On display until 13 October 2024, Bundanon has unveiled WILDER TIMES: Arthur Boyd and the mid-1980s landscape – a major new exhibition and live program of 80s-inspired events.
WILDER TIMES provides a snapshot into a period of cultural dynamism in Australia, when ideas of landscape, land ownership and environmental protection were actively interrogated.
The exhibition includes the work of more than 25 Australian artists of the mid-1980s. The starting point of the exhibition is Arthur Boyd’s renowned 1984 commission of fourteen powerful landscape paintings for Arts Centre Melbourne, which have returned to Bundanon for the first time since they were created. These monumental works are presented alongside over 60 works by other seminal Australian artists of the era.
Artists include David Aspend, Mac Betts, Vivienne Binns, Brian Blanchflower, Arthur Boyd, Mike Brown, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, Judy Cassab, Bob Clutterbuck, Liz Coats, Bonita Ely, Gerrit Fokkema, Helen Grace, Robert Jacks, Tim Johnson, Robert Macpherson, Susan Norrie, John Peart, Toni Robertson, Howard Taylor, Rover Joolama Thomas, Imants Tillers, Timmy Payungu Tjapangati, Richard Woldendorp, and The Women of Utopia.
Boyd’s commission for Arts Centre Melbourne in the early 1980s was one of several invitations to leading artists of the time by renowned designer, John Truscott, to create new work for the interiors of Arts Centre Melbourne. These commissions were integral to Truscott’s conception of the theatres as a ‘secular cathedral to the arts’.
The ambition to create a space where artforms interconnect resonates deeply with Arthur and Yvonne Boyd’s vision for Bundanon, and speaks to the cultural dynamism of that period across Australia.
In preparation for major upgrades to the State Theatre as part of the Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation, Boyd’s grand lyrical suite of large-scale landscape paintings have been reunited with the Shoalhaven bushland and river they depict.
Drawn from rough paintings and sketches made in the landscape and painted in his studio at Bundanon, the canvases record the river Bangli/Shoalhaven from dawn to midnight, capturing the passing of time and the changing of the light.
Presented in the main gallery space of Bundanon’s Art Museum, the series is a testament to the celebrated Australian painter’s deep appreciation of the landscape and commitment to environmental preservation – a commitment that ultimately resulted in the gifting of Bundanon to the Australian people less than a decade later.
“We are thrilled to have worked with Arts Centre Melbourne at an exciting time in their evolution, to bring this significant body of work by Arthur Boyd to Bundanon for our local community and visitors,” said Rachel Kent, CEO, Bundanon.
“The conservation, protection and connection to our environment is a central ethos to Bundanon, not only as an art museum embedded in the landscape but also as a wildlife sanctuary on 1000 hectares of land. Boyd’s landscapes are presented in context – and in conversation with – works by leading Australian artists of this period, drawn from public and private collections.”
“These works offer a deep insight into an important moment in our collective history, continuing Boyd’s legacy of creative, cultural and environmental learning. We are also thrilled to be announcing another major program of live events, giving audience new opportunities to connect with the environment and reignite a nostalgic appreciation of the 1980s,” said Kent.
“I am so pleased that for the very first time, many of our Boyd artworks were able to be safely removed from their home in the Theatres Building and are now exhibited in the environment in which they depict. The refurbishment of the State Theatre has provided a remarkable opportunity to showcase our Public Art Collection to new audiences,” said Karen Quinlan AM, CEO, Arts Centre Melbourne.
The accompanying survey brings together important works across painting, film, photography and printed material created by leading environmentally engaged artists working throughout the mid 1980s.
On loan from significant public and private collections across Australia, this selection of key works contextualises the rapidly changing social, cultural and political climate in which Boyd was producing large suites of new work for exhibitions across Australia and Europe. Presented works include:
- Imants Tillers’ Pataphysical man, presented in the 1984 exhibition An Australian Accent at MoMA PS1 New York which attracted critical acclaim;
- a series of aerial photographs of the Kimberley, Pilbara and Shark Bay by Richard Woldendorp AM, declared a State Living Treasure of WA in 2012 for his contribution to the arts and appreciation of the Australian landscape;
- Timmy Payungu Tjapangati’s Snake Dreaming, 1984, is a work by an artist who was among the first Pintupi men to begin painting on hardboard at Papunya, a movement that played a significant role in shifting perceptions on Indigenous art from the early 1970s;
- the film work, Serious Undertakings, 1983, by artist Helen Grace which sees a rigorous and witty feminist critique of Australian identity and the historical art canon, touching on themes of domesticity, motherhood and women’s experience of the landscape.
“Reunited with the landscape that inspired them, Boyd’s 1984 commissioned suite of paintings are a hymn to the river, the rocky outcrops and the ever-changing natural world. Looking back at this period through the lens of Australian collections, Wilder Times presents a view onto a particular time in Australian cultural history and invokes the vision Arthur and Yvonne Boyd had for a future Bundanon from their earliest days in this place,” said Sophie O’Brien, Head of Curatorial and Learning, Bundanon.
“Taking these paintings out of their dedicated setting and sending them home to Bundanon where they were created, presents the opportunity to see the Arthur Boyd commission in a new light. Viewing these paintings under contemporary gallery lighting for the first time reveals the richness of colours and textures in each work, as well as unearthing details and nuances in the respective landscapes that go unnoticed in their usual context,” said Dr Steven Tonkin, Curator Art & Design, Arts Centre Melbourne.
WILDER TIMES: Arthur Boyd and the mid-1980s landscape
Bundanon Art Museum, 170 Riversdale Road, Illaroo (NSW)
Exhibition continues to 13 October 2024
Entry fees apply
For more information, visit: www.bundanon.com.au for details.