Details
Latitude51.7687323 Longitude19.4569911 Start Date1953-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lodz, Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 24 August 1953
- Summary
- Polish-born, Sydney-trained poster and textile artist who used local iconography, notably kookaburras, in his artwork.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-23
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by adding to it.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 15 September 1938
- Summary
- Painter and poet, Royston Harpur's work has consistently shown his admiration of Japanese Zen gestural abstract forms.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Feb-23
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1933
- Summary
- Wrobel was a private gallery curator (Woolloomooloo Art Gallery ) and collector working with her partner Fred Wrobel until his death. In 2003, she created the John Passmore Museum of Art to promote his work after an inheritance from the Passmore estate in 1989. Their museum collected broadly She was also instrumental in developing the Nightingale Museum, Sydney Hospital as well as the career of Percy Grainger (d.1961)
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-23
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- He was born on 21 January 1928 in Newcastle, the son of Esma Agnes (née McCubbin) and Henry Olsen, who worked at the Cooee Clothing company. When he was seven his father was transfered to Sydney, where they lived at Bondi. Nevertheless he continued to hold deep visual memories of the industrial landscape of Newcastle. In Sydney he attended Paddington Junior Technical High until the outbreak of World War II when his father enlisted in the Army, his mother and sister stayed with relatives at Yass, and Olsen became a boarder at St Joseph’s Hunters Hill.After obtaining his Leaving Certificate in 1943 he worked as a clerk for Elders Smith, a job he loathed. His early talent for drawing was soon turned to good purpose as he became a freelance cartoonist and illustrator for a number of Sydney based publications.His first art classes at the Julian Ashton School in 1946 were to help him develop his illustrative skills. When he wanted to learn more about life drawing so enrolled in Dattilo Rubbo’s School. This was followed by a return to the Julian Ashton School in 1950.Always convivial, Olsen began to move in the circle of artists, writers and coffee drinkers who were congregating around Rowe Street as a sort of Sydney bohemia (many of these would later form the nucleus of “The Push”. He came to know Carl Plate’s Rowe Street Notanda Gallery with its art books and reproductions of European modern art. He decided to become a serious artist.He was aided in his ambition by the difficult but brilliant teacher, John Passmore, who taught at the Julian Ashton Art School from 1950 to 1954. In his old age Olsen recalled Passmore’s uncompromising rigour and his non-precious approach to materials. Olsen also took classes at East Sydney Technical College with the less bombastic Godfrey Miller. The 1950s was a time of renewed prosperity after the trauma of War and economic Depression. Young radical students, like Olsen, were keen to stake their claim as leaders of the avant garde. In 1953 he led a student demonstration against the conservative Trustees of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, and was quoted in the press criticising the awarding of the Archibald Prize to William Dargie. Over two decades later, Olsen was himself seen as one of the more conservative Trustees of the same institution.In 1956 his work was selected for the prestigious Contemporary Australian paintings : Pacific Loan Exhibition on board Orient Line S.S. Orcades , an exhibition that took what was seen as the best Australian art on an ocean cruise as a form of cultural exchange. In December of the same year, Olsen joined with John Passmore, Ralph Balson, Robert Klippel, Eric Smith and William Rose in a group exhibition at Macquarie Galleries – Direction 1 . This exhibition was later credited with bringing Abstract Expressionism to Australia, although, with the exception of Klippel, none of the artists involved had any real knowledge of contemporary art activities in other countries.Olsen’s paintings, some based on moody readings of T.S.Eliot, so impressed the art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald, Paul Haefliger, that he encouraged the Sydney businessman Robert Shaw, to give him a private scholarship to Europe, on condition that he not be based in the UK. Instead he went to Paris, where he spent some months in 1957 learning etching in S.W. Hayter’s Atelier 17 Workshop in Paris, before travelling to Spain. By July 1958 he was in Majorca, where he based himself in a house in Deya to paint. He also worked as an apprentice chef, and developed a life long love of Mediterranean food, both its flavours and its appearance.The distilled essence of these Spanish years continued to flavour his art on his return to Sydney in 1960. Olsen’s paintings of the 1960s established him as one of the leading artists of his generation. He painted Spanish Encounter (Now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales)shortly after his return while living in Victoria Street Woolloomooloo, in loose-knit creative community with many of Sydney’s leading younger artists. Later he stayed for some month’s at Paul Haefliger’s former house in the old gold mining town of Hill End, before eventually settling at Watson’s Bay with his young family. This was the seascape that inspired Entrance to the Seaport of Desire and other works, although these paintings were also celebrations of the hedonism of Sydney life. Even though he was now lauded as a major Australian artist, Olsen did not earn enough from his art to support his family, so supplemented his income by teaching at East Sydney Technical College, Desiderius Orban’s school, the Mary White Art School and lectured to Architecture students at the University of New South Wales. In 1968 he ran his own art school at the Bakery Art School, but this only lasted a year. In 1969 the Olsen family moved to Clifton Pugh’s collective of artists at Dunmoochin in Victoria. On their return to Sydney in 1971, Olsen bought a large property at Dural, north-west of Sydney,and here built a large house and studio. This was the base from which he ventured on many painting and drawing expeditions, including one memorable visit to Lake Eyre in flood, which became the subject of a major series of paintings and prints.In 1980 Olsen moved to Wagga Wagga to join fellow artist Noela Hjorth. Later they moved to Clarendon in the Adelaide Hills, where he lived and worked until the end of the relationship in 1987.He returned to Sydney’s artistic community in Paddington. In 1989 he moved to Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains with his fourth wife, Katherine. In 1999 they moved to a large property, Owlswood, near Bowral, and in 2011 to a seaside property at Avoca Beach on the Central Coast.John Olsen has been one of Australia’s most consistently honoured artists for most of his professional life. His work is represented in most Australian public collections and he has been the subject of a number of monographs. He was awarded an O.B.E. for services to the Arts in 1977 and an Order of Australia (A.O.) in 2001.In 2011 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 21 January 1928
- Summary
- John Olsen's exuberant paintings, which were first exhibited in Sydney in the 1950s, are often celebrations of Sydney, Majorca, marine life, good food and sunshine. He is an abstract artist whose work remains grounded in the landscape or in evocations of poetry, a painter whose distinctive curvilinear style continually pays homage to the quality of a wanderingline.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Apr-23
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1991-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1991
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Feb-22
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude-33.7620891 Longitude151.2150889 Start Date1968-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Forestville, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1968
- Summary
- Craig Ruddy was best known for his striking portraits of Aboriginal Australians. He came to fame after he was awarded the Archibald Prize in 2004 for his linear study of David Gulpilil.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-35.5302183 Longitude144.9597178 Start Date1959-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deniliquin, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1959
- Summary
- Higgins was an ornithologist and photographer who, after an assistantship, became a managing editor over five volumes of the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (HANZAB).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, Shooter's Hill, SE London, England
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, printmaker, illustrator and animator. After studying art in the mid 1970s, Harding travelled through Europe, then returned to Australia, where he developed a reputation for his painterly images while also working in illustration and animation.
Brett Ballard, reviewing an exhibition in 2005, commented that “We can not think of Nicholas Harding without thinking of paint. Luscious, buttery paint. What Harding does with paint is important but of equal importance is what he paints. Harding is after all a painter of subjects…”
Among many awards and honours, Harding won both the Archibald and Dobell Prizes in 2001. He was a finalist in the Archibald 19 times. He undertook four residencies at the University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts’ Cicada Press since 2001.
David Marr remembered that he “worked and worked and worked all the time.”In 2022 he was awarded the Wynne Prize for his painting Eora, a painting that evoked the surviving beauty of the landscape around Sydney which Marr called “Nicholas at the peak of his powers”
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1956
- Summary
- painter, sketcher, printmaker, illustrator and animator. After studying art in the mid 1970s, Harding travelled through Europe, then returned to Australia, where he developed a reputation for his painterly images while also working in illustration and animation.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Nov-22
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude35.6892523 Longitude51.3896004 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tehran, Iran
- Biography
- Hossein Valamanesh combines cultural elements from two countries: his native Iran and Australia. The result is sculptural and installation-based work relating to memory, cultural dislocation, loss, and the progression of time. The work, simultaneously strong and subtle, and occasionally playful, has gentle and poetic resonances.
Hossein Valamanesh graduated from the School of Fine Art Painting in Tehran in 1970. He immigrated to Australia in 1973, arriving in Perth and travelling to Central Australia for four months, where he worked with Aboriginal children. In 1975, he began further studies in visual arts at the South Australian School of Art and, since graduating, has exhibited frequently in Australia and overseas, including Germany, Poland and Japan.
Hossein has completed a number of major public art projects in Australia and Japan, most notably for the Tachikawa Project, an urban precinct in Tokyo featuring 110 works by 90 major sculptors. In 1999, he collaborated with Angela Valamanesh to create the Memorial to the Great Irish Famine, An Gorta Mor , at Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney. He was one of the international artists invited to participate in the 2003 Echigo-Tsumari Necklace project organised by Art Front Gallery in Tokyo. Hossein has received numerous awards, including a fellowship residency in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (1991) and, more recently, an Australia Council Fellowship. An Art & Australia monograph on his work, written by Paul Carter, was published in 1996. Two years later he won the Grand Prize at the 1998 Dacca Biennale in Bangladesh.
In mid-2001, 'Hossein Valamanesh: A Survey’ was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia; the accompanying catalogue contained essays by Sarah Thomas, Ian North and Paul Carter. In February 2002, 'Tracing the Shadow: Hossein Valamanesh’ was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Hossein’s work is included in most major public art collections in Australia. In 2006 he was living and working in Adelaide.
Writers:
Murray-Cree, Laura
Olivia Bolton
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 March 1949
- Summary
- Born in Iran, Hossein Valamanesh migrated to Australia in 1973. His sculptural and installation-based work, which combines cultural elements from Australia and his native Iran, relates to memory, cultural dislocation, loss, and the progression of time.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude50.1106444 Longitude8.6820917 Start Date1948-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1948
- Summary
- Meyer was a film-maker developing feature films such as "Flight of the Albatross" and documentaries for UNESCO and a series Schatze der Welt. He taught at AFTRS and was the recipient of a number of film awards during his career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.9247222 Longitude151.1313889 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Earlwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1946
- Summary
- Strachan was a documentary film-maker, active in the Sydney Film-makers Coop and the Feminist group "Lorraine" in Redfern. Together with Alessandro Cavadini, she formed Reddirt Films working with First Nations people. She moved to the USA in 1982, teaching film with periodic returns to Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.1371483 Longitude0.2673446 Start Date1944-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1944
- Summary
- Page arrived in Australia in 2002 after an international career as a photojournalist, primarily focussing on war photography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Born Sydney 1943 and was first introduced to art at Cranbrook school with Justin O’Brien, where he also met his friend and collaborator Martin Sharp.
On leaving school Kingson studied architecture and arts at the University of New South Wales, but was more interested in drawing than design. However his studies led to a long friendship with Jan Utzon, the son of Jorn Utzon, the architect for the Sydney Opera House. When Utzon was effectively dismissed by the Askin government in 1966, Kingston was one of many who marched in protest.Peter Kingston’s first published cartoons were drawn for the student newspaper, Tharunka. Later he gravitated to OZ, which was dominated by the graphic style of his old school friend, Martin Sharp. His first exhibition was at Hyde Park with Mlck Glasheen and John Allen. Later her participated in the OZ Super Art Market exhibition at Clune Galleries. He also made experimental movies.
In 1971 he became one of the artists who created the communal Yellow House in Sydney’s Kings Cross. His most important work from this time was his contribution to the Stone Room, made for the Spring 1971 exhibition. He also created the Elephant house, made magic shows and participated In some of the performances.
His love of the whimsical nature of comic book heroes led him to make fantasy versions of the life of the Phantom, as well as Snugglepot & Cuddlepie. His mother once knitted a jumper showing his design of Superman unzipping his fly.
In the 1970s, along with Martin Sharp, Peter Kingston became an activist in the campaign to save Luna Park from the developers. He was a fierce campaigner for Sydney’s heritage, whether it be the remnant bush land near his Lavender Bay home or the ferries on Sydney Harbour. The Harbour, the bridge, the ferries and the beauty of moonlight on water, iconic buildings and the bushy foreshores became dominant subjects in his later paintings.Even as he was dying from lung cancer, he continued to campaign to save North Sydney’s modernist MLC building from the hands of the developers.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Olivia Bolton
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 8 May 1943
- Summary
- Sydney painter, printmaker and cartoonist. Kingston was one of the key figures in Martin Sharp’s Yellow House. Many of his works honoured comic strip heroes, especially the Phantom. He is also well known for paintings of Sydney Harbour ferries.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Sep-22
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 23 March 1942
- Summary
- Peter Powditch first began to paint and sculpt his celebrations of the beach and bikini culture in the late 1960s. He was also active as a teacher in several Sydney-based institutions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Feb-22
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-34.1347694 Longitude150.9931332 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waterfall, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1940
- Summary
- Webb was a lighting engineer and designer combining the science of lighting with aesthetic goals. Among his projects are the lighting programme for the 2000 Olympic Games Boulevard, the Sydney Opera House, City of Sydney street lighting and interior commissions for the Great Hall, Sydney University and St Mary's Cathedral crypt.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1937
- Summary
- Spate was a lecturer in art history at Sydney University with major publications on Australian and European artists (notably Monet). She was also involved in major exhibitions on French art in Australian galleries. As the Power Bequest professor and custodian, she was instrumental in the Bequest's transfer to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1936
- Summary
- Proudfoot trained as an architect, working for the NSW Government Architect (1960-1964), later taking up a lectureship at the UNSW. He is best known for his study of the Burley Griffin design of Canberra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.7962 Longitude151.2827 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manly, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- Fitzwater began his career in radio broadcasting, then turning to TV with the ABC. In 1963, he began working with the BBC making over 20 films. In the 1970s, he created an experimental film on the career of Erik Satie with a multilayered soundscape and continued his sound work with poetry. He later developed a film process for dance with cameras moving with the performers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-34.4576958 Longitude149.4696713 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Crookwell, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- McIllree began her career as a fashion model, turning to photography ca.1958 with a photographic studio in Flinders Lane, Melbourne. She and Helen Homewood (also a model) ran a modelling agency as well.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toleworth Rise, London, England
- Biography
- Les Blakebrough’s career as a ceramicist began in 1957 when he was taken on as a pottery apprentice at the Sturt workshops in Mittagong, NSW. Since 1973 has has been based in Hobart. Throughout his career, production has been a central concern for Blakebrough, and in the 1990s he became particularly interested in how the handmade could be combined with limited industrial production.
In 1993 Blakebrough won a Churchill Fellowship to experience industrial processes in the factories of Royal Copenhagen (Denmark), Arabia (Finland) and Royal Worcester (UK). Between 1995-97, along with colleague Penny Smith, and with grants from the Australian Research Council, he established the Ceramic Research Unit at the University of Tasmania. This is capable of producing domestic ware in runs of up to 10 000 items. The porcelain clay used is Southern Ice, a clay that Blakebrough developed in the 1990s and is now manufactured by Clayworks Australia in Victoria.
Blakebrough‘s work was included in the exhibition 'Smart works: design and the handmade’ (2007), and several items are in the Museum’s permanent collection.
Writers:
Jonathan Holmes, Powerhouse Museum
staffcontributor
fishel
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Renowned ceramicist and ceramics educator, first at Sturt Workshops, later in Hobart, Tasmania. Last studio in Coledale, NSW. Pioneer in Australian porcelain clay, described as Southern Ice Porcelain Clay.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.7572829 Longitude145.3456774 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lilydale, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- Ken Whisson combined a strong social conscience with an ascetic life style. His paintings and drawings were intuitive approaches to things seen and felt. He was given a major travelling retrospective ("As If") in 2012.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-22
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1964-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 September 1964
- Summary
- Ewing is an artist and designer working in illustration, painting, graphic design and printmaker.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.7 December 2021
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1961-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1961
- Summary
- Pulbrook worked as a designer, photographer and writer. He worked for John Brumley and Associates, University of Qld and Canberra's AGPS Design Studio and other outlets in addition to his own work as a photographer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 November 1956
- Summary
- Irvine was an architect, based in Denver, Colorado since 2001. He worked on the Buri Khalifa, Dubai, did residential work in Kigali, Rwanda and was engaged in preservation work at the San Miguel Mission, San Miguel, California. His last position was with Stantec Urban Places, Planning and Urban Design Lead, Denver.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jul-21
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Mandy Martin who first emerged as a political activist printmaker and painter, was born in Adelaide in 1952, the daughter of Peter Martin, a professor of Botany and Beryl Martin, a watercolor painter. She first studied at the South Australian School of Art from 1972 to 1975. She first came to prominence as one of the political activists in the Women’s art movement, and exhibited in Fantasy and Reality, alongside Jude Adams, Frances Phoenix and Toni Robertson. Her feminism was very much tinged with political activism. Some of her early works included posters against the Vietnam War and other acts of American imperialism. Along with fellow artists Ann Newmarch and Robert Boynes she became one of the activist of the Progressive Art Movement.After she moved to Canberra with her first husband, the artist Robert Boynes, she taught at the Canberra School of Art at the Australian National University from 1978 until 2003. In 1995 she relocated to Mandurama in rural New South Wales. She continued her close association with ANU, so much so that on her departure she was appointed a Fellow of the University until 2008 when she became Adjunct Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, a position she held until 2018. The new appointment reflected the change in the focus of her art as she moved from a tough political and social critique to an equally rigorous commentary on how out fragile environment suffers from both climate change and mining.Many of her large-scale paintings served as a critique of the degradation of the land in both rural and urban Australia. In 1988, Red Ochre Grove, which has been described by Sasha Grishin as “an apocalyptic intense landscape”, was commissioned for the main committee room at the new Australian Parliament House.In 2017 a touring exhibition of her paintings demonstrated the fragility of land damaged by coal mining and poor management.Her later works included large scale installations, made in collaboration with her son, Alexander Boynes.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 18 November 1952
- Summary
- One of the activist women artists who emerged in the mid-1970s, later turned from overtly political posters and industrial landscapes to painting powerful landscapes of the Australian desert.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Jul-21
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand
- Biography
- Ray Rogers was born near Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand, in 1935. He worked in the petro-chemical industry but after discovering his affinity with the clay medium in 1969 he devoted himself to pottery and was initially self-taught. Initially he was an adherent to the Leach/Hamada tradition and held his first one man show in Auckland in 1974. He was an exhibiting member of the New Zealand Society of Potters, the Auckland Studio Potters, and is an Artist Member of the Academy of Fine Arts.
Rogers is especially noted for his exploitation of a pit firing technique. He studied this technique in California in 1980 and introduced it to New Zealand in 1981 and also to Australia, where he came to live after winning the Fletcher Brownbuilt International Award in 1983. His work is fired in a relatively primitive method, using a large pit dug into the ground. Wood and pots are layered within the pit, and then fired. Rogers continues to explore pit firing as the method sympathetic to the hand built forms he creates. Each piece is considered in order to maintain harmony with the vagaries of the fire where contrasts are achieved on the pots by the flame and heat of the fire.
He remarked of his works in the catalogue of 'Evolution of style: the decorative spirit in Australian contemporary crafts’ at the Craft Centre Gallery, Sydney, in 1985:
I am continuing to explore pit-firing as this Primitive method of firing best suits my work. Character is developed by the Resolution of each piece being kept in harmony with the Vagaries of the fire. One can observe the individuality, not only in the forms but also in the way hues and tones move across each surface. Sometimes the colours are subtle allowing the forms to speak for themselves. Black fungoid areas contrast with softer movements often referred to as Intergalactic. I endeavour to achieve contrasts that offer a challenge for the observer. There is new work in the exhibition showing a gradual change of direction. I like to move slowly as inspiration allows and believe that ones best work is achieved in this way.
During the early 1990s he began to experiment by introducing other organic materials and metallic salts such as silver chloride and bismuth nitrate to his firings. Metallic salts especially provided a lustrous surface and were fired up to five times to provide the depth of the desired effect.
Pit firing is a technique which began to attract many adherents over the succeeding years because of the striking colour variations that the firing can impart. Like Ray Roger’s work, the forms chosen are generally simple spherical forms to enhance the decorative, random effect of the flames. The high point of his career was probably in 1997 when he demonstrated his firing techniques at the 1997 International Ceramics Festivalat Aberystwyth in Wales.
Rogers was a member of the Potters Society of Australia for many years but resigned in 2003 as he had ceased his involvement with ceramics.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1935
- Summary
- Ray Rogers made a significant contribution to the ceramics medium in both New Zealand and Australia and was especially noted for introducing the pit-firing technique to both countries. His career spanned more than thirty years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Mar-21
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude51.627422 Longitude-0.7484153 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- High Wycombe, United Kingdom
- Biography
- Gerald Easden FDIA (13/04/1934 – 17/09/2021)
Gerald Easden was a well-known designer who contributed greatly to many memorable design outcomes in Australia during his sixty-year career. He was a significant furniture designer, who also worked as an Interior Designer, and with many accomplishments in graphic design and the occasional foray into product design. He was an all rounder, and also a gentleman (this title followed him around over the years and was a lasting impression of his attitude and his behaviour).
Easden was born in High Wycombe in the United Kingdom in April 1934. Since High Wycombe was the centre of furniture design and manufacturing in Britain at this time, it was unsurprising that he enrolled at the Wycombe Technical Institute in Furniture and Interior Design, and graduated in 1950. He worked in the Drawing Offices of two large furniture manufacturers, Ercol and Parker Knoll from 1950 to 1957 (less two years National Service in the RAF).
