Colin Madigan and Robert Hughes, Canberra

Colin Madigan AO (1921 - 2011), architect, began his career at the age of 14, assisting his architect father in his Glen Innes office. By the time he was 17 he was earning a living drawing perspective renderings in Sydney. His studies were interrupted by the war, during which he survived the air attack on the HMAS Armidale in which 100 lives were lost. (In the late 1990s, he collaborated with artist Jan Senbergs and historian Don Watson on a book and exhibition, Armidale ’42: Memory and imagination.) Early in the 1970s Madigan’s firm Edwards Madigan Torzillo & Briggs was appointed to design both the Australian National Gallery and High Court buildings. Construction of the gallery, which has been called the most conclusive statement of Madigan’s ideals and creativity, started in 1974, but by the time it opened in 1982 its form differed significantly from the architect’s conception. Madigan won the Australian Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal in 1981. David Moore photographed Madigan with the scintillating expatriate Australian art historian and critic, Robert Hughes AO (1938-2012), next to the entry ramp of Madigan’s brand-new gallery – now much modified, and called the National Gallery of Australia.