The Monash University Collection: Selected Paintings and Sculptures
Dates:
27 July – 22 August 1987
Artists:
David Aspen, George Baldessin, Henri Bastin, George Bell, Charles Blackman, Peter Booth, David Boyd, John Brack, Mike Brown, Jock Clutterbuck, Kevin Connor, William Delafield Cook, Noel Counihan, Lawrence Daws, Roy de Maistre, William Dobell, Lesley Dumbrell, William Frater, Sam Fullbrook, Dale Hickey, Robert Jacks, Michael Johnson, Roger Kemp, Robert Klippel, Percival Alexander Leason, Victor Meertens, Jan Murray, Clive Murray-White, Sidney Nolan, Fiona Orr, Paul Partos, John Perceval, Clifton Pugh, Susan Rankine, Lloyd Rees, Tom Roberts, Ron Robertson-Swann, Marcus Shanahan, Jeffrey Smart, Edwin Tanner, Imants Tillers, Tudor St George Tucker, Danila Vassilieff, Jenny Watson, Fred Williams, Teisutis Zikaras
Curator:
Jenepher Duncan
Opened by:
Patrick McCaughey
Location:
Monash University Gallery
Monash University, Clayton Campus
About the exhibition
This exhibition of sixty paintings and sculptures marked the first time the campus community and the general public were given the opportunity to see a comprehensive representation of the Collection at Monash and to access it in its new gallery space, opened in March of that year.
The Collection began with the University’s opening in 1961, when the first Vice-Chancellor Sir Louis Matheson decided to allocate ‘a modest sum’ for the purchase of works of art as a way of ‘embellishing’ the new buildings. Matheson believed that ‘to establish a collection of contemporary Australian art which would be on public display in the University buildings would be a valuable educational experience for our students’.
Held twenty-six years after its formation, at the time of the exhibition, the Collection numbered 650 works, which had either been acquired by successive Art Advisory Committees or had been given by various individual donors.
The Collection included a broad range of contemporary paintings, sculptures, and graphic works, principally by Melbourne and Sydney artists. The work of young, emerging artists formed the early core of the Collection and resulted in some remarkable early works by established artists, such as Robert Hunter, Robert Jacks, Dale Hickey, Peter Booth and others.
The exhibition was hung in the three exhibiting spaces of the new Monash Gallery, and included paintings and sculptures by such well-known artists as Sidney Nolan, Fred Williams, Roger Kemp, Robert Klippel, Tom Roberts, Danila Vassilieff, Lloyd Rees and Jenny Watson.
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Image: Catalogue cover showing Roger Kemp, Metamorphosis 1973, synthetic polymer paint on paper mounted on canvas, 145.2 x 231.6 cm. Monash University Collection, Melbourne. Gift of Dr J.E. Isaac, 1984