Maintaining a distinctive place in the cultural experience of many Australians, from colonial to contemporary times, responses to the land represent a thread of continuity in the history of Australian art. Indigenous Australians have an intrinsically entwined identity with the landscape, while colonial Europeans found it alien and tried to interpret it through the language of the European landscape tradition. During the first half of the twentieth century, a period of rapid modernised, distinctive Australian artistic ideas and styles began to develop, enhanced by a growing appreciation of Indigenous people’s connection to the land. In contemporary Australia, depictions of the land come in many forms and can be sites for competing histories.
