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Australia Now

Visual Arts

The Australian landscape occupies a central place in the country’s cultural imagination. From the outback to the ocean, Australia has provided many of its visual artists with inspiration and a broad canvas for expression.

Australia is home to a vibrant community of artists—painters, photographers, potters, printmakers, glassblowers, sculptors, weavers, and digital and multimedia artists—working in a wide variety of genres and styles. Together, they play a vital role in capturing the nation’s spirit and shaping Australia’s image. Australia has many art galleries, museums and libraries holding more than 60 million items and an estimated 20 000 working artists, many of whom have graduated from some 30 academic institutions offering degrees in art, craft and design. Art historians generally group Australian visual arts under the headings of Indigenous, early colonial, the Heidelberg School and the modernists of the 20th century and beyond.

Indigenous art

Australian Indigenous art is one of the oldest ongoing traditions of art in the world. Initial forms of Indigenous artistic expression were rock carvings, body painting and ground designs, which date back to between 40 000 and 60 000 years. The quality and variety of Australian Indigenous art produced today reflects the richness and diversity of Indigenous culture and the distinct differences between communities, languages, dialects and geographic landscapes. Art has always been an important part of Indigenous life, connecting the past and the present, the people and the land, and the spiritual and the worldly.

Indigenous artists use a wide variety of media, from paper and canvas to fibre and glass. Techniques such as printmaking, fabric printing, pottery and glassblowing now complement traditional methods. Albert Namatjira (1902–59) is one of Australia’s best-known Indigenous artists. Using watercolours in western style, Namatjira produced landscape paintings that were predominantly of his people’s land of Western Arrernte in Central Australia. His work gave rise to the Hermannsburg School of landscape painting.

In the early 1970s, the works of Indigenous artists began attracting international attention. Elders of the Pintupi people worked mythological Dreamtime designs from sand paintings to boards and canvases, making traditional art accessible to non-Indigenous audiences and buyers. The Papunya Tula Western Desert art movement, as this was known, was one of many initiatives that have created new connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. A flourishing art movement throughout the Western Desert and in other parts of the country saw individuals and communities committing their intricate and interesting stories and unique iconography to durable media. This stimulated an arts industry that now generates around $200 million a year nationally.

During the 1980s and 1990s acclaimed painters Rover Thomas Joolama (1926–98) nd Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910–96) were among the most successful Australian artists in the national and global art markets. A large exhibition of Emily Kngwarreye’s works was held in Tokyo and Osaka in 2008. Indigenous artists are represented at numerous museums in Europe, including the Aboriginal Art Museum in Utrecht, Holland, and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, France.

Early colonial art

Most of the early Australian drawings by Europeans after 1770 were by explorers, naval officers, soldiers and convicts. Marvelling at Australia’s rich and unique biodiversity, they recorded for natural history study the country’s birds, mammals, plants and Indigenous peoples, particularly in the 1830s. Europeans found both the light and the colours in the Australian landscape very different from those in their home countries. In their landscape paintings, some early European artists such as Conrad Martens represented their new environment with a European aesthetic, but others more accurately reflected Australia’s brighter light and unique flora. By the mid 19th century, art museums opened their doors and began collecting Australian artists’ works, including those of Eugene von Guerard (1811–1901), who painted many major landmarks including Mount Kosciuszko, William Strutt (1825–1915) and Louis Buvelot (1814–88).

Heidelberg School

The Heidelberg School of the 1890s was the first significant art movement in Australia to gain international recognition. Heidelberg artists—such as Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, Charles Condor, Hans Heysen and Tom Roberts—captured life in the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their paintings remain an important part of Australia’s cultural landscape and provide a bridge to the country’s more recent past.

The name ‘Heidelberg’ comes from a camp Roberts and Streeton set up at a property near Heidelberg, which was on the rural outskirts of Melbourne. Inspired by the international impressionist movement, they were the first Australian painters to attempt to capture a momentary effect in the Australian landscape with a general impression of colour.

Modernism

While the Heidelberg School and its nationalist painters were mainly Melbourne based, it was in Sydney that the early modernist movement started, with painters such as Norah Simpson (1895–1974), Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984) and Norman Lindsay (1869–1979). Lindsay’s prolific creative output at the turn of the century—in painting, sculpture and writing—ushered in the modernist period of Australian visual arts, which challenged convention and was not without controversy.

In the 1930s, photographer Max Dupain’s bright images of people by the sea captured Australia’s beach culture. The ‘Angry Penguin’ painters of the 1940s, based in Melbourne, modernised the contemporary Australian art scene with a spontaneous and visionary approach. Experimenting with surrealism and other techniques were Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Sidney Nolan. Sidney Nolan became Australia’s best-known artist following the Second World War. He produced a series of iconic paintings of the Australian outback and the legend of the bushranger Ned Kelly.

In the 1950s Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend captured the unique qualities of the Hill End landscape of New South Wales, producing a body of influential landscape paintings. Other notable artists of the last fifty years include John Olsen, Margaret Olley, Fred Williams, Howard Arkley, Jeffrey Smart, Clifton Pugh, William Dobell, Brett Whiteley, Ricky Swallow, Fiona Hall and Rosalie Gascoigne

Sculpture

Although heavily influenced by European aesthetics early on, by the end of the 20th century the work of Australian sculptors confidently drew on many styles, techniques and cultures—following individual interests and branching into newer forms such as sound sculpture and installations.

Other media

Australia’s contemporary visual artists now tell the story of a different Australia. Artists such as William Robinson, Tracey Moffat and Rosella Namok use a variety of media—including photography, sculpture, installation, drawing and performance art—to produce works that reflect issues confronting contemporary Australia, including environmental problems, urban alienation and major changes in the community.

Émigré artists

Émigré artists, with their different traditions, values and experience, have also made their mark on the Australian arts scene. They include Margaret Michaelis-Sachs (photography), Dusan Marek (painting and experimental films), Erwin Fabian (print making and sculpture), Vincas Jomantas (sculpture), Guan Wei (murals and installations), Hossein Valamanesh (painting and sculpture) and Ah Xian (ceramics).

Galleries and museums, collections and prizes

Australia’s art galleries display a wide variety of genres and regularly host travelling local and international exhibitions. The first major gallery, the National Gallery of  Victoria, opened in 1861. Following increased government funding for visual arts in the 1970s, the National Gallery in Canberra opened in 1982. Other prominent galleries include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Gold Coast City Art Gallery, the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, and the Geelong Art Gallery.

Australia’s museums hold an estimated54.9 million objects and artworks, and the national and state libraries hold about 11.3 million items. Prizes on offer to visual artists in Australia include the lively and often controversial Archibald Prize for portraiture, the Wynne Prize for landscape painting or figure sculpture, the National Sculpture Prize and the Sulman Prize for subject/genre painting and/or mural work.

Support for new artists

The Australia Council for the Arts cultivates the nation’s creativity by supporting artists and arts organisations, community partnerships, dance, literature, music, theatre, visual arts and multi–art form practices. In 2006–07, the council provided $156 million in total funding through 1799 grants, projects and initiatives to artists and arts organisations. This funding supported the creation of 4476 new artistic works and the presentation of 3636 new artistic works.

Key Facts

Further information

This fact sheet is also available to download ( PDF)

Note: Unless otherwise stated, all dollar amounts are in Australian dollars.

last updated March 2008