Murray WalkerWalk of Life

Emerging from Melbourne’s figurative, expressionist lineage, Murray Walker has been making art about people, myth and narrative since the 1960s. From his early figure studies as a printmaker, to more recent explorations of street culture in Paris and Berlin as a collagist and painter, Walker has continually reflected on the human condition—in all of its beauty and fright. Although Walker grapples with themes including death, depravity, sex and social misfortune, his work is often inflected with humour, spiritedness and a sense of youthful freedom.

Walk of Life draws from holdings in the Heide Collection and Walker’s studio to bring together a cast of characters across the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. The exhibition spans printmaking, painting, ceramic, collage and assemblage sculpture made over sixty years, and reconnects the artist—now in his ninth decade—with Heide’s founders. Walker first met John and Sunday Reed as an art student in 1958, and the couple became early supporters of his work. Held in their original home, the Heide Cottage, this exhibition celebrates the legacy of John and Sunday’s support of contemporary artists and their continued influence on the history of Australian art.