Monash Memo - 29 August 2001

Back to this edition's story list

Landscape beauty captures Williams audience

Almost a year in the planning, the exhibition Fred Williams: Landscapes 1959–1981 opened at the university's Faculty of Art and Design Gallery at Caulfield last week.

Gallery director Mr Malcom Bywaters said the breathtaking exhibition had attracted leading figures in Melbourne’s art scene, who had assembled to view a collection of major historical interest.

“The exhibition includes 15 landscape paintings covering 30 years. There’s a great sense of time, energy and commitment about the work, and a great sense of historical interest,” Mr Bywaters said.

He said the opening was the culmination of almost a year’s discussions with the Williams Family and Estate.

Catalogue author Ms Julie Roberts, a former senior lecturer in the faculty's Theory of Art and Design department, said Williams had created some of the most powerful and intuitively accurate images of the Australian landscape.

“Along with artists such as Arthur Streeton and Sidney Nolan, he was one of Australia's great landscape painters,” she said.

“He took landscape painting at a time when it was becoming hackneyed and reinvigorated the whole tradition. He invented a new way of looking at the landscape.”

All the works in the exhibition have been selected by the artist's widow, Mrs Lyn Williams, in conjunction with the gallery, from both his estate and his family's private collection.

The works cover the period from his return to Australia after a five-year stay in London, up until 1981, a year before his death at the age of 55.

Fred Williams: Landscapes 1959–1981 runs until 22 September at the Faculty of Art and Design (building G), Caulfield campus. Entry is free.