“ Compare and Contrast One Body of Work from Each of the Four Artist- John Glover, Russel Drysdale, Lauren Berkowitz & Barbara Reid. in Your Discussion Address the Significance of Intentions to Their Practice.”

Australian landscapes have long been used to place fear and anxiety in the Anglo-Australian’s psyche. This anxiety and the requirement for Indigenous peoples to negotiate white ideals is reflected in current Australian literature and cinematic identities. This essay will discuss the critical arguments of what makes the chosen texts Australian literature. This discussion will be restricted to the critiques of the film Lantana directed by Ray Lawrence and the novel Biten’ Back written by Vivienne Cleven. The will firstly look at the use of landscape as a crime scene and how this links to the anxieties caused by the doctrine of terra nullius and the perceived threats from an introduced species. It will then look at the Australian fear of a different ‘other’ followed then by a discussion around masculinity and the need for Indigenous people to negotiate white ideals. The essay will argue that Australian literature and film reflect a nation that still has anxieties about the true sovereignty of the land and assert that Indigenous people have a requirement to fit in with white ideals.

The fourth lesson will be analyse the content of the picture book “Why I love Australia” by Bronwyn Bancroft. The lesson involves: discovering the visual art element and principals of the illustration (VAES1.3); introduce the artist Bronwyn Bancroft (VAES1.3); explore the traditional Indigenous feature and art technique used in the illustration (VAES1.3); reading the book to class, and guiding student to discover the relation between the words and pictures (ENe-1A).

Imagine this: a vast, open landscape full of beauty and terror, framed by the noises of life. Deep purples merging upon the horizon as the distant mountains reach for the white sun. Red dirt and green earth blending on canvas to make this wondrous land – Australia. Our Home.

Contemporary Indigenous Art in Australia is a fundamental core into the exploration into contemporary visual culture, and that of historical reflection and tradition. Art and decoration acts as an integral part of the traditional indigenous lifestyle1, such tradition repressed through the centuries of destructive oppression, that continued through to the late 20th century, reinforced by an education system and society dominated by a history built on the belief in Australia as terra nullius. Such narratives and visual representations of history present the colonisers as powerful figures of exploration, and colonisation- the bearers of learning and civilisation in a land of ‘primitive’, failing to acknowledge the sovereign rights of Australia’s Indigenous people.

Pack your hamper, dress to impress, today we have been invited to a picnic on the banks of the Derwent River. Through the appropriation of Joseph Lycetts 19th century artwork, “View of the Governor’s Retreat, New Norfolk, Van Diemen's Land” (1825), by contemporary artist Joan Ross in her mirror piece, “BBQ This Sunday, BYO” (2005), we will be challenging our thinking about the impact of white colonisation on the indigenous people and the landscape. Lycett portrayed an idyllic picture of British colonisation beside the luscious and calm Derwent River. He promotes Australia as ideal and peaceful. Tellingly, there are no native Australians in the painting - perceived as disruptive and violent at the time - suggesting that a move to Australia would

Jedda, Australia’s first colour film, created in 1955 by Charles Chauvel deals with an Aboriginal child adopted by a white grazing family. As she grows up, Jedda is tempted more and more to return to her people. Seduced by the wild Marbuck, she partakes in the film's tragedy, played out against a spectacular landscape. This essay seeks to discuss the representations of the Australian landscape as portrayed in the film Jedda, highlighting the use of filmic techniques in these representations.

The identity of Australia as a place comes from both its physical features and the atmosphere, which is often created by its physical appearance. Three artists who have depicted the Australian landscape in different styles are Arthur Streeton, John Olsen and Sally Morgan. Streeton’s works are in a realistic but lively style typical of the Heidelberg school. He was intent on recreating the light and warmth of the land. Olsen and Morgan’s works, on the other hand, offer more abstract interpretations of the land. During the 1960s and 1970s, Olsen captured the essence and the energy of the landscape with his bold and bright brushwork whilst Morgan’s work from the 1980s portrays Australia from an indigenous perspective, which she achieves through her use of Aboriginal symbolism and cultural imagery.

