The rich legacy of South Australian artist Geoff Wilson
Geoff Wilson had a pivotal influence on South Australia’s arts community over many decades. Following his passing, John Neylon pays tribute this remarkable artist and educator who helped us see the state’s rural landscapes, its urban environments – and the world – with fresh eyes.
Geoffrey Wilson OAM
1927 – 2024
Geoffrey Ronald Wilson was born in 1927 in Bridgetown, Western Australia. He moved around with his family, first to New South Wales and then Victoria, before settling in Adelaide in 1941. When his youthful ambition to be an architectural draftsman was thwarted, he undertook an art teaching course at the South Australian School of Art and Adelaide Teachers College, and in 1945 began work in the employ of the Education Department.
From the later ’40s to the early ’60s, a life-work pattern developed with teaching interspersed with overseas travel. During this time, Wilson began to exhibit regularly with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts. In 1962, he took up a teaching post at the SA School of Art, where he remained for 20 years, earning a reputation as one of the school’s most travelled and influential lecturers.
Following retirement, Wilson pursued his studio career as well as travelling extensively both within Australian and to Europe. To the end of his life, he remained true to the studio tradition, drawing constantly, working en plein air across rural and remote South Australia, and usually found working on another canvas in his light-filled studio with its tantalising views of Adelaide, the Hills and the sea.
Geoff Wilson at his Belair residence ‘Grime Hall’ in 2014. Photo: Sam Noonan
You might like
The recent passing of such a remarkable artist, art educator and much-loved member of Adelaide’s art community may seem, for some, an end of an era.
While this ever-green artist continued to hold court at his beloved “Grime Hall” at Belair, organising big parties and entertaining everyone with his dry wit and colourful anecdotes, it was possible to imagine that, despite the churn and challenges of the contemporary art scene, some things endured. Not only endured, but mattered.
Wilson’s gift to his students at the South Australian School of Art, and to Adelaide artists who value the studio tradition, was a set of tools – a mindset for looking at the world through the filter of art. It was about learning to look, and to see the world with fresh eyes.
The central theme of a 2022 exhibition, The Thinking Eye, curated by Winnie Pelz, was that of legacy. It comprised work by artists and art educators who had attended the SA School of Art in the 1960s and ’70s who considered the design course taught by Wilson and Helen Macintosh to have been pivotal in shaping their practice.
Subscribe for updates
Geoff Wilson, Monument to the South East Freeway, 2000.
The ’60s was all about colour and design. Wilson’s students felt at ease with his design-based treatment of landscape subjects – a distinctive blend of British neo-romantic landscape nostalgia and pop art idioms.
His approach to landscape comprised, as art historian and curator Barry Pearce says, a visual “interrogation”. This involved privileging built features in the landscape such as buildings and roads, and rendering them with linear clarity then exploring compositional and colour relationships. Such interrogations were often tinged with absurdist humour and muted surrealist riffs as trees, clouds, abandoned machinery and the like were coopted into the action. To the informed eye, each work is an invitation to drill through an outer membrane of representation to an inner scaffolding of relationships.
"The ‘intriguing puzzle’… is why, despite latter-day recognition, there is critical neglect of Wilson"
Wilson exhibited extensively from 1944 to the present day in more than 50 group exhibitions and more than 15 solo exhibitions, including: Orchestrated Vision: the art of Geoff Wilson, Heritage Exhibition, Fleurieu Biennale Inc 2000 (curated by Jane Hylton); Geoff Wilson: Interrogated Landscape, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia, 2015 (curated by Barry Pearce), and In Good Company: The drawings of Geoff Wilson, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2019 (curated by Alice Clanachan).
To this impressive record can be added commissions and awards. Collections representation includes Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, National Gallery of Australia, New Parliament House, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and University of South Australia.
Geoff Wilson, Two circles and an ellipse, Kelly’s farm, Quorn, 2001.
In 2022, the University of South Australia conferred on the artist an honorary award of Doctor of the University in recognition of his distinguished service to the community. The award citation noted that “Geoff’s passion for art and involvement in cultural life, as an educator and artist, is a strong testimony to his standing in the community. Throughout his generous commitment of time and mentoring fellow artists, he has been an instrumental influence on many.”
In 2022, Geoffrey Ronald Wilson was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to the visual arts.
The “intriguing puzzle”, as Barry Pearce describes it, is why, despite latter-day recognition, there is critical neglect of Wilson, certainly within a national context. Part of the reason may lie with the artist, who rarely exhibited outside of his home state and by nature was modest in promoting his work, while generously supporting others.
But, as the history of art demonstrates, artists who hold fast to their vision and values will eventually swim into view. Have faith. Geoff Wilson’s ordered, bareboned South Australian rural landscapes with their agricultural clutter of an earlier era represent an outstanding contribution to our regional sense of shared identity as surely as Heysen’s arcadian renditions of our beloved Hills, the gums and ranges, resonated with an earlier generation.