Does it puzzle you that, over two centuries after Europeans began to settle in Australia, their descendants are still searching for a national identity? For there it is again, in the foreword to the catalogue of an exhibition at Global Arts Link, Ipswich. The director, Louise Denoon, writes that Bluey & Curley: Portraits from an era 1939- 1955 demonstrates 'regional Australia 's continuing contribution to debates about Australian identity'-a subject which, she adds, the Centenary of Federation celebrations in 2001 will highlight. (Why regional? This is the one year old institution's first exhibition to be toured nationally and was developed in association with the Australian War Memorial.)
In connection with this unfinished business of identity, Denoon poses the question as to whether the decades in the middle of the last century are 'an ideal to inspire us or an Australia best forgotten'. To help us decide, she says, the exhibition offers 'a comparison of the popular culture of the day with artists' representations'. The works are principally panels and other drawings by Alex Gurney, the originator of the comic strip 'Biuey & Curley' and forty-five works by artists including Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd and many others. The exhibition is in three parts: images of Australian men, the role of artists during the war and life in postwar Australia.
The period spans the beginning of World War 11 and a decade of what Ross Terrill called the 'comfortable and secure era' after the war, when the phrase 'lucky country' attained a measure of non-ironic credibility. lt also encompasses the life of Bluey & Curley, or that portion of it that was drawn by Gurney. lt was the most popular of the