Australian Art
The National Gallery of Australia's collection of Australian art reflects its unique national responsibility to present the story of visual art in Australia.
The collection includes works of consistently high quality and outstanding aesthetic merit – works by artists from all Australian states and territories and by Australian artists working overseas, as well as works by artists living for a time in Australia. The wide-ranging collection of the work of Indigenous artists from all regions and urban areas of Australia is discussed separately on this site at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.
The Gallery's permanent displays of Australian art are presented in an integrated and broadly chronological arrangement of works from the earliest colonial period to the present day: paintings and sculptures, works on paper, photographs and other photomedia, decorative arts and design. Because of New Zealand's geographical and historical proximity to Australia, works by New Zealand artists are collected selectively and often displayed alongside Australian works.
Key paintings and sculptures are continually on display, although from time to time works are interchanged. Works by contemporary Australian artists are changed more regularly in order to represent the variety of contemporary art in the collection. The changeover of light sensitive prints, drawings, photographs and textiles, which occurs a number of times each year, offers rotating highlights of the extensive holdings of Australian works in these mediums. The Gallery's commitment to providing the widest possible access to its collections is carried through in its exhibitions travelling across Australia and in loans to institutions within Australia and overseas.
New acquisitions
Events
Special focus
- Australian prints and drawings
- NAB Sculpture Gallery
- Rotary collection of Australian art
- Sculpture Garden
- Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series
- Tommy McRae drawings
- The Silk Cut Collection
Related exhibition sites
- Australian Surrealism: the Agapitos Wilson collection
- Armidale ‘42: memory and imagination
- Arthur Boyd & the exile of imagination
- Changing hands: the crafts revival in Australia 1965–1985
- Childhoods past
- Douglas Annand: the art of life
- Everyday Art: Australian Folk Art
- John Brack: inside and outside
- Federation: Australian Art & society
- George W Lambert retrospective: heroes & icons
- Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective exhibition
- Grace Crowley
- Home sweet home: works from the Peter Fay collection
- Imants Tillers: one world many visions
- Islands in the sun
- James Gleeson: beyond the screen of sight
- John Brack: inside and outside
- John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque
- Joy Hester and friends
- Landscapes in sets + series; Australian prints 1960s–1990s
- McCubbin: Last impressions 1907–17
- Making pictures
- Margaret Preston: Australian printmaker
- Misty moderns: Australian Tonalists 1915–1950
- Modern Australian women
- Moist: Australian watercolours
- National sculpture prize & exhibition 2005
- National sculpture prize & exhibition 2003
- National sculpture prize & exhibition 2001
- New worlds from old: 19th Century Australian and American landscapes
- Ocean to Outback: Australian Landscape Painting 1850–1950
- Out and about: The National Gallery of Australia tours Australia
- Painting forever: Tony Tuckson
- Place made: Australian Print Workshop
- Reinventions: sculpture + assemblage
- Richard Larter: a retrospective
- Rosalie Gascoigne: material as landscape
- Seeing the centre: the art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959
- Stage fright: the art of theatre
- Tales of the unexpected: aspects of contemporary Australian art
- Techno Craft
- The Antipodeans: challenge and response in Australian Art 1955 - 1965
- The Edwardians: secrets and desires
- The Europeans: emigré artists in Australia 1930–1960
- The Moet & Chandon touring exhibition 1999
- The spread of time: the photography of David Moore
- The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005
- Transparent things: expressions in glass
- Uncommon world: aspects of contemporary Australian Art
- William Robinson: a retrospective
Select Publications
- At home in Australia Peter Conrad, 2003, National Gallery of Australia, in association with Thames and Hudson
- Australian Art in the National gallery of Australia, Anne Gray, editor, National Gallery of Australia 2002
- Australian folk and popular art in the Australian National Gallery John McPhee, 1988
- Building the collection Pauline Green, editor, 2003
- Federation : Australian art and society 1901-2001 John McDonald 2000
- Grace Cossington Smith Deborah Hart, editor 2005
- Home sweet home: works from the Peter Fay collection, 2003
- Joy Hester and friends Deborah Hart, 2001
- National Sculpture Prize and exhibition, 2005, 2005
- National Sculpture Prize and exhibition, 2003, 2003
- Place made: Australian Print Workshop Roger Butler and Anne Virgo editors 2004
- Read my lips: Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman Kathryn Weir 1998
- Tales of the unexpected: aspects of contemporary Australian art, Deborah Hart, 2002
- The Antipodeans: challenge and response in Australian art 1945-1965, 1999
- The Edwardians: secrets and desires Anne Gray; with essays by Ann Galbally, 2004
- The prints of Margaret Preston: a catalogue raisonné Roger Butler, 2005
- Uncommon world: aspects of contemporary Australian art 2000
Image above:
Ramingining Artists
The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased with the assistance of funds from National Gallery admission charges and commissioned in 1987
Early Australian colonial works portray an emerging New South Wales. Its natural history, Sydney's harbour and inland and colony life. Tasmanian depictions of settler prosperity, pastoral idylls, a sublime landscape, Indigenous people at ease in their land, belie concurrent darker experiences of incarceration and dislocation.
The Victorian goldfields and prosperous Melbourne lured many artists. Including many accomplished Europeans who depicted the landscape in the Romantic tradition. Whilst portrait painting was foremost in colonial South Australian art, memorable depictions of Indigenous tribal life also remain.
Their works were painted rapidly in the open air; they aimed for 'truth to nature'; they are referred to as the Heidelberg School, or the Australian Impressionists.
Expatriate artists developed a sense of being part of the wider international creative community. Up to Federation in 1901 and beyond, a new sense of nationalism contributed to the development of Australian landscape painting. The Symbolism of the Art Deco era are represented through many iconic works.
Women artists came to the fore as Australian modernists during the 1920s and 1930s. During a period of industrialisation and modernisation in Australian cities some significant expatriate women artists returned with an understanding of European Post-Impressionism and Cubism and renewed interest in printmaking.
Between the First and Second World Wars a period of diverse socio-economic impact insued that included the Great Depression and perceptions of national identity and attitudes to the land were in flux. Within this artists including Russell Drysdale, Max Dupain created distinctive works that responded to the realities of their modern urban lives and work.
Two decades after the emergence of Surrealism in Europe artists such as James Gleeson and Albert Tucker are heavily influenced. The NGA holds a leading collection.
During the years immediately preceding the Second World War and over the following decade, a number of artists drew on techniques from European Expressionism, Surrealism and Social Realism in response to the context and atmosphere of the times.
In the post-war period between the 1950s and 1970s a number of Australian artists emerged with strong abstract investigations and an interest in spirituality and the Australian landscape. Godfrey Miller, Tony Tuckson, John Olsen and Ian Fairweather reflect a range of rich and varied influences.
The 1960s and 1970s were decades of great social and political change in Australia. Inspired by changing and more liberated attitudes, artists expressed a new sense of individualism and broke the rules of strict artistic boundaries.
In 1980 the Australian Crafts Board collection was given to the National Gallery, and this collection, together with more recent acquisitions, has allowed the artistic progression of work by several leading Australian craft practitioners to be clearly shown.
The Gallery’s collection of Australian art from the late twentieth century is rich and diverse. It showcases the wide variety of materials, stylistic approaches, and external influences explored by artists from the late-1970s until the turn of the century.
The collection of recent Australian art conveys the diversity and vitality of current art practice. Major contemporary Australian artists who have significantly contributed to the art of our time with their distinctive artistic approaches are represented in the national collection.