One of the more interesting recent events on the New York art scene was the “Australian Accent” show at the Institute for Art and Urban Resources (P.S. 1).[1] Although it was partly a showcase for new talent, importing three Australian artists for their first serious American exposure, it was also another example of the recent American interest in Australia’s artistic life. (Five Australian artists are included in the Museum of Modern Art’s current “International Survey” show, for instance, and this fall the Guggenheim will feature no less than eight artists in their own survey of Australian art.[2]) The aim of the P.S. 1 exhibition was to demonstrate that Australia’s creative fecundity, so evident in its recent films and novels, embraces the visual arts as well. And it sought to define, through the work of three artists—Ken Unsworth, Mike Parr, and Immants Tillers—the particular character of Australian art at the moment.
Until the mid-1970s—we are told by John Kaldor in the exhibition’s catalogue—Australia was removed from the mainstream of artistic expression. Isolated and distant, it had no museum collections or exhibitions to speak of, and no firsthand contact with contemporary art from abroad. This situation apparently began to ease somewhat when the itineraries of major contemporary artists and of shows from the Museum of Modern Art began to include Australia. Soon after, the Australian National Gallery of Art opened its doors, showing, among other twentieth-century works, Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles.
Nevertheless, by the
