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John Olsen at the Sydney Opera House

The artworks of John Olsen are celebrations of landscape and life, a joyful affirmation of optimism and creativity that remained constant over the many decades he held a brush. A giant of the Australian art world, Olsen’s work is held in major collections around the world, and forms part of the fabric of the Sydney Opera House itself.

His seminal mural ‘Salute to Slessor’s 5 Bells’ (1971-73), was commissioned for the Concert Hall Northern Foyer and unveiled when the House opened to the public in 1973. Inspired by Kenneth Slessor’s 1939 poem ‘Five bells’ and designed to be viewed after dark, it is unveiled at night and takes viewers into a dream-like underwater nocturnal space.

The Five Bells mural - which is my biggest challenge ever - is looking very good after 50 years, it looks so happy there. To see my work extended to the exterior, splashed across the sails, completes my life.

John Olsen, April 2023

How Olsen was seduced by the charms of Australia’s largest city

As an adult, Olsen’s relationship with the city deepened and widened. He would compare Sydney to a mistress, not the submissive kind but a wilful one with a sharp tongue and some dangerous associates.

  • By Elizabeth Fortescue

The inside story of Olsen’s celebrated Opera House mural

When I went to see Kenneth Slessor, he was working as a journalist, his poetical self long since disappeared, and he told me a story. It was the story of an artist who drowned in Sydney opposite the place where the Opera House now stands.

  • By John Olsen

A tribute from Barry Pearce

When you meditate carefully upon his paintings you may detect, beyond lines and shapes meandering towards the edges, or slicing each other, flirting eloquently with a prospect of collision, a certain classical calculus that holds the gaze.

  • By Barry Pearce

Learn more about ‘Lighting of the Sails: Life Enlivened’

Australian artist John Olsen’s vibrant paintings of life and energy within the natural world illuminated the Sydney Opera House’s sails in 2023 as part of Vivid Sydney.