Trevor Nickolls
Tightrope walking, 1979-80
Now seen as one of the fathers of the urban movement, Ngarrindjeri artist Trevor Nickolls saw himself as ‘the bridge’ between cultures and his work explored what it meant to live between two worlds. Although he didn’t see his work as overtly political, Nickolls represented the story of many Aboriginal people growing up off Country by painting his experience of displacement and its associated anxieties.
Tightrope walking, painted in Melbourne in 1979–80 focuses on his then newly discovered ‘Dreamtime/ Machinetime’ dichotomy, which expresses the incongruity of his being trapped in an alienating, white-dominated Western nation. The central (brown) figure, entangled in a grey, mechanised Melbourne cityscape with his face howling towards the sky and fire streaming from his mouth, symbolises Nickolls’ longing for the Dreamtime of another age, indicated by concentric circles of Papunya Tula iconography. The work brilliantly illustrates the competing elements of his identity and the challenges of being a light-skinned Aboriginal person living away from Country
- Artist / Maker
- Trevor Nickolls (1949—2012)
- Creation Date
- 1980
- Collection
- Victorian College of the Arts Collection (VCA)
- Subjects
- Art and Design - Paintings
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint on canvas
- Dimensions
(H x W x D) - 1992 x 917 x 33 mm
- Credit line
- Victorian College of the Arts Collection, the University of Melbourne Gift of the artist, 1980
- Accession number
- 0000.109
- Copyright
- © Trevor Nickolls/Copyright Agency, 2025 Request Access
