The Field was the first temporary exhibition in the newly opened National Gallery of Victoria building in St Kilda Road. Its curators, John Stringer and Brian Finemore, proudly proclaimed its partisanship as it celebrated the work of a new generation of Australian abstract artists.
“It is not impartial and comprehensive. It is biassed to define one particular direction in contemporary Australian art,” they wrote.
The Field was held a year after MoMA’s Two Decades of American Painting travelled to Sydney and Melbourne, and both its content and its catalogue were significantly influenced by that exhibition. Its professional production as much as the content of the lively hard edge abstract works encouraged the perception that this was the avant garde in Australia in 1968.
In 2018, the 50th anniversary of The Field, the National Gallery of Victoria recreated the exhibition at Federation Square.
