William Yang turns to his collection of images from the seventies and eighties to tell the story of his time in Sydney in the form of prints at Maunsell Wickes Gallery. My Generation, the exhibition, shows images of the artistic community of Sydney in the 70-s and 80s.
This group included Brett Whiteley , the painter, who was the standout, successful artist of the time, and Martin Sharp who started a pop, surrealistic movement and school at The Yellow House in Potts Point.
Martin’s home, Wirian, the crumbling mansion in Bellevue Hill was full of toys, and remnants and artefacts from Luna Park. The collection went under the title of The Dream Museum. Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson were fashion designers who had the label Flamingo Park. Their work was colourful and inspired by Australian themes and their parades were happenings touched with the magic of theatre.
William became part of their group. Although he belonged to a different generation, Patrick White, the Nobel Prize winning writer, was something of a father figure to this group. Jim Sharman, the theatre director, resurrected his earlier plays and encouraged Patrick to write new ones. Margaret Fink, a film producer, used her house as a kind of salon, and many celebrities would come to her place in Woollahra for dinners. So the groups, who belonged to the visual art, fashion, gay and theatre worlds, overlapped and converged. This rather wild social environment of Sydney in the seventies and eighties, a time of liberation and excess, is set against the physical beauty of Sydney with its harbour and famous beaches.
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