What to See at the Art Gallery of NSW This Summer

A side effect of the Covid pandemic in Australia has been taking a moment to appreciate what we have at home. When first confined to our neighbourhoods, that was quite literal. Now as Australia is able to open up again, even as Covid continues its creep around the world, we have the good fortune to be able to celebrate the art and creative communities already here.

A smorgasbord of that great Australian art is on offer at the Art Gallery of NSW this summer. Ahead of this focus on homegrown talent, we spoke to the gallery’s head curator of Australian art Wayne Tunnicliffe about the exhibitions to catch, specific pieces to look out for and why this summer program is so special.

The Archibald Prize
The Archibald is “always the most engrossing portrait prize in Australia,” says Tunnicliffe. Each year, the nation eagerly awaits the announcement of the winner with a fervour usually reserved for footy grand finals. In 2020, Vincent Namatjira became the first Indigenous painter to win the Archibald with Stand Strong for Who You Are, his arresting self-portrait featuring champion Indigenous footballer and community leader Adam Goodes. “It’s such an impressive painting,” he says. “When people view it, they’ll realise why it has won.”

Attending a portraiture exhibition takes on a particular poignancy in a year when we unexpectedly spent much of the year in isolation. “The whole prize has its usual run of the famous, the infamous, the not-so-famous,” says Tunnicliffe. “But as always, it’s an exploration of portraiture and in this day and age, looking at each other in an art gallery rather than online is a very nice thing to be doing.”

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2020 exhibition wraps up on January 10, so get in quick.

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2020
Until January 10 2021
Ticketed – pre-booking strongly recommended over the holiday period.

Archie Plus

Acknowledging the unusual trajectory of 2020, the AGNSW curators have used the Archibald as a springboard to examine the year through an artistic lens. The result is Archie Plus, “an expanded look at how we are at this point in time and what we’ve been through,” explains Tunnicliffe. Led by Justin Paton, head curator of international art, it involved many of the art gallery’s curatorial staff.

A free program of art, music, performance and dance celebrates “the spirit of humanity” and showcases the work of local artists including Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, whose towering sculpture installation greets visitors in the gallery’s entrance vestibule, and artists Mathew Calandra, Emily Crockford, Annette Galstaun, Lauren Kerjan, Jaycee Kim, Catherine McGuiness, and Meagan Pelham from the Studio A collective, who produced a spectacular mural in the Gallery’s entrance court for the project.

Archie Plus serves another purpose: to support local artists in their time of need. “It was a way to work with contemporary artists, to commission new art and to get money out into the community and support artists and the people they work with,” says Tunnicliffe. “That was a really key part of it.”

Archie Plus
Until February 21 2021
Free admission

Streeton
The AGNSW’s summer blockbuster is a retrospective of the work of the much-admired Australian artist Arthur Streeton. One of the founding members of the Australian Impressionist movement, Streeton is famous for the sun-drenched landscapes he painted in the 1880s and 1890s. The Streeton exhibition looks beyond this period, surveying “his whole career and the six decades in which he painted,” says Tunnicliffe, who curated the show. “Throughout that time, he constantly renewed and pushed his practice. He had an extraordinary ability to capture the world in paint.”

Streeton travelled to England in 1897 and served in France as Australian Official War Artist in the First World War. His later biography is less well known; he returned to Australia in the 1920s and became an environmental activist. “He actively campaigned to prevent the destruction of old-growth forests,” says Tunnicliffe, who hopes that visitors to the exhibition come away with a sense of how Streeton sought to use his talent as an artist to make a positive impact on the world – a message of vital importance in an era of climate change and ecological disaster.

Streeton
Until February 14 2021
Ticketed

Real Worlds: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2020
Real Worlds, curated by Anne Ryan, is a “show of extraordinary drawings” featuring the work of eight contemporary artists: Martin Bell, Matt Coyle, Nathan Hawkes, Danie Mellor, Peter Mungkuri, Becc Ország, Jack Stahel and Helen Wright. “It’s a very unexpected show,” says Tunnicliffe. “If you think of drawings being small black and white exercises framed and hung on the wall, that’s not what you’re going to get at this exhibition. There are big colourful works occupying huge amounts of wall space, through to drawings which include objects and accumulated elements from the environment, through to Peter Mungkuri’s really fabulous ink and wash drawings of trees done on Country at Indulkana in APY lands in South Australia.”

Real Worlds: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2020
Until February 7 2021
Free admission

Pat Larter
Twenty-five years after her death, AGNSW’s survey of the work of Pat Larter marks her first solo exhibition in a public art museum. Perhaps best known as the muse of her husband, prolific pop artist and painter Richard Larter, Pat Larter was a talented artist in her own right who become a leading figure in the international mail art movement. Her work – a mix of film, photographs, video of performance, mail art, collage and printmaking – challenged the male gaze and explored female desire and sexuality. She was a “very provocative, very humourous, and very playful artist who often included her own body within her works,” says Tunnicliffe.

Pat Larter
Until March 21 2021
Free admission

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with the Art Gallery of NSW.