Art Essay
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Modernism and Postmodernism in Australian Art:
‘Australian Identity’
When westerners first came to Australia in the late 1700’s, we found ourselves extremely disorientated in this mysterious world, causing confusion within ourselves and loss of identity in place. But now as we are evolving, we begin to heal ourselves through learning to live in a more empathetic relationship with the land, being influenced and influencing the ancient soils we stand upon.
As we began to acknowledge that nature can provide, resurrect and fortify the stultified soulful, creative, imaginative aspect of ourselves overtime we established a clearer understanding of who we are as Australians, shown through art. Australian artist, Ainslie
Roberts creates works filled with imagination and feeling which seem to have a seamless relationship with nature and humankind, combined with a Western style influence to show what it means to be a white Australian. Clearer still in the works of Lin Onus who tackles a similar topic but with a more political approach towards cross cultured issues of indigenous and white Australians.
We can trace back through the evolution of who we were in relationship with the land through the development of painting, beginning from the point when this land was first discovered by white people. Early colonial painters interoperated the essence of the
Australian terrain with foreign perspectives by creating landscapes which looked just like their home land. Shown in Thomas Watling’s paintings is his attempt to portray the
Australian terrain, but his foreign eyes interoperated the landscape much like England. We tried to make it ours to conquer it instead of living with it which lead us to an extreme loss of who we were. Looking at these early works it appears we did not capture the true essence of this land as we were disorientated with where we were and as a result with who we were.
Families had no real sense of home and children were getting lost in the huge and
Modernism and Postmodernism in Australian Art:
‘Australian Identity’
When westerners first came to Australia in the late 1700’s, we found ourselves extremely disorientated in this mysterious world, causing confusion within ourselves and loss of identity in place. But now as we are evolving, we begin to heal ourselves through learning to live in a more empathetic relationship with the land, being influenced and influencing the ancient soils we stand upon.
As we began to acknowledge that nature can provide, resurrect and fortify the stultified soulful, creative, imaginative aspect of ourselves overtime we established a clearer understanding of who we are as Australians, shown through art. Australian artist, Ainslie
Roberts creates works filled with imagination and feeling which seem to have a seamless relationship with nature and humankind, combined with a Western style influence to show what it means to be a white Australian. Clearer still in the works of Lin Onus who tackles a similar topic but with a more political approach towards cross cultured issues of indigenous and white Australians.
We can trace back through the evolution of who we were in relationship with the land through the development of painting, beginning from the point when this land was first discovered by white people. Early colonial painters interoperated the essence of the
Australian terrain with foreign perspectives by creating landscapes which looked just like their home land. Shown in Thomas Watling’s paintings is his attempt to portray the
Australian terrain, but his foreign eyes interoperated the landscape much like England. We tried to make it ours to conquer it instead of living with it which lead us to an extreme loss of who we were. Looking at these early works it appears we did not capture the true essence of this land as we were disorientated with where we were and as a result with who we were.
Families had no real sense of home and children were getting lost in the huge and