The George Paton Gallery is the first institutionally supported experimental art space in Australia. Established in 1975 as the Ewing and George Paton Gallery, it is run by the University of Melbourne Student Union, on the University of Melbourne Parkville Campus. [1] [2] In 2022, the gallery relocated from its longstanding space at Union House building to the purpose built Arts and Cultural Building. [3]
The George Paton Gallery was the central hub for experimental art in Australia in the 1970s and early 1980s. [4] As well as presenting diverse and challenging exhibitions, it fostered a strong community of creative discourse through film screenings, poetry readings, performance events and hosting meetings by marginalised groups of artists and activists. [4] Early influential exhibitions that cement the radical nature of the gallery's first decade include Janine Burke's "Australian women artists: One hundred years, 1840–1940" presented in 1975, [5] and "The Letter Show", presented in 1974, curated by founding Directors Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers. [6] Later Directors developed their reputations as influential curators in the gallery, [1] including Judy Annear (1980–1982), who went on to be the founding Director of Artspace in Sydney and curator of Australian Perspecta, 1995; Denise Robinson (1982–1986), who became Director of the Australian Centre for Photography; and Juliana Engberg (1986–1989), who has been Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, artistic director of the Biennale of Sydney 2014: You Imagine What You Desire, [7] and program director for European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017 in Denmark. [8] The George Paton Gallery continues as a contemporary art gallery with a focus on the development of young artists, supporting emerging practices and research. [9]
Each year the gallery acquires a selection of works via commission and from graduate exhibitions, including from the Victorian College of the Arts. [10] The artists who have shown work at George Paton Gallery includes many notable Australian artists including Elizabeth Gower, Jill Orr, Vivienne Shark Le Witt, Bonita Ely, Natasha Johns-Messenger, Micky Allan, Maria Kozic, Pat Brassington, Aleks Danko, Peter Burgess, and Jenny Watson. [1]
Newly acquired works feature annually in an exhibition alongside a selection of works from the collection. The 2024 exhibition, ‘UMSU Art Collection: New Acquisitions and Selected Works’ ran from 19 February 2024 - 1 March 2024. The show was curated by Channon Goodwin and Ellie Thomas and included new acquisitions by Grace Chander Britt Salt, and Lachlan Stonehouse, with works from the collection including Astrid Mulder, Kenneth Suico, Noni Drew, David Glaubitz, Jenni Walker, Kaijern Koo and Guy Grabowsky. [11]
Founding Directors Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers played a leading role in developing George Paton Gallery as a feminist art space. [12] The gallery has made a significant contribution to the women’s art movement through the establishment of the Women’s Art Register and through seminal lectures on women in the arts given by leading figures including Mary Kelly, Lucy Lippard, Laura Mulvey. [13] The legacy of the women's art movement and its associated activities at the George Paton Gallery is outlined by Janine Burke as a revolution of art, politics, experimentation and activism. [14] The environment at the gallery fostered the emergence of key feminist organisations and publications including the Women's Art Register, Lip magazine, Art Almanac and the Women's Art Forum. [15]
Joy St Clair Hester was an Australian artist. She was a member of the Angry Penguins movement and the Heide Circle who played an integral role in the development of Australian Modernism. Hester is best known for her bold and expressive ink drawings. Her work was charged with a heightened awareness of mortality due to the death of her father during her childhood, the threat of war, and her personal experience with Hodgkin's disease. Hester is most well known for the series Face, Sleep, and Love (1948–49) as well as the later works, The Lovers (1956–58).
The Australian Centre For Contemporary Art (ACCA) is a contemporary art gallery in Melbourne, Australia. The gallery is located on Sturt Street in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, in the inner suburb of Southbank. Designed by Wood Marsh Architects, the building was completed in 2002, and includes facilities for Chunky Move dance company and the Malthouse Theatre.
Lynne Cooke is an Australian-born art scholar. Since August 2014 she has been the Senior Curator, Special Projects in Modern Art, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Janine Burke is an Australian author, art historian, biographer, novelist and photographer. She also curates exhibitions of historical and contemporary art. She is Honorary Senior Fellow, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne. She was born in Melbourne in 1952.
Australian feminist art timeline lists exhibitions, artists, artworks and milestones that have contributed to discussion and development of feminist art in Australia. The timeline focuses on the impact of feminism on Australian contemporary art. It was initiated by Daine Singer for The View From Here: 19 Perspectives on Feminism, an exhibition and publishing project held at West Space as part of the 2010 Next Wave Festival.
Lina Bryans, was an Australian modernist painter.
Bonita Ely is an Australian multidisciplinary artist who lives in Sydney, whose work has been internationally exhibited. She established her reputation as an environmental artist in the 1970s through her works concerning the Murray-Darling river system. She has a diverse practice across various media and has often addressed feminist, environmental and socio-political issues.
The Women’s Art Register is Australia's living archive of women's art practice. It is a national artist-run, not-for-profit community and resource in Melbourne, Australia.
Robert Owen is an Australian artist and curator. He lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
Kristin "Kiffy" Dattilo Rubbo (1944–1980) was an Australian gallery director and curator.
Art Almanac is a monthly guide to galleries, news and awards in Australia established in 1974.
Vicki Varvaressos is an Australian contemporary figurative expressionist painter. Sometimes referred to as a “transitional artist”, her painting style and subject matter has evolved throughout her career. Many of her works are of women and their experiences in Australia.
Melinda Harper is an Australian abstract artist. She works with a variety of media including drawing, collage, photography, screen printing, painted objects and embroideries. Her work is characterised by the use of colours, stripes and geometrical designs.
Elizabeth Gower is an Australian abstract artist who lives and works in Melbourne. She is best known for her work in paper and mixed-media monochrome and coloured collages, drawn from her sustained practice of collecting urban detritus.
Lesley Dumbrell, born on 14 October 1941 in Melbourne, is an Australian artist known for her precise abstract geometric paintings, and was a pioneer of the Australian Women's Art Movement of the 1970s. She became known as 'one of the leading artists in Melbourne to adopt the international styles of colour field and hard-edged abstraction'.
Geoffrey Bartlett is an Australian sculptor working in Melbourne. Bartlett's career in sculpture has spanned over almost 50 years since 1973. He is known for both his studio-based works and major public commissions in sculpture. Bartlett's work has been noted for its contribution to modern Australia sculpture. In 2007, the National Gallery of Victoria held a major retrospective on Bartlett's work since 1987.
Hertha Kluge-Pott is a German-born Australian printmaker based in Melbourne.
Rozalind Drummond is a photographic artist and an early exponent of postmodernism in Australia.
The Women's Art Movement (WAM) was an Australian feminist art movement, founded in Sydney in 1974, Melbourne in 1974, and Adelaide in 1976.
Meredith Rogers is an Australian theatre director and academic, and has written on performance and theatremaking. Rogers is an Honorary Associate of the Humanities & Social Sciences School at La Trobe University and for over a decade has lectured in their Theatre and Drama Program.
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