Summer 2022
’New Ways of Seeing: Indigenous Artists in Beating About the Bush'
Untitled (Art Gallery of Ballarat Members magazine)

The exhibition Beating About the Bush takes its name and thematic from a seminal 1979 essay by artist and writer Ian Burn. In his essay, Burn discusses the role of characteristic Heidelberg School paintings of ‘the bushman’, ‘the sheep shearer’ and ‘the pioneer’ in the shaping of our national identity. Importantly, and uniquely for the time, his text also highlighted how the images of Conder, McCubbin, Roberts, Streeton et al. were constructions that reflected the class and social relationships of the artists who created them, and the way in which they, and their audiences (the urban bourgeoisie), saw the world and themselves. 

See Untitled for full article.