Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul
Presented at Shepparton Art Museum from Saturday 14 September 2019 to Sunday 24 November 2019, Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul was a Bundanon Trust touring exhibition that featured 40 paintings and 20 works on paper, including a group of masterpieces borrowed from major state art museums, as well as letters, photographs and sketchbooks spanning almost half a century and featuring works from Boyd’s adolescence through to his final years.
The three-year national touring exhibition curated by Barry Pearce, Emeritus Curator of Australian Art AGNSW, explores Arthur Boyd’s lifetime of landscape paintings.
Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul 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 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.
Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul is supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians.
Being presented alongside this exhibition is the SAM curated The Boyd Family: A Legacy of Pottery.
The Boyd Family: A Legacy of Pottery showcases many of the over 140 ceramic works by the extended Boyd family from SAM’s own Collection.
Celebrating decoration, the domestic and the every-day, these works reveal the way in which art and design intersected for the Boyd family and the influences and inspirations that crossed art, architecture, literature and life.
Image: Arthur Boyd, Peter’s fish and crucifixion, detail, c1993, oil on canvas, Bundanon Trust Collection.