Picture my world
nga.gov.au/PictureMyWorld
Picture my world is a collaborative project involving the National Gallery of Australia and early childhood educational centres in the Canberra region. Schools have responded to the topic of home or sense of place in a variety of ways. Each teacher was given a set of four quality photographic reproductions of works of art from the Home at last exhibition to use as a stimulus for discussion and creative responses in the classroom.

Home at last
nga.gov.au/HomeAtLast
Designed especially for children, Home at last encourages children to think about ideas of the home through artworks about home life and house objects from different times, places and cultures.

 

Douglas Annand: the art of life
nga.gov.au/Annand
Douglas Annand was a graphic desiger, watercolourist, textile designer, muralist and sculptor of enormous ability and great style who was quite appropriatly described as 'the most brilliant and versatile eclectic in this country'. The exhibition Douglas Annand: the art of life is the first to recognise his enormous contribution to the deveopment of modernism in Australia.

 

Australian Surrealism: The Agapitos/Wilson collection
nga.gov.au/AustralianSurrealism
While Surrealism was not conceived as an artistic movement, its influence was to be felt most strongly in the visual arts, including painting, sculpture, photography and film. Surrealism was officially born in Paris in 1924 with the publication of French poet and intellectual André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism.
Historical background Education resource from the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Surrealism in Australia Education resource from the Art Gallery of New South Wales

 

Painting forever: Tony Tuckson
nga.gov.au/Tuckson
The art of Tony Tuckson is one of Australia’s great treasures. A private artist for both personal and ethical reasons, he produced some of the best expressionist art ever made here. He was also an innovative and committed senior arts administrator for over 20 years, responsible for presenting to the Australian public some of the earliest and most comprehensive exhibitions of Australian Aboriginal art and Melanesian art.

 

Grace Cossington Smith : a retrospective exhibition
nga.gov.au/Exhibition/cossingtonsmith
This exhibition is a tribute to Grace Cossington Smith, one of Australia's most important and paradoxical artists; an artist who lived a relatively quiet, circumscribed life who was also the creator of iconic images and one of the most brilliant pioneering modernists of her generation.

 

Home sweet home: works from the Peter Fay collection
nga.gov.au/HomeSweetHome
Dr Deborah Hart, Senior Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture at the National Gallery of Australia, interviewed Peter Fay about a selection of works from his collection represented in Home sweet home. Images of the works, along with audio excerpts from the interview and transcriptions are all available.

 

Imants Tillers: one world many visions
nga.gov.au/Tillers
The first major survey of Imants Tillers’ paintings in Australia that includes his most recent and significant large-scale works. Tillers has been identified as a quintessential postmodern artist in his use of appropriation and quotation and the works in this exhibition convey the range, scope, audacity and technical accomplishment of the artist’s enterprise that has emerged in his remarkable canvasboard system.

John Glover and the colonial picturesque
tmag.tas.gov.au/Glover2003/exhibition.htm
This educational material traces the development of John Glover’s work in Europe and Australia. For the most part in chronological order, it invites users to study Glover’s development through a stimulating and appropriate selection of his works, followed by exciting activities and thought-provoking discussion points.

 

Making pictures
nga.gov.au/makingpictures
Making pictures recreates an artist’s studio from 100 years ago – complete with paintings, drawings, an original easel, smock and paintbox and several artists’ sketchbooks. In this exhibition you can see works of art by Australian artists George Lambert, Hugh Ramsay, Thea Proctor and Rupert Bunny. These artists left Australia to live, study and work in Europe during the Edwardian era, around 1900-1914. They all had a traditional artistic training, learning drawing skills as a foundation for making pictures. Like many artists they found inspiration in the works of their peers and in the great works of art shown in museums of London and Paris. They also found inspiration in the excitement of modern life, in the theatre and fashion of the day.

 

New worlds from old: 19th Century Australian and American landscapes
nga.gov.au/NewWorlds
Examining two great traditions of landscape painting of the 19th century, those of Australia and America, the exhibition will explore how artists steeped in 'old world' traditions reacted when confronted by landscapes of the 'new world'

 

George.W.Lambert Retrospective : heroes & icons
nga.gov.au/Lambert
George Lambert (1873–1930) was one of Australia’s most brilliant, witty and influential artists. The exhibtion George Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons is the most comprehensive showing of Lambert’s work for over fifty years. It will present the diverse range of Lambert’s work from his Australian bush subjects to his Edwardian portraits and figure groups, from his sparkling oil sketches to his major battle paintings and large sculpture. It will show the full breadth of Lambert’s approaches to image making and the variety of his handling of pencil, pen and paint. It will demonstrate his sure draughtsmanship and the seductive glamour and sensual appeal of his paint surfaces.