He came to Australia in 1957 and worked in the Design Studio of Radio Corporation-Astor, and from 1958 to 1961 he was employed as a designer for Reliance Furniture, winning two Good Design Awards from the Victorian Guild of Furniture Manufacturers in 1960. He worked as an Interior Designer in the Victorian Public Works Department from 1961 to 1962, designing furniture and interiors for Government Offices, Courts and Hostels, before joining the Studio of the Commonwealth Department of Works, to design interiors and furniture for the cabins and public spaces of the Empress of Australia, which was built in Sydney as the Sydney to Hobart Ferry. During his tenure he also designed furniture for the Reserve Bank, for many Government Offices and the Melbourne and Sydney Airports.
In 1963, Easden was appointed Assistant University Designer for the Australian National University in Canberra. He worked closely with legendary designer Derek Wrigley OAM, University Designer, and deputised for Wrigley for six months to cover for his overseas study tour. Easden designed not only furniture for the University Halls of Residence, but he also devised graphics for university publications and catalogues for exhibitions, and oversaw the hanging of paintings for Sidney Nolan and John Percival exhibitions. He was a part time lecturer in charge of Interior Design at Canberra Technical College also.
In 1968 he married his wife Jenny in Canberra, and the couple moved to Melbourne, where he set up his freelance practice in South Yarra and then later in Toorak. His consultancy offered services in Interiors, Furniture, Exhibition and Graphic Design. Then in 1973 the family moved to Mitcham, where they were to live for the next forty-seven years.
He designed interiors for retail and duty free stores in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Cairns and Port Douglas. He also designed Exhibition Stands in Melbourne, Sydney. Germany, China and Japan, as well as interiors and furniture for restaurants, hotels, motels, offices and domestic clients. His Australian manufacturing clients included Aristoc, Fler, Module and Ausgum, as well as Chinese and Malaysian manufacturers with exports to the UK, Europe and the Middle East.Easden was a multi award winning designer, winning over twenty Good Design Awards and awarded ‘Modern Icon” status of Australian Furniture by the Australian Furniture Association in 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia in 1997, awarded a DIA Gold Citation in 2002, and inducted into the DIA Hall of Fame in 2018.
Easden was the consummate designer as his record attests, but he was also a loving husband and father, as well as a great colleague and friend. He is sadly missed by his wife Jenny and children Mark, Mandy, Rebecca and Ben.
A wonderful designer and a great gentleman has left the stage.
Geoff Fitzpatrick OAM, obituary, 3 November 2021
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1 January 1934
- Summary
- Easden was a furniture and interior designer working across the industry in the UK, Victoria and Canberra. He had extensive experience designing furniture and interiors for the Commonwealth and State Public Service in Victoria and elsewhere. He also worked in design display for commercial retail in Australia and overseas and by the end of his career, had received 20+ Good Design awards.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-41.5936936 Longitude147.1215353 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Longford, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1933
- Summary
- Jolliffe was an animator and illustrator active in film, television and in her late career, digital work. She worked internationally with the CSIRO, Television Cartoons (TVC) and after 1979, established her studio "Jollification" in Sydney, later in Blackheath. She retired from animation after 2011.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 December 1932
- Summary
- London born Medical doctor, active as a painter and photographer in Tasmania from the 1970s including extensive documentary photography of the people of remote East Coast region of Fingal Valley.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Dec-21
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude56 Longitude10 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Denmark
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Larsen, practicing first as a principal of Solvform, Copenhagen, later as a partnership Larsen and Lewers (Darani), Sydney. He had extensive experience in design education and was part of the Steering Committee that formed the Crafts Council of NSW in 1971.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- Fish has produced logotypes, packaging, illustrations and TV commercials as well as award-winning Australian poster designs.
In 1951 Fish moved to London where he created posters for clients such as Cadbury’s and National Benzole, and record covers for Decca and Telefunken.The humour and drama of the European posters Fish found in Paris in the early 50s ‘ particularly the work of Leupin and Savignac ‘ fuelled his passion for the medium. ‘The most striking thing was the way they used ideas, because the idea is the lifeblood of a poster ‘ the visual penetrates the eye, but the idea penetrates the mind,’ said Fish.
Upon his return to Australia in 1954, Fish adopted the European-style poster ‘ designing and writing arresting posters for national and international clients including AWA, the Commonwealth Bank, Johnson & Johnson, NSW Tourism, P&O, Peek Freans, Qantas, Resch’s, Schweppes, STC and Tooth’s Beer. 1955’60 saw his work appear in prestigious international design publications such as Graphis and Modern Publicity. At this time, Fish shared a studio with renowned Australian sculptor Robert Klippel, with whom he also collaborated on various industrial and packaging design ventures.
In 1957, Gordon Andrews commissioned Fish to design two large murals for the Australian Department of Trade’s Food Fair in Köln, Germany. Fish and Andrews also formed part of the group of designers and architects who inaugurated the Sydney chapter of the Industrial Design Institute of Australia in 1958.
Shortly after his return to London in 1961, the Australian Treasury invited Fish to submit designs for the new decimal currency of the 1960s, however he reluctantly declined the commission owing to his commitments in the UK.
Back in Australia again in 1964, Fish co-founded the Kaleidoscope, a famously avant-garde antique shop in Sydney’s Woollahra, with wife Victoria and friend Grant Roberts. Its success was confirmed by its choice as the venue for Liza Minnelli’s Sydney-based television show.
By 1970, Fish was Creative Director (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide) for the US agency, Compton International, winning a Bronze Lion at the Venice Film Festival for client British Airways with writer, John Flanagan. The same campaign also won a Silver Logie at the Chicago Film Institute in 1974. In 1976, Fish created standout poster campaigns for Harry M Miller’s productions of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Show. The latter was awarded Poster of the Year by the Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia.
Joining advertising agency Fountain Huie Fish in 1976 as Partner, Fish went on to create an international campaign for TIME magazine in 1981 that utilised its iconic front cover. This was supported by the release of promotional ‘TIME’ watches to media buyers. Other FHF clients included Club Med and Lufthansa German Airlines. Upon the sale of the agency to Clemenger’s in 1987, Fish went on to design for Northwest Airlines (US), Pirelli and Citroën until his retirement in 2005.
Don Fish’s other significant passion is music. He recently created a series of over 100 cartoons based on classical music themes that ran for 10 years in the ABC magazine, 24 Hours. Today he is expanding on this series with a view to publication, along with composing and writing.
He lives in Sydney with his wife of 46 years, Victoria.
Writers:
Fish, Charlotte
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1 January 1929
- Summary
- Fish produced poster designs, logotypes, packaging, TV commercials and illustrations for major clients around the world, including Cadbury's, British Airways, Qantas and TIME Magazine. Founder member of Industrial Design Institute of Australia (1958). Creative director Compton International, principal of Fountain Huie Fish ad agency. Retired 2005.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Jul-21
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Dunlop began his career in the Commonwealth Film Unit with a special emphasis on rural Australia, then documenting First Nations people in "People of the Australian Western Desert" (later the Martu "Desert People"); later working in Arnhem Land with the Yolngu people and others. This resulted in the Yarrkala Film Project. Much of his later work was editing and archiving ethnographic film records.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- Derek Wrigley (1924–2021) studied architecture and town planning at ManchesterCollege of Art & Design and Manchester University from 1940 to 1946. Heemigrated to Australia in 1947 and spent the next eight years lecfuring inarchitecture at the NSW University of Technology, initiating the first Building Science course in Australia. In 1950-51, he travelled to the UK, US and Hawaii to visit architecture schools. From 1949 to 1954, he designed and built two solar houses for himself, at 13 and 15 Burne Avenue, Dee Why. In 1957, he moved to Canberra to join furniture and industrial designer Fred Ward in the Design Unit of the Australian NationalUniversity and in 1962 became the ANU’s University Architect. initiating the concept of Total Design covering site planning, architecture, interior, landscape and graphic designWhile in Canberra, he designed and built more solar houses: at 14 Jansz Crescent, Griffith ACT (1958), RMB 901, Little Burra Road via Queanbeyan NSW (1975) and RMB 625 Candy Road, Burra NSW (1985, with Ben Wrigley). He was a founding member of the NSW and ACT branches of the Melbourne-based Society of Designers for Industry in 1955. In 1980 he was made a Life Fellow of its successor organisation, the Design Institute of Australia. He was also a co-founder of the Industrial Design Council of Australia in 1956 and a councillor for 30 years afterwards. He remains an activist for better quality design, more sustainable and solar housing (particularly retrofits). and designing buildings and equipment to suit disabled people. In 2004, he wrote and self-published the book Making Your Home Sustainable. In 1977, he retired from the ANU to design furniture for the High Court of Australia. He founded the ACT branch of Technical Aid to the Disabled in 1979 and was awarded the Order of Australia for his services to the disabled in 1982.Sources—Architecture and Arts and the Modern Home. 1955. ‘People: Derek F. Wrigley’. February. p11.—Derek Wrigley Design website www.derekwrigleydesign.id.au—Wrigley, Derek. 2004. Correspondence recorded by Davina Jackson, October.—Rosenfeldt, Ron. 1999. The History of the DIA. www.dia.org.au/history/dia_history.html
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1924
- Summary
- Wrigley practiced architecture in the UK and Australia. Formerly employed as a lecturer Manchester College of Art, UK, lecturer at NSW University of Technology (now UNSW). He had several domestic architecture commissions in NSW. As an exhibition and furniture designer, he designed the UNIVER chair and settee for Aristoc. He was an original member of the Australian National University's Design Unit initiated by Fred Ward.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Dawn Fitzpatrick was born in Sydney, but grew up in Adelaide where she studied at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts. As with many of her generation her life was disrupted by World War II when she served in the WAAF. After the war she married, and in the public eye became defined by her daughter, the actress Kate Fitzpatrick.After moving to Sydney she began to show the fabric art she had long made. Her first exhibition was in 1975 with Lee McGorman in West Street Gallery, North Sydney. In 1977 she joined with Lee McGorman and her daughter Kate at Ace’s Art Shop at Edgecliff. She also designed costumes for the Old Tote Theatre company.
This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by completing it.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- Fitzpatrick is a textile artist, first exhibiting in Sydney in 1975. She also designs and makes theatre costumes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Oct-21
- Age at death
- 99
Details
Latitude-33.8611665 Longitude121.8885159 Start Date1965-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Esperance, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1965
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Sep-20
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude39.3077391 Longitude-76.4768667 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maryland, Maryland, USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- Jon Lewis, photographer and film maker was one of many talented artists to emerge from Sydney's Yellow House. He was a passionate environmentalist, a founding member of Greenpeace and an active participant in its anti-whaling campaign. In 1999 he travelled to Timor-Leste to be a photographer witness to the events surrounding the vote for independence.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Dec-20
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Annette Bezor was born in Adelaide, the daughter of Alma Smith and Keith Bateman. After her parents’ divorce she changed her family name to “Bezor”, a name connected to her mother’s family.She left school at 14, embarrassed at the way schoolboys commented on her voluptuous appearance. In 1974 she enrolled at the South Australian School of Art, graduating in 1977. This placed her in both the male dominated context of the lecturers at the art school and the heady feminism of the Adelaide art scene of the 1970s. She later said that she spent most of her art school years in pyjamas, working in her bedroom at home, enabled by the encouragement of the feminists.After exhibiting her work to strong critical approval, she was awarded an Australia Council residency at the Cité international des artes in Paris, which she took up in 1987. Her subject matter changed to appropriating images of women from Classical painting, transforming them into highly sexually charges personas.
On her return to Adelaide she continued her career, with significant commercial and critical success. In 1994 she was commissioned by the Parliament of Victoria to to paint the official portrait of the former Victorian Premier, Joan Kirner.
She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer three years before her death on 9 January 2020, and held her final exhibition at Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide, in October 2019.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- Annette Bezor was one of the new wave feminist artists to emerge in Adelaide in the 1970s. Her characteristic paintings were studies of voluptuously beautiful women, often inspired by 19th century visions of classical subjects.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 13 December 1949
- Summary
- John Nixon's art is best described as radical minimalism. His tough non-objective approach to art was first developed in his student years and continued throughout his long career. As such he was a significant influence on many other artist, especially in Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Aug-20
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1947-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- Sally Couacaud is a curator, project manager, and former director of Artspace in Sydney. She was the inaugural Director of the Australian International Video Festival, and was one of the first curators in Australia to focus her critical attention on video and other forms of electronic media art.Some of her video curatorial projects include: Putting on an Act (Performance Space, Sydney); Terrorising the Code: Recent US Video, (Australian Centre for Photography and New Zealand tour); Looking with the Whole Body (AGNSW, Artspace, ACP, Powerhouse Museum); Aboriginal Video from Central Australia (Los Angles Festival); Satellite Cultures (New Museum, NYC); Videokunst in Australien – Auf dem Weg zu Teletopologien (Linz); Video Art in Australia (Fukui, Japan).She was also Curator of the Sydney Open Museum where she commissioned and managed the City of Sydney’s public art collection, including the Sculpture Walk. She also spent three months working with Art Front Gallery in Tokyo. Art Front was well known for its commissioning of site-specific art works and the close collaboration between artists, town planners and architects.
Writers:
Scanlines
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1947
- Summary
- Couacaud was a gallery director at Sydney's Artspace (1988-1992), later curator of public art, City of Sydney where she developed the city's Sydney Open Museum's "Sculpture Walk". She curated a number of other exhibitions internationally and in Australia, later initiating the inaugural Australian International Video Festival. In 2008, she moved to Mauritius, later returning to Sydney near the end of her life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2020
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.2918693 Longitude-0.7539836 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Farnborough, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1946
- Summary
- Stennett was a designer active with the Australian Opera from 1969 when he came to Sydney as a costume designer for the Marriage of Figaro. As his career accelerated, he worked on international productions, returning often to the Australian Opera for design work. He retired from theatre in 1994 to tend his garden in Yoxford, Suffolk, England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Jun-20
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1940
- Summary
- McLennan was a sound artist who developed his career through the ABC (beginning 1971), working as a producer, later with the ABC Arts Unit and the programmes "Surface Tension" then "Listening Room". He also performed as an actor, musical performer and mime.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1938
- Summary
- Little began her career as a fashion designer with a dress-making shop in 5-Ways, Paddington under the name Jeanne Mitchell. Her mother had worked as a tailor in Scotland. Little's fashion designs, often reproduced in Australian Womens Weekly, were the springboard for her later career as an entertainer on the stage and television where she designed most of her clothes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-32.2675086 Longitude150.8905694 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1934
- Summary
- Frank Watters was one of the most influential figures in Australian art in the second half of the 20th century. From 1964-2018 he, along with Geoffrey and Alex Legge ran Sydney’s Watters Gallery. Watters was a founder member of Australian Commercial Galleries Association & one of the first gallery managers to practice droit de suite for their artists before it became law in 2009. His archive is in the Art Gallery of NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-May-20
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.0923817 Longitude148.8638613 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Molong, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Brian Sear (1932-2020)
The Australian industrial designer, Brian Sear, played a major role in the design of electronic consumer goods at Kriesler, a profitable Australian subsidiary of the Dutch corporation, Phillips. Born in Molong NSW, he began his career with a 1948 apprenticeship with the office of the architect M.V.E. Woodforde in his George Street studio, Sydney.
This designer-to-be spent two and one-half years with Woodforde while completing his leaving certificate at Sydney Technical College. During his studies, he read books by the American industrial designers Walter Dorian Teague and Raymond Loewy and began to look at industrial design rather than architecture.
Rather than enter the industrial design course (est.1949) at the Melbourne Technical College, Brian chose the UK and gained admission at Leicester College of Art sailing for Europe in January 1956. Although intent on Leicester, the Council of Industrial Design (COID), London, persuaded him to switch to a new course launching at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1957.
The RCA’s first industrial design teachers were the head teacher F.C. Ashford and the Russian expatriate Naum Slutsky (1894-1965) (1). Ashford commented in an interview in 1956 that “nowhere else in Europe will there be a course [on] offer quite like ours.”
Brian Sear’s savings held out for two years of study at the RCA and now penniless, he decided to take the RCA diploma. In 1959, Sear re-emerged in Stockholm to study at Stockholm’s new “Konstfack” school (The official name of the school is Konstfackskolan, Stockholm) where a number of design options were on offer. He could study free in Sweden, but the programme specified that could not take employment. After his second year, however, Sear was awarded a Swedish scholarship and allowed to work until he completed the degree.
The designer returned to the UK after completing the Stockholm programme and took interim industrial design work (notably the silversmith Robert Welch for projects for J & J Wiggin) before returning to Australia in late 1963 and taking an industrial design position with Kriesler Australia working under Harry Widmer (1926-2002) (2). When Widmer left the firm around 1966, Brian inherited his role and became Kriesler’s design team leader. By the 1970s, according to Sear, the company’s design and marketing had led Kriesler to generous profits but market forces and the 1970s tariff reforms began to drain the industry’s profit margins.
By 1978, Sear had left Kriesler to found his own design firm, “Bits”, with designs in the IKEA style of flat-pack furniture for the childrens’ market segment. He maintained a retail outlet in the Westfield Centre, Parramatta until “Big Box” competitors such as IKEA overran his market.
Sear, imagining that the “Golden Era” of Australian industrial design was over, returned to architecture after 1982 providing an architecture and graphic corporate identify for the financial giant Australian Guarantee Corporation (AGC) Westpac. When AGC and Westpac separated in 1987, their corporate design section closed and the designer opted for retirement at the age of 55. Brian Sear lived in a small town south of Sydney and maintained an active career in drawing and persistently enters the annual Dobell Prize for Drawing at the Art Gallery of NSW.
[This edition of the biographical summary was amended, corrected and supplemented by the designer’s son, Tom Sear in 2022]
1: Naum Slutsky was a notable metalsmith and jeweller.
2: Widmer was an award-winning industrial designer but the dynamic character left the field to pursue music and theatre interests. Harry Widmer obituary, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 May 2002.
ends/
28 April 2011, 2022
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Sear is an industrial designer with studies at the Royal College of Art, later, Konstfackskolan Stockholm, returning to Australia in 1963, working as a Senior industrial designer, Kriesler Radio, later design team leader. Sear also established "Bits" as a independent designer developing flat pack furniture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Owner of Beaver Galleries, Canberra, ACT.
Beaver is known for her promotion of fashion design. From 1976-88 she organised annual fashion parades titled 'The Second Skin’ parades.
This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Owner of Beaver Galleries (est 1975), Canberra and a pioneer of craft-based exhibitions in the ACT. She studied design with Derek Wrigley at Canberra Technical College and was an active participant in the establishment of the Craft Association of the ACT (now Craft ACT).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- industrial designer, graphic artist and sculptor, came to Australia in the prison ship Dunera and was interned at Tatura (Vic.) where he either helped produce or produced alone the POW magazine, Brennessel Hinter Stacheldraht (Stinging Nettles Behind Barbed Wire ) – copy sold at Sotheby’s Rare Book sale, Melbourne, for $3,900. His monotype of the camp, Huts at Night 1941, is in the National Gallery of Australia. Other Dunera Boys who worked at Australasian Post included Frederick Schonbach and Klaus Friedeberger .
After his release Fabian went to Melbourne where he was the leader of a group of young German artists, several of whom contributed to Argus publications especially the Australasian Post (1946-47) under art editor Alan McCulloch along with Albert Tucker and McCulloch himself. (Craig Judd could not find any signed examples of his work in Post ). He worked as an advertising artist in Melbourne and contributed drawings and designs to Army Education publications. In 1950 he moved to London, worked as a designer and lectured at the London School of Printing. He returned to Melbourne in 1962 and commenced work as a sculptor, exhibiting there and in other Australian capital cities as well as London.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 5 November 1915
- Summary
- Industrial designer, graphic artist, sculptor and one of the "Dunera Boys" interned in Hay, NSW, during World War II. In 1950 Fabian moved to London where he worked as a designer and lectured at the London School of Printing. He returned to Melbourne in 1962.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jan-20
- Age at death
- 105
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 16 November 1943
- Summary
- Caldersmith, a musical instrument maker, began his career as a high school science teacher, later taking a degree in aerophysics with further study in acoustics. His instrument work explored the properties of Australian timbers with colleagues and constructed and repaired instruments for noted musicians. From 1980, he was a full-time violin maker in Canberra, later moving his studio to rural locations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Oct-19
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-28.3275 Longitude153.395833 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 6 October 1938
- Summary
- Madonna Staunton, who spent all her working life in Brisbane, was best known for her precise, assemblages and collages, but she also painted. Her works are characterised by their small scale, and the way they encouraged viewers to contemplate their many visual possibilities.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Dec-19
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-2.4833826 Longitude117.8902853 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Indonesia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1936
- Summary
- Heins' design career began with architects Jenkins and McLuhan, Sydney, later working at Artes Studio, Sydney. He assumed the lead position of the Design Unit, Sebemo Building Contractors leaving in 1968 to establish his own design practice as Unicum Design. He also lectured at TAFE NSW in Randwick's interior design programme.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Derek Smith was born in England and trained as a ceramic designer and art teacher before emigrating to Australia in 1956.He taught at art schools in Hobart and Sydney, until 1973 when he managed the pottery studio at the Doulton Australia Factory at Chatswood. In 1976 he left Doulton to establish his Blackfriars Pottery in Chippendale.In 1984 he returned to Tasmania where he continued to produce his distinctive ceramics from his Oakwood studio at Mangalore.Shortly after his pottery was successfully shown in Chicago, he spent four years in Italy, before returning to Hobart.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1931
- Summary
- The English born Derek Smith emigrated to Australia as a young man and became a significant influence on younger potters in both New South Wales and Tasmania
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Feb-19
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-7.3279694 Longitude109.613911 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Java, Indonesia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Altmann was a self-taught artist, working as a commercial artist in Brisbane, later in Sydney. He joined John Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald in 1954 working there until retirement in 1986. He possessed a remarkable ability to visualise three-dimensional objects including buildings and urban settings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Taylor was a sculptor, typically working in wood. He was head of sculpture at the School of Art, University of Tasmania, also becoming involved in the University's Design in Wood degree. From this engagement, he and Kevin Perkins were commissioned to design furniture for Parliament House, Canberra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glenelg, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born at Glenelg South Australian, the youngest of five children. Her father was the geologist and Antarctic explorer Cecil Madigan. She first developed her love of sculpture while at Walford House, Unley. She left school in 1938 because of illness. In 1939 she studied at the Girls Central Art School, Adelaide, having decided very early on to pursue a career as a sculptor. After moving to Sydney in 1940 Madigan attended night drawing classes at East Sydney Technical College under Liz Blaxland. In 1941 and 42 she studied sculpture under Lyndon Dadswell. On returning to Adelaide she completed three years of evening classes at the School of Art (1944-46)where her fellow students included Jeffrey Smart and Jacqueline Hick, while working at John Martin Department store by day. In 1947 she returned to East Sydney and completed her Diploma in Fine Art (Sculpture) in 1948. After marrying fellow student Jack Giles in 1949 and adopting his name, she won the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship in 1950, only the third sculptor to receive this award.
