The Australian Galleries turns Seventy

Stuart Purves AM, at the opening of Australian Galleries Celebrates 70 years

This week quite a remarkable event took place in Melbourne. Over three hundred people gathered for an opening at a commercial art gallery – and over half of them were artists. On display were 189 artworks – spread across the two spaces on either side of Derby Street in Collingwood – at exactly the same spot that the Australian Galleries opened their doors seventy years ago.
 
There were a number of historic works, by artists who are no longer with us, including Brett Whiteley, Arthur Boyd, Fred Williams, Jeffrey Smart, Sidney Nolan, Roger Kemp, William Robinson, Inge King and George Baldessin, all of whom had exhibited with this gallery in this building over the years. Then there is a galaxy of major contemporary artists who include John Wolseley, Tim Storrier, Mary Tonkin, Sarah Tomasetti, Thornton Walker, Peter Churcher … too many to mention.
 
The Australian Galleries is an institution that has played a pivotal role in Australian art history over the past seventy years. It launched the careers of numerous artists, including John Perceval, and kept others economically afloat, for example Arthur Boyd, a point well made by Christopher Heathcote in his opening address at the gallery. The gallery also played a pivotal role in guiding significant events in Australian art. Last week, I attended the launch of the Arthur Boyd tapestries at the NGA in Canberra – a rather splendid event. It could be noted that the Arthur Boyd pastel drawings, on which the tapestries were based, were first exhibited at the Australian Galleries in 1965. Even more specifically, the large-scale transparencies from which the tapestries were actually woven in Portugal were made at the gallery and the first job that the young Stuart Purves had in his parent’s gallery in 1966 was packaging the transparencies and sending them to Arthur Boyd.

Dr Christopher Heathcote speaking at the opening of Australian Galleries Celebrates 70 years

Today, sixty years later, Stuart who turns eighty this year, is still managing this gallery as well as the Australian Galleries in Sydney that have been operating for thirty-five years. Running the shop across several venues over many decades is an impossibly difficult act and the fact that the gallery survives, thrives and continues to play a significant role in contemporary Australian art attests to the fact that it must be doing something right.
 
The Australian Galleries has changed many people’s lives. I am one of them. When I was a very small child, my father took me to see an exhibition at the Australian Galleries. For me it was a life changing experience and I remember telling my father that I had decided what I wanted to do with my life. I told him that “I want to be an artist just like Mr Brack and show my work at the Australian Galleries.” I never became an artist like Mr Brack and I never exhibited my woeful efforts at this gallery, but it did have a significant impact on my life.

Stuart Purves AM, the man with the red shoes and his colleagues and staff at the opening of Australian Galleries Celebrates 70 years

The way we look at, consume and acquire art is changing. To some, the commercial art gallery is something of an anachronism, however, it is a past in which I lived and one in which I happen to believe in. I still participate in a regular gallery crawl and I still publish newspaper art criticism on a regular basis. Nevertheless, I notice that the number of visitors I encounter at commercial art galleries is dwindling, in contrast to the swarms at art fairs and at the public art galleries. I don’t have a silver bullet solution and I am uncertain on how the pendulum will swing, but I hope that an institution like the Australian Galleries will continue to thrive and reinvent itself for the future for many decades to come. We need it.

Part of the crowd at the opening of Australian Galleries Celebrates 70 years

Australian Galleries Celebrates 70 years 1956-2026 Group Exhibition 23 June -11 July 2026 35 Derby Street, Collingwood, open daily 10am-6pm