ART + TEXT... is a work of ten paintings which include texts in the form of speech bubbles, dialogue boxes and captions, satirising and reviewing some of the conventions and pretensions in local history.

BITCH 142.0 x 98.5cm (variation after Maria Kozic and )

During August and September 1991 Maria Kozic produced a series of billboard installations around and other cities. The most controversial pictured herself as 'BITCH', a knowing, self-confident and insolent presence. Tom Roberts presents Madam Pfund as a prominent figure in Melbourne's social and professional life. She had come to Melbourne from Switzerland in 1863 accompanying the wife of 's newly appointed Governer Darling. In 1867 she established 'Oberwyl', a school for young ladies, in Burnette Street, St.Kilda. Roberts painted another portrait of her in 1888.

Every great country has its Art Academy 54.0 x 43.0cm (variation after and Lucy Walker)

During the thirties in Melbourne, while Attorney-General for the Victorian State government and (after 1935) the Federal Government, Robert Menzies was a vocal and active proponent for an Australian Royal Academy of Art. His ambition was achieved in 1937 and an inaugaural exhibition opened in 1938, but without Menzies' longed for Royal Charter. The ill-fated and divisive Academy was wound up in 1949 and its funds handed over to the Victorian Artists' Society. Lucy Walker studied at the Gallery School during the 1880s. Her painting 'Cactus' is currently hanging in the Bendigo Regional Art Gallery. A very similar still-life by , now in , was painted most probably at the same time. Jane Clarke in Golden Summers, 1985 feels the Bunny “is, however, rather more accomplished”. Bunny was offered an associate membership of the Academy (not a fellowship) but shortly after its inception, he publicly refusedto join.

Fucked Self-Portrait 90.0 x 65.0cm

Antipodean pillow-talk 64.0 x 141.0cm (variation after , , David & , , , and Dr. Bernard Smith and Lindsay Bernard Hall)

The produced their manifesto in 1959 as a response, to what they saw as, the encroachments of European and American abstractions. At the same time they eschewed a nationalistic or homogenous Australian cultural identity. Their pamphlet on the sources and the nature of meaning in art laid particular emphasis on the 'image', which translated as the figure, the landscape, the nude, myth, fantasy, melodrama and social comment. As a 33 year old from England Lindsay Bernard Hall replaced George Folingsby as the Director of the National Gallery and its school from 1892 - 1935. He exhibited decorative nudes and formal indoor subjects with the Victorian Artists' Society from 1893. The fading traces of a neo-classical aestheticism in his work received a respectful if ambivalent response at the time. His paintings hang in the Rooms of Australian Art, at the NGV.

Studio Interiors 148.3 x 118.2cm (variation after Albert Tucker and Alice M. E. Bale)

By 1943 Albert Tucker had painted some of his bleakest images dealing with aspects of the impact of war round his Jolimont/East Melbourne studio, previously having spent 1941 avoiding military conscription and 1942 enduring it. The emblems and anatomical distortions of the 'Victory girls' and other paintings from the period coalesced into the symbology of his series of Images of Modern Evil. Alice Bale was a student of the NGV Gallery school from 1895 to 1904 and later a friend and admirer of Max Meldrum. With him she co-founded the Twenty Melbourne Painter's Society in 1918 after the Meldrumites' secession from the Victorian Artists' Society. She championed traditional values in art against and her character and intelligence earned her respect even from opponents. Her forte of figures in interiors depicted a self-contained, educated women's world. Since her death in 1955 her estate has established various fellowships and currently funds the A.M.E. Bale Travelling Scholarship.

Mute Portrait of David Simpkin 100.0 x 88.0cm

Cartesian Doubt 100.5x 122.0cm (variation after Juliana Engberg and Ernest Buckmaster)

Juliana Engberg is curator at the Museum of Modern Art at Heide Art gallery. Her text comes from a recent catalogue introduction. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is usually considered the founder of modern philosophy. He is noted for his invention of co-ordinate geometry, his famous dictum "I think therefore I am" and for his insistence on the separation of mind (or soul) and body. His methedology in philosophy, 'Cartesian doubt' so-called, develops from scepticism in regard to the senses. In 1932 Ernest Buckmaster was awarded the and the current painting won the National Gallery subject prize worth £500 in 1941. Since then it has been in the collection of the NGV, although seldomly hung. A member of what Adrian Lawlor described as "the school of slither", Buckmaster's work is associated with the popular academic 'naturalist' kitsch of the pre- war years. Recently this painting has, at his request, been moved to the office of the Premier, Mr. Kennett, in Treasury Place, Melbourne.

Addled Art 75.0 x 65.0cm (variation after and William Dargie)

Lionel Lindsay wrote his polemical essay decrying the corruptions of Modernism in 1942. His dominant theme is that modernism in art was symptomatic of a social and cultural decline in the wider world. With its anti-semetic undercurrent the book evokes the White policy of the time and J.S. MacDonald's 'thoroughbred Aryan' pastoralist tradition. Dargie's painting is in the QLD state gallery and was his second portrait of Namatjira, following his Archibald prize winning painting of 1956. Dargie was an Official with the AIF, head of the NGV Art School from 1946-1953 and a member of the Aboriginal Arts Advisory Committee from 1969-1971. He was knighted in 1970. During the 40's & 50's prints of Namatjira's paintings were among the first cultural contact urban Australians had with Aboriginal Australia. A retrospective 'The Heritage of Namatjira' has recently been held at the National Gallery of Victoria.

My Lady’s Rhetoric 57.0 x 47.0 cm (variation after John Dunkley-Smith and Max Meldrum)

Since 1982, John Dunkley-Smith, like a number of his contemporaries (Nixon, Tyndall etc) has used a generic title for his works. Related to the Situationists, Dunkley-Smith's statement derives from a reading of Guy Debord's Perspectives for conscious alterations in everyday life. Max Meldrum's painting is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. It was included as an illustration of his methedologies in his Science of Appearances, 1951. For Meldrum, art was a 'scientifically' based discipline based on colour relationships recorded by the eye in a certain order of tonal proportion and chromatic impression. He was a zealous teacher, sometimes known as the 'mad mullah' but he had an avid following of students. His art and his views of society related directly but his political liberalism set him against the conservative academic institutions.

Completing the Picture 113.2 x 81.0cm (variation after Richard Haese and Hilda Rix Nicholas)

Richard Haese's Rebels and Precursors, 1983 examines the story of the emergence of Australian modernism during the 1st & 2nd World Wars and beyond. He chronicles the break from Australia's pastoralist traditions, focusing on the political and social preoccupations of the modern artists, their friends and their critics Hilda Rix Nicholas was born in Ballarat, educated in Australia and Europe and lived both here and overseas. She returned to Australia in 1918 after the death-in-action of her husband of 5 weeks. In the years between the wars she continued to travel in Australia and overseas, exhibiting in 52 solo and group shows, 31 of which were in Europe.

All works oil on linen, 1993