Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Visual Arts
Melbourne's visual-arts scene thrives and grows in myriad places: tucked away in base-
ment galleries, exhibited in edgy spaces, stencilled on unmarked laneway walls, flaunted in
world-class museums and sneaking up on you in parks and gardens.
Painting
Melbourne and Victoria's visual-arts culture began in the traditions of the Kulin Nation
tribes, and ancestral design inspires contemporary Victorian Indigenous artists to this day.
The late-19th-century artwork of Wurundjeri elder William Barak depicts ceremonial gath-
erings, several of which are displayed in the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Prominent
contemporary Koorie artists in Victoria include Vicki Couzens, Esther Kirby, Mandy Nich-
olson and Trevor 'Turbo' Brown, who paint upon a mix of traditional artefacts, possum-
skin cloaks and emu eggs, as well as canvas (note: there are no dots in Indigenous Victori-
an art). In Melbourne, the Koorie Heritage Trust and Melbourne Museum's Bunjilaka Ab-
original Centre all provide an intimate picture of Victorian Aboriginal culture.
Early Europeans who visited the fledgling colony of Melbourne presented a very differ-
ent experience of Australia. The Vienna-born Eugene von Guérard is one of Australia's
best-known colonial artists from the 1850s; his vast works include panoramic landscapes of
early Geelong, the Otways, Gippsland and the Western District region, all depicted as colo-
nial jewels with bucolic pastures and abundant forests.
In the late 19th century a new generation of Australian-born artists emerged, forming the
Heidelberg School (aka the Australian Impressionists). Artists Tom Roberts, Arthur Stree-
ton and Frederick McCubbin are fondly remembered for defining a more 'Australian' vis-
ion of the landscape and depicting the harshness in the beauty of the Victorian bush. They
also created a heroic national iconography, ranging from the shearing of sheep to visions of
a wide brown land.
The early- to mid-20th century saw the rise to prominence of a number of modernist
painters, including internationally acclaimed Melbourne artists Sidney Nolan, John Brack,
Charles Blackman, Fred Williams and Russell Drysdale. Heide, the Melbourne home of
arts patrons John and Sunday Reed, played a pivotal role in the development of Australian
modernism; Nolan's famous
Ned Kelly
series is said to have been painted at the Reeds'
dining-room table. The Reeds nurtured an artistic community that included Nolan, Albert
Tucker, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff, who utilised styles
