Celebrating 150 years of art
For 150 years, the Victorian College of the Arts and its predecessor institutions have nurtured the talents of many of Australia’s best-known and most-treasured artists.
ART150 reflects upon a rich and distinguished history, which began at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, and looks towards a vibrant future for Australian art and research.
We celebrated 150 years of art throughout 2017, with an exciting program of exhibitions, workshops, public lectures and events.
Events
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What's on
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Artist Kate Daw in conversation
Kate Daw, Head of Painting at VCA Art, has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1992, and has work in two current Melbourne exhibitions. She speaks with Paul Dalgarno about her life and career to date.
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John Walker in conversation
The former Dean of the VCA School of Art talks to Fiona Gruber during his residency at the Norma Redpath Studio.
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Cold comforts: Frieze editor Jennifer Higgie in interview
The Victorian College of the Arts alumna talks life at the helm of a revolutionary arts magazine.
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Watch: Artist to Artist: Gareth Sansom and Jon Cattapan
Eminent artist Gareth Sansom and VCA Director Jon Cattapan in conversation at the Victorian College of the Arts.
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Gallery: 2017 Art Graduate Exhibition Opening Celebration
Hordes of art lovers descended on the Southbank campus for the opening night of the 2017 Art Graduate Exhibition, held on Monday 20 December. With bands, food trucks, performances and more, the evening showcased the work of over 100 graduating visual artists at the Victorian College of the Arts.
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Sally Smart: VIP and Opening Night
Sally Smart’s new installation Staging the Studio (The Choreography of Cutting) opened on 5 October, 2017, at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, which also hosted an exclusive VIP evening on 11 October. The exhibition runs until 4 November, 2017. See photos from the events below.
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Sally Smart, Staging the Studio – Catalogue Essay
As Sally Smart's major solo exhibition kicks into gear at the Victorian College of the Arts, Vikki McInnes shares her insight on the artist in this catalogue essay for the show.
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Gareth Sansom, the transformer: interview
Gareth Sansom is being rightly celebrated as one of Australia’s eminent visual artists with a major exhibition, and an Artist to Artist event at the Victorian College of the Arts. Arts journalist Fiona Gruber had a candid chat with him.
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Jon Cattapan: a portrait of the artist as a new director
Jon Cattapan parks his car, grabs his keys. We’re in an industrial estate in Moorabbin, a 40-minute drive south from the Victorian College of the Arts, where Cattapan was recently appointed Director.
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Sally Smart interview: Staging the Studio
In Staging the Studio, Sally Smart brings together artworks and ideas that form an incredibly perfect circle. Here, she explains.
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Proud: an exhibition for students, by students
Find out what makes VCA students proud to be artists in the annual student-curated exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery.
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Memorial for Philip Hunter, artist
On 4 April 2017, the Australian artist Philip Hunter died, at the age of 58. In this appreciation of his life, eminent curator of Australian art Jenepher Duncan gives a personal account of the man and his work, with an introduction by VCA Director Professor Jon Cattapan.
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A Remedy for visual artists? Try music, spoken-word and performance
For more than 15 years, artist Jon Campbell’s Remedy programs have encouraged Victorian College of the Arts students to explore artistic expression beyond their studio practice. He talks to Precinct ahead of this year’s events.
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Prize fighters: how to make art in a world of winners and losers
As media attention turns to the 2017 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, we can be sure of controversy, but does competition culture get the best out of artists?
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David Noonan: making art in a dark and quiet place
David Noonan’s dynamic collages and cut-out sculptures have made his name as an artist internationally. But his new project promises to be moving, in more ways than one.
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Melbourne’s 9 X 5 Exhibition … the time is NOW
More than 300 contemporary visual artists have contributed original artworks for the 9 X 5 NOW exhibition at the Victorian College of the Arts, which runs from 16–25 June at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery. The show’s curator explains why.
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Photo gallery: 9 X 5 NOW Opening Night
Hundreds of artists, alumni and friends attended the exclusive artist's preview and opening night of 9 X 5 NOW on 16 June 2017.
