The mid-1950s were a defining moment in the development of Charles Blackman’s art. Having relocated to Melbourne with his wife and muse Barbara in 1951, Blackman achieved early critical notice with his 1953-4 Schoolgirl series of paintings. Following a series of Avonsleigh landscapes in 1955,...
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Art Reviews
By Ken Wach
10 Jun 2020
Jeffrey Smart’s major painting Outside the Ministry of 1970 is a harmony of parts. The painting pulses with what might justifiably be called “visual alliteration”. That is, it has a range of “optical melodies” that run through and serve to both form and inform the built-up composition...
By Catherine Baxendale B Phil Hons
10 Jun 2020
Grace Cossington Smith’s radiant still lifes and interiors of the 1950s and 60s are broadly considered to mark the culmination of her career. Animating the entire surface of her paintings with ‘confident, square touches of pure colour,’1 Cossington Smith fulfilled her long-held...
By Ken Wach
10 Jun 2020
There are times when Brett Whiteley’s paintings are unusually lyrical. Certainly, Whiteley is one of Australia’s most lyrical artists, generally in the free use of his easy, languorous lines and particularly when they describe a curve, an arm, a thigh or a tree trunk. However, in paintings such...
By Ken Wach
10 Jun 2020
Sir Russell Drysdale was one of Australia’s most remarkable artists. He held seventeen solo exhibitions and participated in fifty-five group exhibitions. Drysdale’s works are rare and his output was comparatively low as he produced fewer than three hundred paintings. However, his undoubted...
By Jane Raffan
10 Jun 2020
Yorta Yorta artist Lin Onus has been described as a ‘provocateur who believed that there was no distinction between the...
By Marina Brennan, BA (Hons)
10 Jun 2020
As vision grows I see more. I bring back materials from the landscape and place them around. Little things lying on ledges, or laid out on the floor or in the garden. They are then available to be looked at in my space. As things are moved about, there are more discoveries,...
By Asta Cameron
10 Jun 2020
Evening Fire Line is a quintessential example from Tim Storrier’s oeuvre: grand in scale, balanced in composition, and poignant in subject matter. The idea to paint burning rope under the night sky was born one evening on an outback trip in 1981. Struck by sudden...
By Gavin Fry
10 Jun 2020
It is not surprising that many commentaries on the work of Charles Blackman begin by noting his rapid rise to prominence through his Alice in Wonderland series and it is interesting to speculate just why that happened. Timing is everything in art, as in most human pursuits, and Blackman...
By Anonymous
10 Jun 2020
David Boyd (1924-2011) was the younger brother of iconic Australian artist Arthur Boyd (1920-99). He garnered extraordinary popularity and critical success as a ceramicist, painter and printmaker, and as a key member of the Boyd artistic dynasty, has left an indelible mark on 20th century...
