America, edited by Leah Dilworth. Rutgers University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8135-3272-1
- Loxley, Anne: Retro perspective, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 January 2003. Retro perspective - smh.com.au
- McDonald, John: Visual Art, Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald, 2005-
- Meacham, Steve: Art Prize just a lot of old Archibalds, Arts Review, Sydney Morning Herald, 8/9/06 read in full More Archibald
- Murray-Cree, Laura and Drury, Nevill (eds): Australian Painting Now. Thames & Hudson, 2000. ISBN 978-0-500-23773-1, ISBN 978-0-500-23773-1.
- Reid, Michael: How to buy and sell art. Crows Nest, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 2008. ISBN 978-1-74175-369-1
- Rothwell, Nicholas: Creativity feels the crunch. The Australian, 16.01.09 The Arts | All the latest Arts news | The Australian
- Smith, Sue: Articles and reviews on Australian art and artists Grafico Topico Australian Art Reviews
- Sorensen, Rosemary: Beyond the Frozen Image, The Australian, 27/10/08 The Arts | All the latest Arts news | The Australian
- Sydney Morning Herald with Erin O'Dwyer, 2.4.2009 : Treasures Looted and Sold Online Treasures looted and sold online - Arts - Entertainment - smh.com.au
- The Art Life (Blog) What's Wrong With Peter Timms? 13.07.2004 the art life: What's Wrong With Peter Timms?
- The Art Life (Blog) A Life in Oil 10.03.2005 the art life: A Life In Oil
- The Artswipe (Blog) The Artswipe is BITCH 23.02.09 The Artswipe: The Artswipe is BITCH
- Westbury, Marcus: Not Quite Art, Series 1 (television series) 2007