Opening today at The Art Gallery of Western Australia, dis/possession displays works drawn entirely from the State Art Collection, centring on the juxtaposition of two significant works by Australian artists: Hans Heysen’s Droving into the light and Mervyn Street’s Bull ride.
Painted approximately 100 years apart, each offers a view of rural Australia that reflects the preoccupations of the artist at the time of the work’s production. Street, a Gooniyandi artist from Fitzroy Crossing, worked as a stockman at a time when the impact of the pastoral movement was being fully felt by Western Australian Kimberley Indigenous communities. German-born Heysen lived and worked in the Adelaide Hills during an era in which Australia as a young nation continued to be positioned as a locale of opportunity for colonisation.
