Australian art

The rock art of Australia's Indigenous peoples is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites.Traditional designs, patterns and stories infuse contemporary Indigenous Australian art, "the last great art movement of the 20th century";its exponents include Emily Kame Kngwarreye.
During the first century of European settlement, colonial artists, trained in Europe, showed a fascination with the unfamiliar land. The naturalistic, sun-filled works of Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and others associated with the 19th-century Heidelberg School—the first "distinctively Australian" movement in Western art—gave expression to a burgeoning Australian nationalism in the lead-up to Federation.
While the school remained influential into the new century, modernists such as Margaret Preston, and, later, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, explored new artistic trends. The landscape remained a central subject matter for Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley and other post-World War II artists whose works, eclectic in style yet uniquely Australian, moved between the figurative and the abstract.
The National Gallery of Australia and state galleries maintain collections of Australian and international art.
Australia has one of the world's highest attendances of art galleries and museums per head of population.
Sidney Nolan's Snake mural (1970), held at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania, is inspired by the Aboriginal creation myth of the Rainbow Serpent, as well as desert flowers in bloom after a drought.
Australian literature grew slowly in the decades following European settlement though Indigenous oral traditions, many of which have since been recorded in writing, are much older. Writers of the 19th-century Bulletin School, such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, captured the experience of the bush using a distinctive Australian vocabulary.
Their works are still very popular; Paterson's bush poem "Waltzing Matilda" (1895) is regarded as Australia's unofficial national anthem. Miles Franklin is the namesake of Australia's most prestigious literary prize, awarded to the best novel about Australian life. Its first recipient, Patrick White, went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. Australian winners of the Man Booker Prize include Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan.
Author David Malouf, playwright David Williamson and poet Les Murray are also renowned literary figures. Many of Australia's performing arts companies receive funding through the federal government's Australia Council.There is a symphony orchestra in each state, and a national opera company, Opera Australia, well known for its famous soprano Joan Sutherland.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Nellie Melba was one of the world's leading opera singers. Ballet and dance are represented by The Australian Ballet and various state companies. Each state has a publicly funded theatre company.