From the end of spring 20111, The British Museum opened its doors to the Australian Season to showcase the diversity of Australian art and the more distant periods of its cultural history. With such a unique indigenous population and the history of the Western discovery of the island in 1606 by dutch explorers, not to mention the subsequent British rule, there was more than enough to make the Australian Season interesting.
The series of antipodean displays started off on the 21st April 2011 with the Australian Landscape exhibition on the Museum Forecourt, running through until 16th October 2011. The installation, which represented the biodiversity of Australia, was a collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, exhibiting a number of exclusive Australian works to give us a flavour of the Australian countryside here in the UK.
The series continued on from 26th May until 11th September with the Out of Australia exhibition, focusing more on the more recent artistic elements of the country’s past. Featuring Australian prints and drawing in Room 90, the exhibition went on to include the works of both Sidney Nolan (1917-1992), one of Australia’s most celebrated painters and printmakers, and Rover Thomas (1926-1998), the indigenous Australian artist.
The Baskets and Belongings exhibition completed the Australian Season, running from 26th May to 1th September 2011 in Room 91. Featuring around 60 indigenous Australian containers from The British Museum’s collection, the exhibition showcased the craft skills that have been born out of at least 40,000 years of ancestry on Australian soil.
While the baskets and brik-a-brak sound of the last exhibition might not sound like it was all that impressive, it was actually a massive insight into how human life played out on the massive land-mass before the European’s landed. Combining a whole range of craft-work, including all manner of different baskets and pots that the aborigines used to carry everything from food and water to objects that they’d gathered, it was a massive reminder of how much we’d change things by our naval intrusion.
All of the exhibitions that are a part of the Australian Season at The British Museum were free to enter, which is a bit of a rarity for such a big programme of activity at the musem.
