Throughout his life, Brett Whiteley made images of apes and monkeys. He found much in their character and physiognomy to identify with.
Mirka Mora sitting surrounded by her colourful doll and soft sculpture creations and tapestries in 1978.
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive, State Library of Victoria.
Mirka Mora survived the second world war to carve out a unique place for herself in the Australian art world. Over six decades, her creativity was legendary.
Charles Blackman posed next to his work in Sydney in 2013.
Tracy Nearmy/AAP
Charles Blackman forged an urbanised image of Australia that for most, was more familiar than the mythic landscapes of Sidney Nolan or Arthur Boyd. Yet though familiar, it remains uncomfortable.
Detail from John Russell:
Almond tree in blossom c1887.
oil on gold ground on canvas on plywood 46.2 x 55.1 cm.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. The Joseph Brown Collection. Presented through the NGV Foundation by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2004 (2004.216)
As a young man, Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz joined the Resistance, helping Jews to escape Poland. After settling in Australia as a refugee, he became a pivotal artist, as a new show of his work attests.
A new exhibition features more than 50 works by Fred Williams, centred on the You Yangs peaks, west of Melbourne. They illuminate a breakthrough moment in Australian art.
Rhonda Senbergs in 1977: her photographs are an important social document.
Author provided
Rhonda Senbergs photographed the Australian art world for over 25 years until her death in 1998. From Fred Williams to Bob Hawke to Margaret Olley, many were captured by her lens.
A major exhibition of Jenny Watson’s work at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art spans 40 years in the creative life of a rule-breaking Australian artist.
The packers’ favourite has gained prominence and there are few portraits of politicians in this year’s popular art prize. The stand out work is a deceptively innocent re-appropriation of Aboriginal kitsch.
Brett Whiteley’s output was uneven but at his best, his work was brilliant. A new film offers an unusual insight into the life and art of this creative and troubled maverick.
Part of Meere’s iconic painting Australian Beach Pattern.
Halstead Press
Charles Meere’s painting Australian Beach Pattern is commonly seen as an iconic celebration of our beach culture. But a new book suggests this celebrated work expresses far darker concerns.
Unstacked allows us to see what others’ are searching for among the 6 million items in the State Library of NSW’s collection.
Unstacked/the State Library of NSW
A new website allows you to see what other people search for in the State Library of NSW’s vast collection of artefacts – and discover things you’d never think to look up in the first place.
The best Australian play ever written is revolutionary in its treatment of plot, character and language. It has a weary, sardonic perspective on war and an unheroic worldview.
Judith Wright: she opened our eyes to our dark history, to modernist poetry and to the beauty of our landscape.
courtesy of Meredith McKinney
Judith Wright was possibly our greatest poet and a passionate social activist. But a new biography suggests that in writing her family memoirs, Wright avoided evidence that her settler forebears likely participated in the murder of Aborigines.
A yellow line becomes a blistering ray of sunlight in Summer in the You Beaut Country. John Olsen’s paintings, often described as ‘quintessentially Australian’, teem with life.
Elioth Gruner Spring Frost 1919: one of the paintings included in the gallery’s program.
Art Gallery of New South Wales Gift of F G White 1939
A new study shows that looking at paintings can bring pleasure to people living with dementia, affecting their wellbeing even after the memory of the event has gone.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne