180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, Victoria, July 22, 2013 2013

Summary

With the famous ‘waterwall’ to the rear, this painting depicts the scene looking from the entrance to the NGV. It forms part of a series titled The Scene, which captured on large canvases the outlook from each of Australia’s nine capital city art museums. In the Melbourne version skeletal wintry trees dominate the vista, amid smudged greens and an occasional fuzz of pink brightening the footpath. ‘I thought the paintings had to be colourful and fun and have a bit of life … not just a photographic reproduction,' says the artist, Geoff Newton. His interest is in shifting our attention, and perhaps out minds, ‘fully 180’ from our usual focus on the facades of our state temples of visual culture. In that sense the title of this work is particularly apt.