This is the first of three exhibitions exploring the state of painting at the start of the new millennium. Painting is thriving and exists in many different guises. New Painting in Australia I concentrates on one of many tendencies that are relevant to our time: the use of the vocabulary of abstraction to explore the link between painting and the world around us. No longer interested in ‘art for art’s sake’, these artists are investigating -- with pragmatic objectivity -- the inherently subjective realm of phenomena.