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When you take a moment and look into one of John Perceval\u2019s paintings, there\u2019s a chance that the artist himself is the one staring back at you. A young, cherubic face with a pudding bowl haircut appears again and again \u2013 a face, which it turns out, is the artist\u2019s own.<\/p>\n
A similar visage is also apparent in some of his most beloved works, the ceramic angels.<\/p>\n
Opening at Heide Museum of Modern Art this week is John Perceval: All That We Are, an extraordinary coming together of 25 of the angels, arguably some of the West Australian-born artist\u2019s most significant creations, as well as several previously unseen masterpieces.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, this is the first major survey of Perceval\u2019s work in more than 30 years; the last was Of Dark and Light at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1992.<\/p>\n
![\"Curator](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/730796b432c8db6e73526c865552b0d54ff7a881.jpeg\")
Curator Kendrah Morgan with works by John Perceval.Eddie Jim<\/p>\n
Drawn from significant public and private collections, the show includes several rarely seen works and covers the artist\u2019s first three decades.<\/p>\n
The saying goes \u2018where angels fear to tread\u2019 but at this exclusive walk through, it\u2019s me concerned about my every step in the room housing these precious and fragile otherworldly offerings.<\/p>\n
Putting together the show required months of intensive tracking. \u201cA lot of these works have been in private collections for many, many years; people love living with them, they treasure them,\u201d says Kendrah Morgan, Heide\u2019s head curator. Once people own a Perceval, they tend to hold on to it, she explains.<\/p>\n
Morgan has been keen to put this show together for many years. \u201c[Perceval] is one of the artists I admire the most in the Heide collection because of the psychological depth of the work, and because for me\u2026 the work is profoundly humanist and it\u2019s about all the facets of the human condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
One work \u2013 Angel Trumpeting (c.1960) \u2013 was found at a school after following a trail of leads. Keen to find some angels that weren\u2019t known to the public, Morgan contacted Joe Pascoe, an authority on Australian ceramics and a former director of Shepparton Art Museum. Pascoe pointed her to Preshil, in Kew, who then facilitated a viewing. \u201cPerceval\u2019s children attended Preshil when the family were living in Canterbury from 1954 to 1963, and he gave the school the angel for its art collection, presumably as a gesture of thanks and goodwill.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Alice](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/8c644bd42ebd5c62a9be9ca94438958c90ece2bd.jpeg\")
Alice Perceval with her father John, photographed in 1963. <\/p>\n
Wales-based Alice Perceval, youngest child of Perceval and Mary Boyd, is visiting Heide to see the show as it is installed: she is at once overjoyed and slightly overwhelmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am struck by what an extraordinary artist my father was,\u201d she says, adding that while she\u2019s always known that, seeing the works so beautifully restored, all together and in real life, is very moving.<\/p>\n
An artist in her own right, Alice fondly recalls drawing and painting alongside her dad. He was very playful, not precious at all, and he loved children, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to draw this playful thing he called the Triantiwontigongolope [based on the CJ Dennis poem<\/a>]. We would take it in turns to draw the wings. It was a sort of an insect with an angel-like face.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Perceval having a \u201clonely and sad\u201d youth, according to Alice \u2013 his parents having divorced when he was very young \u2013 he was very playful as an adult. \u201cI think that\u2019s why he and Mirka Mora were such good friends because they really saw the inner child in each other. There was lots of mischief when those two were together.\u201d<\/p>\n Two early self-portraits at the entrance to the show, created when Perceval was 14 and 15, are remarkably self-assured. Other pieces through to his early 20s reveal that while at times anxious and troubled, he was incredibly talented. \u201cThere\u2019s something about my father that was just quite extraordinary, there was something that came from somewhere else, he was just like that from the beginning,\u201d Alice says.<\/p>\n She imagines that when he was 18, meeting Arthur Boyd and then through him his sister, Mary, who would become Alice\u2019s mother, \u201cthere was that nurturing, creative environment, like a feeling of homecoming in a way\u201d.<\/p>\n As for Perceval inserting himself into his works, Alice says: \u201cHe\u2019s superimposing himself as a child, and still there, like the witness and the commentator\u201d.<\/p>\n An impressive 25 of Perceval\u2019s much-loved ceramic angels have been brought together for the exhibition, marking the first time they\u2019ve been shown together at this scale.<\/p>\n Morgan sees them as \u201csymbols of the world\u2019s survival \u2026 even though they\u2019re angels, and, of course, meant to be divine creatures, they\u2019re very secular and they show every type of personality. You\u2019ve got innocence and knowing, mischief and an idealistic, beautifully behaved one,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Created in the late 1950s, in part a response to the threat of nuclear war, the angels are regarded as one of Perceval\u2019s most important contributions to Australian art.<\/p>\n One is called Angel Winkie \u2013 Alice\u2019s older sister, Celia\u2019s nickname – and the mischievous face on another reminds her of a cheeky cousin.<\/p>\n As well as reflecting the full array of human behaviour, the angels are beautifully crafted, often with incredibly realistic childlike gestures, says Morgan pointing to one. \u201cYou know how babies do put their toes in their mouths … and this one \u2026 [Figure of an Angel 1958] I think she\u2019s sucking her thumb.\u201d<\/p>\n Two rooms are dedicated to Perceval\u2019s landscapes and seascapes. The latter features several from his renowned Williamstown series, capturing the docks, shipyards and waters of the seaside town.<\/p>\n The stunning landscapes show incredible technique. One features a leaf the artist stuck onto the picture, while Alice recalls another on which her Dad stuck a dead crab. She\u2019s not sure what happened to it, but muses it may have gotten too smelly.<\/p>\n Prolific and inventive, Perceval also placed historical figures and events in a local context. In Christ Dining at Young and Jackson\u2019s<\/a> (1947\u20131948), he seats Christ and his disciples at the iconic pub opposite Flinders Street Station, complete with the once-infamous Chloe in the background, and a character who looks like Charlie Chaplin.<\/p>\n![\"Alice](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/92462a875a4d07eca96b7391638990cf6ee0319e.jpeg\")
Alice Perceval at Heide\u2019s John Perceval: All That We AreEddie Jim<\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/72c20bd8cc653e7a116a609952fbbdf7eb52fd75.jpeg\")
This is the largest survey of works by John Perceval in over 30 years.Eddie Jim<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/31d7800a7815250ca465a2e949aa58cdaef8c740.jpeg\")
A photograph of the Perceval family camping in the south of France in 1964, by Mary Boyd.National Library of Australia, courtesy of the Mary Nolan Estate<\/p>\n
![\"Artist](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/990834d1c6d302128f3e379651fd9204067072a6.jpeg\")
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