In 1983, Andy Warhol was commissioned to create several limited edition screenprints for the occasion of his upcoming travelling retrospective exhibition in Japan. After first making contact through Gaston Petit (born 1930), a Canadian priest and artist stationed in Tokyo, the brief for Amer

Yorta Yorta artist Lin Onus has been described as a ‘provocateur who believed that there was no distinction between the political and the beautiful.’¹ A self-declared ‘cultural mechanic’,² Onus challenged cultural hegemonies with satire and humour in o

As one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists, Tim Storrier has developed a body of work that is instantly recognisable and universally admired. His outback paintings evoke wondrous feelings of nature and of the Earth as an arena of mysterious rituals, ceremony and elemental su

William Robinson was born in Brisbane and as a young man he showed considerable promise as a musician to the point that, in 1957, he was a State Finalist in the ABC Concerto and Vocal Competition, which led to a position playing piano for the Queensland Symphony O

Sidney Nolan’s treatment of Ned Kelly is the best known group of paintings in Australian art. The series grew out of an interest that was deep and nuanced. Ned Kelly the Bushranger, the Legend and the Myth, have been more widely discussed than any other figure in Australian history. At the t

Some artists paint what they see; others what they feel. For the Melbourne-based artist John Brack it was different. For Brack, art was more in the manner of an intellectual act.

Brack cemented his artistic reputation in 1956 when the National Gallery of Victoria purchased his icon

Jeffrey Smart’s Bus by the Tiber of 1977-78 is not a mere picture of something that was seen, but of something that was created into being. That is, it was thought into existence. Consider, for a moment, the cravated Smart on the balcony of his sprawling Tuscan villa stretching back

Robert Dickerson forged a successful career despite very humble beginnings, earning a reputation as the rough diamond of the Australian art world. Growing-up in Depression-era Sydney, Dickerson left school at the age of fourteen to work full-time in a factory and never received a formal art

When Queen Elizabeth II visited Australia in February 1954, she was the first reigning monarch to set foot on Australian soil. Following the death of her father in 1952, the newly crowned Queen had taken over duties originally planned for King George VI. It is estimated that the monarch trav

Artist's Statement

It has always been in my mind to do something about what I feel about Delacroix’s wonderful painting, Liberty Leading the People, which I saw first with Arthur Boyd and Barry Humphries in Paris in 1963. Delacroix was at the forefront o