Join Andrew Turley for this talk about Sidney Nolan’s four African works and his 1962 travels across Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zanzibar.

Turley’s talk offers a rare glimpse into a little-discussed era of Nolan’s life and work and traces the artist’s incredible body of work and his thematic and creative process at the time.For the last decade, Andrew Turley has unearthed the forgotten histories of several significant series of works painted by iconic Australian artist, Sidney Nolan.

It all started in 2012 when Turley was floored by an encounter with one of the paintings in our exhibition - 'Gorilla'. The screaming ape floating against African mountains gripped him, and for a decade the origin of Nolan’s African works has been an obsession. He walked in Nolan's footsteps across Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zanzibar. He delved deep into photos, diary entries and Nolan’s own reference notes held in the newly opened Sidney Nolan Archives at the National Library of Australia, then went to the UK, trawling the Tate for clues after spending days sitting quietly in Nolan’s Jacobean Manor house on the English border with Wales.

Turley looks through Nolan’s eyes to reveal previously unknown histories of the four African works on display. Using Nolan’s own words, photographs and travel diaries he will offer a rare glimpse into this little-known and seldom discussed era of Nolan’s life and work, explaining Nolan’s thematic process, his creative triggers, and why the series has everything, and nothing, to do with Africa.

Turley has written 'A Day by Day Guide to the Adelaide Ladies' held in the Tate and art institutions across Australia, the soon-to-be-published 'Nolan’s Africa', and is fresh off the back of planning and curating an 'Australian first' exhibition of Nolan’s Auschwitz work at the Sydney Jewish Museum after releasing the history to the world in Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age features on International Holocaust Memorial Day 2021.

Image:
Installation view, Canberra Museum and Gallery.