Victorian Artist Society Show

A piece on the wall at the VAS

I recently had one small but very satisfying moment, seeing a single work of mine, Exit Tiger in the New Members Show at the Victorian Artists Society Gallery.

It is always good to see a piece leave the studio and sit properly in a beautiful gallery space. Especially this space. I learned quite a bit about the early years of the VAS whilst working on an unfinished graphic novel idea, a biography of the Arthur Streeton. The early years of the VAS were quite ructious. In the late 1800s the organisation went through several splits and reformations, mostly driven by tensions between professional artists and the wider membership, and by debates about what a serious, artist-led society in Australia should be.

The first exhibitions included a real who’s who of 19th Century Australian art history, including Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton, Walter Withers, George Ashton and Louis Buvelot.

So yes, just one piece this time, and as part of the New Members Show, but it still feels good to be adding a very small stitch to a long and slightly messy history of artists making things work in Melbourne.