She left Australia in 1950 to study in Europe for three years, stopping at Bombay on the way where she saw the sculptures at Ellora Caves. Her first daughter, Mnemosyne was born in November of that year.She studied stone carving at the John Cass College, London, but most of this time was characterised by by extensive travel in Europe, including a year spent in Italy. Her second daughter, Celia, was born in 1953. The same year she returned to Australia via India, where she spent time drawing at both the Ellora and Ajanta caves. On her return to Australia the family settled in Adelaide, where she raised her daughters (her third daughter Alice was born in 1961) and taught pottery, painting and sculpture at various schools and at the School of Art. She completed a major commission, the Downer fountain for St Mark’s College, Adelaide, in 1964. With the end of her marriage Madigan returned to Sydney in 1973 and continued to sculpt and teach both at the East Sydney Technical College and at the Sculpture Centre. At this time she began her creative and personal partnership with the sculptor Robert Klippel ( they lived near each other but in separate houses). In the 1980s she experimented with assemblages-constructing works from small wooden machine pattern parts-before reverting to carving figurative works in wood and stone, the materials in which her most significant sculptures have been produced. She continued to draw, paint and produce collages in parallel with this.
Madigan was the recipient of of Australia Council grants in 1976 and 1985 and was the winner of the Wynne Prize in 1986, the first sculptor to receive the prize in over 50 years.
Since her first experience with an automatic drill-carving a stone female form in London in 1952-the female torso has been the focus of much of Rosemary Madigan’s work. Madigan has had an active career as both a teacher and sculptor since winning the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship in 1950 but it was only in the last decades that these compact and subtle torsos came to greater public prominence. She should also be better known as the creator of a number of the most compelling religious sculptures executed in Australia, for instance The Yellow Christ (1968).
An independent thinker, Madigan’s interests since her student years placed her somewhat outside the mainstream of Australian sculptural production. Yet her allegiance to the humanist tradition, with its adherence to the impact of the sculptor’s hand, has been of primary importance to the development of many of Australia’s modern sculptors.
Madigan’s exposure to Indian sculpture-beginning with a visit to the Bombay Museum on her way to Europe and three weeks spent drawing the Ellora cave sculptures on her way home-has been profoundly influential. It is not surprising that while in Europe in the early 1950s it was not the heritage of Henry Moore or the biomorphic visions of the immediate post-war generation of British sculptors which had lasting impact, but the `humanity and the down-to-earthness’ of Romanesque sculpture.
Critics have tended to assess Madigan’s art as a restrained homage to the preoccupations of an earlier generation of modern figurative sculptors, and indeed several of her most successful torsos share qualities intrinsic to Gaudier-Breszka’s work, for example. Nonetheless, although figurative concerns have largely remained central, the parameters of Madigan’s art are larger than such a characterisation would allow.
Torso (1954) is not based on the life model but on Madigan’s desire to explore and articulate generic human form. Executed in Adelaide, this was the first sculpture she completed after returning to Australia. In its stylised, attenuated form-somewhat removed from the spare late works-one is tempted to see the sinuous line of Indian sculpture. Madigan has said of it:
I think I was very concerned with understanding the body … not specifically as far as muscles went, but the way the inner structures-the rib cage and pelvis, two major inner structures-work together. Because I was so interested in the way it articulated, I didn’t deal with the arms or legs or head. I was not thinking of realism at all, but of the basic articulation: coping with a complex three dimensional form … I was never concerned to get a “type” of figure … I’m really only interested in the form.
Writers:
Edwards, Deborah
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 5 December 1926
- Summary
- South Australian born sculptor who concentrated on carving stone and wood to produce classically modern sculptures, mainly based on the human figure. Also an influential teacher of sculpture.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Feb-19
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by adding a biography
In 1984 Milton Moon was awarded Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to ceramics. Since then, he has received an Advance Australia Foundation Award (1992) as well as an Australian Artists Fellowship (1994-1998). Milton Moon has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and overseas, and is represented in public collections around the country.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- Milton Moon has been a key figure in developing close links between Japanese studio pottery and Australia. In 2012 he wrote: 'I remain concerned, if a little obsessed, with the challenge of making pots, which although belonging to a ceramic tradition of some eight thousand years or more, are undeniably and uniquely Australian.'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Sep-19
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- State Library of NSW biographical summary. “Georg N. Szirtes fled Hungary in 1949 to escape communist persecution as his father was a businessman. Surtees was also Jewish but despite persecution during World War II, his culture does not seem to have been a factor in his flight.
He arrived in Sydney, from Vienna, ca. 1951, taking the name George N. Surtees. Qualified as an artist, having trained in the Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, he was also interested in industrial design. Initially he worked in Sydney for people like Paul Kafka but by the late 1950’s he struck out on his own, doing commercial display work. He also began to work as an interior designer.His heyday seems to have been the 1960’s-1970’s, when he did a lot of work for companies like Westfield, and Frank Lowy and John Saunders. He worked on the Boulevard Hotel in the early 1970’s and worked his Jewish networks, often called upon to design interiors reminiscent of the Eastern European interiors his clients had fled. He also worked as a graphic artist and examples of the range of his work are in this collection. Biographical note from Mitchell Library file.”
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1 January 1922
- Summary
- Surtees trained in Budapest and worked in Sydney in interior design, commercial display, furniture and other design-related work for commercial clients.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-33.8262187 Longitude150.9414378 Start Date1991-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Greystanes, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 26 February 1991
- Summary
- Jess Nolan was an emerging South Australian artist who died in 2018.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Jun-18
- Age at death
- 27
Details
Latitude-17.0568696 Longitude-64.9912286 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bolivia
- Biography
- Ruth(Ruthi)Eisner was born in Bolivia, in about 1940, to parents who had fled from Nazi Austria.When she was a teenager her family migrated to Australia, and she attended art school in Sydney. Her early subject matter included colourful scenes of people and markets remembered from her childhood in Bolivia. She exhibited, mainly at art societies in Ku-ing-gai and Turramurra for most of her life. She established a small studio based art class in her Turramurra home, encouraging her students to “kindly enjoy their creativity”.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Ruth Eisner was a child of refugees from Hitler who eventually settled in Sydney. While she exhibited in local art societies in Ku-ing-ai and Turramurra, she is principally remembered for being an inspirational teacher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Oct-18
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Atnanker, Anmatyerr Country, Central Desert, NT, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1938
- Summary
- After first working in batik, Kwementyaye (Kathleen) Petyarre turned to painting in 1987. Her precise paintings of her country and her culture led to her becoming one of the most celebrated artists from the country around Utopia station.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Nov-18
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1938
- Summary
- Snow was one of the founders of BUGA UP, a loosely affiliated group of activists opposed to tobacco smoking & advertising. The group began ca.1979 & repurposed innumerable billboards & advertising hoardings; a spray can was the only requirement for admission to BUGA UP. In addition to his graphic work, Snow was also a letterpress printer and for some years, he printed the University of Sydney degrees for their Commencement.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- Muncaster was a designer working in costume design, notably costume developed for the Sydney Mardi Gras parade. He began designing costume for the parade in the early 1980s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, UK
- Biography
- Born in London in 1933. In 1952 she received a National Diploma of Art and Design from the Eastbourne College of Art, England, and in 1956 she gained an Interior Design Degree from the Royal college of Art in London, England. Before moving to Australia in 1961 Dorrough worked as an interior designer for Sir Hugh Casson in London and for a firm of architects (Harrison and Abramovitz) in New York City. In Australia, she worked in interior design for McConnell, Smith and Johnson and lectured in the architecture faculty at the UNSW. She later studied at the City Art Institute, Sydney, where she graduated with a Masters of Visual Art in 1984. In 2000 she studied Renaissance Painting Techniques at the Charlie Shead Studio School, Sydney, NSW.
She played a major role in the creation of the Crafts Council of Australia also designing their offices and the Crafts Council gallery, Sydney.
Dorrough works across different media including drawing, painting, printmaking (particularly etching) and sculpture. Dorrough is well known for her textile wall hangings, titled Twelve Hangings (1980) held in NSW Parliament House, depicting botanic images, as she is for her permanent mixed media installation of life-sized convict silhouettes, Convict Shadows (1991), at The Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, NSW.
In 1987 Dorrough was awarded an Overseas Fellowship Grant Residency in Italy by the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. In 1984 she received the Post Graduate Award for work towards her Masters Degree from the Commonwealth Department of Education. In 1978 Dorrough received a Senior Fellowship from the Craft Board of the Australia Council and in 1975 she was awarded a grant also from the Craft Board of the Australia Council. In 1956 Dorrough was awarded a Travelling Scholarship from the Royal College of Art, London, and she also won the Silver Medal from the College the same year.
Dorrough is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Ararat Gallery, Parliament House, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse), Queensland Art Gallery, West Australian Art Gallery, Tamworth Art Gallery, Wollongong Art Gallery, The Orange City Collection, Arts Victoria Festival Collection, Melbourne Stage College Collection, NSW Kindergarten Teachers Union Study Collection and the Historic Houses Trust.
Dorrough has completed commissions for the Regent Hotel, Sydney; Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney; Bond University, Queensland; IBM Australia; and NSW Parliament House, Sydney.
Writers:
Stella Downer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Dorrough was born in London where she worked as an interior designer. She came to Australia via New York and continued her interiors work while lecturing at the UNSW. After 1964, she began exploring textiles and other media. She is well known for her textile wall hangings and installations commissions.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2018
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Brian Smyth FDIA from South Australia is an Automotive Designer and is now retired.
Brian joined the Institute in 1963 and was President of the South Australian Council (possibly the second president replacing Hugh Whisson) from 1976 to 1979, and was made a Fellow in 1979. He spent ten years on the Administration Committee of the Design Council of Australia.
Brian joined Chrysler Australia in 1949 and was involved in the design of many vehicles including the Simca Station Wagon and the legendary Valiant. He also worked internationally and contributed to design programs in Detroit and also in South Africa.
When he left in 1977 it was noted that 'he left behind him at Chrysler Australia a well organized department with a number of trained stylists highly competent in the areas of clay modeling, colour and trim design, and general styling and design activities. Brian Smyth is a man of outstanding ability, experience and achievement in the field of industrial design.’ signed I.E. Webber, Deputy Chairman, Chrysler Australia.
http://www.dia.org.au/index.cfm?id=179
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1 January 1931
- Summary
- Smyth was an automotive designer working initially for Chrysler Australia. In 1959 he was their senior stylist and became involved in the introduction of the US Valiant model into Australia, later becoming involved in Valiant Charger model. He retired in 1977.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- Mirka Mora, the artist whose joie de vie enlivened Melbourne for many years, was born in Paris in 1928, the daughter of Lithuanian Jews, Leon Zelik and Celia Gelbein.After the Nazis invaded Paris she and her mother were arrested in the Velodrome d’Hiver roundup of 1942, the largest French deportation of Jews of the Holocaust, and taken by train to a concentration camp in Pithviers. Through a combination of fortunate events which included the kindness of strangers and her father’s ingenuity, they were released. Most of their fellow prisoners died at Auschwitz.In 1947 she married Georges Mora, who had been a fighter in the French Resistance and in 1951 they emigrated to Australia with their baby son Philippe, settling in Melbourne. They were by instinct urban dwellers so found an apartment at 9 Collins Street. It had a distinguished history as it had been used as a studio by Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. They soon opened Mirka Cafe in Exhibition Street, where good food and sparking conversation made it a drawcard for Melbourne’s creative intelligentisia. Soon it was also exhibiting art painted by the habitués and their friends. Sunday Reed organized a rare exhibition of Joy Hester’s work. Charles Blackman held his first exhibition there. She combined her work in the cafe with parenthood, but always was making her art. She painted, drew, embroidered, made amusing lascivious dolls, decorated ceramics. There were no barriers with her art.In the late 1960s they moved to St Kilda to the Tolarno Hotel for which she painted murals. This morphed into the Tolarno Gallery, one of Melbourne’s leading art galleries. In 1970s, after multiple affairs by both parties she separated from Georges and later divorced, but remained close to him until his death.In 1978 she was commissioned to paint one of Melbourne’s Art Trams, a project by the state government in an effort to enliven the city. Her whimsical tram easily became the city’s favourite and in 1986 she was commissioned to create a ceramic mural at Flinders Street station. She also painted the foyer of Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre and in 2016 collaborated with the fashion designer Lisa Gorman.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 18 March 1928
- Summary
- Mirka Mora’s joyeous experimental art gave a bohemian flavour to Melbourne life, both with her former husband, the resistance fighter and restaurateur Georges, and then with her wide circle of friends and extended family.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Aug-18
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-33.7750987 Longitude151.2844815 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Harbord, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Charles Blackman was born in the Sydney harborside suburb of Harbord, the third child of Charles Cervic Blackman, a mechanical engineer, and his wife Marguerite Brown, who always preferred fantasy to reality. His father abandoned the family when the boy was four, leading his mother to work long hours at a waitress at Circular Quay – and when she could not cope the children were placed in Dalwood Homes. In primary school he was (briefly)taught by Rah Fizelle. He left school at 13, after an extended bout mumps which confined him to bed. His mother gave him paints to keep him occupied. In 1942 he was employed by the Sydney Sun, first as a copy boy and later as an art cadet. In about 1947 he enrolled in painting classes under Hayward Veal at the Meldrum School of Art, but did not find this to his taste. However he did enjoy the drawing classes at SORA (Studio of Realist Art)and the Sketch Club in Haymarket.The New Zealand poet, Lois Hunter, introduced him to modern art and he began to read twentieth century European literature. Her edition of Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror introduced him to the work of Odilon Redon. In 1948 he followed Hunter to Brisbane where he met other modernist artists and poets, including his future wife, Barbara Patterson. In 1951 Blackman and Patterson moved to Melbourne where they married, spending the following years. In 1952 Blackman came to the attention of the art patrons John and Sunday Reed, with whom he later quarrelled, as well as the art critic Alan McCulloch. Accounts of the unsolved murder of Barbara’s childhood friend, Betty Shanks, inspired his first series of schoolgirl paintings. Barbara was slowly going blind, and so he read to her children’s and fantasy literature, which came in turn to influence his own art, especially Alice in Wonderland. In 1959, encouraged by Bernard Smith, he joined with fellow artists to assert the value of the figurative image in the Antipodeans exhibition, and designed the exhibition poster. On seeing his paintings Sir Kenneth Clark suggested he exhibited in London.The Blackman family arrived in London on 2 February 1961, and soon joined the lively expatriate community of Australians. In 1966, missing the sunshine and the beaches, they returned to Australia, travelling first to Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane but ultimately to Sydney.In June 1978, in part because she was irritated by his constant infidelity, Barbara wrote a formal resignation from their marriage, giving him two weeks notice. Blackman subsequently painted a series of nightmare paintings, based in part on Fuseli’s horse, using the actress Kate Fitzpatrick as his model.A relationship with a 19 year old student, Genevieve de Couvreur, led to his second marriage. He continued to admire Barbara and at his 50th birthday presented her with the large canvas, Fifty Flowers (with a white cat in the corner).He first stayed at Buderim, on the Gold Coast, in 1979 and by 1981 was spending most of his time there, painting on themes of lovers, living in idyllic lush tropical beauty. In 1982 he collaborated with the Sydney Dance Company in Dialogues, Daisy Bates and later Spindrift for the Western Australian Ballet Company. In 1984, after the birth of their second child, Blackman and Genevieve separated.From 1985 he began to base much of his work on the butterflies and vegetation of north Queensland, travelling with the poet Al Alvarez. He also worked closely with the Sydney print workshop, Port Jackson Press.In 1989 he married Victoria Bower, whom he later also divorced. His later exhibitions of recent work were not well received by the critics, who noted their uneven quality and bulk production. However the 1993 retrospective, Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels at the National Gallery of Victoria, demonstrated the full range of his poetic vision.In his last years Blackman suffered from dementia and his affairs were managed by the Charles Blackman Trust, established by his accountant Tom Lowenstein. He died a week after his 90th birthday.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 12 August 1928
- Summary
- The Antipodean artist Charles Blackman was best known for his paintings of schoolgirls and the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland. He was a part of the circle of artists and writers who congregated at Heide, and in 1959 was one of the figurative artists who signed Bernard Smth’s Antipodean Manifesto.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Aug-18
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- William (Bill) Salmon was born in Geelong on 9 April 1928, but spent his early years on one of the properties managed by his father, John Walter Salmon. His mother, Clarice Bennett Taylor, encouraged him to think of a career in architecture, but he was not interested. His paternal grandfather had been a doctor in Creswick. Daryl Lindsay, another doctor’s son, was a family friend and encouraged the boy to think of art. As a compromise, after leaving Geelong College, he studied commercial art at Swinburne Technical College and worked for a time as a designer for Prestige Fabrics.After the War he travelled to London where he continued his studies at the Slade and then the Academia di Belle Arti, in Florence.In 1953 he and his first wife, Adele Love, returned to Australia where he taught for the South Australian School of Art. In 1958 they moved to Sydney where he taught at East Sydney Technical College while holding frequent exhibitions of his bush landscapes at Macquarie Galleries. Sydney enabled him to renew his friendship with David Strachan, whose father had also been a doctor at Creswick. Along with other similarly inclined artists, including Donald Friend and Russell Drysdale, they enjoyed frequent painting expeditions to the old gold mining town of Hill End.In 1963 when Jeffrey Smart relocated to Italy, he invited Salmon to take his place on the ABC’s radio program, The Argonauts. Salmon adopted the name Apelles for these broadcasts. He soon made the transition to television, presenting programs on Roundabout and On the Inside. His television interview subjects included Donald Friend, Sidney Nolan and Lloyd Rees. He also made programs on Fred Williams and John Olsen. In 1970 he married Rosemary Clynes.He remained committed to country life. He designed and built the house at his farm Goannamanna, near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. The bush, with its trees and rocks of the mountains became the subject of many of his paintings. He was an active member of the local bushfire brigade and some of the subjects of his paintings were of landscapes regenerating after fire. In the early 1980s the family moved to a farm near Dungog, which also became the subject for his art.In his later years he became an innovative farmer, always aware of changes in the environment.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 9 April 1928
- Summary
- William Salmon described his art as emerging from the landscape. He trained initially in graphic arts at Swinburne Technical College and worked as a textile designer then studied in the UK and Italy before returning to Australia where he taught in SA and NSW. In 1963 he began to broadcast for the ABC's Argonauts children's program and also presented specialist art programs for ABC television.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Oct-18
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude53.7975 Longitude-1.543611 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Donald Brook was born in what he later described as “an industrial slum” in Leeds, Yorkshire,on 8 January 1927. His father was a traveling salesman, a position that enabled the family to move to “a cultural wasteland of lower-middle class environment”. A series of scholarships enabled him to study electrical engineering but he left the degree before graduating and was conscripted into the British Army. After military service he enrolled in an art degree at the University of Durham, under Lawrence Gowing. His sculpture teacher, JR Murray McCheyne, introduced him to Scandinavian influences,but he was more influenced by the humanist approach of Germaine Richter, Reg Butler and Alberto Giacometti. On graduation he was awarded a scholarship to the British School in Athens, for Crete, but did not attend. Instead he travelled through Greece and Crete, admiring especially Cycladic sculptures. He then spent a year in Paris where he worked for the Societé CIAM. After returning to London he worked for a company making props for the film industry, including the armor for Richard Burton in Alexander The Great. It was at this time that he met his wife, Phyllis, a dancer.After a number of successful exhibitions, he was appointed to teach sculpture at what was to become the Ahmad’s Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria where he stayed for two years. On his return to London he held a number of successful exhibitions in London, before being approached to join the Digswell Trust in Hertfordshire. Here he worked in a community with Ralph Brown, Hans Coper, and Peter Collingwood. Henry Moore was a close neighbour.At Phyllis’s suggestion he applied to undertake a PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University, which he completed in 1967. They arrived in Canberra in 1962,where they found a small but lively intellectual community under the leadership of HC (Nugget) Coombs. His supervisor was the philosopher Bruce Benjamin. When Benjamin became ill with cancer the Brooks moved into the granny flat at the rear of the house and Phyllis cared for the children, including the future art historian, Roger Benajamin. It was at this time Brook began writing art criticism for the Canberra Times, under the editorship of John Douglas Pringle. He also designed exhibition spaces for temporary art exhibitions. While he was exhibiting in Canberra as well as at Gallery A in Melbourne and Sydney, Brook was also grappling with the problem of how art was regarded in relation to fashion. He started to see that many aesthetic judgements were best described as trivial.He was now looking for a regular source of income, so applied for a position at the Elam art school in Auckland. He did not take up the appointment as he was appointed senior lecturer at the newly formed Power Institute at the University of Sydney, where he commenced teaching in 1968. The same year he was appointed art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald. Although he had a fractious relationship with the professor, Bernard Smith, Brook made a lasting friendship with fellow lecturer David Saunders.Although he ceased making sculpture when he moved to Sydney University, this was where he made his first significant contribution to contemporary art. Along with Marr Grounds he established the Tin Sheds workshop, a joint venture between Fine Arts and Architecture to enable students to make art. Under their guidance the Tin Sheds becomes an effective nursery for conceptual art. The sculptor Bert Flugelman joined the Tin Sheds as tutor and also became a lifelong friend. These friends were especially valued in the years after 1968 when the Brook’s three year old son, Simon, was murdered – a crime that was to remain unsolved for almost 40 years.In 1969 Brook delivered the second Power Lecture,Flight From the Object, which became one of the most important contributions to conceptual art in Australia. Brook’s rigorous philosophical approach to art and ideas enabled his next appointment as the inaugural Professor of Fine Arts at Flinders University.In Adelaide in 1974 Brook initiated the creation of the artist run Experimental Art Foundation (EAF) with Ian North, Clifford Frith, Phil Noyce and Bert Flugelman (who had moved from Sydney at his suggestion). Brook retired from Flinders University in 1989, but continued to write, talk and mentor successive generations of artists until shortly before his death.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 8 January 1927
- Summary
- The. Yorkshire born Donald Brook first established a reputation as a sculptor, but his most significant impact on Australian art was as the intellectually rigorous critic, professor and art theorist whose ideas exerted a profound influence on at least two generations of Australian artists, curators and writers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Dec-18
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.0111111 Longitude151.7077778 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Redhead NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Naughton was a painter primarily of "Outback" scenes and scenery. He began his career as a graphic designer and illustrator for advertising agencies in Australia and in the UK. He was Managing Director of he Nichols-Cumming agency in Sydney, later establishing Keith Naughton Studios. He closed the Studio by 1975 and went on the road painting. In the 1990s, he took up political cartooning for the Newcastle Herald.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Scheinberg was the principal of the Holdsworth Galleries, Woollahra, Sydney. The Holdsworth opened in 1969 and closed in 1995-96 on her retirement. Her papers associated with the Gallery were presented to the National Library of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-38.3399766 Longitude143.5858537 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Colac, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 28 August 1920
- Summary
- Awarded MBE 1977 and AM, 1988 "For service to art as an illustrator of botanical specimens".
