History of the collection

The Monash University Collection was established during the foundation period of the University in 1961, with the objective of founding a collection of contemporary Australian art that would be on public display in University buildings and would act as an educational resource. The initial purchases made were works by the 'Antipodean' artists, a group that included Clifton Pugh, Charles Blackman and John Perceval.

The first commission undertaken by the University was a ceramic sculptural mural by John Perceval for the Lawrence Hargrave Library of Science and Technology. The mural, Homage to Lawrence Hargrave , is a five-part cluster of Perceval's `angel' figures and heads, representing the earth's population explosion and the splitting of the atom, with two `astronauts' circling the earth and a `birdman' symbolising Hargrave. Perceval suggested the work could be seen as "a constellation of stars which emphasises man's desire to get off the earth." Other early commissions included a mural, Adaptive Radiation , sculptures by Clifton Pugh and Clive Murray-White and stained glass windows by Leonard French and Les Kossatz.

Currently the Collection numbers over 1200 artworks. Artists such as Arthur Boyd, Rupert Bunny, William Dobell, Sidney Nolan, Clifton Pugh, John Perceval and Tom Roberts, Charles Blackman, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, Leonard French and Roger Kemp are represented. The University has made a commitment to acquiring work by young and emerging artists. This has ensured the inclusion in the Collection of significant works from the various currents in Australian visual art from the 1960s onwards. Paintings by Robert Hunter, Dale Hickey, Ian Burn, Trevor Vickers, Peter Booth and Michael Johnson are representative of the engagement of these artists with the possibilities of modernist reductive abstraction in the late 1960s. Works by Robert Jacks and Robert Rooney reflect the wider aesthetic and cultural concerns of artists of this period.

During the 1970s an artist-in-residence scheme involved Peter Tyndall, John Davis, Lesley Dumbrell and John Walker working at the University. In this decade the frames of reference of the Collection were expanded to embrace a broad representation of Sydney artists including Dick Watkins, Michael Taylor, David Aspden, Fred Cress and Richard Larter.

The Collection was consolidated in the 1980s and 1990s by the addition of artists not previously included and the purchase of work by artists already represented to better survey aspects of their contribution to Australian visual art.

To counter the heavy metal sculpture collected during the 1970s, sculptures from the 1980s by Peter D. Cole, Kevin Mortensen, Robert Owen, Aleks Danko and Tim Jones with Jon Campbell reflect the turn to less traditional media and installation.Works by Jan Nelson, Fiona Orr, Jane Trengove, Sarah Curtis, Julie Brown-Rrap, Susan Rankine, Caroline Williams and Fiona MacDonald acknowledge the important issues in work produced by women artists during the 1980s and 1990s. Concerns addressed in photographic work of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the experience of place, qualities of representation and the body, are illustrated in images by Bill Henson, Graeme Hare, Rozalind Drummond, Anne Ferran, Anne Zahalka, Jacqueline Riva and David Stephenson.

Works in the collection cut across the multiplicity of social, cultural, political and personal interests of Australian artists over the past three and a half decades. Various aspects of the landscape genre are presented in paintings and works on paper by Lynne Boyd, Domenico de Clario, Bonita Ely, Christine Johnson, Jan Nelson, Rosslynd Piggott.

The complex structures of cultural and social identity are addressed in many different forms by Howard Arkley, Chris Barry, Gordon Bennett, Stephen Bush, Juan Davila, Tim Johnson, Tracey Moffat, Imants Tillers and Judy Watson.

Works by younger artists in the Collection such as Mark Galea, Melinda Harper, Brent Harris, Kathy Temin and Gary Wilson, reflect on the history and legacy of modernist art.

Recent acquisitions and gifts include works by Mutlu Çerkez, Destiny Deacon, Melinda Harper, and Roy Wiggan.