Fred Williams - Art Gallery of South Australia - SA.gov.au

Re-discover Australia’s best observer
of landscape
The Art Gallery of South Australia presents a major survey
of one of Australia’s most influential artists. Running from
31 August to 4 November 2012, Fred Williams: Infinite
horizons is the first major retrospective of Fred Williams’s
work in almost 25 years.
Featuring over 100 works of art, the exhibition highlights
Williams’s strength as a landscape artist and includes
important oil paintings and luminous gouaches that reveal
his distinctive approach.
Fred Williams created a highly original way of seeing the
Australian landscape, often combining a feeling for place
with an emphasis on the abstract. This retrospective
reveals how Williams captured the diversity of Australia’s
landscapes; and includes seascapes, ponds, creeks, billabongs
and waterfalls.
Described by historian and former Art Gallery of South
Australia Director, Daniel Thomas as ‘our best observer of
landscape’, Fred Williams revolutionised the way we see
Australia. Williams captured the landscape as though from
the inside out, developing a distinct idiom, one that has
inspired generations of artists’, said Art Gallery of South
Australia, Curator Australian Paintings & Sculpture, Tracey
Lock-Weir.
Fred Williams’s body of work holds the highest significance
in Australian art history and is comprehensively presented
in this major exhibition that comes from the National
Gallery of Australia. Curated by Dr Deborah Hart, Senior
Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture post-1920 at the
NGA who says of the exhibition:
‘Fred Williams: Infinite horizons provides insights into Fred
Williams’s unique take on the Australian environment. It
includes major international loans from the Tate in London,
and numerous works from Australian collections which have
not been displayed publicly prior to this retrospective.’
Rennie Ellis, 1940–2003, Fred Williams in his studio, in front of his painting
Gorge landscape, 1981 © Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Beachscape Erith Island I, 1974,
gouache and sand on paper,
55.6 x 77.6 cm (image and sheet);
Purchased from Gallery admission charges
1983, National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra © estate of Fred Williams
Visitors will see a stunning range of Williams’s iconic paintings inspired by the
unique Australian landscape from Upwey in Victoria to the Pilbara in Western
Australia and Weipa in North Queensland, along with surprising personal
portraits of family and friends.
The exhibition also features a wide range of Australian subjects including
expansive views of deserts, mountains, beaches, rainforests and bushfires as well
as more intimate studies of wildflowers, mushrooms, birds and insects. Among
the works that have never been publicly shown before is Williams’s marvellously
illustrated China sketchbook created during a visit there in 1976.
Fred Williams died in 1982 leaving behind a body of work of great significance.
His art has changed the way we view and understand the Australian landscape.
It was a remarkable achievement and is a fitting prelude to the Art Gallery of
South Australia’s 2013 exhibition, Turner from the Tate: the making of a master
that showcases the work of one Britain’s greatest landscape painters, J.M.W.
Turner.
Fred Williams: Infinite horizons runs from 31 August to 4 November 2012.
For further information, including details on the public program of talks, tours,
children’s activities and members events visit www.artgallery.sa.gov.au.

Iron ore landscape, 1981, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 183.0 cm;
Presented through the NGV Foundation by Rio Tinto,
Honorary Life Benefactor, 2001. National Gallery of
Victoria, Melbourne © estate of Fred Williams
Media contact
Marika Lucas, Senior Publicist, Art Gallery of South Australia
e lucas.marika@artgallery.sa.gov.au
t 8207 7156
m 0407 077 102
Images can be downloaded directly from:
www.nga.gov.au/AboutUs/MediaCentre/Williams/index.cfm
Please ensure all images are captioned and not cropped.
A NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA EXHIBITION
GOVERNMENT PARTNERS
PRINCIPAL PARTNER
The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government Agency
MAJOR PARTNER SUPPORTING PARTNER
YULGILBAR
The Yulgilbar Foundation