Peter Benjamin Graham

Who was Peter Benjamin Graham?

Peter Benjamin Graham, was an Australian visual artist, printer, and art theorist.

In 1954, Graham began to explore native Australian wildlife and themes associated with Aboriginal culture, using the visual languages of European figurative Modernism and later geometric abstraction.

He began developing a new form of visual geometry related to Chaos Theory from 1960, eventually called Thematic Orchestration. This new visual language enabled the 2D deconstruction and synthesis of an observed subject, in a way fundamentally different from traditional abstraction. Thematic Orchestration allows the artist to 'grow' an image, producing almost infinite conscious invention.

In 1964 Graham began developing what he called a high level visual notation system for pure visual imagery, which he first named Notation Painting and later New Epoch Art.

Graham became a pioneer of the Australian artist run initiative movement, running The Queensberry Street Gallery in association with Victorian Printmakers' Group from 1973 until 1978.

In 2006 Peter Graham's 1945 painting Peter Lalor Addressing the Miners Before Eureka featured in a major Australian travelling exhibition celebrating the 150 anniversary of the Eureka Stockade This painting is also featured in Riot or Revolution, a dramatised history documentary on the Eureka Stockade directed by Don Parham and produced by Parham Media Productions in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2005.