Public Impressions: Sidney Nolan in Popular Media

Overview

Before television dominated popular media from the early 1970s, colourful magazines were an ever-present fixture on the coffee tables and in canteens and waiting rooms across Australia. Their coverage was broad and diverse.

The arts were seen as an important regular feature of magazines such as The Australian Women's Weekly, targeting the housewife at home, the armchair traveller who read Walkabout, or the bloke who picked up Australasian Post or Pix during smoko. With a focus on the coverage of Sidney Nolan, this exhibition explores how magazines brought art and culture into the lives of their readers, drawing out the eclectic strategies that were used to present contemporary art to a wide audience.

As an expatriate living in London, coverage in Australian magazines kept Nolan in front of a home audience, while international coverage cemented a global reputation and a sense of an Australian national identity.

Curated by Dr Kate Warren, Senior Lecturer, Art History & Curatorship, ANU and 2022 Research Fellow at the National Library of Australia.