The City Wakes, The City Sleeps

The City Wakes, The City Sleeps curated by Dr Victoria Lynn and James Lynch draws from the TarraWarra Museum of Art Collection to present a selection of rarely seen artwork treasures, exploring how artists across different eras have captured the architecture and social dynamics of life in the city and revealing the distinctive character of our urban experience and built environments.

The exhibition opens with a major work by Peta Clancy (Yorta Yorta) titled Birrarung ba brungergalk, which depicts the local Birrarung through a First Nations lens. Originally commissioned by the Museum for The Soils Project in 2023, this work explores the confluence where brungergalk (Watts River) meets the birrarung (Yarra River) near Healesville on Wurundjeri Country. brungergalk had been tapped and damned, without consideration for its vital connection to Country, and its sacred and sustainable value for First Nations communities. Its inclusion in this exhibition signals to visitors the natural and cultural significance of the terrain before the growth of cities.

Peta Clancy, Birrarung ba brungergalk, 2023 TarraWarra Museum of Art collection. Purchased 2024, acquired with the assistance of the Robert Salzer Foundation © Peta Clancy, courtesy of the artist and Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

Australian artists working between 1950 and 2000s have captured the evolution of modernisation of life. Featuring over forty artworks by over 25 of Australia’s most influential artists, the exhibition represents a visual capsule of how cities have been regarded through the eyes of artists.

This curated journey through the TarraWarra Museum’s rarely displayed collection reveals how artists have always been urban anthropologists, dissecting the architecture of our ambitions and the social choreography that transforms buildings into communities.

The exhibition is divided into 9 key  ‘scenes’: The Modern City, Suburbia, Rhythms,  Thresholds, Interior Lives, The Industrial City, Dreams and Play, and features multiple works by artists such as Howard Arkley, Clarice Beckett, Charles Blackman, John Brack, Rosalie Gascoigne, Louise Hearman, Melinda Harper, Dale Hickey, Robert Jacks, Inge King, Joanna Lamb, Sidney Nolan, Jeffrey Smart and Edwin Tanner.

John Brack Subdivision, 1954 TarraWarra Museum of Art collection. Purchased 2004 © Helen Brack

Curator and Director of TarraWarra Museum of Art, Dr Victoria Lynn says: “This exhibition considers the city awakened and at rest. From the joyful paintings of Swimming at St Kilda Beach, by Sidney Nolan, in the 1940s, through the depiction of urban sprawl in John Brack’s painting, Subdivision, 1954, and Dale Hickey’s de-populated interiors through to Louise Hearman’s eerie dream like images and Jon Cattapan’s watery painting, Mirror, 1991, Australian artists have manifested a variety of atmospheric interpretations of the modern city.”

Curator at TarraWarra Museum of Art, James Lynch says: “Looking at this exhibition, one thing that became evident is just how much distance and time have passed since many of the artworks were first created. The 1950s post-war boom of Melbourne was 75 years ago, and the population of Melbourne has gone from just over 1 million to 5.3 million. Melbourne has become more culturally diverse as well as much physically larger, with new neighbourhoods stretching in every direction. At the same time, our lives have been transformed in the digital age.  It is a good opportunity for our visitors to reflect on some of the utopian and dystopian ideas about the growth of cities, and how it compares to their contemporary realities.”