The Arts - Sydney - page 486

VISUAL ART
Sydney's first artists were the people of the indigenous Eora nation. Figures of animals,
fish and humans can still be seen engraved into sandstone outcrops in Bondi and around the
harbour. In the Blue Mountains, ancient hand stencils decorate cave walls.
In the colony's early days, the first foreign-born painters applied traditional European
aesthetic standards to Australia's bleached light, raggedy forests and earthy colours: as
such, they failed to capture the landscape with any certainty. In the early 19th century, John
Glover (a convict) adopted a different Australian landscape-painting style, using warm
earth tones and more precise depictions of gum trees and mountains in his work. Conrad
Martens, a friend of Charles Darwin, painted accurate landscapes of a surprisingly busy
Sydney Harbour in the 1850s (where did all the trees go?).
The first significant art movement in Australia, the Heidelberg School, emerged around
the 1890s. Using impressionistic techniques and favouring outdoor painting, the school
represented a major break with prevailing European tastes. Painters such as Tom Roberts
and Arthur Streeton were the first to render Australian light and colour in this naturalistic
fashion. Originally from Melbourne, they came to Sydney and established an artists' camp
at Little Sirius Cove in Mosman in 1891, which became a focal point for Sydney artists.
Roberts and Streeton depicted what are now considered typically Australian scenes: sheep
shearers, pioneers, bushrangers…all powerful stimulants in the development of an enduring
national mythology.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Sydney painters such as Grace Cossington Smith
and Margaret Preston began to flirt with modernism. French-influenced Nora Simpson
kick-started the innovative movement, experimenting with cubism and expressionism.
In the 1960s Australian art drew on multiculturalism and abstract trends, an eclecticism
best represented by the work of Sydney artist Brett Whiteley, an internationally celebrated
enfant terrible who died in 1992. He painted sexy, colourful canvases, often depicting dis-
torted figures, as well as landscapes of Sydney Harbour. His Surry Hills studio, containing
many of his works, has been preserved as a gallery.
Australian Aboriginal art is one of the oldest forms of creativity in the world, dating back
more than 50,000 years. Art has always been integral to Aboriginal life - a connection
between the past and the present, the supernatural and the earthly, the people and the land.
Drawing on pop culture images for much of his work, Martin Sharp rose to prominence
in the 1960s as cofounder of the satirical magazine Oz . In the 1970s he helped restore the