Art exhibitions

Whittlesea Arts website

Whittlesea Arts is an interactive hub showcasing the very best of the City’s visual art, civic history and public art collections.

Visit the Whittlesea Arts website to view our art collections

The Art of John Borrack 

Celebrating The John and Gillian Borrack Federation Bequest.

One of Australia’s finest landscape artists, John Borrack invites us to look at and reflect on the history and transformation of our ancient land, the Australian landscape. On one level, this significant collection of paintings is a record of human intervention in the Plenty Valley region; on another, it represents an insight into the artist’s stylistic development through forty paintings created over a period of forty years, from 1961 to 2000. This collection is also about a narrative, a human story of an artist who dedicated his life to observing the landscape and interpreting it.  Borrack’s paintings depict his affinity with the land, painted in watercolour and gouache en plein air (meaning ‘painted outdoors’) - they capture the moods of nature.

John Borrack’s deep connection to the Plenty Valley region stems from his ancestral roots. His mother, Augusta Caroline Borrack, was a descendant of the Ziebell family, pioneers who established the Ziebell Farmhouse in Thomastown in the 1850’s. The artist’s childhood experiences of country life and exposure to the beauty of the land were firmly imprinted in his memories and visual sensibilities, providing him with a lifetime of rich subject matter to explore in his art.

Learn more about John Borrack.