Abundance
by Jean Broome-Norton 1934, 1987
Art Gallery of New South Wales
In Broome-Norton’s exceptional art-deco relief 'Abundance', the sexually assertive male and female bodies proclaim their child as a heroic product of their union. The work is an emblem of the fruitfulness of the land and the human race. The athleticism and fecundity of the bodies is coupled with a sense of the fertility of the land, signified by sheaves of wheat and a wreath. Such optimistic and mythic imaging gives no indication that the sculpture was conceived during the social upheaval of the Great Depression. The work instead reinforces notions of Australian life as a golden age of physical and environmental harmony.