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Dec-18
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-32.7218138 Longitude152.1440889 Start Date1961-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nelson Bay, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1961
- Summary
- Herbert was a film maker, forming a company "Arcadia Pictures" with Sophie Jackson while attending the City Art Institute. After further training at AFTRS, Sydney, he produced a number of short films, features and TV series. He also worked on a number of films as art director, stylist and props acquisition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Jun-17
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born in Adelaide, but the family moved to Goroke in Western Victoria when he was nine months old then onto Condobolin. He moved to Sydney and studied at Beacon High School in 1967 then transferred to Newington College. A brilliant caricaturist, he began drawing cartoons professionally in 1983. He first drew for the Bulletin and for the Sydney Morning Herald , resigning from the latter in 1994 and moving to the Daily Telegraph-Mirror (swapping places with Suzanne White) . Now he is at the Australian .
By 1998 Leak had won 8 Gold Stanley Awards from the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club as Artist of the Year, including 1987-89, 1991-92, 1994 (Suzanne White won in 1990 and Eric Löbbecke in 1993) and 1996 [presumably also 1995 and 1997]. He was voted best caricaturist in 1989, 1991, 1994, best humorous illustrator in 1988-89, 1991, 1994, best general illustrator in 1987, 1989, and best cartoon done on the night in 1987 (awards listed only to 1993 in Lindesay: see also Inkspot ) He has also won 7 Walkley Awards for cartoon of the year, including 1996 (see Inkspot 28, Spring 1997). His paintings had been hung in the Archibald Prize 8 times by 1998 (more since) and he had both a portrait of Robert Hughes and a cartoon of cricketer Mark Taylor in the National Portrait Gallery.
Just quietly , Nurse and The man of action , published in the Australian on 21, 29 and 30 July 1997, were exhibited in Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra: National Museum of Australia/ Old Parliament House [OPH] exhibition, 1997), cats 57, 9, 91. In 1998 he showed more cartoons and spoke about his work at the OPH cartooning seminar. He was also in Bringing the House Down 2001 (4 works) and doubtless in between. Included in State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] exhibition Australians in black & white : (the most public art) in 1999, he gave a lecture at the library on 1 March 1999. He lectures and talks regularly, e.g. on radio, as well as publishing anthologies of his cartoons and occasionally writing on the subject. A selection of his cartoons, Drawing Blood , was published by Allan and Unwin in 1998.
He drew a version of 'for gorsake stop laughing’ for the Stanleys (Black and White Artists Club Awards) 1989 (SLNSW) – an acknowledged tribute to Stan Cross .
In 2002 Leak was hosting Radio National’s weekly arts’ program, 'Nighclub’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1956
- Summary
- Leak began his career with art lessons, briefly attending the Julian Ashton School, Sydney. In 1982, he began cartooning, working for the Bulletin, then the Sydney Morning Herald and News Ltd. He was a multiple entrant to the Archibald Portrait Prize and won multiple awards (Walkley, Stanley Award) for his illustrations and cartoons. He also published a novel and books of his cartoons.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude42.3636331 Longitude-87.8447938 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waukegan, Illinois, USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1954
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1950
- Summary
- Irving, after brief training at Swinburne, he worked with Hector and Dorothy Crawford's film studio, Melbourne. With Claudia Karvan, he filmed "Love my Way" and was involved in film and TV productions such as "Newsfront, "Water Rats", "Mushrooms", "My Brilliant Career" and others. In retirement, he took up teaching at the Australian Film, TV and Radio School.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- When Peter Pinson was a student at North Sydney Boys High in the 1950s, art was not taught at this selective school. However a change in the school curriculum meant that from 1962 onwards all NSW school children would learn art and as a result many school leavers, including Pinson, were offered scholarships to train as high school art teachers.After completing his studies in art at East Sydney Technical College and Sydney Teachers College he was employed as an art teacher at Bathurst High. In 1964, his last year as a student, Pinson was awarded the watercolour prize in Sydney’s Mirror-Waratah Festival. He was encouraged to develop his art further, and the landscape around Bathurst became the subject of paintings he developed for the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship, which he was awarded in 1968.In London Pinson completed a Masters at the Royal College of Art. While he was in London Pinson became interested in Zen Buddhism, which was to become a significant influence on the way he approached art.On his return to Australia in 1971, Pinson taught at Wollongong Institute of Education before being appointed as Senior Education Officer at the National Gallery of Victoria.In 1977 he returned to Sydney as a senior lecturer in art in the innovative art education program at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education. In 1991 when the college joined the University of New South Wales and was renamed College of Fine Arts, Pinson was appointed as an Associate Professor and was later promoted to Professor.Pinson was a thoughtful and supportive teacher, encouraging many artists at the start of their careers. His own art continued to show the influence of his London years, with intensely coloured works that reflected both his pleasure in the small details of domestic life and his love of visual and verbal puns.In 1986 he was appointed Offical Military Artist, an appointment that led him to visit military bases around Australia. The appointment led him to look again at the work the Surrealist Eric Thake had painted during in World War II. He saw similarities between his whimsical approach to art and that of Thake.Pinson preferred to work on paper, using water based acrylics. His interest in the medium led him to join the Australian Watercolour Institute, and in 2003 he was elected President.In his years at the College of Fine Arts Pinson also curated a number of exhibitions on distinguished Australian artists, many of whom were colleagues and friends. On his retirement he established an art gallery in Woollahra where he exhibited the work of many of his former colleagues and friends.In 2014 the gallery closed and Pinson spent his last years concentrating on his own art, described by David van Nunen as being “characterised by emphatic design; painterly surfaces; a generally subtle palette offset with passages of pungent colour; flatness; and a feeling for pattern that relates to synthetic cubism and art deco posters.”
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 9 October 1943
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Jun-17
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1942
- Summary
- Ceramist Liz Williams received an Australia Council grant for travel and research, which she undertook in Mexico and America in 1991. She was also an Australia Council Studio residency recipient, based in Barcelona during 1994-95. Williams has exhibited in Australia and overseas and is represented in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Mar-17
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.27452185 Longitude0.196116556 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sevenoaks, Kent, UK
- Biography
- Ti Parks was born in England in 1939. He studied painting and printmaking at Bromley College of Art in Kent and at the Slade School in London.
From 1964-1973 he lived in Melbourne and in 1973 he represented Australia at the 8ieme Biennale de Paris with a major photographic and collage work called “Polynesian 100.” The following year, in 1974, he was appointed Senior Visiting Lecturer at Elam School of Art in Auckland, New Zealand. He subsequently returned to London in 1975.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 15 March 1939
- Summary
- The experimental artist Ti Parks had a major influence on the development of conceptual art in Australia, especially in Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.6055342 Longitude150.821953 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Windsor, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Robin Norling, painter and draughtsman (particularly of the figure), teacher and gallery director, was born in Windsor, New South Wales, in 1939 but grew up in Taree, New South Wales. He studied at the National Art School, Sydney Teachers College and the Royal College of Art, London, UK.
In 1961, aged only twenty-two and still a student at Sydney Teacher’s College, he won the Sulman Prize, for a mural design, Sea movement and rocks . In 1962, having just started teaching art at Macquarie Boys High School, Norling was awarded the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship, which allowed him to travel to Europe and North Africa with his new wife, art teacher, Elaine Odgers. In 1966, the two of them began their slow return to Australia, driving through Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, immersing themselves in the many cultures they passed through.
On his return to Australia, Norling returned to secondary school teaching and, in 1970, was appointed as a lecturer in art education at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education. In the same year he began writing and presenting a weekly ABC radio program aimed at youth, entitled Young World of Art , which ran for four years. From 1978 to 1986 he was senior education officer at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, during which time he curated a number of educational exhibitions, including Light and Shadow and Composition is Artist’s Glue. This position gave him a remarkable opportunity to study, at his leisure, some of the greatest paintings in the country, including works by less well-known artists such as the British Victorian painters Lord Frederick Leighton and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Norling realised that these artists were more than the sentimental storytellers that contemporary taste held them to be.
In 1986 Norling left his position at the Gallery and took up a position at Meadowbank College of TAFE, teaching painting and drawing. In 1997 he retired from teaching and returned to full-time painting. From 2000 he shared a studio and directorship of Patonga Bakehouse Gallery on the New South Wales Central Coast, with fellow artist Jocelyn Maughan.
Norling is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Charles Sturt University (Goulburn campus) and the University of Sydney.
Acknowledgments to Peter Pinson, for his introduction to Robin Norling, Phillip Matthews, 2010, for much of the information contained herein.
Writers:
Cooper, JonathanPinson, Peter
Jonathan Cooper
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Norling began his career in sign-writing, later training in painting at the National Art School, Sydney, and the Royal College of Art, London, UK. He was a secondary school teacher, lecturer at Alexander Mackie (later City Art Institute), Meadowbank TAFE, ABC presenter and educator at the Art Gallery of NSW. He also worked as a curator and writer during his diverse career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude53.5111779 Longitude-2.937562183 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maghull, Liverpool, England
- Biography
- Alun Leach-Jones was the eldest child of a Welsh elementary school teacher father and a Scottish mother. His parents had met in Liverpool, but shortly after Alun’s birth the family returned to his father’s home in rural North Wales where he became the local schoolmaster, and his son’s first teacher. Alun did not speak English until he was ten. In 1947 an uncle, who was recovering from the War, showed him how to paint watercolours. When the family returned to Liverpool, Alun joined his uncles’ Post Office club, and was commissioned to paint murals, his first professional experience. From the age of 14 he worked at the Solicitor’s Law Society, making illuminated manuscripts for presentation. A workmate, Ronald McKenzie, introduced him to art, and they travelled to Paris where he saw Gauguin, and to the Prado in Madrid. Art became increasingly important and he enrolled in evening classes at Liverpool College of Art. In 1959 Leach-Jones travelled to London to see New American Painting at the Tate, an exhibition that introduced him to Abstract Expressionism, and changed the way he thought about colour and form.The following year he travelled to Adelaide as an assisted immigrant, where he worked at various jobs including as a library assistant, before enrolling in night classes at the South Australian School of Art where he said his “real professional life started”. It was also where he met his wife, fellow artist Nola Jones. Kym Bonython noticed Leach-Jones’ constant visits to his gallery, and encouraged the budding artist by giving him a place to live in the gallery in return for assistance with installing exhibitions and caretaking duties. Leach-Jones’ interest in art books at the Mary Martin bookshop piqued the attention of Max Harris, who commissioned him to illustrate a book, and introduced him to Sidney Nolan which gave him a sense that art could be a career.The South Australian School of Art also led him to an interest in the possibilities of printmaking, led by Udo Sellbach, Karin Schepers and Geoffrey Brown.In 1964 Leach-Jones and his wife Nola travelled to England where she studied at the Chelsea School of Art, while he became involved in the Contemporary Art Society. He shared a studio with the English abstract painter Brian Plummer. Consequently he met other artists including Patrick Heron and Norbert Linton. London finessed his screen-printing technique and he started to make images of intricate abstract beauty, with the generic title “Noumenon”, which he described as “the idea of perceiving a purely intellectual entity”. He continued working in this direction on his return to Australia, this time to Melbourne, in 1964. The same year he held his first successful solo exhibition at Australian Galleries, which was soon followed by exhibitions in other cities. His meditative intricate abstract works led to him exhibiting in The Field in 1968 and being regarded as one of Australia’s leading abstract artists. In 1969 he represented Australia at the Bienale del Sao Paulo, in Brazil.The same year he was appointed as a teacher at the Prahran College of Advanced Education, also taught at the National Gallery of Victoria School. This was followed by an appointment at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1972 and the City Art Institute (later known as the College of Fine Arts, UNSW) in 1978. His significance as a printmaker was first recognised in 1967 when he was made a Print Patron of the Print Council of Australia, and his achievement in a British context was recognised in 1990 when he was made an Honorary Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, UK.The significance of Alun Leach-Jones as a printmaker as well as a painter was early recognised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australia Council which, in 1974, chose him to exhibit at the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi. This was followed by other exhibitions and residencies in Malaysia, Singapore and New York.In 1980 Leach-Jones undertook a residency in Berlin, at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanian. His studio was next to the death zone of the Wall, place of concrete, barbed wire and dead animals.From this came a turning point in his art, with the series “The Romance of Death” which was triggered in part by the efforts of those trying to cross the wall.
In the 1990s, influenced by what he described as 'Welsh melancholy’ he made a series grouped under the title “The Instruments for a Solitary Navigator”. He later described these as “like a slime trail left by the snail behind him”.In 1999, encouraged by his friends Lenton Parr and Robert Klippel, he began to make sculpture which was the subject of several of exhibitions in commercial galleries.Towards the end of his life there was a renewed interest in the mid-century Abstract artists and the way the daring young men who painted in precise colours had helped shape modern Australian art.
Writers:
AngelaTandori
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 3 January 1937
- Summary
- Alun Leach-Jones was one of the generation of artists who helped define Australian colourfield art in the 1960s. Hie first came to prominence exhibiting in The Field in 1968 with paintings of smooth intricate patterning, indicating a search for abstract transcendence. His ideas and his art easily transformed into silk screen prints and in his later years he also exhibited sculpture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Dec-17
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 24 September 1937
- Summary
- In the 1960s Melbourne artist became well known for his lively hard edge abstract paintings which were based on images discovered on cereal packets. Later he gave the same magnified scrutiny to knitting patterns and then elements of suburban culture. In 1970 he turned from painting to systematic photographic observation. Rooney has also written extensively on Australian art as art critic for both The Age and The Australian.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32.256944 Longitude148.601111 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- Hall trained as an architect at Sydney University, later tutoring after 1963 in addition to his architectural practice. He also painted and drew, exhibiting with Barry Stern Gallery, Janet Clayton Gallery and others. In the 1980s, he began to build stringed instruments with An Morison and Isa Coello from workshops in Alexandria and elsewhere.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Sydney Ball was born on the 29th of October 1933 in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Lillian and Sidney Ball. Because of his father’s war service he was awarded a repatriation scholarship to St Peter’s College. On leaving school he undertook a series of jobs including jackaroo and bank clerk.After enrolling in architectual studies with Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz at the Workers Education Association he began to work as an architectural draughtsman, a discipline that influenced his later work. He joined the Royal South Australian Art Society’s weekend classes, and began to think of studying art full time. After taking some classes with James Cant, John Dowie and Dora Chapman at the South Australian Institute, he realised he needed international experience in order to fully develop as an artist.In 1962 Ball travelled to New York and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League, studying lithography with Harry Sternberg and painting with Theodoros Stamos. He scoured both public art museums and commercial galleries, enticed by Matisse, as well as exhibitions by Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis and Mark Rothko. He exhibited at New York’s Westerly Gallery, and his work was favorably noted by Donald Judd.The young Australian moved easily into the New York Creative milieu. Stamos introduced him to his colleagues, including Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell. Subsequently he was invited to Mark Rothko’s house for Thanksgiving.In 1965 Ball returned to Australia via Japan, where he visited the shrines at Kyoto and Nara, sparking a lifelong interest in Asian philosophies and religions.On his return to Adelaide Ball was appointed lecturer at the South Australian School of Art, where one of his students was Margaret Worth who he later married. He exhibited with some critical success in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, which brought his work to the attention of John Stringer and Brian Finemore who were planning an exhibition of Australian colourfield art to open the new National Gallery of Victoria. As well as Ball’s work being included in the exhibition, he designed the lithograph exhibition poster.In 1969 the Ball family returned to New York, but the marriage ended in 1971. Ball came to know the critic Clement Greenberg and through him others American artists who shared his passion for pure colour, including Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Jack Bush. He especially admired Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko’s approach to colour. After Rothko’s suicide he was asked to clean the studio.In 1972 he returned to Australia, eventually settling in Sydney with an appointment a senior lecturer at the City Art Institute. He bought land at Glenorie, north of the city, and commissioned architect Glenn Murcutt to Design the house & studio which was completed in 1983. This became his base with his partner Lynne Eastaway until his death.He continued to explore different systems of belief and their visual expression, from China and Tibet, Korea, India and the paintings by Aboriginal artists in a cave near his home.After some years when abstract painting was out of favour, a revival of interest in both colour and the culture of the 1960s brought renewed attention to Ball’s art. In the last years of his life Ball’s work was included in a number of major survey exhibitions. In 2008 Anne Loxley curated a national touring exhibition, Sydney Ball: The Colour Paintings. Sydney Ball died on 5 March 2017, at home in Glenorie, two days after suffering a stroke.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 29 October 1933
- Summary
- The Adelaide born Sydney Ball was a painter of pure colour and abstract form, and one of the first of the post-World War II artists to understand that New York, not London was the place to see and explore new art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Mar-17
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Sydney Ball was one of the first of his generation to look to New York instead of Europe for inspiration. He consistently painted large abstract works in clear, pure colour.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Grant was an industrial designer with studies at the Royal College of Art, London, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. He designed work for Expo '67 Montreal, Toyo Kogia, Davis Furniture NY. He was the principal of Kjell Grant Design, Melbourne and has produced furniture for Innerspace and others. A designer lecturer at RMIT, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.0809856 Longitude5.127683969 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Utrecht, Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Huveneers was a graphic designer beginning his career in the Netherlands, the UK, finally in Australia in 1968. Much of his work was in advertising and marketing and by 1970 he established a studio, Huveneers P/L. Amongst his commercial work was the corporate identify for Australia Post.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude16.8305877 Longitude96.2191864 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yangon (Rangoon), Burma
- Biography
- Image and short biographical entry in Australian Black-and-White Artists Club Book of Originals (1986), AGNSW (178.1988.1-102).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Milligan was an illustrator for the Fairfax press in Sydney and a painter. He trained at Goldsmiths, University of London after the 1939-45 war. Arriving in Australia in 1951, he worked as a glassware engraver (probably for AGM), then worked for Fairfax. He also painted abstracts, took portrait commissions and illustrated books for his brother Spike Milligan.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-33.7569444 Longitude151.0775 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheltenham, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Brett was an internationally acclaimed marine painter. He appears to be a self-taught painter whose knowledge of ships and the sea came from an early career as a sailor on Australian coastal steamers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- painter, was born in Vienna in 1920, he and his family had lived in Warsaw until forced to flee in 1937 because of the Nazis. He worked in Melbourne 1937-48, where he was an active member of the Contemporary Art Society – and a communist – along with his friends Noel Counihan and Vic O’Connor . They painted the life they saw on Melbourne streets. He first exhibited with Boyd and Counihan at the University of Melbourne in 1939. Bernard Smith wrote in 1943 that Bergner, Boyd and Perceval constituted 'the most vital movement in Australian art today’. Some of Bergner’s paintings were the first to address the specific plight of Aboriginal Australians, according to Mellick. 'He recalled: “I did not know what an Aborigine was. He did not look like a Negro, more like a Jew… I painted these people with the faraway look in their eyes from generations before. They were displaced and I felt I identified with them.’ Works included Two Women 1942 (NGV) – one an Aboriginal.
