By arts editor HELEN MUSA

Canberra Museum + Gallery is the official custodian of the Nolan Collection, a significant group of over 218 original artworks gifted to the Australian people by the late artist, Sidney Nolan.

Now a new exhibition at CMAG, Public Impressions: Sidney Nolan in Popular Media, opening this weekend, reveals how one of Australia’s most celebrated painters used popular media of an earlier era to build his profile and connect with audiences.

Bringing together major artworks, magazines, photographs, scrapbooks and archival material, the show examine how Nolan’s images circulated far beyond gallery walls.

The exhibition curator, by Kate Warren, senior lecturer, art history & curatorship at ANU, argues that Nolan’s public reputation was shaped not only by his paintings, but also by the journalists, photographers, editors, collectors and critics who helped bring his work into everyday Australian life.

Among the highlights is Pretty Polly Mine, an early Nolan painting on loan from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Purchased in 1949, it was the first work by Nolan to enter a public collection and became one of his most widely reproduced images.

The painting is displayed alongside rare magazines, scrapbooks and photographic material from the State Library of New South Wales, together with works from the Nolan Foundation Collection.

One of the exhibition’s most revealing images comes from a 1967 Pix magazine photoshoot. In the carefully staged photograph, Nolan poses beside a framed reproduction of one of his famous Ned Kelly paintings. The image demonstrates the publicity machine at work, way before the era of social media, with readers encouraged to fill in a coupon, send a few dollars and receive their own reproduction print to hang at home.

Warren believes the exhibition offers a fresh perspective on Nolan’s relationship with mass media, saying, “I hope visitors come away with a new understanding of how artists like Sidney Nolan engaged actively with popular media of their day, as well as the diverse ways that magazines presented Australian art to the everyday lives of their readers.”

Public Impressions: Sidney Nolan in Popular Media is at Canberra Museum + Gallery, June 6 – September 6. Entry is free.