2 October - 26 January 2010
More than any other artist of his generation, John Brack (1920-99) was a painter of modern
Australian life. Unlike his contemporaries, Brack painted neither myth nor history and when he
focused on the landscape, it was the sprawl of suburbia that caught his attention rather than the
ubiquitous Australian bush.
Brack has long been considered the quintessential Melbourne artist, a reputation which rests
in no small part on the renown of his painting,
Collins St, 5pm 1955. Today it seems more appropriate to
view him as a distinctively Australian artist who, with a penetrating gaze and keen sense of irony,
documented aspects of contemporary life in what have become some of the most iconic images of
twentieth-century Australian art. More than depictions of familiar subjects however, Brack’s
paintings are cerebral exercises which slowly reveal references to sources as diverse as the
history of art and literature within complex layers of meaning.
His was an art of ideas that aimed to speak directly to the audience, grounded in the
everyday but communicated through a distinctive and highly personal language, incorporating complex
visual analogy, irony and humour, and always underpinned by a deep knowledge of the history of art.
This major retrospective, the first in more than twenty years, will survey John Brack’s
complete œuvre, incorporating paintings, oil paintings, watercolours, prints, pen, ink and pencil
drawings and etchings, from all of his major series. It will be the first time this great artist’s
work has been staged in such a spectacular exhibition in Adelaide.
Curator: Kirsty Grant, Senior Curator, Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne
Coordinating Curator, Adelaide: Tracey Lock-Weir, Curator, Australian Paintings and
Sculpture, Art Gallery of South Australia
John BRACK, Australia 1920–1999, The bar, 1954, oil on canvas, 96.4 x 140.0 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Purchased, NGV Foundation with the assistance of donors to the John Brack Appeal, 2009, © Helen Brack.
