A Collaborative Effort: How Collaboration and Collectivism in Australia in the Seventies Helped Transform Art into the Contemporary Era

The seventies period in Australia is often referred to as the “anything goes” decade. It is a label that gives a sense of the profusion of anti-establishment modes that emerged in response to calls for social and political change that reverberated around the globe around that time. As a time of immense change in the Australian art scene, the seventies would influence the development of art into the contemporary era. The period‟s diversity, though, has presented difficulty for Australian art historiography. Despite the flowering of arts activity during the seventies era—and proba-bly also because of it—the period remains largely unaccounted for by the Australian canon.