 

Richard Later: a retrospective
nga.gov.au/Larter
In 2008 the National Gallery of Australia recognises and celebrates the work of Richard Larter, one of Australia’s most engaging and lively artists. The exhibition, which covers his artistic practice from the late 1950s through to the present, gives viewers the opportunity to engage with a spectrum of works that are at times provocative and dazzling, and at other times evocative and lyrical – but never dull.

Federation: Australian art & society
nga.gov.au/Federation
This website provides access to information relating to more than 260 works exhibited in 'Federation'. As is the case for the exhibition, works can be viewed within 7 themes. These themes offer a convenient format for browsing, however the website also provides a search tool for exploring the works in a more focused manner.

 

Grace Crowley: being modern
nga.gov.au/Crowley
Grace Crowley: being modern is a retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings by one of Australia’s most influential modern artists. It traces her remarkable artistic journey from traditional landscapes to avant-garde experimentation and pure abstraction.

Landscapes in sets and series
nga.gov.au/Landscapes
This exhibition focuses on prints produced by Australian artists from 1960 to the present. As well as presenting prints of the Australian landscape it represents the work of two artists who have often found their subject matter in foreign landscapes. Janet Dawson produced poetic lithographs of the Italian landscape, where she worked in the late 1950s. For the 'new Australian' migrant Salvatore Zofrea, the Italian landscape is the source of formative memories.

 

 

Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Alhalkere, paintings from utopia
nga.gov.au/Kngwarreye
In the 1990s Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c.1910-1996) emerged as one of Australia's leading painters of modern times. Kngwarreye's prominence is no overnight sensation; it finds its roots in a lifetime of ritual and artistic activity. Her energetic paintings are a response to the land of her birth, Alhalkere, north of Alice Springs - the contours of the landscape, the cycles of seasons, the parched land, the flow of flooding waters and sweeping rains, the patterns of seeds and the shape of plants, and the spiritual forces which imbue the country. Kngwarreye's vision of the land is unique; her paintings challenge the way we look at art by Aboriginal Australians. Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Alhalkere - Paintings from Utopia traces the brief but impressive career of an artist who started painting in the public arena when she was in her eighties.

 

Michael Riley: sights unseen
nga.gov.au//Riley
Michael Riley: sights unseen is one of the most significant exhibitions of Indigenous art to be held at the National Gallery of Australia. A major retrospective of one of the country’s leading Indigenous contemporary artists, it is the first exhibition to focus on the career of an Aboriginal artist from the south-east of Australia. Previous retrospectives have honoured the work of Dr David Daymirringu Malangi (2004), Albert Namatjira (2002), Rover Thomas (Joolama) (1994) and George Milpurrurru (1993).

 

No ordinary place: the art of David Malangi
nga.gov.au/malangi
David Malangi (1927–1999) of the Manharrngu people was a leading figure in the development of the Central Arnhem Land bark painting movement and holds a prominent place in Australian Aboriginal art. Made famous by his design used on the Australian one dollar note when Australia converted to decimal currency in 1966, Malangi painted over a period of four decades. He was a major instigator of Gallery's Aboriginal Memorial, contributing ten magnificent hollow logs to the project. The exhibition traces the development of Malangi’s work from the early bark paintings of the 1960s that record his patrilineally inherited land and ceremonies, to the masterful dedications to his mother’s land and culture for which he was also responsible and where he spent the last thirty years of his life.

 

National Indigenous Art Triennial 07: culture warriors
nga.gov.au/NIAT07
Presenting the work of thirty artists from each state and territory, the Triennial demonstrates the incredible range of contemporary Indigenous art practice. It is the largest survey show of Indigenous art at the Gallery in more than fifteen years, featuring up to four works by each artist created during the past three years in a variety of media, including painting on bark and canvas, sculpture, textiles, weaving, new media, photomedia, printmaking and installation. The works selected not only create an exhibition of outstanding quality but are also ultimately important acquisitions for the national collection.

 

Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape
nga.gov.au/TurnerToMonet
Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape presents a landmark exhibition of nineteenth-century Western landscape painting. Featuring one hundred works by the greatest artists of the time, the exhibition showcases Australian landscape painting in an international context and looks at the triumph of landscape as it rises to new importance in the art of Europe and the New World.

 

The Edwardians: secrets and desires
nga.gov.au/Edwardians
The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires showcases the broad range of art created by artists working and exhibiting in London during the years 1900 to 1914. The exhibition reflects a time of great social change — from a period of established order to the beginnings of a more modern world — and reveals the variety of possibilities that became available during this time.

