Stuart Black - 'The Incessant Hunt'

Wednesday 23 May - Sunday 17 June 2018

The late Stuart Black’s art is intrinsically linked to homosexuality.

Living at a time when gay people were inventing themselves; a time of hope, desires, disappointment and conflict, Black’s art sits at the end of late modernist practice, with its stress on individual expression, creativity and invention. Art of a more culturally enlightened time when images of sexual difference and experience were sympathetically and critically examined.

Black (1937-2007) was a Melbourne-based painter who gained critical notice early in his career for a refined synthesis of modernist styles. As a mature artist, Black made art as a diarist and social commentator. He also made art purely for pleasure. The Stuart Black Memorial Bursary to the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, allows selected young artists to acquire materials, to travel and have the support of a sponsored drawing teacher. It is a lasting legacy of this charismatic personality and much admired teacher.