Temporary road closures will be in place around the Gallery from 26 February during the Enlighten Festival.
Peter Porter OAM (1929–2010), poet and critic, moved from Brisbane to London in 1951 at age 22. His work as an advertising copywriter influenced his early poetry, lucidly evoking the culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s. British poet Stephen Spender described Porter's mind as 'immensely fertile, lively, informed, honest and penetrating'. Porter's first collection of poems, Once Bitten, Twice Bitten, was published in Britain in 1961. The death of his wife in 1974 gave rise to the poetry collection The Cost of Seriousness (1978). Porter's straddling of Australian and English culture remained central to his work, evoking urban and natural worlds. In 1990 Porter was awarded the Gold Medal of Australian Literature, and in 2002, the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
Best known for his landscapes, Tony Clark's work features conceptual, punk and pop qualities, as evidenced by the reduced palette of blue and pink in this portrait of Porter. The blue of Porter's floating head references Clark's preoccupation with the classicism of Josiah Wedgwood's Jasperware.
Purchased with funds provided by the Basil Bressler Bequest 2004
Basil P. Bressler (44 portraits supported)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
The Portrait Gallery's paintings of two poets, Les Murray and Peter Porter, demonstrate two very different artists' responses to the challenge of representing more than usually sensitive and imaginative men.
Drawn from some of the many donations made to the Gallery's collection, the exhibition Portraits for Posterity pays homage both to the remarkable (and varied) group of Australians who are portrayed in the portraits and the generosity of the many donors who have presented them to the Gallery.
