Sidney Nolan: Illuminations
This exhibition of selected works from Sidney Nolan’s 1982 Illuminations series comes from the Nolan Collection, managed by Canberra Museum and Gallery on behalf of the Australian Government.
While best known for his Ned Kelly series, literature was a lifelong preoccupation for Nolan, as seen in works inspired by Shakespeare, James Joyce and Thomas Hardy, among others. Illuminations was influenced by the work of nineteenth century French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891).
Nolan was a visual mythmaker, an artist whose innovative and powerful paintings of the Australian experience have changed the ways we see ourselves. Forever the innovator, in the 1980s Nolan began experimenting with spray can paint, which enabled him to blend colours on the canvas to create layer upon layer of paint.
Sidney Nolan and author Patrick White were two Australian cultural giants, who were once friends and artistic collaborators, but fell out and mobilised their creative talents against each other. The Life of Patrick White is showing in conjunction with Sidney Nolan: Illuminations.
