About the exhibition
The starting point for Before Night—After Nature, Selected Works from the Monash University Collection was Domenico de Clario's powerful and enigmatic Night Paintings of 1972–77. These evocative nocturnal works study various aspects of the landscape at night.

‘The exhibition considers the complex associations between night, shadows, fear, the landscape and the self’, said curator Geraldine Barlow. ‘Night, as it lays down a nurturing blanket of darkness, rattles childhood fears and gathers us into a disquieting intimacy with shadows.’

‘Before Night—After Nature reflects on the interconnected natures of humanity and the land at a time of social and environmental distress.’

According to political theorist/philosopher Hannah Arendt, ‘The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.’ Exploring this link, Barlow suggested that ‘In this exhibition we encounter haunted landscapes in which the lives of those who have preceded us touch upon the larger narratives of history, and uneasy landscapes where the natural order has been profoundly disturbed. Discovery and technology are evoked in their most wondrous and dangerous potential.’

Before Night—After Nature brought together key works and closely held treasures from the Monash University Collection, drawing upon both the contemporary and the historical. The exhibition invited viewers to explore their understanding of the body and the land, the individual and the global, the personal and the political. Both interior and exterior landscapes were explored, as well as landscapes of mind and matter.

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: Philip Hunter, Continent V (Edal's garden) 1989, oil on canvas, 195 x 270 cm. Monash University Collection, Melbourne}