Sidney Nolan has not only transformed the name of Australian art, but through his vivid depictions has shaped the Australian view of its history and landscape. His practice was often unpredictable, constantly experimenting in different techniques and media. Nancy Underhill’s book ‘Nolan on Nolan: Sidney Nolan in His Own Words’ describes his use of pocket-sized notebooks for preliminary sketches or “explorations”, stage designs and book illustrations. Throughout Nolan’s career as an artist he did not stay within one form of art making, but experimented with technique and style, this in turn created works that were new and exciting. Nolan in his Ned Kelly Series commonly used canvas or board to produce his works, he preferred a "fast-drying and extremely fluid enamel house-paint” (National Gallery of Victoria), which suited his fast and productive practice. Barry Pearce, The Head Curator, Australian Art, AGNSW and Curator of Sidney Nolan Retrospective commented, “(Nolan) as Australia’s premier iconographer of the continent… Nolan flirted with descriptiveness without sacrificing the hallucinatory unreality that preserved his loyalty to Rimbaud…”
References
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/__data/page/10827/nilan_ed_kit.pdf
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22283742-5001986,00.html
Ricky Swallow
The young artist Ricky Swallow works for flawless masterpieces, paying attention to every detail of his wooden sculpture, plastic moulds and paintings. Like his postmodern work iMan Prototypes (2001), Swallow practice involves the mimicking of “popular culture icons” (Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces). Created by injected-molded resin with colour tint Swallow confronts his audience by visualizing the relationship with humankind’s reliance on computers. The iMac skulls haunt the viewer by being a perfectly scaled reproduction of the human skull, a key component of Swallow's practice and a tool to achieve his purpose. In this particular work Swallow questions the viewer on their ability to ignore the evident control of consumerism in society. By repeating the same design Swallow portrays the idea of a worldly problem and the idea that we are not alone in the struggle between function and control.
References
http://www.gertrude.org.au/exhibition.php?id=135
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