Artist Andrew Christofides was inspired to curate Visions of Utopia after visiting the gallery in 2012 for an artist talk, and stumbled upon a work by Ralph Balson in their permanent collection.

Balson and his partner Grace Crowley are considered the pioneers of non-objective abstract painting in Australia.

It was his oil composition from 1948, “Construction Painting Orange”, which ignited a passion in Christofides for this project.

“It’s a stunning painting and a very important painting,” he said.

“I thought then I would look in their collection and see what they had and related to that sort of work and we came up with about half a dozen.” 

Over the next four years he built upon this collection to eventually involve more than 30 pieces from all over the country.

It may surprise people to see historic works from the 1940s and 1950s of bold geometric shapes, that have no particular meaning, but Christofides said it’s a form of art which has been seen since the late 19^th century.

While the curator was always interested in abstract art, it “knocked him out” as an art student in the 1970s when he saw works by Kazimir Malevich in an Amsterdam gallery.

“I thought in 1913 … to be making pictorial elements that meant nothing beyond themselves – that is geometric forms, circles, squares et cetera – I thought that was a very heroic thing to do,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wollongong Art Gallery program director John Monteleone has labelled is as one of the “pillars of modern art”.

“It’s very much about art for art’s sake,” Monteleone said.

“The title ‘Visions of Utopia’ is so appropriate because … non-objective artists try to bring all the elements of art together to create the perfect art.”

He was excited to be pulling several works from the gallery’s own collection out for show and is considering adding another piece from a younger artist featured in this exhibition.

Visions of Utopia - running from September 2 to November 20 at Wollongong Art Gallery.

Curator Andrew Christofides will be giving a free artist talk on September 7, from 11am.

He’ll talk about the idea of non-objective painting, outline the principles involves and discuss the works on display within a historic and Australian context.