The Field (exhibition)

The Field was the inaugural exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria’s new premises on St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Launched by the director of London’s Tate gallery, Norman Reid, before an audience of 1,000 invitees, it was held between held 21 August and 28 September 1968. Hailed then, and regarded since as a landmark exhibition in Australian art history, it presented the first comprehensive display of colour field painting and abstract sculpture in the country in a radical presentation, between silver foil–covered walls and under geometric light fittings, of 74 works by 40 artists. All practised hard-edge, geometric, colour and flat abstraction, often in novel media including coloured or transparent plastic, fluorescent acrylic paints, steel and chrome. The art was appropriate to a launch of the new venue itself, designed by architect Roy Grounds, and emphatically rectilinear; cubes nested in a basalt rectangular box amongst the other buildings of the new Arts Centre, each based on a geometric solid. Echoing emerging international stylistic tendencies of the time, The Field sparked immediate controversy and launched the careers of a new generation of Australian artists.