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Excitement & tranquillity come together at Heide
Who or what is Heide? Roving Reporter Dayna explains.
On a not so very important day, though particularly sunny, I decided to put on my walking shoes and visit somewhere inspiring. As a lover of all things 'outdoorsy,' I ended up at Heide Museum of Modern Art (new window) in Bulleen.
Who or what is Heide?
Heide is a wholly unique and awe-inspiring place. More like a paradisiacal house than a museum for modern art, Heide tricks its visitors into thinking they're visiting an old cottage or farm-house.
Beautifully restored, Heide was the house and dairy farm that belonged to John and Sunday Reed, art patrons who welcomed and housed an amazing array of contemporary artists in the period between and after the Second World War.
Many of the artists, poets and musicians who visited and regularly stayed at Heide were key figures in one of Australia's most significant modernist movements and were known as the Angry Penguins (new window). They were the driving forces of established modernist art as we know it today.
Heide today is much the same as it was in its humble beginnings yet restorations and exhibitions have seen it come alive with a paradox of old vs the ultra-modern.
Who were John & Sunday Reed?
John and Sunday Reed were unusual and exceptional patrons of their time. Both studied in various European schools and when they returned to Australia, they came to the realisation that they were different to the Europeans and unlike the conservative British-Australians.
This initial recognition conceptualised itself as unique "Australianness" and the Reeds dedicated the rest of their lives putting everything they had behind an emerging Australian culture.
They spent their money and energy backing all radical new forms of literature and poetry, music, painting and sculpture and welcomed members of Melbourne's then, not-so-diverse cultural community.
The Reeds provided hospitality, intellectual and inspirational stimulation as well as numerous other forms of support to artists, writers, poets and musicians who visited them at Heide.
The Heide circle of Artistes
Many notable Australian artists, poets and writers resided and belonged to the 'Heide movement.' Each artist and writer played a pivotal role in the active movements of emerging modernism and the lives of those artists were spiritually and idealistically connected as well as artistically and intellectually.
Renowned Australian painter Sir Sidney Nolan was a regular at Heide and was just as much part of the scene as John and Sunday were.
Other famous visitors and contributors to Heide included Danila Vassilieff, Noel Counihan and the Angry Penguin painters such as Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.
Also contributing at Heide were poets Max Harris, Charles Rischbieth Jury, D.B. Kerr and P.G. Pfeiffer who founded the movement's literary magazine titled Angry Penguins (new window).
What's Heide like now?
Heide is amazing! An extremely tranquil space nestled on the banks of the Yarra River, it is set on 11 acres of rolling hills and seemingly untouched bushland.
There are exotic and indigenous plant species, all contributing to the bohemian atmosphere and grassy knolls displaying modern and contemporary sculptures.
Due to renovations completed in the last few years, there is now the famous café and sculpture garden with the bizarre contrast of ultra-modern statuettes located on a backdrop of natural landscape.
Heide was the revolutionary hub of Australia and though many of the artists who resided there have now passed on, their undeniable presences still waft through the air.
One can almost touch the dramatic aura of change and rebellion that once bubbled at Heide and it is definitely worth the short trip; if not for its hypnotic experience then definitely for the incredibly hard-to-ignore social and artistic history seeping out through the walls.
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