There are some amazing events happening in regional Victoria at the moment, from film, to photography, to art. It’s the latter that has us planning our next trip out of Melbourne, to Geelong Gallery.
The long-running gallery’s current exhibition ‘Fred Williams in the You Yangs’ brings together this revered artist’s You Yangs series paintings (62 works!) for the first time, and highlights ‘the turning point in Fred’s vision of the Australian landscape’. The Geelong show fittingly heroes his abstractions of the You Yangs – the same remarkable granite ridges that’ll no doubt have us pulling over to take some Instagram Stories en route!
Bestowed an OBE for his contribution to Australian art and in particular landscape painting, Fred began working in the You Yangs area in the early 1960s. His fascination with the ‘big mountain in the middle of a plain’ (as the translation of the Indigenous Australian name goes) endured for almost 20 years.
Some stunning new merch has been created in support of this exhibition, including Fred’s ‘You Yangs landscape’ (1963) silk scarf, and ‘You Yangs pond’ (1963) notebook, as well as captivating ceramics by Torquay-based Peta Marie. Exit via the gift shop!
‘Fred Williams in the You Yangs’
August 19th to November 5th
Geelong Gallery
55 Little Malop St, Geelong