Heide Museum of Modern Art

It ain’t necessarily so...

Mike Brown and the Imitation Realists

18 July - 1 October 2006

Venue: Heide I

Curator: Kendrah Morgan

Mike Brown first came to public attention in a 1962 exhibition with Ross Crothall and Colin Lanceley, known collectively as the Imitation Realists. The group shared an interest in collage, American Popinspired assemblage, junk art, objets trouvés and the art of non-Western cultures. They produced exuberant, playful and often provocative constructions that were without precedent in Australian art.

It ain’t necessarily so... represents Brown’s wide-ranging stylistic experimentation during the 1960s, culminating in a vivid, sprawling mural which he painted in the Heide I dining room in 1969–70. Although the original mural was destroyed in the early 1970s, a re-creation in the spirit of Brown’s work has been produced to form the centrepiece of this exhibition.