Cream: Four decades of Australian art

Cream: Four decades of Australian art chronicles the development of modernism in Australia from 1940 to 1980. Grace Cossington Smith’s Drapery in the studio 1940 demonstrates the predominance of post-impressionism and European influences in Australian art at that time. The painting also indicates an end point for euro-centric influences and a new era of a truly ‘Australian’ style. In a post-Second World War environment themes that emerged include universal mythologies in an Australian context, a revised representation of the Australian landscape, portraiture, and social realist depictions of marginalised Australians. Artists include John Perceval, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, John Brack, Clifton Pugh, Sam Fulbrook, Margaret Olley, and Fred Williams, are represented by paintings completed as mature artists and are synonymous with their practice.

Alongside the ‘Melbourne moderns’, Cream also emphasises the development of modernism in other Australian centres. Donald Friend, Frank Hinder, John Coburn, James Gleeson, Lloyd Rees, and David Aspden each represent a particularly Sydney alternative to modernism, through the varying pursuits of expressionism, futurism, abstraction, and surrealism. Equally, the inclusion of Brisbane artists such as Vida Lahey and Jon Molvig; and Ray Crooke and Kenneth Macqueen – effectively Queensland artists – will challenge the predominate view that the centres of Australian modernism belonged to Sydney and Melbourne. Women artists, including Judy Cassab and Constance Stokes, who have previously received less recognition for their place in Australian modern art, are also represented.

The exhibition ends at 1980 with William Robinson’s Four cows, one bulling, which surmises a new direction in Australian painting; the beginning of ‘post-modernism’. Cream also recognises the contribution of the Australia Council and the people Rockhampton in the development of the Gallery’s remarkable collection.