National Gallery of Australia

And that contemporary abstract style was informed nevertheless by her traditional life.

Again, in that documentary I saw, there was a scene where some of her grandkids, I think they were, adults now, were looking at some of the artworks that are about to be displayed in this documentary at the National Gallery and they were literally reading her paintings like maps of the earth, maps of their lands.

They could tell where the emu eggs were, where the yams were growing, where the rivers split.

They could read her paintings.

Then she does a decade of batiks and would have learned more about colours.

So when she gets to painting, she's kind of primed and ready to go, even so.

The fact that the third painting she ever painted, not the third one that she thought was good enough to show, but the third painting she ever painted gets bought by the National Gallery in Canberra.

And, in fact, the National Gallery director at the time, James Mollison, when he saw her work, he visited Utopia, he saw her work, described her as one of the finest abstract expressions he had ever encountered.

This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Woiwurrung people.

NGA Art Talks is a podcast brought to you by the National Gallery of Australia.

I'm Professor Lisa Slade, a curator, art historian and the Hugh Ramsey Chair in Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne.

This is The Gleeson Tapes and in this series we'll be delving deep into the archives to hear from some of Australia's most enduring and influential artists.

In the late 1970s, before the National Gallery of Australia opened its doors, the surrealist artist and writer James Gleeson set out across Australia with a tape recorder and a mission to build an oral history archive that captured the stories behind key works of art in the National Collection, told by the artists themselves.

Gleeson completed close to 100 interviews, letting the tape roll and the stories unfold from one artist to another.

But before we start, let's take a moment to talk about James Gleeson, the man behind the archive.

Brilliant.

And with the Cambodian works, there was a distinction between items that ended up in museums.

So if something's in the Met or in the National Gallery of Australia, you know it's there.

They generally have online catalogs.

You can go see it if it's on display.

He's a cultural icon who merged the harsh beauty of the Australian bush with folklore, myth and surrealism.

We're talking about Sidney Nolan, who most Australians will know from the Ned Kelly series, those bold, stark paintings of a black figure straddling a horse, many of which are housed in the National Gallery in Canberra.

But how did Nolan come to paint such a quintessential Australian image in the 1940s? And did he know that his magical works would transform the image of the post-war nation? A new exhibition, curated by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, explores Nolan's early years in Australia and includes, for the first time in 60 years, the entire 27 paintings that make up the Kelly series.

Denise Mamocki is behind the show and a senior curator with the gallery.

Her art's now traveled around the world, worn by artists like Amyl and the Sniffers and Kneecap.

She was one of the youngest artists ever selected for the National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery, and through it all she's using something unexpected as her form of resistance, joy.

So I'm keen to know, how are you keeping joy in your life? Where are you finding your whimsy? Text in, 0439757555, 'cause Aretha is opening her first solo exhibition in Melbourne tomorrow, and I'm so happy to say that she's here in the studio with us.

Aretha Brown, thanks so much for coming on Hack.

The tagline for this show is, "The only thing harder than being born Aboriginal, gay, and a woman is being born a romantic." Can we just start there? Tell me more.

Uh, yeah, so the, the title of my first solo is called Born Romantic, and it's all about love, or as a lot of Blackfellas say in Creole, lub, um, with a B.

And it, it was just something that I really needed to make right now, I think, after, you know, finishing the big National Gallery Triennial this year, which that work that I made, it was all about, you know, first contact and colonization, and it was a timeline that spanned over, I think, 230 years of, you know, the history of this country and First Nations history.

And to be honest, it was, it was heavy, of course.

Because Aretha has been in the public eye since she was 16 years old when her speech at an Invasion Day rally in Melbourne made national headlines.

She quickly became a leading voice for young First Nations people and was one of the youngest people ever selected for the National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery.

Aretha also founded an art collective called Kiss My Art.

Together they've painted nearly 70 murals right around the world.

Yeah, so the title of my first solo is called Born Romantic, and it's all about love, or as a lot of Black followers say in Creole, love with a B.

And it was just something that I really needed to make right now.

I think after, you know, finishing the big National Gallery triennale this year, which...

That work that I made, it was all about, you know, first contact and colonization.

And it's been fantastic to see her love of the arts blossom through an initiative that Dementia Australia has with two of our national institutions.

On Tuesdays, there's an art therapy group at both the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and the Portrait Gallery of Australia.

They sit side by side on the lake and my mum goes to the one at the Portrait Gallery.

And it's such a simple but powerful concept that the people living with dementia come and Seats are already prepared in front of two different artworks by the guides and curators.