Guide 05 Western Australia independent information
Western Australian art history, in a short timeline
There is no single start to art in Western Australia. This page sketches a few anchor points in order, keeps the claims modest and leaves out anything that cannot be checked.
Before the colony
Aboriginal people have made images on this land for a very long time, and places such as Murujuga preserve some of the densest groups of engravings anywhere. Any survey that starts with the arrival of Europeans leaves out most of the timeline, so a fair history begins here.
Colonial views and early institutions
After British settlement of the Swan River colony in 1829, drawing and painting served mapping, record keeping and domestic life, and many early images show landscape as the newcomers saw it. Public art institutions came later. The state gallery's first acquisition dates to 1895, a useful marker for the beginning of a public collection.
Mid twentieth century: famous Western Australian artists
The painter Guy Grey-Smith, who trained at the Chelsea School of Art in London and returned to Western Australia, became the first president of the Contemporary Art Society's state branch in 1966. A major retrospective at the state gallery in 2014, titled Art as Life, was described as the first of its scale in some thirty five years. His career is often used to ask how artists on the western side of the continent were noticed by national critics.
Another marker is Fremantle Arts Centre, which opened in 1973 as a place where artists, writers and audiences could meet.
New voices from the north
The East Kimberley painting movement changed how Australian art is discussed. Warmun Art Centre and artists such as Rover Thomas brought ochre painting into national and international view, and the 1990 Venice Biennale showing placed Western Australian Aboriginal art in a global setting.
Today
Current practice spreads across Perth studios, regional centres and online projects, and the debates are about land, climate, migration and access. To see where this plays out now, look at Perth and Fremantle's galleries and the regional art map.