Canberra, Australia.- The National Gallery of Australia is proud to show “Out of the West” on view at the gallery through April 1st 2012. “Out of the West” is the first survey exhibition outside Western Australia to present a large sample of Western Australian art from pre-settlement until today. It includes well known images and new discoveries. Works by established early artists, Robert Dale, Thomas Turner, James W R Linton, A B Webb and Kathleen O’Connor, as well as those by more recent artists such as Herbert McClintock, Harald Vike, Elise Blumann, Guy Grey-Smith, Robert Juniper, Howard Taylor, Brian Blanchflower, James Angus and Rodney Glick, will be shown, alongside significant works by many less familiar names.
When settlers started arriving in Western Australia nearly two centuries ago, they were mesmerised by the light, heat, long horizons, and vast expanses. By the twentieth century art societies had formed and local traditions had developed. Out of the West presents a starting point for visitors to the National Gallery of Australia to explore the art made from these responses to Western Australia, through a diverse range of media including painting, sculpture, drawing, print-making, photography, video installation, jewellery, furniture, decorative arts and design. Vital to the exhibition are important historical works from the National Gallery’s recently acquired The Wordsworth Collection.
This collection has been lovingly assembled over more than 40 years by Marie Louise Wordsworth, one of Western Australia’s most passionate and respected collectors. Based on Marie Louise’s deep knowledge of Western Australian history and her family heritage, the collection covers the period from Western Australia’s beginning as a free-settlement colony in the early mid-nineteenth century, through the importation of convict labour in the 1850s, and the discovery of gold in the 1890s. It includes rare views of Albany, Augusta, Bunbury, Esperance, Gingin, Rottnest and Toodyay. Her passion for Western Australian colonial furniture was pursued with a singular intensity, with the best aims in mind. These items are highly important for their rarity. The exhibition is a curatorial selection of work drawn from the National Gallery’s collection, rather than a full survey. Some works by Western Australian artists remain on display in the Gallery’s collection displays of Australian art as well as the newly opened Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander galleries.
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery. The building has 23,000 m2 of floor space. The design provides space for both the display and storage of works of art and to accommodate the curatorial and support staff of the Gallery. The collection of Australian art incorporates art made in Australia or about Australian subjects since European settlement in 1788, with the greatest strength in the 20th century. Australian art also includes the art of Australia’s Indigenous people. The collection encompasses paintings and sculpture, prints and drawings, photographs, the decorative arts, sketchbooks, posters and installation art. Included are significant works by artists such as Tom Roberts, Charles Conder, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton, members of what has been widely regarded as the national school of Australian painting, the Australian Impressionists. Sidney Nolan’s paintings constitute an important part of the Gallery’s representation of the art of postwar Australia. Works by Arthur Boyd are another great strength of the collection, along with works by Margaret Preston, John Perceval, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester.
The Gallery also holds comprehensive collections of the works of major 20th century photographers such as Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton and Max Dupain. Sculpture is also well represented, with major works by artists such as Bertram Mackennal and Robert Klippel. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art collection at the National Gallery of Australia comprises over 7500 works and is the largest in the world. The National Gallery of Australia has collected art from Australia’s Pacific neighbours since 1969 in order to display historical traditional objects from the Pacific as art rather than artefact. The collection spans one-third of the world’s surface, encompassing Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia with myriad cultures stretching from Papua New Guinea to New Zealand and Easter Island. It also ranges in scope from 3500 BCE to the present day. The European and American art collection is essentially modern; the representation of European and American art parallels the recorded history of Australian art over the past 200 years and finds its strength in the 20th century. The collection develops from the beginning of the 19th century in a variety of media which includes painting and sculpture, a strong collection of prints, posters, illustrated books and drawings, a near–complete representation of the history of photography, and an excellent representation of theatre arts, and decorative arts and design. One of the Gallery’s best–known works is Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles1952, acquired in 1973. Other highlights include Willem de Kooning’s Woman V 1952–53 and Constantin Brancusi’s two versions of Bird in Space 1931–36. Works of Asian art in the national collection range from Neolithic and early Metal Age ceramics from Iran, Japan, Thailand and China, to installations created in the last decade by Thailand’s Montien Boonma, Wenda Gu, a Chinese artist based in New York, and Yukinori Yanagi from Japan. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.nga.gov.au