Perspecta ’83

About the exhibition
This biennial survey of contemporary Australian art was installed across the Monash University Exhibition Gallery and Heide Park and Art Gallery after being first shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales one month earlier. The exhibition was organised in three sections: painting, works on paper and photography; the Exhibitions Gallery presented painting, with the other two components shown at Heide. This edition of Australian Perspecta was notable for the unique foresight and influence of Bundjalung curator and writer Djon Mundine in securing recognition for Ramingining art practices. Art historian Gordon Bull has linked this groundbreaking work to the inclusion of a number of works by First Nations Australian artists in the Bienal de São Paulo later that year. The first half of the 1980s is seen as a crucial period in the introduction of Aboriginal works within the context of contemporary art, and both Ian McLean and Terry Smith have cited Perspecta ’83 as at the forefront of this development.

Reference: Gordon Bull, ‘Curating in the Field’, in Inter-discipline: AAANZ Conference 2013—Conference Proceedings, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, 2014.

Acknowledgements
The exhibition received assistance from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council.

MUMA Online Exhibition Archive
MUMA’s online archive is expanding. We welcome your feedback and input. Please contact muma.communications@monash.edu with any information that could help enrich the archive for future audiences.

^{Image: Annette Bezor, The Snake Is Dead 1981, oil on canvas, Meranti (Shorea sp.), 184.4 x 102.8 cm (image), 208 x 126.4 cm (framed). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Michell Endowment 1981 © Annette Bezor}