Edward Binder Peter Upward and friends

This portrait by Edward ‘Ted’ Binder depicts, from left to right, the artists David Boyd (1924-2011), Peter Upward (1932–1983) and Roderick Shaw (1915-1992). The work is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

A graduate of Sydney’s National Art School (NAS), Binder was awarded the English-Speaking Union Travelling Scholarship in 1966. He followed the ‘hippy trail’ through Kashmir to London, where Upward and Boyd had settled. Back in Sydney in 1969, he began teaching at NAS, eventually joined by Upward, a key figure of Australian gestural abstraction, and Shaw, one of the founders of the Studio of Realist Art.

On the morning in November 1975, after the Labor government of Gough Whitlam was controversially dismissed, Binder, Upward and Shaw formed the Artists Action Group, staging exhibitions to raise money for progressive causes. In this group portrait, Binder presents his comrades in art – Boyd, Upward and Shaw – deep in conversation, at ease in each other’s presence, with Boyd’s sfumato drawing and ceramic goblets completing the scene.