Kids audio tour Art Gallery of New South Wales

Benign but fearsome, this pair of unusually large and meticulously detailed figures exemplifies ceramic technique in Tang China. The facial features and elaborate costumes of these tomb guardians are realised with a convincing naturalism combined with iconographic stylisation. Their dynamic and dramatic poses are characteristic of figures that were placed in the four corners of the tomb to ward off evil spirits. Guardian figures such as these, termed 'lokapalas' or guardian kings, became assimilated into the popular concept of the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism, or 'tian wang'. The demonic appearance of this pair is heightened by their flamboyant armour with its flaring epaulettes and prominent breastplates. Also typical is their heroic pose: by standing on or trampling a demon or animal the guardians demonstrate their power over natural elements and evil forces.

Art Gallery Handbook, 1999. pg. 250.

Inspired by his experiences as a youth in the bush near Warren, NSW, George W Lambert began this ambitious work at the age of 26, while living with his mother at Hornsby. He worked in a small shed in the garden, and had to position the painting diagonally across it, even then unable to stretch the canvas to its full extent.

The painting was enthusiastically received as a heroic portrayal of bush life, displaying Lambert's innate skill at draughtsmanship. It was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape painting for 1899, and the following year Lambert left for London with the first New South Wales Society of Artists Travelling Scholarship.

This work was acquired by the Gallery in 1899.

Charles Meere was one of a group of Sydney artists whose work modernised classical artistic traditions as a means of depicting national life during the inter-war period. The epitome of his vision is Australian beach pattern, a tableau of beach goers whose athletic perfection takes on monumental, heroic proportions. Meere created a crowded and complex composition through the pattern of figures, which appears as a still-life of suspended strength. This iconic painting encapsulates the myth of the healthy young nation symbolised by the tanned, god-like bodies of the sunbathers.

This work was a finalist in the 1940 Sulman Prize and was acquired by the Gallery in 1965.

Tom Roberts conceived the idea of a bushranger picture while he was staying at Inverell in northern NSW. He painted 'Bailed up' largely en plein air. It tells as much of the qualities of the local landscape as of its staged drama. Roberts superbly captures the summer heat conditions, which render to stillness the dramatic circumstances of a Cobb & Co hold up. The scene was painted from a purpose-built platform in a stringy bark tree, giving the work its high vantage point. Roberts modelled the figures on Inverell townspeople, including stagecoach driver 'Silent Bob Bates' who had been held up by local bushranger 'Captain Thunderbolt' three decades earlier.

Buluwana was a woman of Wumuddjan subsection, and one of the first people to inhabit the Kurulk clan region at Ngandarrayo. The Ngandarrayo site is on a large escarpment outlier. The camping places along this outlier are rich in rock art. During the time of great drought, Buluwana and her family were camped at Ngandarrayo. They were weak from thirst, and close to death, when the group was confronted by the malevolent gigantic form of the Death Adder snake. Buluwana tried to run away with the rest of her family, but was crushed and turned to stone. An arrangement of rocks still remains in the ground as Buluwana's present-day form. Only her head protrudes as a prismic standing stone - the rest ofher body is under the ground. Other human remains lying on rock ledges are said to be those of more early ancestors. The Ngandarrayo site is a place of great significance to people of the Kurulk and Kulmarru clans, and is classed as a highly sacred and dangerous place.

from Hetti Perkins et al., 'Crossing country: the alchemy of Western Arnhem Land art', Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004