The Antipodeans (from the Greek: ἀντίποδες meaning literally “those at the antipodes”) were a group of Australian modern artists who asserted the importance of figurative art, and protested against abstract expressionism. Though they staged but a single exhibition in Melbourne during August 1959, they were noted internationally. History The Antipodeans group consisted of seven modern Melbourne painters and the art historian Bernard Smith, who compiled The Antipodean Manifesto in 1959, a declaration fashioned from the artists' comments as a catalogue essay to accompany their exhibit. Albert Tucker, not associated with the group, had begun exhibiting a series in a similar figurative style titled Antipodean Head in Europe in 1957. Member John Perceval exhibited a ceramic sculpture Antipodean Angel, a laughing figure standing on its hands, at Terry Clune Gallery in Sydney in May 1959. The artists were Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, John Perceval and Clifton Pugh. They were all Melbourne-based, save Dickerson, who was from Sydney. In 1959 none were direct members of the Heide Circle that had maintained its importance with the Melbourne Branch of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) since the early 1940s, though Sunday and John Reed championed the group. Three were Boyd family members and all were fraternal painters of some stature working within their maintained styles of realistic imagery. Notably, though Perceval showed there in 1958, they did not exhibit in the CAS's own gallery (directed by Reed from 1958 as the Museum of Modern Art Australia), as the Society opposed the show, but chose instead to use the premises of the rival Victorian Artists' Society, long a bastion for cultural conservatism in Melbourne. The Age, in its 'News of the Day' greeted their emergence;For the layman mystified by most modern art, the exhibition by a newly formed group called the Antipodeans, which opens at the Victorian Artists' Society rooms tomorrow, holds out real promise. The Antipodeans a group of seven Melbourne artists and one University Fine Arts lecturer have joined forces in a protest against the work of many of their contemporaries. The artists in the group are [joined by] the lecturer Mr. Bernard Smith (who is also their chairman) [ . . . ] To Illustrate the group's Idea, Mr. Smith showed us a copy of the group's manifesto, a strongly worded two page document which, we feel, is bound to provoke some argument somewhere."The article quotes