One of the first things Bergner did in Melbourne was to set up a Yiddish theatre. His father Melech Ravitch was a Yiddish poet who had translated Kafka from German into Yiddish in the year of Kafka’s death (1924), but Bergner’s first strong engagement with Kafka was in Melbourne, as he later recalled (quoted Rubin and Mellick). Paintings after he moved to Israel permanently in 1948 continue to take themes from Kafka’s novels and short story 'Metamorphosis’, e.g. The Metamorphosis 1975 (artist’s collection). Retrospective exhibition, Israel, in 2000.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 October 1920
- Summary
- 20th century Melbourne painter. Contemporary of Boyd and Perceval and active member of Contemporary Art Society with Noel Counihan and Vic O'Connor. Bergner's paintings were among the 1st to address the specific plight of Indigenous Australians and later work took inspiration from the works of German writer Franz. In Tel Aviv, a member of a circle of artists centred in the popular Cafe Kassit, where he painted a large mural.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-37.247494 Longitude144.4552171 Start Date1962-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kyneton, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Silversmith Robert Foster set up F!NK and Co in 1994, joined by partner Gretel Harrison in 1997. Foster wanted a business that would support his one-off handmade works, starting with production of his now well-known aluminium F!NK water jug.
From the outset, F!NK was envisaged as a company of designers and many acknowledge Foster’s generosity and enthusiasm in providing them with a start. He insists on a close connection to the tooling part of the process to ‘maintain the sensitivity and integrity of the design’.
F!NK objects are now sold extensively in Australia and overseas. Increased demand for the F!NK water jug led Foster to explore offshore manufacturing, and he proceeded to have jug forms made in China, mostly for assembly in Australia.
Foster’s work is in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, and was included in the Museum’s 2007 exhibition 'Smart works: design and the handmade’.
FROM THE DESIGN INSTITUTE OF AUSTRALIA’S HALL OF FAME AWARD 2019:
Robert Foster was born in Kyneton, Victoria to art teacher parents who also painted and made pottery. He studied gold and silversmithing at the Canberra School of Art, now ANU School of Art, under renown silversmiths Ragnar Hansen and Johannes Kuhnen. He graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts (Visual) and a Post Graduate Diploma of Arts (Visual) in 1986. He went on to establish a studio, Fink & Co in 1993 and rapidly became a major figure in the ACT and national design industry.
Best known for designing tableware, lighting, furniture and other objects, he also had a number of major sculpture commissions including Ossolites in the foyer of the ActewAGL building in Canberra. Each piece he made is imbued with a distinctive personality and movement; objects ‘that might, Nutcracker-suite style, come to life as the owner sleeps.’
Foster’s iconic Fink jug epitomises his design ethos and technical prowess and is a landmark achievement in Australian design. When commissioned to create the jug by Canberra restaurant The Republic, Robert took aluminium tubing, an everyday yet sustainable material, and fashioned it into a sleek, economically-viable product. The original tooling involved old pieces of steel from his father’s tractor and wood from a fence post. The Fink jug now features in collections both nationally and internationally including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and major Australian institutions including the National Gallery of Australia.
He won numerous awards including the ANU Alumnus of the Year award in 2015. He regularly lectured, gave specialised workshops and was a key-note speaker at international conferences.
Following his untimely death in 2016, two grants were set up in Robert’s name to ensure his dedication to helping others continues. One is the ANU Robert Foster Gold & Silversmithing Honours Scholarship and the second is the Capital Arts Patron’s Organisation’s Robert Foster Memorial Award.
Writers:
Powerhouse Museum
staffcontributor
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. c.1962
- Summary
- Foster studied silversmithing at the Art School, ANU, founding the Canberra-based jewellery and household object design company F!NK + Co in 1993. In 1997, Gretel Harrison was a partner in FINK + Co. Foster was elected to the Design Institute of Australia's Hall of Fame in 2019.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1956
- Summary
- Patterson trained at Sydney Technical College & Sydney College of the Arts. She began costume work in TV, later moving into film. She frequently collaborated with directors Jane Campion and Gilliam Armstrong. Her earliest work was contemporary costume design (Sweet and Sour, Dancing Days) and as her career expanded, she moved into period costume & production design. (The Piano, Portrait of a Lady, Far From the Madding Crowd).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-33.37877205 Longitude147.9534388 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Forbes, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Ian Kenneth Willding was born at Forbes, NSW in 1954, the son of Kenneth Willding and Beryl (née McCarney). After initially training as a chef and working in Sydney, he moved to Adelaide in 1989. For the next sixteen years he worked as an artist in residence at the Suneden Special School. He also forged close links Nunga and gay communities, supplementing his income by working as a carer. Although he had left Forbes his art continued to reference memories of his childhood. His synaesthesia meant that these paintings, especially Dust of My Fathers (2008, have an immediacy in their evocation of times past.In 1996 he became involved in the Red House Group of community artists, an association that would last the rest of his life. His involvement in community arts led to his 2009 venture of curating Kumqwot, an exhibition of work by gay and lesbian artists. He held a number of solo exhibitions of his own work, notably Ceaseless Patterns of Being, which indicated his growing interest in Asian spiritual values, and Native Tongue III of 2009, which recalled the only time he ever heard Wiradjuri being spoken.In 2011 Tandanya Cultural Centre honoured him with a solo exhibition, Family Matters: A Wiradjuri Story in which he drew on his own research and his mother’s knowledge of their family history. He had always wanted to travel, but for most of his life such adventures had appeared to be impossible. Shortly before he died, he is friend Samuel Schmid travelled with him to Europe, going by train through Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Poland, seeing so much of the art that he had long admired in reproduction.In January 2017, just after he died, Adelaide’s Gallery M honoured him by showing Ian Willding, Retrospective.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 10 October 1954
- Summary
- Ian Willding, a Wiradjuri man, developed his art while working for many years at the Suneden Special School in Adelaide. His inspiration however came from his childhood in Forbes, in rural NSW. From 1996 onwards he was associated with the Red House Group of community artists, and also curated exhibitions of works by gay and lesbian artists.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Aug-16
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-31.6535192 Longitude116.6726927 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northam, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Conceptual artist concerned with the politics of representation, appropriation and particularly photography, working frequently with text, found images and assemblage.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Sep-16
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude29.974498 Longitude32.537086 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Suez, Egypt
- Biography
- Emanuel Raftoplouos was born in Suez, the multicultural seaport city in north-west Egypt. His mother, who had Italian heritage spoke to him in Italian, while his father, whose heritage was Greek, spoke in Greek. He was educated at the British school which gave him an easy command of English. It was here that he was introduced to painting and drawing.In 1956, in the lead up to the Suez crisis, his family made the prudent decision to leave Egypt and emigrate to Australia, where they settled in Sydney. Although he wanted to study art, his father wished for him to have a profession. The compromise was that he enrol in architecture at the University of Sydney. However Raft, as he had renamed himself, surreptitiously enrolled in painting classes at Bissieta’s art school. Architecture was soon abandoned.In 1959 he sailed for Milan, where he studied at the Brere Academy, where Bissietta had also studied. Here he was joined by Philipa Watkins, who he had met as a fellow art student in Sydney. Together they travelled to London, the standard destination for young Australians visiting Europe. Raft began to exhibit paintings burnt and seared with a blow-torch, as well as elaborate jewellery, which he called “wearable sculpture”. These were well received in both Australia and England. In 1968 two of his paintings were selected for the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark The Field exhibition. The following year his marriage to Watkins ended.In 1978, three years after his second marriage to the designer Helen Thaw, Raft and his family settled permanently in Sydney. Although he had a successful career in England, teaching as well as making art, he missed the sun. He joked “the rising damp was too much for me”.In 1981 he was appointed lecturer in art at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education, a position he held until his retirement in 1996 as it transformed into the City Art Institute and the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. He bought a house in the country near Lot, in France, where he stayed in the European summers. After Helen died in 2008 there was less travel.
His third wife, the sculptor and jeweller Sylvia Ross, was a long time colleague at the College of Fine Arts. In 2015 as the National Gallery of Victoria prepared to revisit The Field for its 50th year celebration, the curators discovered that several works were missing. Raft’s two Monoliths”, in the collection of Kym Bonython, had been destroyed some years before in Adelaide’s Black Thursday bushfires. He agreed to recreate them. As Raft was weakened by leukaemia the works were completed with the assistance of fellow artist and former student David Eastwood.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 7 February 1938
- Summary
- The Egyptian born Emanuel Raft brought a cosmopolitan perspecive to the way he approached painting, sculpture and design. He was also a teacher and mentor who influenced generations of students.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-May-16
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1937
- Summary
- Stitt was an artist, illustrator, graphic designer and animator trained at Melbourne Technical College (later RMIT) and began working in film in the late 1950s. As his career evolved, he also began working as a cartoonist. Later in his career, he turned to animation and special effects. He was often engaged in the film industry working with Philip Adams and Fred Schepisi.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- USA
- Biography
- George Henry Freedman, (6 March 1936–21 July 2016) was Australia’s leading interior designer from 1970 until a younger generation (including some architects and designers he trained) became prominent in Sydney during the 1990s. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied architecture at Syracuse University (1953–1958) but did not graduate. Influenced by his father, a paint company’s colour decoration adviser, he first worked as a designer and artist in London, Amsterdam and New York before he was despatched to Sydney in 1969, by New York design consultancy Knoll International, to deliver Manhattan-modern executive offices to help internationally rebrand the British colonial origins of the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac). During 1970–1971, Freedman worked part-time for Sydney decorator-antique dealer Leslie Walford, and formed a personal and professional partnership with Neville Marsh, a successful decorator from Perth. Trading as Marsh Freedman Associates after 1972, they designed many prestigious Sydney commercial and residential interiors, often including Freedman’s own furniture designs (most built in-situ but including a restaurant cocktail trolley collected by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences). Marsh Freedman Associates’ most significant project was designing two floors of executive offices atop a new Martin Place tower for the State Bank of New South Wales (1985–1988). Across eighty rooms, Freedman and his team provided one of the world’s finest curations of postmodern (1970–1990s) perceptions of interior design excellence. Freedman later specified colours and finishes to update two Sydney heritage monuments: the Powerhouse (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, 1988) and the Queen Victoria Building (historic markets to a modern shopping centre, 2009).As well as designing interiors for some of Sydney’s most prestigious and prosperous people and organisations, MFA created Sydney’s most magnetic transmillennial restaurants, notably Berowra Waters Inn, 1976; Claudes, 1981; Kinselas, 1983; Taylor’s, 1984; Chez Oz, 1985; Bilsons, 1988 (renamed Quay, 2004); Treasury, 1992; Ampersand, 1998; and Buon Ricordo, 2007.In 2005, Freedman was described by The Sydney Morning Herald as ‘the Godfather of Sydney interior design’. He was recognised by design and architecture industry experts for his daring and widely emulated combinations of colours, inventive uses of materials, relentless attention to detail, and commitment to high-quality furnishings (often imported signature classics). He was respected also for his sophisticated understandings of optical perception and volumetric manipulations of interior space; talents exemplified with his optically and geometrically sophisticated scheme for Kraanerg (1988), one of three Sydney Dance Company ballets for which he designed the sets. With his American and European architecture and arts knowledge, he was highlighted by design writers as practising more like an architect than many Sydney colleagues who were educated as interior decorators and designers. He worked with Sydney’s leading architects of the late-twentieth century—including Glenn Murcutt, Ken Woolley, Peter Stronach, Lionel Glendinning and ecological design pioneer, Sydney Baggs. Freedman also trained some of Sydney’s outstanding younger architects and designers—including Iain Halliday, Sam Marshall, Stephen Varady, William MacMahon, Arthur Collin, Robert Puflett, Tim Allison and his late-career partner, Ralph Rembel. In 2005 the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter) awarded Freedman Rembel an Interior Architecture commendation for its design of executive offices at the AMP building overlooking Circular Quay.Freedman’s 1970s and 1980s furniture designs, often finished with luxury European veneers and eye-catching details, were often promoted in Australia’s leading home furnishing magazines, especially Belle, Vogue Living and Interior Design. He was a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia and the Academy of Design Australia, and a regular judge for the annual Dulux Colour Awards. During the late 1980s, Neville Marsh retired from Marsh Freedman Associates to live in Rome and Freedman continued to practice as George Freedman Associates (with Robert Chester and Sam Marshall). In 1996 he appointed Ralph Rembel as his business partner and in 2002 their practice was renamed Freedman Rembel. In 2010, Freedman and Rembel dissolved their practice and Freedman joined PTW (Peddle Thorp and Walker) architects as Head of Interior Design (while continuing to advise his existing private clients. In 2014, Freedman married psychologist Peter O’Brien at a ceremony in New Zealand.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 6 March 1936
- Summary
- Freedman trained as an architect. His interior design career began with Kahn & Jacobs Architects, a New York City firm. He later shifted to London, then back to New York working for Knoll International. He arrived in Sydney in 1969, forming a partnership with Neville Marsh in 1971. Freedman's practice later became Freedman Rembel in 2002. The practice was associated with PTW (Peddle Thorp Walker) architects after 2010.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Jul-16
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- Tasmanian born artist mainly known as a printmaker, Bea Maddock also worked in painting, drawing and photography.
Beatrice Louise Maddock was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1934. Beatrice and her twin sister, Frances, were the youngest of the four children of two amateur artists, Henry Mervyn Maddock, an Anglican clergyman, and Thelma Annie. The family lived in various country parishes of Tasmania.
In 1956, Maddock graduated with a Fine Art degree from the Hobart Technical College where she had studied part-time under Jack Carington Smith, Dorothy Stoner, Jack Koskie and Stephen Walker. During her studies, she worked at the Visual Aids Centre at the Tasmanian Education Department. Maddock taught in high schools while studying art education at the University of Tasmania. Artist and former teacher Jack Carington Smith encouraged her to apply to the Slade School of Art in London. She was accepted, and left in 1959 to pursue postgraduate painting and printmaking with William Coldstream, Anthony Gross (etching) and Ceri Richards (lithography).
During her European journey, she traveled in Scotland, England, France, Holland, Italy, and Germany. She studied at the Academi de Bell Arti in Perugia, Italy, on a one-month scholarship. She went to churches and sketched in notebooks, observing Masaccio’s paintings and other religious sculptures. Because of the language barrier and the poor teaching at the provincial school, Maddock and her fellow student Murray Walker quit the classes to spend most of their time in the landscape. Maddock found great interest and inspiration in the art and landscape of Umbria and Tuscany. She painted works like Italian landscape (1961) outdoors on small canvases she carried. At the Slade School, she had been criticized for drawing too well and using too many colours, a palette she had been taught in Tasmania. After mainly working in tones of green, her Italian experience diversified her palette again. In Paris, she was impressed by the works of Georges Rouault, the French Fauvist and Expressionist painter and printmaker. Her print works at the Slade, like her 1960 Self-portrait , were influenced by Rouault’s emphatic gestures and strong black outlines. She admired German Expressionism in Munich and Essen, and would later study German Expressionist prints at the National Gallery of Victoria Print Room when living in Melbourne in 1964. Maddock travelled back to Australia by boat in 1961, stopping in Bombay, India. There, she was deeply confronted by the poverty, and she considered her experience in India as a milestone.
Upon her return to Australia, Maddock spent two years in Launceston, studying ceramics, teaching, painting, and printing. In 1964, she had her first solo exhibition in Launceston: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints by Bea Maddock. She then moved to South Melbourne, where she worked in a furniture factory to make ends meet. The city influenced her Figure series, which she would work on until 1968. Maddock moved back to Launceston in 1965 to teach ceramics, printmaking, drawing and basic design. Even after she moved, her works were still based on her Melbourne experience.
Bea Maddock won many prizes including the Tasmanian Drawing Prize in 1968, with Figure in a place , and the F.E. Richardson Print Prize in 1969, with Midnight (part of the Day series).
By the late 1960s, the artist established herself as a printmaker and in 1970, the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne invited Maddock to teach printmaking. There, she was also able to dedicate time to her own work with the advanced printmaking technology, and started making photo-screenprints and photo-etchings. Her promotion of these two practices through teaching was extremely important in Australian art schools. In 1973, Maddock was appointed Senior Lecturer in Printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts (formerly National Gallery of Victoria Art School).
During the 1970s Maddock worked mainly in series which paralleled the sequential nature of newspapers, as she was commenting in her work on the omnipresence of mass media. She used newspaper clippings and other found materials in her work, like the photograph of a criminal in a local newspaper she used in the photo-etching Philosophy I (1972).
In 1974, she won the 4th prize at the International Print Biennale in Poland for the photo-etching Square (1972) and received her first commission, from the Print Council of Australia, to produce a member print. A Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University of Canberra allowed her to spend all of 1976 on her own work. She then received a Commission (1977) from the Visual Arts Board for the VIIth International Exhibition in New Delhi, for which she produced ten prints – the Journey series, Four by Two , and Two by Two . The same year, the Commonwealth Games Print Portfolio in Edmonton, Canada, commissioned her to produce a print. She traveled to Canada, then the United States, where she saw the work of Jasper Johns at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a Paul Cezanne exhibition at the MOMA and other public collections in New York. Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol were important influences on Maddock’s work, with their extensive use of serial imagery, grid format, and photography. Numeral 1 (1984) is an example of one of Maddock’s responses to Jasper Johns’ serial work.
From 1979-80, she was Acting Dean at the Victorian College of the Arts and worked on a commission of twelve encaustic panels for the High Court of Australia, Canberra. She resigned from her Senior Lectureship at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1981, and became part-time lecturer at the Bendigo College of Advanced Education in 1982. Living in Macedon, Maddock created the Access Studio, a space for ex-students to use. Sadly, the 1983 Ash Wednesday bush fires destroyed Maddock’s Macedon studio and house. (She would later recreate the Access Studio at the Red Lion paper mill in Dunolly.)
Maddock toured New Zealand and gave lectures, along with her exhibition Bea Maddock Prints 1960-1982. She returned to teaching in Launceston, Tasmania, for one year until 1984, when she resigned from teaching altogether in order to devote herself entirely to her own work. Maddock had always had a strong desire to educate, but she knew that time consuming teaching was incompatible with her career. The following year, she was appointed member of the Council of the Australian National Gallery and was also Chairperson of Ritchies Mill Arts Centre in Launceston.
In 1987, the Artists in Antarctica Program invited Maddock on a trip to Antarctica. It inspired her Forty Pages from Antarctica , a suite of etchings. That year, she also produced, under the commission of the Australian National Gallery, the encaustic panels We live in the meanings we are able to discern for the ANZ Bicentennial Art Commission.
Text is a feature of Maddock’s visual language. The Parliament House Construction Authority commissioned Maddock to design two posters using quotes chosen by historian Manning Clark. Completed in 1989 for the Manton exhibition, Queensland Art Gallery, the four panel encaustic painting Tromemanner – forgive us our trespass is a good example of the importance of words in Maddock’s art.
Maddock’s work is held in the collections of the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, all State galleries and other collections in Australia, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery in Washington.
Maddock is a Member of the Order of Australia.
