Sidney Nolan's renowned Ned Kelly series features prominently in a retrospective exhibition of the artist's early creative period, currently on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. However, the exhibition's senior curator, Denise Mimmocchi, directs attention toward a less celebrated work that preceded the Kelly paintings—a canvas Nolan produced during his military service when he was stationed in Victoria's Wimmera region in 1943.
That earlier work, titled Kiata, represents a pivotal moment in Nolan's artistic development. Mimmocchi explores the significance of this painting and explains how it marked not only a turning point for Nolan himself but also a watershed moment in the broader trajectory of Australian modernism. The work demonstrates the artist's emerging visual language and his capacity to synthesize landscape, memory, and abstraction in ways that would influence the direction of contemporary Australian art.
The exhibition contextualizes Nolan's formative years by presenting both the celebrated Kelly series and these foundational works side by side, allowing viewers to trace the evolution of his distinctive style. By examining Kiata alongside his later, more famous compositions, the show reveals how Nolan's wartime experience and his time in the Wimmera shaped his artistic vision and contributed to a broader modernist shift in Australian visual culture during the mid-twentieth century.
