This is a beautiful, thought-provoking, and timely exhibition about the enduring power and relevance of myth to humanity. In fact, visitors get two exhibitions in one, in the way that TarraWarra Museum of Art does exceptionally well: with contemporary art speaking back to Australian modernism – the original core of the museum’s permanent collection.¹

Sidney Nolan: Myth Rider fills the main gallery spaces with twenty-two paintings and eighty-seven works on paper dating from 1955 to 1966, charting the artist’s epic treatment of the Trojan War, its parallels with the Gallipoli campaign fought over much the same terrain, its origins in the ancient Greek myth of Leda and the Swan and the relevance of all this to his own time. Then, beyond those grey-walled rooms, a shaft of daylight beckons and in the end gallery, overlooking the Yarra Valley landscape, Heather B. Swann: Leda and the Swan – quiet, exquisite, almost monochromatic in comparison with the rich red, blue, gold, and green of Nolan’s PVA Ledas – punches like a steel fist in a silk glove. Both exhibitions are curated by TarraWarra’s Anthony Fitzpatrick.