Writers:
Drouin-Le, Vy
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1934
- Summary
- Bea Maddock was one of the nation's most accomplished contemporary printmakers. She worked across a range of media including encaustic painting, screen-printing, drypoint, handmade paper and . She also had a brief teaching career at the School of Art, Launceston CAE. Perhaps her best known work is Terra Spiritus: With a Darker Shade of Pale, a monumental 52-sheet panorama of the entire coastline of Tasmania.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2016
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Bolster founded the Aladdin Gallery, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney with Thomas Bolster in 1964 (some sources cite 1967). The gallery exhibited work from Asia and the Pacific as well as design and craft by Australian artists. The Bolsters moved to South Australia in 1982.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- Dell Claire Scott was born in Rockhampton in 1931, the second child of Barney Scott and his wife Bronwen neé Milner. Scott worked as a projectionist in Yeppoon but, starstruck by the movie business, he left the family for the United States. Her mother remarried Thomas Clarke, a labourer and timber-getter, and the family moved to a farming district some 26 kilometres north of Rockhampton. Dell attended The Caves State School where she demonstrated a love for drawing. She drew every day, usually in the evenings by the light of a carbide lamp. On completing primary school, she boarded in Rockhampton and worked in various businesses including a steam laundry and a couple of Greek cafés. When waitressing in one of these cafés she met her future husband Cliff Nash, a third-generation miner who worked as a fitter and turner for Mount Morgan Mine. They married in 1956 and daughter Leonie was born in 1957, their only child. Dell Nash found the mining town west of Rockhampton fascinating and often returned to the subject of Mount Morgan in her career as a painter. The family relocated to Rockhampton around 1963 when Cliff Nash obtained a position as chief engineer for the abattoir owned by T. A. Fields Pty Ltd at Nerimbera. Throughout the 1960s, her main focus was in turning the company house into a home, creating gardens and playing tennis. Health issues forced her to adopt a more sedate lifestyle and she joined the Rockhampton branch of the Royal Queensland Art Society. Her art practice did not flourish until Mervyn Moriarty founded the Australian Flying Arts School (subsequently Flying Arts/ Alliance) in Brisbane in 1971 and brought painting workshops to regional Queensland. Nash repeatedly credited Moriarty and AFAS with opening up her life with art. Bela Ivanyi, who had joined AFAS as co-pilot and tutor in 1974, instigated annual workshops near Yeppoon on the Capricorn Coast. The Cooee Bay Artist Workshops provided opportunities for ongoing professional development for Nash and fellow-artists such as Carmen Beezley-Drake, Linda Frawley, Rita Kershaw and Olga Morris for almost 4 decades. Ivanyi continued to mentor the largely regional clientele, bringing with him a series of high-profile contemporary guest tutors including Roy Churcher, Roy Orloff, Stanislaus Rapotec, Colin Lanceley, Fred Cress and Irene Amos. These influences gave Nash the confidence to paint boldly. AFAS and later Queensland Arts Council exhibitions in Brisbane included work by Nash. She became a prominent supporter of the Walter Reid Centre in Rockhampton, and exhibited regularly and collected prizes in local competitions such as Blackwater, Emerald, Gladstone, Gympie, Mackay and Rockhampton. In 1984, she enrolled in the Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education and completed a two-year course in etching, lino-print and screen-print, obtaining a Fine and Applied Arts Diploma. Painting landscapes, however, remained her favourite medium, largely due to her reverential connection to her environment. She sketched in ink, charcoal and pastel then completed the work in her studio.Her success was confirmed when Double Heads Yeppoon (1984), a work featuring the volcanic plug that juts into Rosslyn Bay, was selected for ‘Queensland / Works 1950–1985: A Survey of 80 Painters’ at the University Art Museum, University of Queensland. In the same year, the semi-abstract Rolling Hills, Tanby (1985) won the Bundaberg Sugar Company prize of $2000.The Queensland Arts Council and Rockhampton Art Gallery joined AFAS in showcasing Central Queensland contemporary artists and a number of her works were selected for travelling exhibitions, mostly to regional Queensland, in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Others were sold through local and Brisbane galleries. In all, Nash established a significant profile in the 1980s and 1990s.Dell and Cliff Nash owned a beach house in Zilzie, south of Cooee Bay, and retired there. Nash embraced the burgeoning coastal art scene. She continued to sell though Rockhampton galleries Biroo Gallery and Spiral Gallery; a gallery in Emu Park known as ‘the’ Gallery and The Mill Gallery in Yeppoon; and spaces such as Gnomes Restaurant, Rockhampton and Rydges Resort, Yeppoon. Rockhampton’s daily Morning Bulletin consistently featured and photographed Dell Nash as did, on occasion, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail. In 1996, Rockhampton Art Gallery honoured Nash, then aged 65, with a retrospective exhibition as part of a series to recognise the contribution of artists from Central Queensland.Nash continued painting and frequently won additional regional art competitions. She developed a canny sense of what might appeal: Cloncurry was awarded the Ernest Henry Art Prize, Cloncurry in 1996; Hills and Houses of Mount Morgan took the acquisitive $1000 prize in the Mount Morgan Inaugural Spring Fair in 1997. She engaged across the community, sharing skills and insights with TAFE students and high school students from St Ursula’s College in Yeppoon, Rockhampton Grammar, Rockhampton Girls Grammar and Rockhampton High School. Always keen to explore new perspectives, Nash experimented with modelling and exhibited a bust of her granddaughter Courtney in ‘The Quarry Studio exhibition’ in Walter Reid Art Centre Gallery in December 2004. She attended art workshops in Brisbane led by John Rigby and continued to participate in the Cooee Bay Artists Workshop. One of the last she attended was in 2013, under tutor Joe Furlonger, just three years before her death. Nash’s husband, who suffered from motor-neuron disease, died in 2011. She participated in ‘Reflections of Summer’, a group exhibition in The Mill Gallery, that same year. She continued to paint and exhibit after moving to Oak Tree Retirement Village, Yeppoon. The deep love of the natural world that was so apparent in the beginning of her career never left her. She died in 2016, aged 84. Art critic and gallery director Sue Smith, writing in an email in 2020, observed, ‘Looking again at her work after many years I’m quite struck by its strong similarity to work by another Rockhampton artist, Carmen Beezley-Drake. This might be partly explained by the fact that Dell and Carmen and others in CQ were regular attendees at the annual three-day Cooee Bay artists workshops – I think these two and others were very strongly influenced by the workshop tutors, especially Bela Ivanyi.’
Writers:
Lesley Synge
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 22 October 1931
- Summary
- Dell Nash was a contemporary impressionist landscape artist of Central Queensland known for her instinctive feel for line and vivid colour and strong psychological and emotional response to physical locations. A student of the Australian Flying Art School in the 1970s she began exhibiting in the 1980s, collecting many awards in regional art shows.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Jun-16
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- Carl Nielsen was born in Australia in 1930. He completed an Industrial Design Diploma at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT) in 1952. He moved to Sydney, first working as a photographer, then in furniture and construction and then as a design assistant at Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA) Ltd. After a few years working in London, Nielsen returned to Australia to set up his own design business in 1960. In 1965 Nielsen was elected Federal President of the newly established Industrial Design Institute of Australia (DIA) and he also began teaching at University of New South Wales (UNSW). In the 1970s his company became Nielsen Design Associates Pty Ltd (NDA) and produced many notable products. His spouse Judy Sternberg worked at NDA as a director/business manager. Nielsen became more involved in design education and in 1976 he was appointed as Head of Industrial Design and Principal Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA). In 1984 he and his wife Judy resigned as Directors of NDA though the company continued. Nielsen completed a Masters degree at SCA before the design school was amalgamated with the Sydney Institute of Technology to become the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Nielsen was appointed Associate Professor in the Design Faculty at UTS. In 1990 Nielsen was a founding councillor of the Australian Academy of Design and in 1992 he was elected Life Fellow of the Industrial Design Institute of Australia. Nielsen retired from teaching at UTS in 1999, and was appointed an Adjunct Professor from 2000-2003.
Writers:
Powerhouse Museum
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1930
- Summary
- Industrial designer and design educator. He studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and established a private practice as Carl Nielsen Design ca.1961, which became Nielsen Design Associates after 1971. Nielsen was a founding member of the Society of Designers for Industry, NSW Chapter and held many posts in national professional design organisations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and etcher, was born in Sydney. She studied at East Sydney Technical College until 1949, including etching under Herbert Gallop. However, she did not begin exhibiting her prints until 1963, when she showed at Joy Ewart 's Workshop Art Centre, Willoughby, which she had helped set up. Since its demise she has exhibited with Artarmon Galleries, e.g. Alan Bond Sydney Development etching c.1988, and Northern Approaches 1964-65, etching (edn 30), purchased from Artarmon Galleries by Joan Kerr.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Painter and etcher Elizabeth Ursula Rooney helped set up Joy Ewart's Workshop Art Centre at Willoughby. She studied etching under Herbert Gallop.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Mar-16
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-33.7962 Longitude151.2827 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manly, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Ceramic artist and designer, was born in Manly, NSW, and attended Balgowlah Heights Infants School on the first day it opened. He lived in Balgowlah until his early teenage years and remembers being the escort for the first Miss Manly Mardi Gras in the early 1960s. He studied sculpture and ceramics at East Sydney Technical College and is said to have been the first student to be awarded the new Ceramics Certificate at the 'Tech’ in 1964. His ceramic works are in major galleries, including the Powerhouse Museum and Manly Art Gallery & Museum. He has also worked as a commercial designer. In the late 1950s Alistair McCrea, CEO of the Australian Speedo Company, hired him to revolutionise its men’s leisurewear. His range of Speedo designs (1960-62), largely from the Powerhouse Museum’s archive, was shown in a retrospective at Manly Art Gallery 25 January-2 March 2002, combined with a fashion parade held in conjunction with the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Travis began flying huge kites in the 1970s and constructed them as suspended forms from the early 1980s, e.g. hanging along the nave of St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Newtown, for the first (and only) Sydney Festival of Mediaeval Music and Architecture in 1982 (when Joan Kerr gave the inaugural Blacket Memorial Lecture). From the 1960s onwards he has taught in countless workshops and classes on issues of colour, form and design.
Writers:
Staff Writer
stokel
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- Travis is a noted colour consultant, kite-maker, ceramic artist and designer. Travis was hired by Alistair McCrea to revolutionise Speedo's range of men's leisurewear, now archived in the Powerhouse Museum. His large-scale kites have been adapted for interior design commissions and performance art events. He later lectured at the Shillito School of Design and the College of Fine Arts, Paddington.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2016
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1923
- Summary
- Joynes was an embroiderer and needleworker working in Sydney. She was an active member of the Embroiderers Guild NSW, exhibiting in their exhibitions and other venues and publishing a number of publications on her art forms. With Prue Socha and Pat Langford she also founded the Creative Embroidery Association, Sydney. The Australian Museum relied on her skills as a textile conservator for a number of years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- sculptor, was born in Berlin, Germany, on 25 November 1918. In 1951 she came to Melbourne – a city which struck her then as a sculptural desert – and spent the next eight or nine years adjusting to her new life, having her children and augmenting the family income by making and designing jewellery. Only a few sculptures were produced during this period, but in 1959 King, who had mostly worked in wood and stone, started welding. Her initial training had been as a wood-carver in Germany (1935-38), then at the Royal Academy in London and the Glasgow School of Art. After the war she had worked in London, where she held her first solo exhibition in 1949. A chance to travel to France and New York in 1950 confirmed the latter as the most exciting city she had experienced. There she saw Jackson Pollock’s paintings and made contact with members of the New York School, as well as exhibiting in a group show. Back at London she met and married an Australian artist, Graham King.
King’s early steel sculptures reflected a break with the past in the demands made by her use of a new material and in the inspiration and challenge offered by the vast spaces of the Australian landscape. Later she began to make steel maquettes: some complete in themselves, some models for large-scale works. Her first commission for a large sculpture came in 1971 with the RAAF Memorial in Canberra, followed in the same year by the Fred Schonell Memorial Fountain at Queensland University. These projects introduced King to collaborative work with engineers and welders and to the sort of detailed preparation with models and computation drawings critical to the monumental Forward Surge (1974-82), commissioned by the Victorian Arts Centre. Other works commissioned since the mid-1970s include sculptures for the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, the Australian National University, Woden Valley Hospital, the State Bank of Victoria, the NSW Royal Blind Society Sculpture Award, ICI House in Melbourne, the McClelland Gallery Sculpture Park and the State Superannuation Board.
From 1969 King held regular solo exhibitions and participated in group shows and, from 1980, in the Sculpture Triennial exhibitions. She was a founding member of the Group of Four in 1953 and its successor during the 1960s, Centre Five. Both organisations aimed to promote public understanding and acceptance of sculpture, particularly through lectures and exhibitions, and were critical in creating a more receptive climate for it. Her educational interests also involved her in lecturing in sculpture at the School of Early Childhood Studies (1961-75) and at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in 1976-87.
King is represented in institutional, state and regional galleries and in private collections in Australia, Europe, UK and USA. In 1984 she was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia. Further recognition of her contributions and achievements has come with honorary doctorates from Deakin University (1990) and RMIT (1993).
Writers:
Kirby, Sandy
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 November 1918
- Summary
- King is a prolific and successful sculptor. Her involvement in the Australian art scene throughout her career has been immense and she is well recognised through commissions and awards.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Apr-16
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1918
- Summary
- Higgs trained as a commercial artist, later working as a textile designer at Claudio Alcorso's Silk and Textile Printers, Sydney. In 1948, she returned to New Zealand to continue her career.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1957-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 29 June 1957
- Summary
- Andrew Sayers was one of the great curatorial communicators and enthusiasts for Australian art. His time at the National Gallery of Australia led to significant redefinitions of Australian art. As well as his own painting, which he kept private for many years, he is also remembered as inaugural Director of National Portrait Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Nov-15
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1948-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- This obituary was written by Grace Cochrane AM, independent curator and writer, Sydney; former senior curator of Australian decorative arts and design, MAAS, Powerhouse Museum.
Reproduced in part from [https://maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2015/03/04/obituary-john-smith-designer/]
It is very sad to hear of the death on 24 February 2015, of John Smith, a key figure in furniture designing and making in Australia for over 40 years. Smith and his partner, ceramic artist and designer Penny Smith, migrated to Tasmania as ‘10-pound Poms’, in 1970, and it was here that I met them after ‘crossing the ditch’ from New Zealand in 1972. After bravely battling recurrent bouts of cancer for some years, John Smith died with his family around him, at their weekender on Bruny Island.
Smith’s contribution to his field is respected and admired by many friends, colleagues and past students. He had moved to Hobart from the UK to take up a position as a design lecturer at the Tasmanian School of Art, later part of the University of Tasmania, combining teaching with his practice as a designer-maker, specialising in furniture design but also working on architectural and sculptural projects.
Born in Chesterfield in England in 1948, Smith completed a Pre-Diploma of Art at the Chesterfield School of Art in 1967 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Furniture), at the High Wycombe College of Art and Technology in Buckinghamshire, in 1969. From his initial appointment in Hobart as a lecturer in graphic design, he soon changed to teaching 3-Dimensional Design. He was appointed Head of the Design in Wood/Furniture Design program in 1981 and ran the department until retiring in 2007. In 1991 the Centre for Furniture Design was also established at the School and, under his direction, focussed on design research for industry with post-graduate students. The School says of his passing: “John’s influence as a designer of great skill and vision, as well as a teacher and mentor, has been exemplary and will be sadly missed by his colleagues.”
The initial 3-D Design program aimed to produce graduates able to apply design skills and ideas to the needs of industry, and was the first wood-oriented design program to be established in a university School of Art in Australia. It was broadened into the Design in Wood course in 1981, largely because it was seen that Tasmanian industry was not employing designers, and the notion of training a designer-maker who could, instead, sometimes contract out aspects of their work to industry was seen as the most realistic direction to take. To tailor the course more specifically to Tasmanian needs, it was decided to concentrate on local timber as a resource and also develop the making skills related to design. The Design in Wood course became part of the four-year degree program, and a number of those in the strong local resource of woodworkers were closely involved in planning and teaching.
As Smith said:
“an art school environment is an ideal position from which to study the designing-making process. If you want advice on whether to use finger-joints in the construction of a cabinet, don’t just ask a cabinet-maker who might say ‘use secret mitred dovetails’; also ask a sculptor who might say ‘why make it in wood?’ or ask the ultimate philosopher, the lay person in the street, who might just simply say ‘why bother’… If you are serious, you must have something to say and design is a language which helps you articulate your ideas.” (Smith in Cochrane, 1992, p 393)From 1990 the School offered a master’s degree, funded as part of the recent federal compensation to the Tasmanian government for the legislation that banned forest logging in the Lemonthyme Valley. During this time, a number of international furniture-makers were invited to teach there, and the School mounted the exhibitions Design in Wood, showing the work of graduates, students and staff in 1981; the Huon Factor, looking at the use of Tasmania’s special timber species in 1989; and in 1991 the exhibition Splitting Heads, in association with the first Hobart Design Triennial and the Critical Vision symposium.
Smith was a member of the Tasmanian Woodcraftsmen’s Association (founded 1976), and was involved in the Hobart Summer Schools of the early 1980s. He served on the boards of a number of organisations including the Visual Arts/Crafts Board and the Design Committee of the Australia Council; was a founding member of the Australian Academy of Design and one of the original members of the Furniture Designers Association (FDA). He received grants from the University of Tasmania, Arts Tasmania, the Australian Research Council and the Australia Council, including residencies in Barcelona and Los Angeles.
Throughout this time, Smith continued with his own designing and making practice. While exploring a Tasmanian identity in his work he was also interested in contrasts and connections with other places, while considering the sculptural relationships between furniture and architecture. Within his design practice he worked speculatively for exhibitions, produced products for a specialised retail market and carried out public and private commissions.
He was attracted to contemporary design forms as well as to the use of non-timber materials. In the mid-1970s he designed a large geodesic dome as a house, with triangular components made in fibreglass and perspex; he and Penny built it on Mt Nelson and lived there, working in their adjacent studios. Later, they built their second similar, smaller home on Bruny Island in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. Penny explained:
“The Geo-dome Observatory came about from building experiments over the years, and has become the repository of the sum of our multiple parts. It’s a work in progress. Here reside the spoils of our respective endeavours – mementos of and from various friends and family members – of our travels and our art.”Over these decades Smith won a number of design prizes. In 1983, for example, he won a furniture design competition for restaurant and kiosk furniture, organised by the Crafts Council of Tasmania and judged by Tapio Periaenen (managing director of the Finnish Crafts and Design Council). His work is in the International Design Centre, Berlin, and in public collections in Poland and Japan. In Australia he is represented in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Parliament House, Canberra; the National Gallery of Victoria; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the Design Centre of Tasmania’s Wood Collection, Launceston; the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart; the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; and the Hobart City Council. [...]
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1 January 1948
- Summary
- Smith was a furniture design and maker who initially trained in the graphic arts, later turning to 3-D design. Appointed Head of Wood/Furniture Design at the University of Tasmania, Hobart in 1981, he went on to establish the Centre for Furniture Design, an influential for in furniture design and manufacture in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1945
- Summary
- Smith was a documentary film maker and a member of the Sydney Film-makers Coop. She founded her company, Smith Street Films, in 1987 and created her first film, "Eora" the following year. She produced films for the ABC, TAFE NSW and worked for the Aboriginal Legal Service. Her journalism appeared in the "Sydney Morning Herald" and the "Koori Mail".
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Vernon Treweeke has been called "the father of psychedelic art in Australia" and was a close associate of Brett Whiteley, who he had known from his school days. He also exhibited with the Central Street Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- Colin Lanceley, painter, sculptor and printmaker, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1938 and raised in Australia, as his family relocated to Sydney in the following year. In 1954 at the age of 16 Lanceley was apprenticed as a colour photo engraver in the printing industry in Sydney. He also attended evening classes taught by Peter Laverty at North Sydney Technical College. Lanceley subsequently enrolled at the East Sydney Technical College in 1956, where he graduated with a Diploma in Art in 1960. After his student days, Lanceley, together with Michael Brown and Ross Crothall, formed the Imitation Realist Group (1961) and exhibited work at John Reed’s Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne and at the Rudy Komon Gallery in Sydney. This trio of artists enjoyed playing a game they called ‘aesthetic chess,’ where they made impromptu arrangements of the everyday contents of their pockets (for example coins, keys etc.), often laid out on a table at a cafe in Sydney’s Taylor Square.
As the recipient of the prestigious Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship in 1964, Colin Lanceley travelled to Italy and the UK, where he remained throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He held his first London exhibition at Marlborough Gallery in February 1966. In the course of becoming a well-travelled artist, Lanceley embarked on numerous trips across Europe, visiting France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Holland, Belgium and Crete. He spent extended periods working in France and Spain and during his time in England he lectured part-time at the Bath Academy of Art, Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, and the Chelsea School of Art, London. After his prize win at the Europe Prize for Painting held in Belgium in 1980, Lanceley continued his art practice in Burgundy rather than London. Lanceley married his wife Kay Morphett during his time aboard and they had two sons.
Lanceley, along with his family, returned to Australia in 1981, whereby he renounced the badge of expatriate artist. He was appointed as a lecturer at the City Art Institute in Sydney, serving in this post from 1983-86. Lanceley’s artistic reputation and influence was recorded in a 1987 publication by Craftsman House, with an introduction by Robert Hughes and an interview by William Wright, followed in the next year by an ABC film, ‘Colin Lanceley – Poetry of Place’ directed by Andrew Saw.
Significantly, in 1990 Colin Lanceley was awarded the honour of the Order of Australia (AO) for Service to Art. In the subsequent year he was presented with a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Australian Government and was also invited to lecture and exhibit at the Arts Club of Chicago, USA. Lanceley’s role as an honorary lecturer continued as he delivered the 1993 Lloyd Rees Memorial Lecture, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 2000 he lectured at the Bathurst Regional Gallery and in 2001 he was invited to lecture at the New York Studio School, Manhattan, USA. His artistic influence has also been furthered through the official roles in which he has serving, including his post as a member (appointed 1994) of the National Gallery of Australia’s Council and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the National Art School, Sydney (appointed 1998).
Lanceley has exhibited his work extensively since 1962 in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, and internationally in England, Switzerland, Belgium, USA, Poland and Japan. A large survey exhibition of Lanceley’s work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1987, followed by ‘Australian Collection Focus – Colin Lanceley’ in 2001. Lanceley’s work has also been included in several major group exhibitions including Perspecta at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1983, the Biennale of Sydney in 1986 and the Great Australian Art Exhibition in 1988.