During the early settlement of Australia, art was primarily used for documentary purposes by ammeters and pioneers (Splatt and McLellan 1986, 1). The arrival of trained European artists yielded a wave of Colonial oil paintings (Manton 1979, 58), however, these artists were “…trained to regard the landscapes of Europe as the norm.” and therefore their work could not accurately portray the Australian identity and atmosphere (Splatt and McLellan 1986, 1-2). These Colonial artists “…retained the smooth, anonymous surface established by academic procedures and practice.” (Manton 1979, 58). As such, their European eye and techniques distorted the Australian landscape into picturesque, “park-like green hills and bubbling streams bathed in a gentle light.” (Australian Government, 2009), often grounded “….in the middle distance…” (McCaughey 1979, 7). In a stark contrast, the landscapes produced by Heidelberg School artists were lauded for their portrayal of the Australian landscape “…experience(,) realized fully in paint.” (McCaughey 1979, 7). Frederick McCubbin’s Bush Study (1902) exemplifies the difference between the work of Colonial artists and those of the Heidelberg School with its use of Impressionist techniques becoming “…an essential and explicit part of the painting.” (Manton 1979, 58). Within this work, the bush is treated as a familiar abundance and brought “…forward, virtually right up on to the picture plane.” (ibid). The “…iridescent palette and roughened paint texture…” of the work immerses the viewer allowing them to gather a sense of the heat dulled, melancholic Australian bush landscape (ibid, 54-58). McCubbin’s work, as with other Heidelberg School paintings, depict “…a world which is 'natural', self-contained, self-sufficient and paradigmatically Australian.” (Hills 1991,

It is the first modern landscape in Western art. Though the humans seem to be the main focus, the landscape is just as important.

The land has a lot to do with Australia, the way that its identity may have developed might be through its isolation and our slow understanding and respect for it. Landscape pieces by other artists at this time depict the land in a much different light than Nolan. Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s Wife’ has a woman dressed in dull clothing, standing alone, highlighting her isolation in the Australian outback. Whereas Preston’s abstract landscape ‘Flying Over The Shoalhaven River’ depicts the land to be an inviting and welcoming place.

Many of Tim Winton’s fictional texts mirror moments in his own life, and with an understanding of Winton’s personal context, we can begin to discover the importance of these events and an understanding into why many of his text orbit around similar ideas. Through the insight given in his landscape memoirs, Lands Edge and Island Home, a more considered reading of his fictional texts; Breath, A Blow, A Kiss and Sand can be found. Specifically, these texts explore the role that landscape and place have had in shaping his perspectives and distaste of the expectations of Australian males. These texts each explore certain aspects of the expectations that men all over Australia are subjected to that Winton strongly opposes. Winton grew up in the 1960’s middle-class suburb of Karrinyup, WA, his working class Christian family’s beliefs and values, and events in his early life have evolved to form many of his present-day values towards landscape and masculinity.

The first page depicts a pristine Australia with vivid blue sky and red earth but as the British begin their colonisation, introducing vehicles and technology into the country, the blue of the sky slowly fades as the dirty pollution takes over sucking up the colour of the land as well. The symbolism of the scientific and mathematical formulae, test tubes and plans positions the viewer to recognise that white man, in his efforts to learn about the land through experiments, is in fact destroying a land with which the natives had lived in harmony for many years. The irony of this is particularly obvious when the illustrator juxtaposes a picture of cows attached to milking machines and marked as to what cuts of meat they will become, together with branded and tagged sheep, with a picture of a barren piece of land and empty waterhole full of dead fish. Tan reinforces this irony through the use of unnatural colour on the page with the sheep and cows suggesting to us that the mass production of non-native animals for food is unnatural and is destroying the natural food sources of the land through pollution and

This artwork appears to be an abstract piece made from magazine clippings to create a collage. The artwork is a vertical piece that measures approximately 17 x14. It focuses in on the subject of a girl who is created out of neutral colors. She stands out against the rainbow background. In the background each clipping has a different element and pattern, but they all work in unison creating a rainbow background.

Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.

Tress works into Nature, clawing into his surfaces
in a mixture of media, creating a thicket of line or impasto, removing it, retreating, beneath mobile, 
airy skies. Tress is arguably the most recent consistent
contributor to expressionist landscape painting
from Wales. (Julian Freeman, 2006, p.126)