Bundanon Art Museum Free Admission All Weekend
Saturday 06 – Sunday 07 July 2024
Head over to Bundanon Art Museum this weekend for a full weekend of free 80’s inspired programs to celebrate the opening of a new major exhibition, Wilder Times.
There is something for everyone in the two full days of performances by legendary rock-reggae band No Fixed Address, talks, wearable fashion workshops and guided ecological walks. Each day concludes with a film showing featuring iconic Australian 80s talent.
Wilder Times: Arthur Boyd and the Mid 1980s Landscape
If you miss the opening weekend festivities, the Wilder Times exhibition and events program run 06 July – 13 October 2024.
This major new exhibition sees Arthur Boyd’s series of fourteen powerful paintings of the Shoalhaven landscape return to Bundanon for the first time since they were created in 1984, as a commission for the Arts Centre, Melbourne.
Arthur Boyd, 1984. Paintings, oil on canvas. L: White Cloud on Shoalhaven River, 188 x 157 x 6cm. M: Dark Cloud Shoalhaven River, 182 x 152cm. R: Starry Night Shoalhaven River, 183 x 152cm
Sophie O’Brien, Head of Curatorial and Learning, Bundanon, says:
“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.”
As well as the paintings by Boyd, Wilder Times brings together over 60 works by seminal Australian artists from the time Boyd created this momentous body of work, providing a snapshot into a period of cultural dynamism in Australia, when ideas of landscape, land ownership and environmental protection were actively interrogated.
Artists include David Aspden, Arthur Boyd, Mac Betts, Vivienne Binns, Brian Blanchflower, Mike Brown, Arthur & 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 Payangu Tjapangati, Richard Woldendorp, and Women of Utopia.
Boyd’s commission was one of several invitations to leading artists of the time by renowned designer, John Truscott, 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’.
Arthur Boyd, 1984. Paintings, oil on canvas. L: Shoalhaven River Bank – Dawn 152x183cm. R: Landscape with Dog 265x312cm
The ambition to create a space where art forms interconnect resonates deeply with Arthur and Yvonne Boyd’s vision for Bundanon. Boyd’s grand lyrical suite of large-scale landscape paintings is being reunited with the bushland and river they depict while major upgrades are being made to the State Theatre and Melbourne Arts Precinct.
Rachel Kent, CEO, Bundanon, says:
“We are thrilled to be working 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. 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.”
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 love 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.
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.
Find full information on the Bundanon website.
