drawing
- Museum number
- 2006,0228.3
- Description
-
'All that remains is the music of their names', from the series 'Back of Beyond'; a deserted homestead with an iron bed and abandoned truck. 1954
Felt-tipped pen and ink on thin coated paper
- Production date
- 1954
- Dimensions
-
Height: 253 millimetres
-
Width: 304 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Stephen Coppel, 'Out of Australia: Prints and Drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas', with a contribution by Wally Caruana on Aboriginal prints, BMP, 2011, no.11
From the sweeping panorama of the empty, desolate landscape in 2006,0228.1, Nolan in these drawings focuses on the lonely human struggle for survival in the outback's isolated homesteads where drought and death are the only companions.
Several of the 'Back of Beyond' drawings (cats 2006,0228.1, 2006,0228.3, 2006,0228.2) are inscribed by Nolan with a number in ink. It is not known what this refers to, although the sequencing suggests it may be akin to a storyboard. In 1954 Nolan reported in a letter to Tucker in Rome: 'I have been working a good deal but mostly on drawings for the Birdsville film which I have now built up into a collection of 50 drawings related to the script' (letter 28 August 1954, in McCaughey Bert and Ned, p. 171). 'All that remains is the music of their names' is reproduced in Clark, MacInnes and Robertson 1961 as a plate 24 under the caption 'Deserted Homestead 1953'. It is shown opposite a photograph taken by Nolan in 1952 of an abandoned iron bedstead in the desert.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Geoffrey Smith, 'Sidney Nolan: Desert and Drought', exh.cat., Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 2003, cat.no.91, reprod. p.128.
2011 May-Sept, BM, 'Out of Australia', cat. no.11.
2012 July-Sept, BM, Isolation (Camden School for Girls curated display)
2017-18, 24 November–11 January, BM, Sidney Nolan Centenary: Back of Beyond, Gallery 90a display
- Acquisition date
- 2006
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2006,0228.3