WITH the conclusion of the international exhibition The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece from the British Museum, staff at Bendigo Art Gallery have been busy working behind the scenes to install works from the permanent collection.
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The gallery’s collection includes more than 5000 artworks and with all works now stored in the new facilities onsite, access to the collection is much easier than in the past.
One of the highlights of the new collection hang in Gallery 4 is the monumental painting Journey of the Sun by Leonard French. Measuring more than eleven metres in length over 12 panels, this painting depicts the sun’s journey through a seasonal landscape.
The spring landscape features fish swimming, and birds rising from the earth through vines, flowers and trees and flying towards the sun.
In the summer landscape the fire turtle rises out of the sea through the dried earth, grass and trees towards the high summer sun.
In autumn the turtles swim in a violet-coloured ocean and a serpent moves through a golden garden of dying leaves and vines.
In the final section of the painting, a large fish is suspended above a winter sea in a garden of ice flowers. The trees have no leaves and thrust up to a sky filled with snow and rain while a white bird dies in the pale sun.
The work was commissioned in 1980 for the State Bank Centre, Melbourne (corner of Elizabeth and Bourke streets), and was displayed there above the tellers’ desk until early 2004.
Journey of the Sun was donated by the Commonwealth Custodial Services under the Cultural Gifts Program in 2003.
This is only the second time that this work has been displayed since being acquired – the last time was in 2005.
Because of the monumental size of the work it is unlikely to be displayed often.
Also on display in Gallery 4 are works on loan from a generous private lender. This collection of 15 works, which includes some of the great masters of Australian art of the 20th century – Arthur Boyd, Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley, Ian Fairweather and John Perceval – has been on loan to the gallery since 2005 and adds great depth to this area of Australian art history.
Another delight for visitors is the gallery’s iconic Leda and the Swan by Arthur Boyd, painted on a Kelvinator refrigerator in 1958.
If you would like to know more about the gallery and its collections, why not join a free guided tour?
Tours are available every day at 2pm.
