Tableau

RESEARCH BACKGROUND This exhibition explored Australian art of the 1980s, a decade of intensive social change and fiercely contested viewpoints on contemporary art and culture. During this period there were a number of creative approaches ranging from appropriation and sampling to the DIY aesthetics of post-punk, from postmodern critiques of authorship and originality to postcolonial revisions of Australia. Ellis's painting experiments with the image and abstraction and belongs to a painterly tradition that is figurative, surreal and expressionist. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION This innovative painting is informed by an aggressive punk aesthetic and a highly refined and coded personal symbolism. Ellis places universal humanist concerns at central to his creative practice, part of his response to the social and political turbulence experienced in the 1980s. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE Ellis's work reflects the complexity of contemporary art at a time when Australian society was rapidly changing. Exhibited at the NGV, Max Delany curated this first major exhibition to focus upon significant works by contemporary Australian artists that reflects upon this pivotal decade. A series of public programs accompanied the exhibition and offered visitors an opportunity to engage on a variety of platforms with the diverse digital legacy of this important period in Australian art.