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For one night only, the National Art School goes retro by transforming into a haze of 1960s nostalgia, paying tribute to the swinging 60s and the revolutionary spirit of the Beat Generation.
On Thursday 14 July, the National Art School presents ‘NAS Nights: The Beat Generation’, celebrating the style, music, spontaneous creativity and non-conformist ideologies which defined this bohemian sub-culture in the 1950s and 60s.
The Beatniks channeled their frustration with the materialism of post-war America into art, music and literature. They had a penchant for jazz bars, coffee and spoken word poetry, as well as a studied nonchalance about their physical appearance. Favouring intellectual advancement over superficial beauty, their style was characterised by simple black clothing, berets, turtlenecks, black eye makeup and dark glasses.
The night is themed around the current exhibition ‘Ann Thomson & Contemporaries’ which will be open until 9pm in the upstairs Gallery, accompanied by a Floor Talk by curator Judith Blackall and the renowned artist herself. Thomson’s career spans more than six decades. This exhibition focuses on her creative investigation that incorporates abstraction and figuration. Her work is both compelling and enigmatic, ranging from gestural compositions and collages to large-scale paintings, sculptural assemblages and works on paper.
‘Ann Thomson & Contemporaries’ presents a snapshot of a unique moment in the National Art School’s history, celebrating the heady times at East Sydney Tech in the late 1950s and early 1960s, an era of which produced some of Australia’s best artists including Godfrey Miller, John Passmore, John Olsen, Vivienne Binns, Elisabeth Cummings and Martin Sharp.
NAS Director, Michael Snelling said, “We invite you to join us in celebrating this remarkable group of artists, whose work is so heavily influenced by abstract expressionism, colour field painting, modernist abstraction and minimalism. It was this generation who wanted to break open the perceived elitism and hierarchies of the art world and who fought against the structures of conservatism in an extraordinary period of social and cultural change.”
Direct from Chicago, spoken-word tour de force Miles Merrill will perform a spoken-word poetry piece at the Gallery, influenced by the great beat poets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. A free Action Painting Workshop is also scheduled, where paint will be randomly splashed and poured onto the canvas – very Jackson Pollock-esque.
The night will continue with sounds of an acoustic set of 60s inspired tunes from Frances Castley, open-air black and white video projections by Gary Shead, and a hearty wintry fare and mulled wine by The Hangout Café and wine by Cake Wines.
A night not to be missed!
National Art School
Thursday 14 July, 2016 6-9pm
Sydney
Ann Thomson, Yellow Sound (detail), 1999, oil on linen, 150 × 245 cm
Courtesy the artist and Defiance Gallery, Sydney
