Ian Fairweather is one of Australia’s most eminent artists. His distinctive visual vocabulary sets him apart from his contemporaries, and his paintings stand as highly individual statements within the broader canvas of modern Australian art. Born in Scotland in 1891, Fairweather travelled extensively throughout northern Europe and Asia for much of his adult life, absorbing diverse cultural influences that were woven into his paintings. He visited Australia for the first time in 1934, and in 1953 settled permanently in a hut on Bribie Island, north of Brisbane. Fairweather found the environment of Bribie Island conducive to his work, and the period is largely recognised as his most productive and successful.
The Fairweather Room acknowledges the artist’s significance in Australian art, and recognises the close connection he shared with Queensland in adopting Bribie Island as his home. This display, the most extensive in Australia, provides the opportunity to examine the artist’s oeuvre in depth.
From the late 1940s onwards, Ian Fairweather grappled with the tensions between representation and abstraction. Since conquering the human figure in the 1920s as a student of Henry Tonks at the Slade School, London, the figure remained constant in his painting. Most of the works in this display, however, date from the 1950s and 1960s; and show the artist’s progression towards complete abstraction in 1960 and his subsequent return to figuration. Fairweather described this tension in his work, saying: 'It’s between representation and the other thing, whatever that is, and it’s difficult to keep one’s balance'.
List of works
Two Philippine children 1934–35
Two nudes 1934
Café tables 1957
Kite flying 1958
War and peace 1959
Painting III 1960
Flight into Egypt 1961
Epiphany 1962
The sisters 1962
MO, PB and the ti-tree 1965
