The Edwardians Exhibition: In the Adelaide City region of South Australia

The Art Gallery of South Australia’s latest exhibition, The Edwardians, is best summed up in one word - sumptuous. Pass the portrait of King Edward the Seventh and you step into an era which bears his name - the Edwardian Age.

The Edwardian era was a time when wealth, birthright and manners were the keys to commanding respect and obedience. It was also an age when workers were flexing their collective muscles, a time of great artistic expression and technical innovation. As you enter the exhibition, ‘The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires’, one of those innovations - the moving picture takes you through many of the breakthroughs of the Age such as the airplane and the motor car.

“People know a lot more about the Edwardian period than they realise,” explained the exhibition’s designer, Adam Worrall. “Everything from the Titanic in 1912 to flight - the first successful flight over Adelaide in 1912.”

Secrets and Desires covers the period from 1900 to the beginning of the First World War - a period of dramatic change from the established order to a more modern world.

But the exhibition begins with the trappings of wealth and privilege when the likes of Melba and Percy Grainger were entertaining London high society.

“It's an era when Australian painters went abroad but also our famous export, Dame Nellie Melba and our second most famous export Percy Grainger. It was a time when Australians really are making a name for themselves on the world stage in the same way that Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe are making their name on the world stage today.”

The Edwardian Age was also a time of novelists like Virginia Woolf who's works reflected a broadening consciousness about the role of women in society. It was a time of the suffragette movement and the stirrings of women's liberation. Curator, Dr Anna Gray showed us a series of painting which show how the trend was captured on canvas.

“She's in a closed room like a gilded cage with barely a hint of light coming through,” explained Anne as she pointed to the next picture. “As you go through this room you actually see women in the rooms still reading and absorbed in their books. But the curtains are being opened and then you see light coming through the windows until the curtains open, the doors open and the outside world is coming through. You feel as if these women are getting a sense of liberation. They're beginning to open their lives and go out into the world.”

That sense of liberation extended to the working class with gardeners portrayed as regally as any lord of the manor. And it also extended to a more risqué depiction of that old artistic staple, the nude. The early Edwardian nude often dealt with classical mythology but that would all change.

“But (in this era) they felt freer to paint the nude just as itself.” Anna showed us a painting of a nude wearing a hat. “This painting by Wilson Steer was never exhibited during his lifetime because his friend told him it was too naughty. It was naughty because the woman was wearing a hat. And that made the woman more naked than nude.”

It's all part of The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires - on show at the Art Gallery until September 12, 2004

The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires
The Art Gallery of SA
On show until September 12, 2004