Lanceley has received a range of awards during the course of his artistic career, including the Young Contemporaries Art Prize from the NSW Contemporary Art Society (1963), the Scottish Arts Council Prize at the 1967 Edinburgh Festival, two prizes at the 1968 Krakow International Print Biennale and the Europe Prize for Painting in Belgium in 1980. His artistic commissions have included designing mosaics for the Australian International Aquatic Centre, Homebush, Sydney (1994), painting the ceiling of the Lyric Theatre, Sydney (1998) and creating a large glass work for the County Court of Victoria, Melbourne (2002).
Lanceley’s iconic and brightly coloured works, presenting abstract scenes built up from fractured geometric shapes, incorporate three-dimensional crafted and painted wood elements fixed to canvas supports. Collage has served as the recurring basis of his work, which has also been inspired by literary sources, for example the writings of T.S. Eliot.
The art of Colin Lanceley is represented in prominent Australian and international collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem; Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Contemporary Art Society and the Tate Gallery, London, England; Kunstvrein, Hamburg, Germany; Museum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and The National Gallery, Washington, USA.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1938
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude56.7823936 Longitude8.2414749 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Agger, Jutland, Denmark
- Biography
- Leif Kristensen (1935–2015) was a Danish architect, educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen, who came to Sydney in 1962 with plans (not successful) to work for Jørn Utzon’s team building the Sydney Opera House. Instead he joined the Government Architect’s Branch of the New South Wales Public Works Department, working as personal assistant to senior architect Peter Hall –– who later became one of the trio of government architects who completed the Opera House after Utzon’s departure. After four years of architecture school, Kristensen worked for Copenhagen architect Erik Ejlers. In 1964 he won registration to practice in New South Wales and in 1967 he and his second wife, Christine Wing, built a house and studio on bushland at Arcadia. As a government architect, Kirstensen’s most significant project was the Marsden Hospital for handicapped children in Parramatta – which won the NSW RAIA’s Sir John Sulman Medal (best public building in the state) for 1969–70.After leaving the government in 1969, he began a practice specialising in aged care facilities. His notable projects included Towradgi Park, Juliana Village (NSW merit award 1982), Norby Retirement Village and Abel Tasman Village.During the late 1980s, Kristensen again worked at the Sydney Opera House, reviewing and designing various fitouts and facility improvements.
Source—Drew, Philip. 2015. 'Leif Kristensen (1935–2015).’ Architecture Bulletin (Obituary), Spring edn, p. 36.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 17 June 1935
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1934
- Summary
- Cooper began his career as a landscape painter, later turning to illustration and paintings of birdlife. He illustrated the book "Portfolio of Australian Birds" (1967), "Parrots of the World" (1978) and other works.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1933
- Summary
- Digby was an artist and designer working in costume and set design for the Australian Opera, the Australian Ballet and other performing arts companies. He also worked as a book illustrator producing covers for some Patrick White novels and children's books such as Bottersnikes & Gumbles and a treatment for Waltzing Matilda. He had a parallel career as a painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Apr-15
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Hood worked as a naval architect designing yachts and commercial vessels in Australia, the Pacific, Guyana and Bangladesh. He established a design firm in 1963. His work on the Hood class yachts produced a number of variants of Hoods (20s, 23s and more recently a Hood 28ML. He is celebrated as the designer of the America's Cup yacht, the 12 metre "Dame Pattie" launched in 1967.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Elizabeth (Betty) Ann Dewar Cameron was born in Brisbane in 1931 the the second child and only daughter of William Dewar Cameron and Vida Margaret née Hutton. Her talent was evident at an early age as she was 13 years old when she was awarded The Sunday Mail Child Art Contest in 1944 and 3rd prize the following year. Cameron took her initial art studies under the tutelage of Patricia Prentice at Somerville House, Brisbane and also studied art privately with Caroline Barker and Richard Rodier Rivron.
The Younger Artists Group (YAG) of the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) was founded in 1941 and several artists who have made a significant contribution to art in Queensland had their beginnings here: Patricia Prentice, John Rigby , Margaret Olley , Margaret Cilento, Peter Abraham, Harold Lane, Joy Roggenkamp and Betty Cameron herself. Cameron was regarded as one of the most promising of the Younger Artists Group members when she began to exhibit in 1948 as one of the four paintings she exhibited that year, 'Frosty morning’ was purchased by the Darnell Fine Arts Committee of the University of Queensland. Subsequently, Betty Cameron received the 2nd prize awarded by the RQAS as an encouragement award at the Annual General Meeting in 1949.
She became Chair of the Younger Artists Group and was instrumental in the push to establish a travelling art scholarship. By the middle of 1950 the RQAS decided to provide a grant up to £150, provided a matching amount of £150 was raised by the YAG by 30 June 1951. Their efforts (which included a exhibition of the works by Cameron, Betty Quelhurst, Peter Abraham, Kenneth Roggenkamp and Theodore Klettke at the Moreton Galleries, Brisbane in June 1950) were successful. On 19 September 1951 a selection committee comprising Dr Gertrude Langer, Robert Haines and Vida Lahey awarded her the scholarship. Her work was included in the 1951 'Exhibition of Queensland Art’, at the Queensland Art Gallery and also in the early exhibitions 'Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise’ and 'L. J. Harvey Memorial Prize for Drawing’.
With the assistance of YAG scholarship Betty Cameron studied in London under Stuart Ray at the South West Essex Technical School but such was her proficiency that, after two terms study, he suggested she apply to enroll at the prestigious Royal College of Art, London. She was successful and was awarded the Princess of Wales Scholarship for the best female student. An appeal conducted by the Courier Mail, Brisbane, in 1953 provided the additional funds so she was able to complete her three year course of study.
She returned to Brisbane in 1957 with her British husband, the painter Roy Churcher. Together they set up a studio and gave classes in the attic of the Royal Queensland Art Society’s premises in the School of Arts Building, Ann Street. At the end of the year they took over classes at St Mary’s Studio, Kangaroo Point when John Molvig departed for a tour to Melbourne and central Australia. Portraiture was her major interest when she returned to Brisbane although she occasionally painted landscapes. She exhibited a 'Portrait of an old woman’ in the Australian Women’s Weekly Portrait Prize in 1957 and an unfinished portrait of Robert Haines, the Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, in the Centenary Eisteddfod in 1959, together with a 'Portrait of J. V. Duhig’. Later that year, however, Cameron gave up painting to devote herself to rearing her four sons. After some years as a secondary school teacher she began to teach at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College. In 1971, when her youngest son started school she became a full-time lecturer there. She took her academic career seriously enough to undertake an MA from the Courtauld Institute in London. Her thesis was on Jon Molvig, later the subject of a book and she was awarded the degree in 1977. Two years later she was appointed senior lecturer at what was then the Preston Institute of Technology in Melbourne, a move that entailed her leaving her family in Brisbane for the first year. Her outstanding abilities combined with her administrative and networking capacity led to her becoming head of school. In 1983 she was appointed Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, and in 1984 was Deputy Chair of the Council. Her generous inclusive approach and administrative capacity brought her to the attention of Janet Holmes a Court and in 1987 she was invited to apply for the position of Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In 1990 she was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Australia where she became known as “Betty Blockbuster” for the magnificent range of exhibitions she organised.After she retired in 1997 she made a series of television programs on art for ABC Television. She also returned to her first love of drawing as, with failing eyesight she revisited her favourite works of art and drew them to fix them in her mind. The resulting books, Notebooks and Australian Notebooks combine fine drawing with written observations that are like love letters to art.
Research Curator , Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 11 January 1931
- Summary
- Betty Churcher, who was the first woman to head both a state and national art gallery, had an extraordinary career in arts education and administration in Australia. This was a change in direction from the expectations of her early years when she was regarded as one on Queensland's most exciting young painters. In her "retirement" she returned to art, and to drawing
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-Mar-15
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- advertising and comic strip artist, was born in Newcastle, NSW. After completing his schooling at Cooks Hill Intermediate High, he became a window dresser for a soft-goods firm, then an artist in the company’s advertising department. He moved to Sydney in 1945 where he worked with department stores and advertising agencies. Then he worked for years for H. John Edwards, drawing over 150 issues of Tim Valour (the first few issues included a pirate adventure Rip Weston by Les Such), about 50 issues of The Crimson Comet , many issues of Biggles , and fillers and covers. He produced Catman in 1958 for Frew Publications and Captain Strato for Young’s Merchandising. In 1959 he did The Phantom Commando for Horwitz Publications and began work on Air Hawk and the Flying Doctors . The strip appeared simultaneously in the Sun-Herald and the Perth Weekend Mail and was subsequently syndicated internationally for 8 years. A series of Air Hawk comics were published from the late 1950s to early 1960. The strip ceased production in 1986 (though reprinted in the SMH until the early 1990s). Dixon won the 1985 Stanley for Best adventure/illustrated strip for Air Hawk .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Prolific Australian post WWII comic book and newspaper strip artist ("Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor") and others. Worked on storyboards, advertising, comics after travelling to the USA in 1986.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Jul-15
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 23 November 1927
- Summary
- John Baily was Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia during the Dunstan years. Nationally he endeared himself to artists and curators for his intellectual generosity as the first Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. He is also the painter of lyrically beautiful landscape watercolours.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Nov-15
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude50.0619474 Longitude19.9368564 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Krakow, Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Gross was a film animator, director and producer. He became a film maker in Poland in 1947, later moving to Israel in 1950 working as a cinema photographer. In Israel, he began his independent film career producing unconventional imagery and topics. Immigrating to Australia in 1968, he first worked in TV, later returning to film. After 1977, Yoram Gross Films created feature length animated films.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude53.8 Longitude-2.6 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lancashire, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Colligan was a painter and designer with training from colourist Phyllis Shillito, East Sydney Technical College. He became an interior designer and colour consultant founding Glasebrooks Paints Colour Studio. He later moved into theatre and TV. In 1982, he became the President of the Royal Art Society of NSW and was active in the visual and performing arts in the Port Stephens and Newcastle areas.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude51.7687323 Longitude19.4569911 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lodz, Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Wrobel was a private gallery curator ( Woolloomooloo Art Gallery ) and collector working with his partner Elinor Wrobel until his death. He also trained in jewellery design and founded a firm "French Jewellery" (date unknown) and after learning to sail, he began to design and build sailboats campaigning with his yacht Mirrabooka.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kabararrji (Bentinck Island) , NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born circa 1924 on Bentinck Island (Kabararrji )in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Gabori grew up traditionally hunting, fishing and gathering. In the 1940s after a combination of drought and rising tides led to conflict among the Kaiadilt people, missionaries deported the entire population to Mornington Island where she lived for many years. Originally a weaver, Gabori first began exhibiting her paintings in 2005 at the Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Centre. She had a solo exhibition in 2005 at the Woolloongabba Art Gallery and was a finalist in the Xstrata Indigenous Emerging Artist Award in 2006. Her work was subsequently purchased for the permanent collection of the Queensland Art Gallery and in 2012 her work was included in the National Gallery of Australia’s National Indigenous Art Triennial.The income from her painting enabled her to return, with other women, to Bentinck Island.As is the custom, on her death her name was changed to Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda.Mirdidingkingathi means someone born in MirdidingkinkiJuwarnda is a dolphin, her totem.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. c.1924
- Summary
- As with other Kaiadilt women, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori wove grass nets and carved coolamons for many years before she began to paint. Her first exuberant abstract paintings were exhibited in 2005 at the Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Centre, and soon attracted national attention. In 2016, the year after her death, QAGOMA honoured her with a retrospective survey of her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Feb-15
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.283333 Longitude149.1 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Orange, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Dixon was a National Art School trained artist and designer. He had a teaching career in Bathurst NSW, later Goulburn NSW. He worked across a range of media including pottery, sculpture and print-making. Retiring to Canberra, he continued his painting and drawing, largely based on nature studies. He remained an active environmentalist throughout his career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- Jennie Boddington was the first curator of photography to be appointed in Australia. She was responsible for the National Gallery of Victoria's photography collection from her appointment in 1972 to her retirement in 1994. She was also a distinguished contributor to Australian cinema
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15-Nov-15
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne
- Biography
- Ray Crooke is one of that generation of Australian artists who was only able to complete their art education after serving in the armed forces during World War II. As with fellow post-war artists Guy Warren and Tony Tuckson that war time experience shaped both his sensibility and his approach to art. Crooke was the second son of Gordon Crooke, an art loving accountant, and his wife Euphemia a nurse who had experienced a childhood on Aboriginal missions. After leaving school at the standard age of 15 he worked in an advertising agency while taking classes at Swinburne Technical College.In 1940 he enlisted in the Australian Army, first serving in the Victorian Scottish Regiment before being transferred to Western Australia. His unit was then transferred to northern Queensland coastal bases, a move that gave him a lifelong love of the tropics.After the War the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme enabled Crook to complete his art studies at Swinburne, where he was taught by Sir William Dargie, Rodger James and Alan Jordan among others.In 1951 he married June Bethell and in pursuit of the strong clear colours of the north, Crooke moved north, first to Cairns, then Thursday Island and later to Yorkey’s Knob. The tropics gave him his subject matter and coloured his approach to art, but there was little chance of becoming a professional artist so far away from the city, so in about 1955 the family returned to Melbourne.After a string of successful exhibitions in commercial galleries throughout the 1960s and after his portrait of George Johnston was awarded the 1969 Archibald Prize, he felt confident enough to permanently leave the city and return to north Queensland, eventually settling in Cairns.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 12 July 1922
- Summary
- Crooke began his career as an artist at a Melbourne advertising agency while taking courses as Swinburne Technical College. After 1939-45 war service, he taught, painted and worked as a textile designer. His first solo show was held in 1959 and he became well-regarded for his evocations of Australia's tropical north. He had considerable success locally and internationally, later settling in Cairns.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Dec-15
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Williams was a career Royal Australian Navy officer (retired 1971) who also co-founded the surfwear brand Pratts with his brother Bill, making board shorts and bikinis from a factory in Long Reef NSW on Sydney's northern peninsula. Pratts had retail outlets in Dee Why and Chatswood.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.8225666 Longitude151.1923402 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Leonards, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- May-15
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- painter, was born Judit Kaszab in Vienna, Austria, on 15 August 1920, to Hungarian parents Imre Kaszab and Ilona, née Kont. Her parents soon separated and Judith went with her mother back to Hungary to live with her grandmother. She wanted to be an artist from an early age, even though she had little experience of galleries and paintings; when she was twelve (1932) she drew a charcoal portrait of her grandmother (reproduced in Klepac). She began her studies at the Academy of Art in Prague in 1938; the following year she married Jancsi (John) Kampfner, a man twice her age.
The outbreak of World War II changed everybody’s life; in the Kampfners’ case, Jancsi was sent to forced labour camps in Poland and Kiev and Judith’s mother was sent to Auschwitz. Judith worked in a factory under the assumed name of her Catholic maid Maria Koperdak, putting her artistic skills to use after hours as a forger of papers and passports. When the war ended, her husband returned; their first child was born on New Year’s Eve 1945.
Life in post-war Europe had little to offer them. The Kampfners and their (now two) sons obtained permission to migrate to Australia. They arrived at Sydney in 1951, living first at Bondi and later Woollahra. Judith soon made contact with other Sydney artists – including Michael Kmit, Paul Haefliger, Jean Bellette and Desiderius Orban—and established herself as a portrait painter. Although she has revisited Europe several times, undertaking several important portrait commissions there and gaining an international reputation, she became an Australian citizen in 1957.
Judith Cassab is a prolific and accomplished artist, able to paint portraits in a single sitting if necessary. Her portraits have won many awards, several of them twice: the Archibald Prize (1960 and 1968), the Australian Women’s Weekly women’s prize (1955 and 1956) and the Helena Rubinstein Prize (1964 and 1965). Her exhibition credits are prodigious. Judith Cassab was awarded the Order of Australia in 1988, the Bicentennial year.
Writers:
Callaway, AnitaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- Painter born in Austria. Resident of Sydney she is a prolific and accomplished artist, able to paint portraits in a single sitting if necessary. Cassab has also worked as a muralist providing a mural for the Rex, Potts Point, Sydney in 1953.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New South Wales
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-33.7962 Longitude151.2827 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manly, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Peter Rushforth was born in Manly, NSW in 1920. From 1942 to 1945 he spent three years as a prisoner of war in Changi. On his return to Australia he enrolled in the arts course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and continued his studies at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. In 1951 he relocated to Sydney where initially enrolled in a sculpture course at East Sydney Technicl College, but soon became their first full time teacher in ceramics. The same year he set up a studio at Beecroft in the northern suburbs. He travelled extensively in the UK, Denmark and the USA on a Churchill Fellowship and spent time working in Japan. In 1966, he moved to Church Point, NSW. In 1978, on his retirement, he relocated his studio to Shipley in the Blue Mountains and became a full-time potter. He was a maker of high-fired stoneware vessels in a woodfired kiln with chun, tenmoku, limestone and ash glazes, wax resist, brush or inlay decoration. In 1985, he was awarded the Order of Australia for his services to ceramics and, in that year, the National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective exhibition of his work, which is marked with an impressed or incised 'PR’.
Writers:
Judith Pearce
7write6
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 4 December 1920
- Summary
- Peter Rushforth's pots are a synthesis of European and Japanese aesthetic influences. He came to an appreciation of the Japanese Mingei (folk) aesthetic in unusual circumstances as a prisoner of war in Singapore during the 1939-45 War. Later he became one of the nation's most influential ceramics teachers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jul-15
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and cartoon historian, was born Anthony Raftopoulos in Paddington, NSW, son of Denis Raftopoulos who migrated to Australia in 1902 but returned to Greece for a wife (and a war). Tony Rafty, as he was known, was educated at Rose Bay Public School and the Central Technical College, Ultimo, until forced to leave at the age of 14 due to his parents’ poverty. He and his brother Stan then worked as golf caddies.
Tony’s first job as a cartoonist in 1939 was with the Referee (a sporting paper then in Ezra Norton’s stable, along with Smith’s Weekly ). He joined the Sun Associated Newspapers group in 1940 but enlisted in the AIF in 1941. He was a war artist and correspondent in New Guinea until discharged as medically unfit with malaria seven months before the end of the war. A month later he was back in New Guinea as artist-correspondent for Associated Newspapers (also other WWII stations: see file). Some of his wartime drawings were reproduced in Pix (see file). In 1948 he became the first Australian to draw an Australian comic book (acc. Lindesay). Ron Tarrant in the Secret Service , compiled from comic strips drawn in 1940-41, was published by the NSW Bookstall Coy, acc. Rafty c.v. He also created the strip Mugs the golfer .
He freelanced from 1957 to 1962 then rejoined the Sun and Sun-Herald as cartoonist, illustrator and sporting cartoonist, remaining until 1981. A book of caricatures, Tony Rafty’s Golfing greats with text by Terry Smith, was published by Rigby, Adelaide in 1983 (ML 796.3520922/1). He claims to have done about 20,000 drawings over half a century; 4,000 form the main part of his own 'World of Caricature’ collection. (Some were offered to the SLNSW in 1998 by his son, under the Taxation Incentive for the Arts scheme.) ML (PXD 764) has a collection of 8 placemats for the Australian War Correspondents Association Anzac Day luncheons 1989-97 and about 56 for Journalists’ Club dinners from 1989 to 1998 drawn by Rafty and other artists.
A noted cartoon historian, Rafty organised the exhibition Fifty Years of Australian Cartooning at the Sydney Journalists’ Club in 1964. It moved to Farmers’ Blaxland Gallery (11-19 September) and interstate to the Myer Mural Hall, Melbourne (November). 150 artists were represented, with biographical and career details in the catalogue compiled by Rafty and Brodie Mack . As Lindesay points out, it was the most comprehensive exhibition of Australian cartoons up to this time.
Rafty was elected president of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club in 1975. He claims he was a founding member, presumably this must have been when the club was reformed in the 1930s as he’s not on the 1924 list (see Harry Weston ). He was smocked in 1988, elected a life member in 1991 and awarded a Silver Stanley in 1997. He continues to do cartoons, exhibiting The Wik time bomb , published in the Greek Herald in 1997, in Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra: National Museum of Australia/ Old Parliament House exhibition, 1997), cat. 96. He is also a longtime member and former president of the Sydney Journalists’ Club and the War Correspondents’ Association. OAM awarded 1991. In 1997 he had been married for fifty years to Sheila; they have five children.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1915
- Summary
- Caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and cartoon historian. Rafty joined the Sun Associated Newspapers group in 1940 but enlisted in the AIF in 1941.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 100
Details
Latitude-24.838632 Longitude151.1093424 Start Date1955-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Monto, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Gordon Bennett came to art as a mature adult, graduating in Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, in 1988. He quickly established himself as an artist equipped both intellectually and aesthetically to address issues relating to the role of language and systems of thought in forging identity.
Much of Bennett’s work is concerned with mapping alternative histories and ideas in post-colonial Australia. He rejects racial labels and stereotypes. In 1995, as an act of personal liberation from preconceptions about his Indigenous heritage, Bennett created an ongoing, pop-art inspired alter ego, John Citizen, whom he says is 'an abstraction of the Australian Mr Average, the Australian Everyman’.
In the late 1990s, Bennett began a 'dialogue’ with the work of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York artist seen by Bennett as someone outside Australia who shared both a similar western cultural tradition and an obsession with drawing, semiotics and visual language. Bennett’s 'Notes to Basquiat’ culminated in a series of works produced in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York in 2001. Bennett’s subsequent 'Camouflage’ series (2003) references the war in Iraq and issues of secrecy. His most recent abstract works extend the notion of camouflage, dissolving the appearance of difference.
