Sidney Nolan Centenary

 Portraits/self-portraits

"The paintings are really more about myself and my emotional state, than Kelly," Nolan told writer Janet Hawley during the 1980s.

Sidney Nolan Trust

Centenary Programme

"Widely considered Australia’s finest painter, Sidney Nolan lived for most of his career in England. The ancient manor, The Rodd near Presteigne on the borders of Wales, was his home for the last nine years of his life and it was here that he founded the charitable trust in his name. The ancient landscape of its valley setting reminded him of the timeless and monumental wild places that he had visited in Australia and elsewhere throughout his career. His ambition was to create an inspirational gathering place for artists, scholars, students and others to meet, to exchange and develop their practise, and above all to create and to share widely their artistic endeavour."

Sidney Nolan, four abstracts, 1986,
enamel spray on canvas, 305x457cm,
Collection of the Sidney Nolan Trust, © Sidney Nolan Trust

Accomodation nearby Rough Acre 

Pallant House 

Chichester
Sidney Nolan exhibition from Feb 18


A major exhibition marking the centenary of the birth of Australian-born artist Sir Sidney Nolan (1917 – 1992), a leading figure of international 20th century art whose diverse oeuvre saw experimentation with a wide range of materials. Focussing on the artist’s time living and working in Britain, it brings together works that reveal recurring themes such as Australian history and literature, mythology, and the tragic hero/anti-hero. Iconic works from the 50s and 60s including paintings of the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly and the unfortunate explorers Burke and Wills are shown alongside Nolan’s sets and costumes from the 1962 Royal Ballet production of The Rite of Spring.

IKON Gallery 

Birmingham
Sidney Nolan exhibition from June 2017 

Sidney Nolan (1917 – 1992), one of the most important Australian artists of the twentieth century, lived his last years on the Welsh-Midlands border. To mark the centenary of his birth, in collaboration with The Sidney Nolan Trust, Ikon brings to light a selection of extraordinary paintings dating from the 1980s.
Fugitive portraits

Sir Sidney Nolan, Illuminations (1982).
Spray on canvas. © Sidney Nolan Trust.

Preparations: the Education team visit to Sidney Nolan Trust

Press The Australian
Telegraph Alistair Sooke
Art UK listings of works held in UK
On Desert Island Discs in 1962
On Front Row 17 Feb 2017 9'45-14'40: Richard Cork reviews
Transferences: Sidney Nolan in Britain is at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex from 18 February - 04 June 2017.




Sidney Nolan working on Qantel Paintbox with Martin Holbrook ~34'  1986 BBC2 

Review by Giles Auty (in Weekend Australian 25 August 2007) of Nancy Underhill, Nolan on Nolan: Sidney Nolan in his own words (Viking)

 Riverbend: video of the paintings set to Peter Sculthorpe's 'Djilile'

Riverbend - shoot out of Kelly and Constable Scanlon, painted in London: memory of boyhood holidays in Melbourne bush.

It is of Eden I was Dreaming (dir. David Muir, Film Australia, 1983)

evocation of the life of the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud based on a series of paintings by Sidney Nolan. Rimbaud has always been one of Nolan’s heroes