Japanese art
Now showing
Gallery 20 | Admission: Free
New acquisitions displayed for the first time include the huge sculptures,
Pair of Temple Guardians (nio), wrathful figures with bulging eyes and rippling muscles
who ward off bad spirits. And
Buddhist Map of the World, one of twelve surviving copies of a fourteenth century map
based on the firsthand account of the Chinese monk Xuanzang (600–664) following his journey to
India. As well as screens, prints and decorative arts.
Islamic Art
Now showing
Gallery 19b | Admission: Free
Our Islamic gallery is the only one of its kind in Australia. The display currently
features ceramics from the tenth to twentieth centuries from Iran and Turkey together with silver
ware from Mughal India. A recently gifted very rare Indian painting depicting a portrait of the
Prophet Muhammad is now on display for the first time.
South East Asian Art
Now showing
Gallery 21 | Admission: Free
The display currently focuses on sculpture from Indonesia dating from prehistoric
times, Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic periods. See four very large and sumptuous
India-Indonesian ceremonial textiles and a fine pair of wooden figures from Yogyakarta, Central
Java of the rice goddess Dewi Sri with her consort-brother.
Also on display for the first time is the recently acquired gold lacquer Buddhist
manuscript cabinet from Thailand.
The Shadow of War: Australian Surrealist and Expressionist Drawings (1930s – 1950s)
Now showing
Gallery 6 | Admission: Free
A new display area has recently opened in gallery 6 for ‘in focus’ displays drawn from the
Gallery’s extensive collection of prints, drawings and photographs. The inaugural display is
a selection of Australian drawings from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, which are surrealist or
expressionist in style.
Created in a period overshadowed by the Second World War, many of the drawings reflect the
anxieties and uncertainties of the time. The display includes expressive drawings by Sidney Nolan,
Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Roy Opie, who were part of the lively art scene in
Melbourne.
Surrealism was particularly strong in Adelaide as can be seen in drawings by leading artists
Ivor Francis, Douglas Roberts and the Czech immigrant, Voitre Marek, who settled in Adelaide in
1948. The works of Sydney-born, James Cant, who lived in London and Sydney during this period,
were also surrealist in style.
Fabrications: The Human Condition
Now showing
Gallery 19a | Admission: Free
The display
Fabrications presents a diverse range of Australian figurative ceramics from the 1920s to
the present. Largely from the Gallery’s permanent collection
Fabrications looks at how ceramic artists of the twentieth century have treated the human
form.
In Australia the potential of figurative ceramics dates to the beginnings of the studio
pottery movement and has featured consistently in many ceramists work since the 1950s.
Non-functional, figurative ceramics exist between art, craft and sculpture, making them some of the
most interesting forms art historically. Significant artists such as Arthur Boyd, John Perceval and
Bert Flugelman have harnessed the medium of clay to create some of their most celebrated works of
art.
Fabrications as the name suggests also responds to the notion that the human condition is
something that is constantly in flux. Constructed by the value systems of each generation and
through the cultures in which they lived these figurative ceramics reflect the stylistic,
political, sexual, feminist and personal expressive possibilities encountered by the ceramic
artist.
A Tribute to Doreen Reid Nakamarra
Now showing
Santos Atrium | Admission: Free
Doreen Reid Nakamarra was an extremely talented artist and a highly regarded ambassador for
the Pintupi people. This display pays tribute to her and the other Pintupi women artists who are
gaining worldwide recognition for their unique and sophisticated style of painting. These works
celebrate their exceptional ability to illustrate ancestral knowledge and ongoing travels through
country. Pulsating with rhythmic patterns, the works of Doreen create optical illusions, rising and
falling as with the desert terrain.
detail: JAPAN, Edo period 1615 1868, Amida Nyorai, c.1650, Kyoto, wood, colour, gold leaf,
bronze, glass, 101.00 cm (high). Elizabeth and Tom Hunter Fund 1997. Art Gallery of South
Australia, Adelaide
