Remastering the Record

They are some of the most enduring images of Australian art. Having made his home in a thatched hut on an island off the coast of Queensland, eccentric Scottish-born painter Ian Fairweather (1891-1974) began to harmonize a lifetime of influences and impulsive traveling. Mixing Taoist philosophy with Cubism, and Ab-Ex drips with Chinese calligraphy, his grandiloquent '60s works like Monastery and Monsoon transcended abstraction to become austere meditations in paint, as elemental as lightning. And all the more remarkable considering their flimsy foundations - they were often completed on carboard with the cheapest of ink.

But perhaps Fairweather's most...