Arthur Boyd may be the only visual artist ever to be named Australian of the Year – lauded throughout his career – but a new exhibition shows there is plenty of room to reassess his work.
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The show, selected from the National Gallery of Australia's collection of more than 4000 pieces, includes some of Boyd's best known works, as well as several that have never been exhibited or even properly mounted.
From ceramics, prints and sculptures to tapestries and a two-metre fragment of a mural that once adorned the dining room in one of the Boyd family homes, the exhibition takes in 43 years of the artist's career.
Gallery director Ron Radford said the sheer scale of some of the works – some were so large that Boyd had to dig a trench while working on them – as well as the long process of selecting and restoring those for display, meant the exhibition was very expensive to stage.
And while many of the works form part of the large gift Boyd made to the gallery in 1975, many more have been acquired since, including several in the past few months.
While some gallery-goers might baulk at having to buy a ticket to works by an Australian artist, Dr Radford was confident the show was presenting a new dimension of Boyd.
"The very fact that we're showing so many prints, drawings, etchings, theatre works for the first time, tapestries for the first time, sculptures – it really is showing a different Boyd from what we think the public conceive of him," he said.
Curator Deborah Hart, who has spent years putting the show together, said the exhibition was also designed to show Boyd's range in terms of technique.
"I think he is really one of the most diverse artists that I've ever worked on in terms of just the stylistic range," she said.
"Because there were over 4000 works to choose from, how do you make sense of that stylistic diversity? He was so wide-ranging, and he came very much from an artistic family who encouraged him to experiment and I think that sense of innovation never left him."
She said working out how to get the dining room mural, The Prodigal Son, into the gallery had been a huge challenge, as it remained attached to the four-tonne concrete wall on which it was painted.
"It looks so simple now, and so beautiful, like it's meant to be there, but I had to work with a team of engineers to work out how to build a load-bearing structure. So there's a lot concealed behind that wall that you can't see," she said.
"Part of my brief was to excavate the collection and really try and discover things and bring them to light, and show the gift in the context of the acquisitions and give him a really good go."
Arthur Boyd: Agony & Ecstasy is showing at the National Gallery of Australia from September 5 until November 9. Tickets are available through Ticketek.
Arthur Boyd
Purchase hand-signed, limited editions. A selection of collagraphs and lithographs, each with a certificate of authenticity.
To purchase go to smhshop.com.au/art/boydand theageshop.com.au/art/boyd