 

Constable : impressions of land, sea and sky
nga.gov.au/Constable
John Constable (1776–1837) was one of the greatest British landscape painters, renowned for his landscapes, his ‘pure and unaffected representation of nature’. The breadth of his vision of the English countryside is evident in masterpieces such as Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds 1822–23, A boat passing a lock 1826 and The Vale of Dedham 1827–28.

Monet & Japan
nga.gov.au/MonetJapan
39 of Monet’s best paintings from the world’s greatest collections, alongside an extensive selection of Japanese prints and paintings, vividly demonstrate Monet’s intimate relationship with Japanese art.

 

Pierre Bonnard: observing nature
nga.gov.au/Bonnard
The French artist, Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), was a successful painter, draughtsman, photographer, printmaker, illustrator and interior designer, whose work continues to surprise and attract new generations of art lovers.

 

The Italians: three centuries of Italian art
theitalians.com.au
The exhibition is an overview of 300 years of Italian art from 1500 to 1800 including masterworks from the Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque and Rococo eras. More than one hundred works from public and private collections in cities such as Rome, Florence, Bologna, Venice and Naples are displayed chronologically. Subjects include Christian religious imagery, allegory, mythology, portraits and views.

 

Sean Scully: body of light  
nga.gov.au/Scully
Sean Scully has come into international prominence as one of the most admired painters working in the abstract tradition. His individual painterly style is sufficiently established that all those familiar with contemporary visual culture would recognise his work.

 

Monet & Japan
nga.gov.au/MonetJapan
39 of Monet’s best paintings from the world’s greatest collections, alongside an extensive selection of Japanese prints and paintings, vividly demonstrate Monet’s intimate relationship with Japanese art.

Rough cuts: European figurative prints from Gauguin to Paladino
nga.gov.au/RoughCuts
The aim of this exhibitionis to look at two groups of print-works; not only in terms of their figurative content but also their working methods and surface aesthetic. The first group is the early period of ‘German’ Expressionism, from approximately 1895 to 1925, and the later European neo-figurative period of the 1970s and 1980s.

 

The big americans: the art of collaboration
nga.gov.au/BigAmericans
Utilising the Gallery's outstanding collection of international prints, Big Americans documents printmaking at a key 20th Century workshop frequented by significant artists of the day who worked with Master printer Ken Tyler - a major figure of the 'Print Renaissance' in post-war United States of America.

 

The art of war: Otto Dix’s Der Krieg [War] cycle 1924
nga.gov.au/Dix
Otto Dix was born in 1891 in Untermhaus, Thuringia, the son of an ironworker. He initially trained in Gera and at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts as a painter of wall decorations and later taught himself how to paint on canvas. He volunteered as a machine-gunner during World War I and in the autumn of 1915 he was sent to the Western Front. He was at the Somme during the major allied offensive of 1916.

 

Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler
nga.gov.au/Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler was a key figure in the New York art scene during the 1950s. She was one of only a handful of women artists who successfully contributed to an artistic territory dominated by such giants as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning.

 

Crescent moon: Islamic art & civilisations in South East Asia
nga.gov.au/CrescentMoon
This exhibition is a spectacular visual exploration of the Islamic heritage of Australia’s nearest neighbours. As the first major international exhibition to focus on the Islamic art of Southeast Asia, Crescent moon introduces Australian audiences to the beauty and complexity of Islamic culture within our region. Southeast Asian creative genius found expression in a wide variety of media, including metalwork, manuscript illumination, textiles and wood carving.

 

Inside out: new Chinese art
nga.gov.au/InsideOut
This exhibition explores the vitality and dynamic changes in late 20th-century China - a period when the deeply-rooted cultural assumptions and centuries-old visual traditions have been under enormous pressure from rapid modernisation, changing political realities and conflicting global, ethnic and local identities. The exhibition features work by artists from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as those living abroad. Consisting of nearly 90 works created in the years 1985-1998, Inside Out presents an astonishing body of art - confronting, clever, mysterious, elegant and always thought-provoking - across the full range of media, with painting, sculpture, photographs, installations, videos and prints by some of the world's leading contemporary artists.

 

Montien Boonma: temple of the mind
nga.gov.au/Boonma
Montien Boonma (1953–2000) was one of Asia's most distinguished contemporary artists. This retrospective — curated by Thailand's leading art historian, Apinan Poshyananda, for the Asia Society, New York — demonstrates the broad range of materials and techniques that the artist explored, including: large-scale sculptures in metal, wood and ceramic; pen, crayon and pencil drawings; and organic collages on paper. Montien Boonma’s contemplative installations draw on the spirit and senses of Thailand, combining overtly Buddhist imagery with industrial and ephemeral materials such as gold leaf, fragrant spices, earth and charcoal.

