If you’re not familiar with the work of the great Australian artist Colin Lanceley, now is your chance. The National Art School in Darlinghurst is proudly presenting Earthly Delights, an exploration through the artist’s signature technicolour assemblages and the intense sensory experiences of human life, culture and nature that underpin his work, affirming his vital significance and contribution to Australian contemporary art.
This major show, curated by Sioux Garside in collaboration with the Lanceley estate, tracks the evolution of the artist’s work in three main stages: the collaborative collages of the Annandale Imitation Realists, formed in 1960 with two fellow NAS students and described by Robert Hughes as Australia’s “first totally urban art-guerilla group”; his assembled sculptures from the mid-1960s while living in London; and the vibrant, sculptural paintings he became known for in the five decades from 1970 until his death in January 2015, aged 77.
Lanceley had a strong association with NAS, studying there in the 1950s, before returning as an educator in ’81 and teaching at the school for several decades and helping to establish NAS as an independent, studio-based tertiary art school in ’96.
Earthly Delights follows Lanceley’s never-ending quest to express what he described as the essence of being alive at a particular moment in time, and to escape the traditional strictures of painting.
Colin Lanceley: Earthly Delights is free to visit from June 24 to August 13, 2022.
