British Modernism from an Australian Point of View: Clarice Zander's 1933 Exhibition of British Contemporary Art

The experience of Australian expatriates in Britain and the role they subsequently played in the development of the creative and performing arts in Australia has long been acknowledged. Stephen Alomes's When London Calls: The Expatriation of Australian Creative Artists to Britain (1999) is one recent example of such research into the importance of expatriatism to Australian cultural history.Footnote1 However, the role played by these expatriates in British art historiography remains overlooked and deserves further investigation. When considering the development of modernism in Australia, as Terry Smith explains, we must acknowledge that 1920s London was the primary point of reference for Australian artists and that English and Scottish tastes, styles, techniques, aesthetic ideologies and institutional forms dominated Australian artistic life.Footnote2 Indeed, the mobility of Australian artists between centres of art in Australia and abroad contributed to the ‘arrival’ of modernism in Australia; it can also be argued, however, that the same mobility played a part in the development of modernism in Europe, and more particularly England. Art historian John Richardson, for instance, traces this impact by considering the influence of Roy de Maistre, one of the acknowledged founders of abstract art in Australia, on the work of Francis Bacon. The exhibition Francis Bacon: Five Decades, held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2012, acknowledged de Maistre's influence on Bacon, and also shed light on further artistic reciprocities between Bacon and other Australian artists who travelled to London, such as Sidney Nolan and Brett Whiteley.Footnote3 Such flows of influence were also acknowledged at the time, and the Exhibition of British Contemporary Art, organised in 1933 by Australian expatriate Alleyne Clarice Zander, can be considered a significant case challenging cultural exchange between Britain and Australia during the interwar years.