Australia: AUSTRALIAN ART

The visual arts have a long history in Australia, with evidence of Aboriginal art dating back at least 30,000 years. Australia has produced many notable artists from both Western and Indigenous Australian traditions including the late-19th-century.

Traditionally the art market has strongly supported oil paintings of Australian landscapes. In the work of artists Eugene Von Guerard, Arthur Streeton, Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan and Louise Hearman, the human figure has been placed within an Australian landscape. In photography, Harold Cazneaux, Max Dupain, Wolfgang Sievers, Mark Strizic, Rennie Ellis and Tracey Moffatt are examples of artists noted for their documentation of urban Australia. Since the late 1990s, senior Indigenous artists like Yannima Tommy Watson and Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Baby Boomer and Generation X contemporary artists have commanded a rapidly increasing share of a domestic art market that has long been both cultural nationalist and internationalist.

Australia has a number of major museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the National Gallery of Australia, National Portrait Gallery of Australia and National Museum of Australia in Canberra, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. Notable Indigenous sites have been set aside as UNESCO listed areas such as those at Uluru and Kakadu National Park.

National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne