Cirrus@Austlit

'John Brack’s famous 1955 painting, Collins St, 5pm, reminds us that Australian life in the 1950s could be dull. Really dull. Brack’s lugubrious grey commuters march down a grey Collins Street, committed to a life of slavish uniformity. But many of his ­contemporaries took a different approach. They embraced ­colour, and excelled at it — from the violent colours of Arthur Boyd to the intricate, subtler pigments of Fred Williams, through art the colour and vividness of the Australian landscape could drip into its cities. And Mirka Mora, the Melbourne painter and local celebrity who died last year aged 90, has to be one of the most colourful of all.' (Introduction)