Page 46 - Studio International - February 1971
P. 46
Sydney
commentary:
New art in
Australia
Donald Brook
The work of five typical young artists in Sydney
indicates something of the range of ideas and
attitudes forming in Australia at the brink of the
seventies.
When I came to Australia at the beginning of
the sixties, not meaning to stay, I had seen
Nolan at the Whitechapel, read Patrick White,
doubted Lawrence, and formed the expectation
of an art that would be like the country itself
pungent and quaint.
Going ashore at Freemantle reinforced the
image. Horses were tethered in the street and
wine came in the groceries at about five shilling
the half-gallon flagon. But these vignettes
belong to no proper system. One might as well
talk about the longest single-span ferro-concret
bridge in the world that casually spans Sydney
suburbs, or the ubiquitous caverns in the urban
roads that the endless wire and plastic entrails
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