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Paintings made from nail polish, pixels and ochre from Australia's far north-west will be on display at The University of Western Australia soon.

A new exhibition - Object Lessons 1: Painting (from 28 April) - promises a ‘buffet' of different approaches and perspectives on painting and painters.

The works in the exhibition are from one of the nation's biggest and most significant collection of women's art - the Cruthers Collection - donated to UWA in 2007 by philanthropists Sir John and Lady Sheila Cruthers. In the 30 years she collected women's art, the late Lady Cruthers amassed 400 works by 155 artists from the 1890s to the present.

Since then, UWA's Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery has added about 200 more works to the collection and its curator, Gemma Weston, has mined it to come up with a series of three spectacular Object Lessons exhibitions lasting from April to December.

Object Lessons 2: Curtain Situations (from 11 July) combines textiles and sculptural objects with prints and paintings, looking at the use of curtains in both illusion and in domestic spaces.

Object Lessons 3: Pattern Recognition (from 3 October) will show works which feature patterns, including some by Indigenous women artists.

WA artist Shannon Lyons was commissioned to produce a site-specific painting for Object Lessons 1.

"Painting has been declared dead and resurrected so many times over the history of modern art," Ms Weston said of Object Lessons 1 .

"It tends to survive as a relevant medium no matter how technology evolves. There's the possibility of infinite variety and experimentation but also a sense of an ongoing framework and continuum."

Media references

Clare McFarlane (Marketing Assistant, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery) (+61 8) 6488 7806
David Stacey (UWA Media) (+61 8) 6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716