From the Art Collection

In May this year, the School was delighted to receive 12 paintings on loan from a current Girls Grammar family.

These works are currently exhibited throughout the Main Building and Kathleen Lilley Building. They include pieces by prominent artists Robert Brownhall, Ben Quilty, Richard Bell and Sam Cranstoun.

Robert Brownhall is known for his realist, yet dream-like and atmospheric paintings of the everyday. His works draw on interiors and exteriors of public buildings and cityscapes.

Richard Bell works across several media, often using text to pose provocative and satirical challenges to preconceived ideas of aboriginal art. The painting on display is called I Like Art and is from a series where he plays on his ‘Bell’s Theorem’—‘Aboriginal Art—it’s a white thing’ series.

Sam Cranstoun often focusses on historical events as a way of demonstrating how we shape the past and how mass media and popular culture contribute to a collective understanding of history. First Sign of Land, on loan to the School, references the moon landing in July 1969.

The School is honoured to have on loan five Ben Quilty works, coinciding with his exhibition that is currently on display in the Gallery of Modern Art.

Quilty’s painting style is readily recognised from his thick layering of paint, created by using different tools such as palette knifes or cooking spatulas. Through his portraits and landscapes, Quilty raises questions about personal and national identity, while his Torana and skull paintings, subjects he has returned to time and again, explore young male culture and toxic masculinity.

Quilty is also known for his large Rorschach paintings. The work hung in the Main Building is a Rorschach diptych portrait of Germaine Greer, one of a series he painted of her in 2010.

The School appreciates the generosity of this family and the interest they have shown in Girls Grammar’s fine arts collection.

Ms Lorraine Thornquist
Manager of Collections