Ian Milliss and Vernon Treweeke: then and now

A Macquarie University Art Gallery exhibition held between 31 October - 21 November 2014. This show highlighted how the two artists – Milliss and Treweeke – approached the broad question of what it means to be an artist in all its intractability and how they have sustained their authentic selves over a 50 year period in the process.

Ian Milliss and Vernon Treweeke met in the late 1960s when both showed at Central Street Gallery (1966-1970). Despite their age difference they became friends before heading off into different directions that took them away from the conventional art world into alternative communities. Treweeke a pioneer of the 1973 Aquarius Festival that introduced the counter cultural movement into the north coast community of Nimbin moved into mural painting associated with the festival. Milliss turned towards the green bans movement and unionism that activated different modes of production. It was perceived then that both artists had withdrawn from artistic practice. But this was not the case. On the contrary, both remained very active albeit in unseen ways. Milliss was engaged in cultural activism involving a wide range of trade union and community groups utilising different media whilst Treweeke forged ahead painting large scale public murals. Over the last decade, both artists have been rediscovered and vigorously taken up by the art world, their work put forward to a new audience of art critics and young emerging artists. This exhibition looks anew at not only their work produced in the 1960s but explores it in relation to their current practices working as contemporary artists.