In the past decade Del Kathryn Barton has become one of Australia’s most recognisable and collectable artists. Born in Sydney in 1972, Barton graduated from the University of NSW with a Bachelor of Arts in 1993. She won her first Archibald prize in 2008 for her self-portrait with her two...
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Art Reviews
By Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM FAHA
27 Feb 2019
The death of Robert Dickerson in October 2015 took many people by surprise. It was not that his death at the age of ninety-one was particularly unexpected, even if he had been in robust health for the preceding few years, but it was because Dickerson was a maverick and unique figure in the...
By Gavin Fry
27 Feb 2019
If any proof was needed of the current place of Charles Blackman in the Australian art world, one need look no further than the record of art auctions over the past four decades. Blackman sits on top of the card for the number of appearances in Australian art auctions, just topping eight...
By Anonymous
27 Feb 2019
Fred Williams’ deliberate yet vivid depictions of the Australian bush are the product of his truly unique approach to landscape. In contrast to the Antipodeans (from which he was famously excluded), Williams was less interested in the mythologies of Australia’s past than in observing and...
By Timothy Abdallah BA
27 Feb 2019
Over a period of about four years in the mid 1960s, Fred Williams produced the breakthrough paintings on which his reputation rests as the most important Australian artist of his generation. In the following years he consolidated the experience and technical gains made over his lengthy years of...
By Caroline Jones BA, MA (Art Admin.)
27 Feb 2019
The Shoalhaven River was a continual source of inspiration to Arthur Boyd and, looking back over the artist’s vast body of work, formed a major part of Boyd’s oeuvre. The Shoalhaven region, on the south coast of New South Wales, has historically been an area favoured by artists because of its...
By Asta Cameron
27 Feb 2019
David Boyd was a prolific artist of extraordinary skill, compassion and humanity. Born in Melbourne in 1924 to artists Doris (1888-1960) and Merric Boyd (1888-1959), whom this painting depicts, he grew up in a milieu of gifted artists where he learned creative skills, including pottery, painting...
By Anonymous
27 Feb 2019
‘… In the growth and transformation of its myths a society achieves its own sense of identity… The ways in which a society images its own feelings and attitudes in myth provides him with one of the deepest sources of art.’1
One of the eight Melbourne painters to join art...
By Asta Cameron
27 Feb 2019
Unlike most students at the National Gallery Art School, Sam Fullbrook came to it as a clean slate, having seen very few paintings before the age of twenty-four. However, his instinct to study art in the post-war years proved a sound one. Sir William Dargie (1912-2003), Australia’s foremost...
By Rodney James BA (Hons.), MA
27 Feb 2019
Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe (1810-61) was a well-known colonial identity, field surveyor and professional artist. The recipient of numerous awards and medals, Balcombe was also regarded as a man of sensitivity and wide-ranging interests. As one friend and colleague aptly put it, Balcombe was an ‘...