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Artist Kirsty Budge in her own words
New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based artist Kirsty Budge is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, recipient of the 2014 Stirling Collective Award for Painting and recent nominee for the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize. This month, she will exhibit alongside more than 300 contemporary artists in the landmark 9 X 5 NOW exhibition.
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Watch: 9 X 5 NOW – meet the curator
Meet 9 X 5 NOW curator Dr Elizabeth Gower, as she unboxes some of the 300+ works contributed by Victorian College of the Arts artists and alumni for the landmark exhibition this 16–25 June.
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Minna Gilligan on art school, making, and the 9 X 5 NOW exhibition
Graduating in 2012 with a Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours), Minna Gilligan joins a long list of alumni who will feature in the upcoming 9 X 5 NOW Exhibition.
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Artist Laura Woodward in her own words
Laura Woodward is a prize-winning kinetic sculptor and artist. She completed her PhD The Introverted Kinetic Sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2014, for which she was nominated for the Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD Thesis. She currently teaches at VCA Art.
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Smoking out the differences between 9 X 5 inch artworks, then and now
On 16 June 2017, the Victorian College of the Arts will stage 9 X 5 NOW, an exhibition featuring original artworks by more than 300 contemporary visual arists. The 9 x 5 title refers to the dimensions of the artworks, which are based on the size of cigar-box lids, as was the case in the original 9 x 5 exhibition in 1889. How have our artistic attitudes to smoking – and its accoutrements – changed since then?
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Restless works by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists
Restless, at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, exhibits recent works by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists as a counterpoint to the “welt” paintings by Gordon Bennett (1955–2014).
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Artists on Art – and why you should take part
On 28 May 2017, the Victorian College of the Arts and the National Gallery of Victoria will present a series of floor talks by eminent VCA Art staff on some of Australia's most iconic artworks. Here, they explain their choices.
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The VCA in photographs, 1978–1986
In 1978, Foundation Lecturer in Art History at the Victorian College of the Arts Janine Burke bought a second-hand Pentax, and began taking photographs of her art-school peers. The fruits of her labour offer a slice of Australian art history.
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Being part of how the questions are posed – Geography artist in residence Linda Tegg
Victorian College of the Arts alumna Linda Tegg has been appointed by the University of Melbourne as the School of Geography’s Artist in Residence. She explains why interdisciplinary collaborations – and an open mind – are so important.
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9 X 5 NOW exhibition receives huge response by Australia’s leading artists
More than 300 contemporary visual artists have contributed original artworks for the upcoming 9x5 NOW exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery.
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Artistic encounter: Jon Cattapan and Ian McLean
Professor Ian McLean studied at the Victorian College of the Arts in the 1970s, and was recently appointed as the Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne. Artist and Deputy Director of the VCA Professor Jon Cattapan interviews him on his journey from artist to art historian.
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Artist Jenny Watson in her own words
Jenny Watson has never seen her gender as an impediment to success, but becoming an internationally-recognised artist requires tenacity.
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Artist Prudence Flint in her own words
Prudence Flint graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1989. Since then she has held solo exhibitions across Australia. She was a finalist in the Archibald Portrait Prize in 2015 and 2016, won the Len Fox Painting Award 2016, the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2004, and the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 2010.
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Sex and ping pong: Sidney Nolan and the Gallery School
The centenary of Sidney Nolan's birth will be marked globally, but what can we learn from his time as a student at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School?
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Lauren Berkowitz: the artist as collector
Get acquainted with the work of the acclaimed Australian installation artist and Victorian College of the Arts alumna ahead of her solo exhibition, Bottles, at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery.
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Patricia Piccinini on the art of push and pull
Her work is specific and universal, enticing and discomforting, recognisable and elusive – what are the driving forces behind the art of Patricia Piccinini?
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Photo gallery: ART150 launch party
Hundreds of students, staff, artists and art-lovers joined us for the official launch of ART150 on Thursday 2 March 2017 at the Southbank campus.
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Presence and the Australian landscape
Featuring work by artists including Frederick McCubbin, Clarice Beckett, Louise Hearman and Rick Amor, Presence, at Melbourne’s Margaret Lawrence Gallery, takes a look at how spirituality and the sublime manifest in depictions of the Australian landscape.
