Throughout his productive and fascinating career, the one subject, or ‘muse’, which has continually captivated John Olsen, is the natural world. From the minutest of swamp critters, field mice, frogs, pelicans and giraffes, to the tributaries, endless ocean and expansive inland desert, all h
Michael Johnson, nowadays a veteran Australian Abstract painter, began painting in the late 1950’s. A graduate of Sydney’s Julian Ashton School, he moved to London in 1960 and only returned to Australia for two years in 1967 before leaving for New York in 1969. His 1967 exhibition at the Cen
In a short life of just forty-seven years Lin Onus spanned the triumph and tragedy that is Aboriginal Australia. The talented and imaginative son of a successful Aboriginal businessman, and a Scottish mother, both of whom were active campaigners for Indigenous rights. Lin built a career of g
Paddy Bedford was a Gija man, ‘born in the cattle’ on Bedford Downs station in the East Kimberley and named after his boss, Paddy Quilty. The artist was also known among his peers as “Goowoomji” or simply “PB”. Bedford Downs and the surrounding landscape was the source of many Gija Dreamings
James Gleeson’s magisterial The Wall, of 1986, was originally exhibited in the renowned gallery of his long-term friend Frank Watters. Since then it has remained in a private collection and is offered at auction here for the first time.
Gleeson, (AM 1975; AO 1990; Hon. D. L
Arthur Boyd’s first Wimmera landscapes were conceived in the summer of 1948-49, when he accompanied the poet Jack Stephenson on a painting excursion to Horsham. Considered the regional capital of the Wimmera area, Horsham is set to the north of The Grampians on the banks of the Wimmera River
Ian Fairweather is without doubt one of the most distinctive individuals to grace Australia’s shores. His restless explorations took him from the home of his affluent Scottish family on the island of Jersey to a handmade hut on Bribie Island and encompassed a sixteen day solo voyage from Dar
The Twins c1954 is a large and important work of Charles Blackman’s (born 1928) most notorious period and ‘has increased, rather than diminished, with time in its articulation of a complex formal challenge.’1 It is a schizophrenic portrait where femininity meets beast, the eye mov
Many in Australia dream of the European romance, of the never-ending holiday experience or of returning to visit the country of their birth. For here, on the rooftop garden in Venice, Florence, Barcelona or Seville on warm summer nights, it is possible to enjoy dinner late into the evening,
Painted over two years from 2007-2009, Garry Shead’s The Smile contains numerous hints, allusions, and references to the artist’s personal life and to historical as well as literary events that concerned him at the time.
Shead became interested in the British author John Fo