 

The TT Tsui collection of Chinese ceramics  
nga.gov.au/TTTsui
Since earliest times, the ritual of burial has played an important role amongst the people of China. Through the generous gift in 1995 of Chinese art by Dr TT Tsui, the National Gallery of Australia is able to illustrate the complexity and ongoing evolution of these burial rites.

 

Indonesian Textiles
nga.gov.au/IndonesianTextiles
The National Gallery of Australia holds one of the richest public collections of Indonesian textiles in the world. Now, thanks to the generous assistance of the Australia-Indonesia Institute (AII), the extensive collection of over 1200 works is accessible to scholars, researchers and textile enthusiasts across the globe through this website.

 

 

The good, the great & the gifted: camera portraits by Yousuf Karsh and Athol Shmith
nga.gov.au/KarshShmith
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as the middle-classes expanded in size and affluence, the mass circulation of portrait photographs of public figures and celebrities became an industry. Photographers with talent, technical aptitude, business sense and charming manners found they could become not only specially appointed Court photographers but also the darlings of High Society. Photography defined and created the very notion of celebrity by catering to the public fascination with images of the stars of the stage and later the cinema. Though separated across the globe and in their relative international fame, both Yousuf Karsh (1908–2002) of Ottawa and Athol Shmith (1914–1990) of Melbourne are 20th-century examples of portrait photographers who continued and excelled in the field of providing the public with glorified and glamorised portraits of public figures.

 

Picture Paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s
nga.gov.au/PictureParadise
This is the first exhibition to survey the history of photography of our region – from India and Sri Lanka, Southeast and East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands to the west coast of North America. It features pioneer local photographers as well as Europeans working in the region. The exhibition reveals the rich heritage and the many outstanding achievements of the first century of photography  in the Asia–Pacific region.

 

Sculpture garden
nga.gov.au/sculpturegarden
Illustrating the development of sculpture during the modern period in Australia and overseas, the Gallery's Sculpture garden holds over 25 works work ranging from human scale to the monumental

National Australia Bank: Sculpture Gallery
nga.gov.au/NABSculptureGallery
The new gallery space shows new acquisitions alongside sculptures that are already part of the Gallery’s significant collection. It will be known as the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery for ten years in recognition of a new arts partnership between the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and National Australia Bank (NAB).

National Sculpture Prize and exhibition 2005 and 2003
nga.gov.au/SculpturePrize05 |  nga.gov.au/SculpturePrize03
The three Prizes – held in 2001, 2003 and 2005 – have included an extra-ordinary range of works by a total of eighty-three artists from around Australia. The Prize has introduced emerging artists to a national audience and has exhibited their works alongside those of Australia’s leading sculptors.

 

Rodin: A magnificent obsession: sculpture and drawings
cantorfoundation.org/Rodin
The Cantor Collection traces its origins to 1945 when B. Gerald Cantor (1916-1996) wandered into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There he was "touched" by a marble version of Auguste Rodin's The Hand of God. Eighteen months later, Mr. Cantor purchased a bronze version of this sculpture. This was the beginnning of a lifetime of collecting. Together with his wife, Iris, Mr. Cantor built the largest and most comprehensive private collection of works by Auguste Rodin.

 

Transformations: the language of craft
nga.gov.au/Transformations
This exhibition is a celebration of the recent work of eighty-five Australian and international artists working in the area of studio craft. All are forging new expressions within the fields of glass, ceramics, textiles, wood and metalwork, and through a variety of materials in furniture, jewellery and sculpture.

 

From Russia with love: costumes for the Ballet Russes 1909–1933
nga.gov.au/russia
The Russian Ballet, also known as the Ballets Russes, was founded by Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929). Diaghilev, the Russian Ballet's producer and creative director, rejected conventional ideas of ballet. His great achievement was to integrate design, music and dance. By encouraging the artistic collaboration of painters, choreographers and composers, Diaghilev created a new art-modern ballet. From 1909 until 1929 the company performed in Paris, throughout Europe and in North and South America. Ironically, the Russian Ballet company never appeared in Russia.

 

The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn gift
nga.gov.au/wolfensohn
The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn gift enables people from all around Australia to discover and handle treasured objects. Made possible by Jim Wolfensohn, the Australian-born former president of the World Bank, the gift comprises three art-filled suitcases and The 1888 Melbourne Cup, touring to schools, libraries, community centres, regional galleries and nursing homes. The idea of the suitcase kits is to give to people a chance to handle and appreciate original works of art by contemporary artists as well as works from other cultures and times.