“He seems to hover on that thread between terrible and great painting,” Richard Lewer, winner of the 2026 Archibald Prize, says of artist Sidney Nolan.
asserted
Lewer → seem → Nolan
It’s not overly conscious, but there is a playfulness there.”
asserted
It → ’ → ?
“I think his approach to Australian history and identity still gives us a lot to unpack,” says Archibald and Sulman finalist Tom Polo.
asserted
Archibald → think → lot
“He continually pushed his subjects into something more ambiguous and psychologically charged.
asserted
He → push → something
The work doesn’t give you everything at once.”
asserted
work → give → everything
“Something I’ve thought about a lot in my own work is how you can paint a landscape that is recognisably Australian, but make it operate psychologically, rather than descriptively,” says artist Fiona Lowry.
asserted
Lowry → think → landscape
“I think Nolan opened up that possibility for a lot of Australian artists.”
asserted
Nolan → think → artists
Asked separately for three words to describe Nolan’s work, Polo offers psychological, restless and layered.
asserted
Polo → ask → work
Lowry suggests psychological, restless and strange.
uncertain
Lowry → suggest → ?
Denise Mimmocchi, curator of Nolan: Origins, a chronological sweep of more than 150 works from the artist’s formative years at the Art Gallery of NSW, describes Nolan’s paintings as “nebulous landscapes of his own psyche”.
asserted
Mimmocchi → describe → psyche
And you thought they were about Ned Kelly.
asserted
they → think → Kelly
“If Sidney Nolan were still alive and working, his new work would be worth nothing,” MONA’s David Walsh, the country’s most enthusiastic private collector of Nolan’s work, has said.
asserted
Walsh → work → work
“I say that because, essentially, the earlier in his career a piece comes from, the more valuable it is.
asserted
it → say → career
Since I own some later work, that annoys me.”
asserted
that → own → me
Walsh, who built his entire Hobart museum around Nolan’s multi-panel, early 1970s artwork Snake, also owns some of the artist’s old stuff.
asserted
who → build → stuff
Four of Walsh’s works, including Robe Street, St Kilda (1945), and Dog and Duck Hotel (1948), are on loan to the AGNSW exhibition.
asserted
Four → include → exhibition
They are among the more than 30,000 artworks Nolan is thought to have made in his lifetime.
asserted
Nolan → think → lifetime
By the time Nolan began the first charcoal sketches of what would in time become his best known series of paintings, the tram driver’s son from St Kilda had left school at 14, worked as an illustrator for a hat factory, married fellow art student Elizabeth Paterson, dropped out of art school, discovered the poetry of Rimbaud and Rilke, the paintings of Picasso, Matisse and Malevich, and held his first solo exhibition of weirdly abstract pictures, in which he sold nothing and had several works splattered with green paint by an unknown assailant.
asserted
he → begin → assailant
He’d also abandoned Paterson (and their infant daughter), moved in with his much older lover, muse and patron Sunday Reed (and her husband), ridden his pushbike from Melbourne to Sydney (and back), stowed away on a ship bound for Europe, been kicked off it before it left Australian waters, lost his soldier brother in a drowning accident, been conscripted into the army, stationed in the Wimmera, deserted, gone on the run, hidden in an inner-Melbourne loft and turned 28.
asserted
it → abandon → loft
Bristling with artistic ambition, trapped in Australia by World War II and under siege from his early forays into adulthood, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the figure that began to take shape on the canvas resembled an armour-clad outlaw whose violent and deadly stand-off at Glenrowan in 1880 was, by 1946, the stuff of legend.
asserted
off → bristle → legend
“In the Ned Kelly paintings, Nolan’s personal life and art came together,” curator Lesley Harding writes in the catalogue to Nolan: Origins.
asserted
Harding → come → Nolan
“[Nolan’s] feelings of entrapment and status as a fugitive played out in his striking images of the popular folktale and its hero … within Ned Kelly’s story lay universal themes of betrayal, power, injustice, love, loss and innocence – themes that resonated deeply with the artist’s own life.
asserted
that → play → life
Or, as Nolan would later put it, “the Kelly is really about me”.
asserted
Kelly → put → me
A bizarre creature from the planet wherever
“Ultimately, the works themselves remain really arresting and alluring and enigmatic,” Mimmocchi says in response to why Nolan and why now.
asserted
Mimmocchi → remain → response
“One of the beauties of Nolan is that sometimes we don’t totally know what he’s on about.
asserted
he → know → what
Sometimes it’s a vibe, but it’s an interesting vibe, and that’s the sort of thing that makes you re-look at things.
asserted
you → ’ → things
That multi-levelled, complex meaning can continue to resonate in the present day.
asserted
meaning → continue → day
“If we’re looking at the idea of an artist painting around questions of Australia, its landscapes, its Country, these are questions that need to be rethought and reconsidered.
asserted
that → look → Australia
Nolan is a way of looking at that.
asserted
Nolan → look → that
It’s not resolved.
asserted
It → resolve → ?
What Australia is, is a story that continues.”
asserted
that → continue → ?
“Like most Australians, I knew Nolan through the Kelly paintings when I was a teenager,” says Lowry, who included late-career spray paintings by Nolan in Searchers, an exhibition she curated at the National Art School this year.
asserted
she → know → School
In that show, works by Nolan appeared alongside contemporary artists such as Khaled Sabsabi, Shaun Gladwell, Joan Ross and Reko Rennie, but also street artists, including TAVEN, one of Sydney’s best-known graffiti artists.
asserted
works → appear → artists
“Kelly is the great mythologised Australian outlaw, while TAVEN comes out of an actual contemporary outlaw culture where painting can involve trespass, risk, speed and getting away with it, or not,” Lowry says.
asserted
Lowry → mythologise → it
“They’re obviously not equivalent.
asserted
They → ’re → ?
But putting them together opened up questions about permission, legitimacy and who or what gets absorbed into official culture.”
asserted
who → put → culture
Lowry, whose portrait of Penelope Seidler won the 2014 Archibald Prize, describes Nolan as “a much stranger artist than his familiarity allows us to see.
asserted
us → win → artist
We’ve seen that black helmet so many times it has almost become a logo.
asserted
it → see → helmet
But it’s an extraordinarily weird pictorial invention.
asserted
it → ’ → ?
There’s this beautifully articulated landscape and then a black geometric void where a human being should be.
asserted
being → ’ → ?
…and 40 more, not listed.
The Aporia
