Australian art history 1933-1978

Noel McKenna's work depicts subjects drawn from contemporary life in a naïve and gently humorous style. This work belongs to a series of maps McKenna produced between 2002 and 2014, which are mostly of Australia. While McKenna's paintings are generally modest in scale, the maps are necessarily large to accommodate rich taxonomies of information. Each painting charts a disparate, idiosyncratic subject, from lighthouses to dangerous fauna, racecourses, public swimming pools, and 'big' tourist attractions. Here, the form of Australia accommodates a crossword puzzle on the history of Australian art between 1933-1978: a more enigmatic approach than the aggregation of names, facts and images in other maps. The clues gesture to figures and events familiar to McKenna but otherwise obscure and most likely forgotten, charting a highly personal account of interests, influences and incidental knowledge.