It’s interesting to think about how Creative Australia’s Board may have acted differently if they had had time to consult the history books before making their decision to rescind the invitation of next year’s chosen Venice Biennale Australian representative artist.
Perhaps if they had taken note of the similarly controversial decisions made by the Robert Menzies Government 67 years ago in selecting the artists for one of Australia’s first official delegations to the Biennale, things may have gone a different way.
Read: Governance advisory firm appointed to review Creative Australia’s 2026 Venice Biennale process
That said, it would be unfair to draw direct comparisons between how things worked in 1958 compared to how they operate today.
For a start – as we learn from art history academics like Dr Sarah Scott (Australian National University) and Professor Charles Green (University of Melbourne) in Green’s chapter within Kerry Gardner’s book Australia at the Venice Biennale: A Century of Contemporary Art (2021) – in 1958, artists chosen to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale were decided by the Prime Minister and ‘his art advisers’ (a defining aspect of the Biennale selection process that is very different to how things work now).
As Green explains, the Menzies Government’s Biennale curatorial panel “made a deeply conservative choice [of Australian artists for representation at the Biennale in 1958]”, in a decision that was “in conscious and deliberate defiance of the Venice organisers’ desire for contemporary art”.
Evidently, the conservatism shown by the Australian government caused backlash from members of the Australian arts community at the time and was also regarded poorly by international art world figures, who deemed the Australian works in that year’s Biennale as stale and passé.
The Government’s choice of Biennale artists that year were Arthur Streeton (who had died 15 years prior in 1943) and Arthur Boyd (1920 – 1999).
Their picks included Streeton’s painting Golden Summer, Eaglemont (1889) and Boyd’s Wimmera landscape series, which were painted in the early 1950s. Both are traditional oil paintings presenting powerful evocations of semi-arid Australian outback scenes (in the case of Streeton’s work, they are distinctly colonial scenes).
According to Green – whose writing draws on research by Dr Sarah Scott – after these works were shown at the 1958 Venice Biennale to a disapproving international critical response, the Menzies Commonwealth Art Advisory Board (a committee hand-picked by government) were so affronted by this international reception they decided to withdraw from their commitment to the Venice Biennale entirely, and stopped sending Australian artists to this international exhibition for a period that turned out to be the next 20 years.
It was not until 1978, under the Whitlam Government, that the next Australian Venice Biennale artist delegation was sent to this prestigious event.
Interestingly, the 1978 Biennale delegation comprised three artists whose work was far more engaged with the politics of the day and spoke directly to that year’s Biennale curatorial theme, which was ‘From Nature to Art, from Art to Nature’.
Australian artist John Davis showed his sculptural work Continuum and Transference (1977-78). Ken Unsworth presented his Suspended Stone Circle (1974-5) and his performance work Face to Face (1977), and Robert Owen exhibited his installation pieces Chinese Whispers (1977) and Split Gate (1977).
So, perhaps if we can learn anything from the 1958 Australian delegation Biennale furore as compared to the Biennale controversy playing out today, it is that both decisions – made almost 50 years apart – mark turning points in Australian art that hinge on ideas of what is (or is not) an appropriate representation of ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian art’ on the international stage (including, of course, the question of who is the ultimate arbiter of that representation).
Another interesting thing this history shows us is how Australian artists – at least since the late 1970s – have not shied away from making work for the Venice Biennale that is directly engaged with politics.
In 1978, political ideas around environmentalism were at the forefront and, in the 40 years since, there have been a plethora of no less urgent political ideas embedded in the work of the Australian Venice Biennale artist representatives (Gardner’s survey book gives great insight into many of them).
While the curatorial theme for the 2026 Venice Biennale is yet to be announced, as we know, it is only this year that the nature of Australian artists’ supposedly ‘political works’ (made almost 20 years ago) have been deemed inappropriate by the Board of the Federal Government’s arts funding agency to allow that artist to be included in this international exhibition.
For many in the sector, this decision ultimately marks another significant turning point in the Australian arts scene – one which we can only hope will not lead to another 20-year gap in artist representation at this event.
