Since he came to national and international attention in the 1940s, Albert Namatjira’s paintings have become synonymous with the landscape of central Australia. During his lifetime the watercolour paintings he produced were highly popular, widely exhibited and reproduced, and are credited wi

Ned Kelly
If we picked up human beings as we pick
up sea-shells on the beach, how would
we respond to the square-headed boy from
the bush lying in our land’s hand.

Executioner, executioner, he would never fit
in a classical urn, h

The idiosyncrasies of Ken Whisson’s art have long deprived him of due recognition, but they are what make him one of Australia’s most intriguing practitioners today. Whisson’s importance to Australian visual culture has been affirmed in recent years by a major joint retrospective at Heide an

‘…laying out journeys for the eye to wander over the canvas, [Firth-Smith] launched into a nautical mode in the mid-1980s when, instead of ‘taking a line for a walk’ as Paul Klee recommended, he set sail over liquid surfaces. These works began to feature conspicuous puns on the idea of ‘medi

Ralph Balson’s Matter Painting, c1962, combines the 20^th century fascination with Einstein’s theory of relativity with a first-hand knowledge of mid-century American and European art. The ‘drip and pour’ approach that informs Matter Painting is reminiscent of Jac

Michael Johnson is perhaps the most steadfast abstractionist in Australian art, so it is all the more surprising that he started his long and distinguished career as a commercial artist. His father Percy had worked before and during world war two as an illustrator, specialising in black and

Born in New Zealand and Australian by adoption, Euan Macleod has made our national iconography of the figure in the landscape his own intensely personal domain. For more than forty years he has built a vision in paint that is instantly recognisable and compelling to all who see it. He has wo

The depiction of historical and contemporary women form a major component of Bertram Mackennal’s work. These late 19^th and early 20^th century sculptures were highly lauded during his life and actively sought out by Australian collectors in the 1920s after they had been

Melbourne-born sculptor, Bertram Mackennal, was arguably Australia’s most internationally successful artist at the turn of the twentieth century. Between the years 1890 – 1920, the artist had his work purchased by the Tate Gallery, was elected as a member of the Royal Academy and was the fir