Australian Art through the Millennia

Melbourne is alive with a lively arts and music scene. It is the arts capital of Australia.

While this is true now, Melbourne has been the centre of art since the Australian Impressionists in the 1880s. However, the real beginnings of art in this part of the world began tens of thousands of years ago with aboriginal art.

Indigenous art

Indigenous, or Aboriginal art goes back not just a few hundred years but tens of thousands of years.

The foundation to Aboriginal life and art is the Dreaming. Dreaming is the aboriginal way of understanding the universe. It explains life, the spirit and the creation of trees, waterholes, rivers, mountains and stars, the animals and plants that inhabit this world.

It determines Aboriginal values and relationships with other living beings and the land. It is their spiritual renewal and nourishment, and establishes their responsibilities to life and the land.

Aboriginal art is the oldest Australian art – dance, song, storytelling, painting and artifacts - are ways of communicating the dreaming.

The Heidelberg School of Art

The next great art movement in Melbourne is the Heidelberg school of arts.

It began in the late 1880s, when a group of artists set up camp at Box Hill. They painted ‘plein air’, which is painting outside directly from nature rather than in a studio.

This grew into a movement of painting at "artists’ camps" along the beautiful bends of the Yarra. It became known as the Heidelberg School, named after a picturesque rural area, which is now a Melbourne suburb. Many of the scenes painted are still recognisable along the flood plains of the Yarra.

Artists include well known names such as Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, Jane Sutherland, Charles Conder and others. This lively artist’s community formed the first Melbourne artist’s colonies – a reflection ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, made possible by the wealth of the Gold Rush.

They are referred to as the Australian Impressionists as their style is reflecting that of international impressionism. However, the Heidelberg School stands on its own. It has been the first Western art to realistically depict the Australian landscape, including its harsh sunlight, earthier colours, and distinctive vegetation.

Today you can walk along the Yarra trail that guides you through the paintings and scenes of the Heidelberg School.

The Heide Circle

The Heide Circle was a group of artists between the 1930s and 50s that lived and worked at "Heide", close to Heidelberg along the Yarra. It has now become the Heide Museum of Modern Art.

They were the Australian modernists, including famous names such as Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, John Perceval and Joy Hester.

The ‘Angry Penguins’ evolved from the Heide Circle as an early literary and art movement of Australian surrealism and expressionism.

Melbourne art today

Australian art today is alive in Melbourne. Around Gertrude Street in Fitzroy is the centre of contemporary art, with many galleries, artists’ cooperatives and artist studios. The arts are supported by the Victorian arts council.

Along Flinders lane in the city there are the established galleries – and than there is the National Gallery of Victoria with its Australian and International sections, as well as numerous regional galleries.

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