In July, the Art Gallery of New South Wales will present Janet Dawson: Faraway, So Close – the first retrospective of one of Australia’s great artistic visionaries. Spanning more than six decades, this exhibition delves into Janet Dawson’s distinguished career and highlights the extraordinary range of her art practice.
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Dawson is a prolific artist whose exuberant creativity defies accepted artistic conventions. Working since the late 1950s, she has been a forerunner of major movements in Australian art and has embraced a wide range of styles and mediums including painting, printmaking, drawing and sculpture. Throughout her career, Dawson has moved between her own arresting forms of abstraction and realism, making her an artist difficult to categorise.
Janet Dawson: Faraway, So Close unfolds chronologically with more than 80 works drawn from major Australian public and private collections, including many rarely seen by the Australian public. Visitors will encounter important paintings from across Dawson’s career, from superb abstract paintings, including The origin of the Milky Way 1964 and Old cloudy moons 1 and 2 1979, to her later explorations of the natural world in Scribble Rock cauliflower 1993–97, Scribble Rock pomegranates 1999 and Moon at dawn through a telescope, January 2000 2000.
Art Gallery of New South Wales director Maud Page says: ‘This major exhibition gives overdue recognition to one of the visionaries of late 20th-century Australian art. Janet Dawson is a pioneer of abstraction and an artist with a distinct realist style, yet her important contributions have been under-acknowledged.
‘This exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to discover one of the most singular voices in Australian art, and I’m immensely proud that the Art Gallery is part of this important milestone in Janet Dawson’s remarkable career.’
Event Details:
Dates: 19 July 2025 – 18 January 2026
Location: Art Gallery of NSW - Naala Nura building, Lower level 2
Cost: Free, no bookings required