Image: Heide Museum of Modern Art, BULLEEN
Heide Museum of Modern Art has opened ‘John Perceval: All That We Are’, a survey exhibition focused on the first 25 years of John de Burgh Perceval’s career. On view in the Heide Main Galleries until 12 July 2026, the exhibition positions Perceval as a central but unruly figure in the creative circle associated with John and Sunday Reed at Heide, while tracing his contribution to the development of modernist art in Melbourne.
The exhibition draws on Perceval’s work from the late 1930s through the early 1960s, when he emerged publicly in the early 1940s and developed what Heide describes as a fundamentally humanist practice. By the age of 19, the artist was already making works of considerable competency and psychological power. Across painting, drawing and ceramics, Perceval created images and forms that, according to the museum, register “the joys and fears and frailties and strengths underpinning human existence.”
‘All That We Are’ follows the arc of that early output, moving from unsettling portrayals of childhood memories and wartime experience to exuberant imagery inspired by the European Old Masters and later gestural land and seascapes. The exhibition also highlights a major aspect of Perceval’s ceramic practice, including 28 of his celebrated angel sculptures from the 1950s and early 1960s. One of the works featured on the exhibition page is ‘Angel with Trumpet’ (1961), a glazed earthenware work held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The show arrives as Heide continues a strong 2026 program built around Australian modernism and related histories. The museum’s July newsletter also points to ‘Always Modern: Radical Nurture’ in Heide Cottage, ‘Crichton, Tucker, Whiteley: The Chelsea Hotel Years 1967–69’ in the Albert & Barbara Tucker Gallery, and the forthcoming ‘Brassaï: Secret Paris’ in the Main Galleries. Within that wider program, the Perceval exhibition sits squarely in Heide’s long engagement with the artists, ideas and networks shaped around the Reeds and their home at Bulleen.
Heide’s exhibition page identifies Kendrah Morgan as curator of ‘John Perceval: All That We Are’. The museum says the exhibition is located in the Heide Main Galleries and is included in the current exhibitions listing on its website. The display is presented at the museum’s Bulleen site, where Heide also notes current roadworks and possible travel disruptions linked to the North East Link Tunnel and Eastern Freeway Upgrade projects.
The exhibition began on 21 March 2026 and runs through 12 July 2026 at Heide Main Galleries, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen, Victoria.
