Exhibition Feature Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul

Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul focuses on Boyd’s diverse notions of landscape and traces one of the most celebrated careers in the history of Australian art through this lens.

Presenting a number of never-before-seen works created by Boyd as a teenager, the exhibition offers the first in depth look at the artist’s powerful early grasp of the landscape as a subject. Bookended by Boyd’s youthful paintings of the Mornington Peninsula in the 1930s and the final phase of his career depicting the Shoalhaven area in southern New South Wales in the mid-1970s, Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul considers not only the topographic landscape, but also the landscape Boyd carried within himself.

As a personal friend of Boyd, guest curator Barry Pearce brings a unique insight to his curatorial role, allowing this exhibition to move beyond the traditional academic understanding of Boyd’s career and delve deeper into the rich personal landscape of the acclaimed Australian artist.

Boyd’s profound delirium of light and dark, swinging between euphoria and apprehension through diverse notions of landscape over almost half a century, is the focus of this exhibition. The story of Arthur Boyd is one of genius evolving out of childhood innocence to which in some ways, through extraordinary complexity, it returned at the end of a long productive life. His was an artist’s odyssey through landscape both seen and imagined.

Emeritus Curator of Australian Art AGNSW, Barry Pearce

The exhibition features work from four distinct periods:

Prelude: works of Boyd’s parents and grandparents Genesis: Boyd’s early years from when he was an adolsecent until when he left Australia. (1930 – 1959) Between Worlds: Boyd’s works while he was in the UK The Shoalhaven Years: Boyd’s work from 1971 until the end

About Bundanon Trust

Bundanon is a unique place for Australian art. Gifted to the Australian people in 1993 by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd the Bundanon property is located on 1,100 hectares of bush and park land overlooking the Shoalhaven River, near Nowra. The company’s mission is to operate the property (which includes the Bundanon Homestead site and the Riversdale site) as a centre for creative arts and education, to support scientific research and to maintain a working farm. Bundanon’s residency program for artists, writers, musicians, dancers, performers and scholars, and its creative arts programs for children, remain an investment in Australia’s future. Bundanon Trust is supported by the Australian Government through the Department of Communication and including the University of Wollongong, the Borland Bequest, Landcare Australia, the Australia Council for the Arts, Create NSW and a range of other public and private bodies.

ARTHUR BOYD Hanging rocks with bathers and Mars c.1985, oil on canvas, Bundanon Trust Collection