VISUAL ARTS
Melbourne has a reputation for serious, rather than decorative,
art, though the style and substance has changed with the times.
/ Visual Arts
“
The inclusion of
various aspects of
design has been
another consistent
feature of the visual
arts program.
”
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The Heidelberg School, named for the Melbourne suburb, produced paintings
still considered emblematically Australian: Tom Roberts’ Shearing the Rams
(1890), for instance, or Frederick McCubbin’s triptych, Pioneer (1904). In the
1930s, a group of modernist painters who would achieve renown, including
Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff,
gathered at the home of John and Sunday Reed, adjacent to Heidelberg, now
thriving as Heide Museum of Modern Art.
Once public art was limited to statuary commemorating public
figures and historical events. Now, murals and stencils crowd the laneways
of the CBD, corporate buildings are expected to exhibit public art, and openair sculptures and decorated benches are commonplace.
Given the importance of visual arts to Melbourne’s cultural scene, it
is not surprising that it has been given prominence throughout the Festival’s
history. As an international festival, the program has looked far afield for
context and the arts community has inspired fascinating collaborations
among artists across genres.
Many of the Artistic Directors have sought advice from specialist
curators. For example, Maudie Palmer, Founding Director of both the Heide
Museum of Modern Art and TarraWarra Museum of Art was curator to
Clifford Hocking and Sue Nattrass; and Juliana Engberg, Artistic Director of
the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) worked with Jonathan
Mills, Robyn Archer and Kristy Edmunds. Josephine Ridge looked to
expatriate Louise Neri, a Melburnian who was Founding Director of the
Gertrude Street art space in Fitzroy and is now a director of the prestigious
Gagosian Gallery in New York.
In the beginning, the visual arts in Spoleto Melbourne Festival
of Three Worlds had an Italian focus. The first year, there were shows of
Italian sculpture and design works on paper and a major exhibition of
Etruscan culture. Only one Australian, Roger Kemp, was given a venue,
though Menotti did open the Festival by riding in a procession of painted
trams. The following year, more at home in the city perhaps, he brought the
Third Australian Sculpture Triennial under the Festival’s umbrella and an
exhibition from the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, alongside a show of Italian
new romanticism.
With John Truscott’s background as a designer for stage and
film it is not surprising that he presented surveys of the work of both
Loudon Sainthill and Cecil Beaton. He also held a survey of international
graphic design curated by Ken Cato. Jonathan Mills presented Lineage: The
Architecture of Daniel Libeskind with the Jewish Museum of Art and the NGV.
The inclusion of various aspects of design reflects Melbourne’s identification
with design and architecture as key to the city’s character. Sometimes
this meant using buildings as the canvas for art: Richard Wherrett’s City
Screens project (1993) with the Centre for Contemporary Photography, for
example, and the Bill Henson installation (1996) in the Spencer Street Power
Station in the year Leo Schofield focussed on photography. At other times,
the building was the artwork. Following his architectural extravaganza,
Babylonia at ACCA in 2005, Callum Morton’s Valhalla was installed on the
Arts Centre forecourt in 2009. In 2014 and 2015, the Festival partnered with
Naomi Milgrom Foundation’s MPavilion, an annual architectural initiative
temporarily located in the Queen Victoria Gardens on the very site of
Truscott’s Botanica which, beyond the link to design, also gave the Festival
a unique venue for free events.