Past exhibitions

As a particular way of making art, collage involves adding found or pre-fabricated elements to a two-dimensional surface, extending into three dimensions via assemblage.

It is remarkable and wide-ranging in its ability to collapse boundaries and challenge conventions in art.

With works by Robert Klippel, James Gleeson and Rosalie Gascoigne among others, this exhibition presents some of the key pioneers of the genre in Australia as well as more recent practitioners.

Fascinating, provocative, strange or spectacular, the works vary greatly – in the materials (often lowly or scavenged), in the extent and nature of ‘found’ elements, and in the variety of ways in which they have been put together.

Highlights include Eugene Carchesio’s tiny Matchbox constructions, the surreal pasted engravings of Sidney Nolan, the political potency of Tony Albert’s Headhunter, Colin Lanceley’s extraordinary triptych of reclaimed detritus The dry salvages and the impressive No 796 by Robert Klippel – a large-scale assemblage of wooden pattern-parts for obsolete machinery.