The Sidney Nolan: Myth Rider Forum
Join us for an afternoon of thought-provoking discussion and a moving musical performance responding to the exhibition Sidney Nolan: Myth Rider.
The Nolan Forum will feature an introduction to the exhibition by the curator Anthony Fitzpatrick, and presentations by:
Jane Clark (art historian, writer and lecturer and Senior Research Curator, Museum of Old and New Art)
who will discuss the artist’s intellectual and performative approach to making art in ‘Sidney Nolan: thinking fast and slow and painting like a boxer’, and
Sarah Midford (Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, La Trobe University)
who will highlight the connections that Nolan drew between the Gallipoli campaign and the Trojan War in ‘Mythmaking from Achilles to Anzac’.
The afternoon will conclude with a performance by the contemporary composer and multi-instrumentalist Rosie Westbrook, who will premiere a new composition for double bass commissioned by TarraWarra Museum of Art which she has produced in response to the exhibition.
TICKETS $20 ($15 Members and concession)
Bookings essential
All visitors must provide proof of vaccination and QR Code check-in, in accordance with Government regulations.
Masks must be worn indoors for COVID safety
Limited to 50 people in our spacious Main Gallery.
About the presentations
Jane Clark: ‘Sidney Nolan: thinking fast and slow and painting like a boxer’
For Sidney Nolan, making art was ‘a very serious thing’, at once intellectual and performative. ‘You have to gear yourself to it’, he once explained; and then, after months or even years processing his thoughts and layers of inspiration, he would paint – usually to music – ‘the same as boxing… quicker than you can think’. He changed techniques: never one to play it safe. His Leda and Anzac series reveal not only his wide-ranging visual, historical and literary appropriations but, also, an always experimental mindset and the fascinating evolution of his painting methods.
Sarah Midford: ‘Mythmaking from Achilles to Anzac’
Nolan’s fascination with ancient Greek myths was sparked while living on Hydra. During this time he visited Gallipoli and walked the battlefields collecting First World War relics. Visiting historical and mythical landscapes inspired many of the works in this exhibition, which illustrate the ways Nolan fused myth and history with his own experience of grief after losing his brother during the Second World War. Nolan’s complex web of stories stretching back to before the Trojan War and into contemporary Australian landscapes helped him to understand universal human behaviour and his place within it all. The result is Nolan’s own visual mythology of a continuous conflict – with its roots in the Trojan War but stretching into the 20th Century – and its brutal consequences.