This course introduces some of the preoccupations of Australian art in the years since colonisation. Issues to be discussed include: the notion of the artist as a recorder in the 18th and early 19th centuries; the ways in which art was marshalled into the fin de siecle search for a national identity; the changing perceptions of what 'legitimate' Australian art may be; the different (and changing) perceptions of gender in Australian visual culture; ideas of what may be 'modern' in an Australian context; the yearning of the colonial artists to succeed at international centres of Empire; the impact of non-British traditiions on Australian art, the growth of an appreciation of different aspects of Indigenous cultures and their impact on how Australian art is seen today.