It brings together works by Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Tuttle, Raquel Ormella, Lynda Benglis, Ti Parks, Merlin James, Peter Alwast, Natasha Kidd and Karl Wiebke, among others.

The exhibition juxtaposes significant historical precedents and contemporary works, showing how artists have continually reappraised the boundaries of their art by means of an engagement with ‘the real’, curator Tony Oates says.

“Giving paintings the characteristics of objects, reassessing their physicality, spatialising their elements – these are well-known devices for challenging and breaking down the four-squareness of painterly autonomy,” he says.

“Equally relevant to this exhibition is the artists’ exploration of new media and processes, their strategies of collaboration and their radical repurposing of objects and found materials.

“The ultimate significance of the works in the exhibition could be determined by their suggestion that painting or the artist or art itself cannot be fixed in any assigned place. Inspiration and change must be discovered through a kind of brinkmanship in what we don’t yet understand and may not be quite ready to accept.”

The Drill Hall Gallery exhibition is presented as part of a broader project that includes exhibitions at the ANU School of Art and Design Gallery, 10 August – 1 September, curated by Peter Alwast, Raquel Ormella and Su Yilmez; and ANCA Gallery, 11 August – 26 August, curated by Oscar Capezio.

These exhibitions are supported by the ANU Research School of Humanities and the Arts, the ANU Foundation for the Visual Arts, ANCA inc and the Friends of the Drill Hall Gallery.