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Watch: Celebrating 150 years of art
Video: As we celebrate ART150, former and current heads of VCA Art reflect on what makes the Victorian College of the Arts such a special place for Australia's next generation of artists.
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Art of war: where conflict meets creativity
The relationship between Australia’s military efforts and sanctioned artists dates back to 1918 but, as the nation’s 63rd official war artist explains, there are as many ways to cover combat as there are artistic sensibilities.
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Lenton Parr and the birth of the Victorian College of the Arts
Get to know a towering figure in the Australian art world, whose legacy at the VCA continues.
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Art and amnesia: the Gallery School and the fate of women artists
As the Victorian College of the Arts celebrates 150 years of art in Melbourne, has anything changed for female artists?
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Meet VCA Art
Behind every great arts teaching institution are the people who inspire – and learn from – the artists of tomorrow. Here, nine leading staff members from VCA Art discuss their roles and arts practice.
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The VCA in eight artworks
Many of Australia’s most notable established and emerging artists have passed through the Victorian College of the Arts. Here, current staff reflect on the works that have most impacted them.
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Welcome to ART150
As a year-long celebration of Melbourne and its art kicks off, the Director of the Victorian College of the Arts outlines her reasons to be cheerful.
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About
A century and a half of art
ART150 is a celebration throughout 2017 of the distinguished history of the Victorian College of the Art’s School of Art, its genesis in the National Gallery Art School in the 19th century, its rich 20th-century history and its 21st-century present and future.
We look forward to exploring the deep historical roots shared between the State Library of Victoria, at which the School of Art was established in 1867, and the University of Melbourne, which, as home to the VCA, continues that lineage today.
Get involved in the celebrations with a range of public events, lectures and workshops taking place throughout the year, and engaging arts commentary and analysis from some of our leading art thinkers. After all, this is your story too.
Welcome to ART150Melbourne's art school
The Victorian College of the Arts was founded in 1972 under the directorship of Lenton Parr, drawing on the distinguished histories of its many antecedent institutions to provide artists with intensive, specialist, studio-based training and education.
The critical aspects were to value artists as teachers; to recognise that the training of emerging artists was an art form in itself; and that talent-based entry was the most valuable form of assessment but that it needed to be backed by desire and commitment.
Since 2007, the VCA has been part of the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne, where it continues to go from strength to strength.
Lenton Parr and the birth of the VCA
Creating the future
The 150-year history of the VCA and its antecedent institutions has involved some of Australia's best-known and most critically-acclaimed artists, whether it's Eugen von Guérard (the first teacher at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School) or heavy-hitting luminaries such as Bertram Mackennal, Arthur Boyd, Clarice Beckett, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton.
Contemporary, world-renowned alumni such as Patricia Piccinini, Bill Henson, Sally Smart, Ricky Swallow, and Jenny Watson give just a taste of the variety and quality of talent nurtured at VCA Art.
We are understandably proud of our past and our present – but ART150 is also about the future.
The VCA's Southbank campus is currently undergoing major capital works, with the opening of the Buxton Gallery in late 2017 and the redevelopment of Melbourne's historic Dodds Street Police Stables as art studios due to be completed in 2018. Join us in celebrating the Faculty and University's commitment to the training of future generations of leading artists and teachers and, indeed, to enjoy their art.
Visit the VCA websiteGet ART150 updates
Are you a graduate of the VCA or its predecessors? Update your details to receive exclusive alumni offers.
Update your alumni details
- 1992–2016 alumni
Are you a recent graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts (1992 onwards)? Update your details via the University of Melbourne Alumni and Friends website and receive exclusive ART 150 alumni offers and first access to our 2017 program of events.
- Pre–1992 alumni
Are you an alumna or alumnus of the Victorian College of the Arts (1972–1992), National Gallery of Victoria Art School (1867–1972) or Victoria College's Prahran Faculty of Art and Design (1981–1992)? Update your details to receive information about exclusive alumni events and offers, and first access to our year-long program of events.
Background image: Patricia Piccinini, The Skywhale, 2013. Hot air balloon, commissioned for The Centenary of Canberra. Photograph by Martin Ollman. The Piccinini Hot Air Balloon is a Centenary of Canberra project, proudly supported by the ACT Government.