The home of John and Sunday Reed between 1935 and 1967, the Heide I cottage was a hub of progressive thinking and modernist ideas that centred on art, but which extended to literature, politics and sociology.

The rise of Communism and Fascism in the 1930s and 1940s and the spectre of World War II spurred urgent debate concerning the role of the artist and the imperative of creative freedom. Drawing on aspects of the European art movements of Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism, and their own personal experiences, the artists of the Heide circle forged a new humanist, antipodean modernism, the hallmark of which was a shift from objective to subjective reality.

Focussing on these turbulent decades, this exhibition presents many of the best known works from the Heide Collection by artists supported by the Reeds, including Sam Atyeo, Danila Vassilieff, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester.