Join us for a conversation between Eugene Barilo von Reisberg and Ian Britain as they discuss The Making of Donald Friend: Life & Art.

Donald Friend was one of twentieth-century Australia’s most celebrated artists. In more recent years, his artistic achievements have been overshadowed by the revelations in his diaries of his egregious sexual relations while living in Asia. Those diaries, kept from the time he was 27 until close to the end of his life, provide the most comprehensive and candid record of his later career, and they have been published in various editions. Records of his early years, on the other hand, are fragmentary and widely scattered, and yet it is here that we can discover and best understand what went into his making – as man and artist. Ian Britain’s biography brings together all kinds of rich and revealing detail about this formative period of Friend’s life and career.

Ian Britain is a former editor of Meanjin, the author of Once An Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James. Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes and co-editor of The Oxford Book of Australian Schooldays. Eugene Barilo von Reisberg is an art historian and adviser.

Free, but bookings are essential.

Please book here.