Art Gallery of SA: OUR COUNTRY AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION LANDSCAPES EXHIBITION

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.

Dorothea McKella's famous poem fits perfectly with the sentiments expressed in oils and watercolours at the South Australian Art Gallery's latest exhibition, Our Country, Australian Federation Landscapes 1900 to 1914.

"Well just as this is one of the ultimate Federation pictures . . . Dorothea McKellar's poem I Love a Sunburnt Country is very much the ultimate Federation poem . . . in fact they're the same date 1904."

Frederick McCubbin's monumental triptych says so much about how Australians were beginning to see themselves at the turn of last century . . . as pioneers who'd tamed a rugged land.

"The pioneers arrive in the forest . . . they set up their farm . . . they clear it and in a couple of generations the city has built up . . . that's it in a nut shell."

With federation came nationhood.

Imbued with a growing sense of nationalism the Australian artists who stayed at home were determined to create works with a great sense of occasion ... like this stirring piece . . . Mount Kosioscko.

"It was a commission by the Art Gallery of New South Wales by Australia's leading and senior landscape artist W C Piguenit at the time to paint the highest point in the nation. And so this in Sydney became the great icon of the Federation."

"Huge pictures were bought for art museums and of course the attendances for art museums were incredible, hundreds of thousands of people used to visit art museums and those attendances weren't surpassed until the 1970's and they came to see not British art. They came to see their Australian landscapes."

From rivers deep and mountains hight to a land girt by sea the exhibition brings together works from around the country . . . from a time when we'd first settled on the site for the nation's capital.

And it was at this time that artists like Hans Heysen were persuading us to see the beauty of our country through new Australian eyes.

"The gum tree became the central icon... as you like... of Australian landscape paintings and has remained so for much of the 20th century . . . it began first with artists like Lister and of course Adelaide's Hans Heysen."

"It's about Australians . . . and not only artists . . . artists led the way . . . but Australians seeing the beauty of their own land and coming to art museums especially to see these wonderful pictures of their own land."

Some of the works on display are familiar and famous, but many have not been on public display for many years. However, all offer remarkable visions of a new nation and remain remarkably fresh one hundred years on.

Our Country Australian Federation Landscapes 1900 to 1914 is on at the Art Gallery until November the 18th. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au