Australian Art
Australian art is a rich tapestry that reflects the diverse cultures and histories of its people, encompassing both Indigenous and European influences. Indigenous Australian art, considered the world's oldest ongoing art form, includes rock paintings, carvings, and various crafts that date back over fifty thousand years. Notable examples of these ancient practices can be found in sites like Kakadu National Park, which features sacred Dreaming stories depicted in rock art. After European colonization began in 1788, Australian art evolved with the emergence of new movements, such as the Heidelberg School, which focused on landscape painting and was influenced by European Impressionism.
In contemporary times, Australian art continues to thrive, blending traditional Indigenous elements with modern styles, including abstract expressionism and pop art. Major movements like the Western Desert art movement have gained international recognition, highlighting the unique styles of Aboriginal artists, particularly in mediums like dot painting. Australia is home to numerous art institutions, such as the National Gallery of Australia, which showcase this cultural heritage. Overall, the country's art scene reflects an ongoing dialogue between past and present, making it a dynamic field of exploration for artists and audiences alike.
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Australian Art
Australia is known for landscape paintings, crafts, sculptures and installations in both Indigenous and European styles. Western Desert art, which includes "dot" paintings, is one of Australia's best-known art forms. Much of Australian art narrates or comments on the history of Australia's people and cultures. After European colonisation began in 1788, Australia's art culture became broadly influenced by European movements that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Concurrently, Indigenous art became widely recognised and popularised and has continued to flourish as a central aspect of Australia's arts and culture.
Australia is home to many government-subsidised art museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the National Gallery of Victoria. Due to its cultural and historical significance, Indigenous Australian art is featured in galleries throughout the world, including Switzerland's Musée d'art Aborigène Australien La Grange, which is devoted to Aboriginal art.
Background
Australia's oldest art forms, originating more than fifty thousand years ago, were created by the Indigenous peoples living throughout the continent, Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islands. These include rock paintings and carvings, weavings, bark paintings, body decoration, stone tools and ground designs created by Aboriginal people, as well as Torres Strait Islanders' sculptures and headdresses. Indigenous Australian art is thought to be the world's oldest ongoing art form.
Rock carvings and paintings using red ochre are among the earliest known examples of Aboriginal art. As many as one million rock carvings are believed to be located along the Dampier Archipelago in Western Australia. The images portrayed in these artefacts, such as depictions of Dreaming stories, are sacred to Aboriginal people. Such rock paintings are well preserved and are featured at the Kakadu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The main motifs by region are geometric shapes, silhouettes or figural representations.
The nineteenth century saw broad recognition of the artistry of Indigenous Australians. Indigenous art often deals with themes of history, nature and spiritual beliefs. In the modern era, Indigenous art includes printmaking, ceramics, glassware, photography, jewellery, basketry and textile arts, in addition to traditional art forms practiced for many millennia.
In the decades following European colonisation, new Australian art movements emerged. These included landscape paintings depicting the natural terrain and vastness of Australia. English painter John Glover came to Tasmania in 1831 and created a significant set of landscape paintings. Glover's paintings influenced the Australian impressionists, or Heidelberg school, a dominant movement in European-influenced Australian art in the 1890s. Artists belonging to this movement include Fred McCubbin, Walter Withers, Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts, whose works consist mainly of bright, naturalistic or impressionist landscape paintings. The movement derives its name from Streeton and Roberts's farmhouse near Heidelberg, Victoria, where they and other artists painted landscapes.
Australian Art Today
Australia's modern art is both heavily influenced by dominant European movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and by Indigenous art forms that include narrative and culturally reflective elements. Australia's major works of European-influenced art are collected and maintained by the Department of Communication and the Arts, which curates thousands of artworks created between 1788 and 1980.
In the early twentieth century, much of Australian art dealt with issues of race, immigration and national identity. Federation and the Immigration Restriction Act (or "White Australia Policy"), both in 1901, set the stage for decades of commentary on interracial issues in Australia.
This period saw the beginning of a modernist movement, primarily in Sydney and spurred by artist Nora Simpson. Her work, influenced by similar movements in France, includes cubism, expressionism and other modernist art forms that were gaining popularity in Europe. The Contemporary Group, formed in 1926, was an early modernist group that included Roland Wakelin, Roy de Maistre, and, most significantly, Grace Crossington Smith. Along with painter Margaret Preston, Smith is one of Australia's best-known modern artists.
The Modern Art Centre in Sydney and the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne were both established in the 1930s. Around the same time, modern artists such as Preston created work drawing on Indigenous influences, beginning what would become a longstanding trend of incorporating styles and concepts of Indigenous art into modern art. Aranta artist Albert Namatjira is among the Aboriginal artists whose work defined this era, using stylistic forms of European art such as watercolour painting to depict Australian landscapes.
Other European-influenced movements in Australian art include symbolic surrealism, marked by the works of Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd; abstractionism, which grew in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s; and pop art. Artists Brett Whiteley and Richard Larter are among Australia's major contributors to the pop art movement. Their popular works range in style from avant-garde to abstract expressionist.
Concurrent with the rise of Australia's pop art movement, the Western Desert movement began in the early 1970s and became one of the country's defining visual art movements. Western Desert art refers to the practise of transferring the styles of ground painting and body painting to canvases and other media typically used in European art. Artist and schoolteacher Geoffrey Bardon is credited with initiating the movement among Pintupi and Luritja men. Alice Springs, Northern Territory, is a hub for Western Desert art, including dot paintings, crafts and live performances. Aboriginal Australians create and sell their art in the art centres and galleries surrounding Australia's central region. The Western Desert art movement has resulted in thousands of mixed-media works, including paintings and crafts. A collective of artists known as Papunya Tula formed in Northern Territory and became stewards of the movement. In 2007, a painting by one of the Papunya Tula artists sold for a record AU$2.4 million, and by the 2020s, the movement had generated tourism and sales contributing to an industry of more than $200 million annually in Australia.
Contemporary Australian art includes abstract works by Michael Johnson and Lindy Lee. The latter deal in the dual nature of life and nature and are informed by Zen Buddhism and Taoism.
Among Australia's most-revered contemporary works is the National Gallery of Australia's Aboriginal Memorial, a collaboratively created collection of two hundred painted log coffins commemorating Indigenous people killed by European colonists in the frontier era.
Bibliography
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"Australian Art." Art Gallery NSW, Art Gallery of New South Wales, www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/australian-art. Accessed 17 June 2024..
Bird, Caroline, and Sylvia J. Hallam. A Review of Archaeology and Rock Art in the Dampier Archipelago. National Trust of Australia, Sept. 2006, www.nationaltrust.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/20061020-Dampier-Rock-Art-Review-ROE35.pdf. Accessed 17 June 2024.
Ham, Anthony. "Australia’s Western Desert Art Movement Turns 50." Smithsonian, 13 May 2022, www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/australias-western-desert-art-movement-turns-50-180980067/. Accessed 17 June 2024.
"Heidelberg School, Melbourne (c.1886-1900)." Encyclopedia of Art History, www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/heidelberg-school.htm. Accessed 17 June 2024.
"Kakadu National Park." United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 1992–2017, whc.unesco.org/en/list/147. Accessed 17 June 2024.
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