Since 1989, Bennett has held over 50 solo exhibitions and achieved national and international recognition for his work, with representation in biennales in Sydney, Venice, Kwangju, Shanghai and Cuba, and in major exhibitions of contemporary art in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Prague (Czech Republic), Italy, Denmark, Canada, South Africa and Japan.
The Art of Gordon Bennett by Ian McLean (including an essay by Gordon Bennett), was published by Craftsman House in 1996. Bennett has received several major awards, including the Moët & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship (1991) and the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize, National Gallery of Victoria (1997). His work is held in all major public art collections in Australia.
Writers:
Murray-Cree, Laura
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 October 1955
- Summary
- Acclaimed contemporary Indigenous artist, Gordon Bennett's work explores the role of language and systems of thought in forging identity. Much of his work is concerned with mapping alternative histories and ideas in post-colonial Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Jun-14
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude12.5433216 Longitude104.8144914 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cambodia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1952
- Summary
- Bun Heang was an artist and illustrator who immigrated to Australia in 1980. His later career developed in the field of political cartoons with a particular interest in Cambodian developments. His work appeared in films, magazines, books and on-line.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1947-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1947
- Summary
- Robert Hunter is best known for his rigorous works, painted in shades of white. He was one of the artists exhibiting in The Field of 1968.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2014
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by submitting a full biography
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1943
- Summary
- Robert Jacks is one of the first generation of Australian artists to take nourishment from the post war American artists, rather than looking to Europe. He was one of the exhibitors at The Field in 1968
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Aug-14
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by writing a full entry
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 17 December 1937
- Summary
- As well as an extensive career as an artist Bill Wright became one of the most influential curators of contemporary art in Australia. After directing the 1982 Biennale of Sydney he was appointed deputy director of the Art Gallery of NSW where he mentored a generation of younger curators.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Oct-14
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-37.805278 Longitude145.035833 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 12 October 1936
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Feb-14
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Mar-14
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, , United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1931
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2014
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.7156888 Longitude150.3317665 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leura, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Professor Joan Kerr:Cartoonist and illustrator, produced cartoons and greeting cards in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Sydney Bulletin and London Punch were his chief cartoon outlets, but he also drew them for the Spectator and Lilliput , while in Australia his wordless, witty and satirical line drawings also appeared in K.G. Murray publications. Harvey’s Christmas cards were typically Australian versions on traditional English Yuletide themes: a kangaroo eating a plum pudding, Santa sunbaking or water-skiing, a man with a horse and buggy taking a Christmas tree to his rural Oz home (the NGA has an almost complete set). In the 1990s-2000s he designed, researched and wrote broadsheet Pictorial City Guides, the latest being Berlin (2001.
*Biography by Dr. Helen L. Hewson. *A student at Melbourne High School from 1944-1946, Tony Harvey indulged his passion for drawing and cartooning and dreamt of seeing the world. He read widely, borrowed from the Melbourne Public Library, frequented the National Gallery of Victoria and Ellis Bird’s secondhand bookshop discovering old engravings and copies of Punch, The Studio and Art in Australia. For a taste of the avant grade there was Gino Nibbi’s Leonardo Bookshop which played a pivotal role in freeing up literature and art in Australia throughout the 1930 and 1942 by stocking the latest art books and magazines. Critical of the conservative art scene, Nibbi published Stream, edited by Cyril Pearl with Dominic Leon’s Vorticist-inspired covers.In 1947 Harvey gained a free place to study commercial art at Melbourne Technical College where Alan Warren, Harold Freedman, Eric Smith and Ed Heffernan were teaching drawing, printmaking and lithography. Melbourne’s strong printmaking tradition can be traced to the NGV’s acquisition in 1891 of works by Durer, Rembrandt, Whistler and other artists. Familiar with the Claude Flight inspired relief printing among local printmakers during the 1940s, Harvey was also drawn to the work of British artists: John Piper, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Paul and John Nash. In 1948 the Old Vic theatre Co. starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh staged Sheridan’s The School for Scandal in Melbourne. Cecil Beaton’s sets, incorporating gigantic line engravings of Georgian houses, were a spectacular introduction to theatre design for the young art student.
With savings from designing for Fortuna Fabrics, Sydney and drawing filmstrips for the Maxcraft Projection Manufacturing Co., Harvey sailed in 1951 to Europe. On reaching London he sent three cartoons to Punch signed 'John Harvey’ which were accepted. An invitation to submit drawings to a special exhibition of _Punch _illustrators in New York followed and his cartoons were reprinted in Pick of Punch Annual (1951- 2: 44,142,197). His work also appeared in Lilliput, Spectator and London Opinion.
The country’s emergence from the war years was celebrated with the Festival of Britain. In addition to the V&A and Tate and National Gallery collections the new Arts Council exhibited sixty painters and twelve sculptors in a show of British art over the preceding 25 years. At this time and of interest to Harvey was the modern graphic design infused with Scandinavian and European trends as seen in Graphis and _Gerbraugraphik, the art of the Polish poster school and the drawings of Tomi Ungerer and Andre Francois. From America there was the New Yorker with the cartoons of James Thurber and Saul Steinberg. Furthermore in Britain the union of text, illustration, typography and printing pioneered by William Morris flourished through the private presses, Nonesuch, Curnow, Golden Cockerel and others.
After sketching around Europe and Britain, Harvey returned to Australia during 1953 via the USA. In Melbourne the printmaking scene was vital and experimental centering on Harold Freedman, Tate Adams, Geoff Barwell and Ian Armstrong at Melbourne Tech. Harvey chose instead to design and print greeting cards for distribution on a larger scale than had been attempted by local artists like Helen Ogilvie and Harry Raynor.
Tony married Prudence Boileau, the elder daughter of Sir Gilbert Boileau and Chica Edgeworth Somers (later Lowe) in 1954. They moved to Richmond where he set up his commercial 'art card’ printery, first at 283 Bridge Road Richmond and later at 609 Bridge Road. He produced over 250 card designs using lino cuts and letterpress and ranging from religious art, native flora and fauna, Australia’s colonial history and Aboriginal designs as well as a unique and humorous exploitation of an antipodean Christmas celebrated by kangaroos, Santas and the traditional fare turned upside down,'down under’.
Max Harris wrote in the Observer(17 October 1959)of thethe superiority of Australian cards over their English equivalents: “...Australian designers have a fresh and unexploited slant on the festive season… The greatest designer is Anthony Harvey, who does his own colour printing with unusually rich and vibrant inks. He is the first artist to have taken Australian motifs of the conventional kind and given them high wit and sophistication…”
In an interview with Helen Hewson in August 1987, Harvey recalled his working method:
“First I cut out the design using lino-cutting and cheap Japanese woodcarving tools, gem razor blades and an umbrella rib. A design would often require 2 or 3 or 4 blocks to create the colour range and I would ink up the first image in black and print it onto a further piece of lino in preparation for cutting the next block and to ensure exact registration. To give variety to the designs and range of cards fine lines were introduced by letterpress and photo-processed blocks were made from my drawings, and used with linocut blocks.
“I had an electric American Chandler and Price platen press and it was all rather dangerous because there was the possibility of crushing one’s hand as you fed the card between the block and the ink rollers. It was a major problem ensuring the rich coloured oil based inks had dried properly before a card design was returned for further colour printing,or if complete, for folding. I invented several drying machines over the years.
“The second printery, an old dairy with brick walls and cement floor, was very cold in the winter. The press and printing functions were along one wall with a central bench for folding and sorting cards for storage or despatch. Along two walls were floor to ceiling shelving accommodating drying racks, labelled boxes and the numnbered printing blocks easily identifiable for future reruns.
“Although it might seem from the diversity of the designs that other artists were employed, I was a solitary worker and engaged family members to assist with folding and packing. I handled my own distribution using sample cards in albums which I showed to prospective buyers.
Anthony Harvey Greeting Cards were sold exclusively throughout Australia by bookshops, art galleries and craft shops, including Primrose Pottery, Isa Johnstone, Georges Pty.Ltd. Hicks Atkinson, Hawthorn Galleries, Norman Robb, Margareta Webber, Hill of Content, Burnes and Oates and the Literature Bookshops in Melbourne; Marion Hall Best, the Roycroft, Carl Plate’s Notanda Gallery, David Jonesand the Blaxland Galleries in Sydney; Mary Martin Bookshop in Adelaide and Fuller’s in Tasmania. The cards featured in newspapers and magazines including, Australian Letters (Dec.1959), Walkabout (December 1960)and Vogue and Australian House and Garden.
The advent of the UNICEF and charity cards made inroads into Harvey’s exclusive art market and he closed his printery in 1959 and joined Speciality Press, North Clayton as a production planner and graphic artist. A year later, accredited for his 'industrial experience’ he was accepted at Collingwood Technical School as a temporary art teacher. He moved with his wife and two young daughters, Georgia and Tracy, from Richmond to St Kilda.
Continuing as a teacher, in 1962 the family had settled at Eltham in a cottage on the property of builder/designer Alistair Knox. Harvey designed and printed a range of silkscreened cards for loyal clients which incorporated three and four colours producing softer tones and subtle gradations of colour and depth.
Reflecting on a decade of extraordinary creativity Phillip Adams observed:
“Anthony Harvey’s cards…were way ahead of their time. Splendid pieces of design evoking for me, the great graphic work of Eastern Europe… in particular of Poland. (Adams-Hewson, 5 Dec.1977.)
In 1989 the National Gallery of Australia acquired An Album of Greeting Cards 1954-1964 for its Australian Print Collection. Blue Island Press, Sydney began reprinting Anthony Harvey cards in 2014.
Harvey taught art and craft at Watsonia Technical School and attended evening classes at RMIT and Toorak Teachers’ College part-time to gain further qualifications. In 1963 he was appointed Head of Advertising Art at Prahran Technical College and also produced the Commercial Art Course for Stott’s Technical Correspondence College, Melbourne. Returning to Watsonia Tech. the following year he remained in the Victorian Technical School system until 1974. When he resigned to concentrate on his own work, he was the Executive Officer of the Art and Craft Teachers’ Association and the Teachers’ Representative on the Four Person Standing Committee for Art in Technical Schools.
Drawing on his teaching experience he wrote and illustrated The Australian boys’ book of crafts, pets, sports and hobbies (1968). With Prudence Harvey, a companion book for girls (1970) soon followed as well as New Zealand editions in 1971.
Throughout the 1960s Harvey drew for Punch, Spectator and the Sydney Bulletin. From this period a cartoon based on Sebastian Brandt’s woodcut The Banquet given by Dido to Aeneas in which Harvey depicted the plates and wine cups sliding off the table with the accompanying caption: “It’s the way they draw these wretched tables!” featured in The Bulletin Book(1966). Years later E.H.Gombrich used the drawing in The Image and the Eye (1944) as an example demonstrating problems of perspective in medieval art. Professor Joan Kerr noted: “Anthony Harvey is an interesting cartoonist—oddly un-Australian despite the subject matter, I felt, probably because he is so sophisticated and understated. (Kerr-Hewson, 11 March 2002).
Harvey designed an egg container in the shape of a hen, which was hand-made from strawboard and painted. Its popularity led to a version in clay from which a brass mould was made. Thousand of birds were produced in papier mache from the mould and were brightly decorated by all the family, in particular his father, Stan Harvey. The birds sold throughout Australia, was an essential ingredient for all designer kitchens according to Belle House and Garden and _Vogue.
Tony and Prue were divorced in 1978. He moved to East Melbourne and joined Australian Industrial Publications where he spent the next thirteen years illustrating technical manuals for battleships,aircraft and power stations, much of it classified. Independently he published ARTCARDS (1985), a folio of postcards including his own linocuts along with works by Durer, Aldus Munutius, Yasukini. He researched, wrote and illustrated The Melbourne Book(Hutchinson, 1982) with over 400 black and white drawings which was launched by Don Dustan, Minister for Tourism in Victoria in the Melbourne Town Hall on 30 November 1982.
Harvey’s final project was a series of Pictorial City Guides. “I design the sort of guide I would like to have for a visit to a city. An overview with clues to its character and shape, pictures of the significant features—historical, cultural and architectural” The drawing were always views of the front elevation and based on photographs and sketches made on location. The guides were created on a Macintosh LC11 with a simple MacDraw 11 program with each city contained on the one frame. This was compressed on a disc, turned into a negative by laser technology and used to produce a printing plate for photo-offset production. Tones were made with 1800 dots to the inch. Twenty-four world city guides were designed and sold in Australia, UK and the USA until production ceased in 2007. Over many years as a designer Harvey always adapted to innovative changes in printing technology.
Initially Anthony Harvey Pictorial Maps was based in Carlton where Tony lived with Ann Morton until her death in 1993. Subsequently he moved his studio to Port Melbourne where he joined Alison Rowlands who later became his wife. He died at Port Melbourne on 27 July 2014 and is survived by his wife and daughters, Georgia Phillips who is currently the custodian of his sketchbooks and albums and Tracy Harvey, an actress, writer, musician and artist.
.
'
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
drhle_hewson
drhlehewson
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 25 May 1930
- Summary
- Harvey was a designer,sculptor, cartoonist, illustrator, print-maker, map maker and author. He also had an extensive career as an educator in Victoria. Especially noted for his wit, humor and economy of line in his Punch and Bulletin cartoons and vibrant range of linocut and silk screen Australian greeting cards produced during the 1950s and 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Jul-14
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Des O’Brien was born in Sydney in 1930 and studied at the National Art School, Darlinghurst, and, later, with Godfrey Miller who taught him figure drawing.
He is a respected editorial and institutional illustrator, designer, author and painter. However, his personal art, which includes genre scenes, geometric abstracts, still life, portraits, figure paintings and drawings, has seldom been exhibited and unlike his applied art is unknown to the public. He makes no distinction between his fine and applied art, believing each is more accurately characterised as a continuous development.
Some noted clients of O’Brien’s include John Fairfax, Associated Newspapers, OTC, Australia Post, Australian Wool Bureau, the Herald and Weekly Times, Reader’s Digest, Commonwealth Bank, and Qantas. He has also created advertising work for many corporations.
O’Brien is a recipient of a Bronze Medal from the Arts Festival of the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games. He is also the author, designer and illustrator of the children’s picture book, The Frog and the Pelican, awarded a Bronze Medal from Leipzig in 1983 and the Australian Book Publishers Design Award. He was inducted into the Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1995. Since that time he has worked almost exclusively on his personal art and has produced limited edition artists books of his work.
His work is illustrated in The Arts in Australia Series, _Commercial Art _written by R. Haughton James, Longmans, Green and Co., 1963.
Writers:
samobrien
duggim
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1930
- Summary
- Des O'Brien is an Australian illustrator, graphic designer, painter and author. He trained at the National Art School, later joining Associated Newspapers. He formed a studio, O'Brien & Horrex, with his artist wife Jackie Horrex after 1955. He worked for publishers, advertising agencies and Australia Post.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, filmmaker, performance artist and printmaker, Richard Larter was born on 19 May 1929, at Hornchurch, Essex, the son of Thomas Larter, a claims assessor for a marine insurance company, and Dorothy Scarles, who had worked for the British War Office during World War I. His mother was proud of her French ancestry and encouraged her children to appreciate both the work of the French Impressionists and the more adventurous Surrealist work sold at the art gallery run by her friend Fred Mayor. However his parents were less supportive when the young Richard indicated he wished to be an artist – his mother saw his future as a doctor. Richard Larter’s first formal art education came during World War II in 1944 when St Martin’s School of Art in London was kept open by running occasional classes for school children. His loathing of upper class 'military pretensions’ came from his time in National service with the British army where he served in the medical corps after leaving school. After the army he enrolled at St Martin’s as a regular student, but left almost immediately because he could not stomach either the teaching or his fellow students, who he felt came from the officer class who he continued to despise. After leaving the army he worked from 1949 to 1952 at Perfect Lambert & Co as a trainee marine surveyor. When he could, the young artist travelled to Paris where he spent time at art museums, looking especially at the work of the Impressionists and meeting other would-be artists. In 1949 he travelled to Cornwall where he befriended the visiting American artist, Mark Tobey. The next year he travelled to Algiers where he worked with the ceramicist Zora Merabek while she was restoring the Marabout tombs. Back in London, at Perfect Lambert & Co, he met the 15 year-old Patricia Florence (Pat) Holmes who had come to be interviewed for her first job after leaving school. At the end of 1952 he left Perfect Lambert, moved out of his parents’ home and moved to Canvey Island at the mouth of the Thames to spend Christmas with Pat’s family. On 1 February 1953 a great storm in the North Sea flooded Belgium, Holland and southern England. Canvey Island was completely submerged and 58 people died. The Holmes family was evacuated to a local school and Richard Larter married Patricia Holmes on 18 February 1953. They both became involved in adult education classes at Toynbee Hall in London, where he studied drawing while Pat supplemented her basic education. He worked at various jobs, including being a photographic model, until 1954 when he enrolled as a trainee teacher at Shoreditch Teacher’s College. He supplemented his meagre stipend by working as a rock driller, so his attendance at class was best described as intermittent. In 1956, while working as an art teacher at Santley Street Secondary Modern School in Kentish Town, Larter was looking at the window of a medical supplies shop, saw a box holding hypodermic syringes and realised they could be used to draw lines in paint. He also saw the definitive exhibition 'This is Tomorrow’ at the Whitechapel Gallery, where he was impressed by the energy of Eduardo Paolozzi, an artist he had long admired. No London gallery was interested in the young Larter’s art, but the Chief Inspector for Art at London County Council encouraged him to enter the Paris Salon. His painting was accepted and hung, but in 1962, by the time this happened, the Larter family were in the process of immigrating to Australia where Richard was employed by the NSW Department of Education. Teaching in Sydney led to a friendship with Richard Cobb, who later became the manufacturer of fine artists’ paints. In 1963 the Larter family bought land and a small cottage at Luddenham on the western edge of Sydney, and Richard Larter began to teach at Liverpool Boys’ High School. Conditions at Luddenham were primitive – the water supply was a small dam and a tank – but the wilderness of the bush environment encouraged Pat and Dick Larter to develop their own reading and other interests apart from the Sydney art scene. Although commercial galleries continued to disregard his work of this period, Larter had more success in local art competitions. In 1964 Bath Night 1, entered in the Royal Easter Show, received a favourable comment from Daniel Thomas, curator of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The following year when Thomas judged the Berrima art competition he awarded the prize to Richard Larter. He alerted Frank Watters to Larter’s work, which led to an invitation to exhibit at Watters Gallery, a new commercial gallery founded by Frank Watters and Geoffrey Legge. Perhaps because of the isolation of Luddenham, both Richard and Pat Larter were keen to experiment with different technologies. From 1966 onwards they were working on sound pieces and later they collaborated on performances and films. In 1967, the year their youngest child Eliza was born, Richard was transferred to Penrith High School, which was closer to home. Despite being the subject of advocacy by the curator of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the first collection to buy his work was the fledgling National Gallery of Australia in 1970. At the end of 1972, Richard was sufficiently financially successful to leave school teaching and devote himself to art full-time. However his finances were sufficiently unstable for him to continually look for residencies and other opportunities to earn while making art. In 1974 the family left Australia when Richard was appointed for a 12 month visiting lectureship at the Elam Art School, Auckland. Although Richard was the subject of the appointment, Pat Larter also participated in lectures and performances for students. As she was no longer caring for pre-school children she began to assert her own identity as an artist. The persona “Dick & Pat Larter” began to make a presence in the ephemeral movement of International Mail Art, although Richard Larter was happy to tell all that the dominant persona in that art form was Pat’s. Despite his political radicalism Richard Larter’s art became increasingly popular with major institutions and corporate collections. In 1976 he began a long and fruitful connection with the Victorian Tapestry Workshop which created large tapestries out of several of his paintings, including Pretty As (1981) in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. In 1978 and 1979 Richard Larter was an artist in residence at Australia Council-funded studios at Armidale and Wagga Wagga. Neither were particularly happy experiences. This was especially true of Wagga Wagga, where the studio was in a physically remote location, and Pat stayed in Sydney where she created a major mail art event, Art Core Meltdown. However they saw the advantages of living in a large country town as distinct from the fringes of an ever growing city and in 1982 they sold the house at Luddenham and moved to Yass, to a two storied house in the centre of the town. In 1991 Richard bought the house next door as a dedicated studio. This gave him sufficient space to work on a number of paintings at any given time. At about the same time Pat ceased to be his model, so Richard used photographic models from agencies in Canberra and Sydney for his figurative work. Both Richard and Pat began experimenting with photography and laser prints on canvas enabled by modern computer technology. In 1996 Richard was awarded the Joan & Peter Clemenger Prize for Contemporary Art. Richard and Pat Larter’s super scans were included in the 1996 Adelaide Biennial, which was the same year as a celebration of Larter films at the Melbourne Super Eight Festival. Their collaboration ended on 19 October 1996 when Pat died. In May 1999 Watters and Legge galleries combined to celebrate Richard Larter’s oeuvre with a 70th birthday exhibition that was a revelation to many who had not recognised the breadth of his achievement. Subsequent to this there have been a number of exhibitions in public art museums. In 2002 Kelly Gellatly curated 'Stripperama: Richard Larter’, at the Museum of Modern Art at Heide, which examined the figurative tradition in his art and in 2006 Joanna Mendelssohn examined the connections within the Larter family in 'Larter Family Values’ at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre. In June 2008 there will be a Richard Larter retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Richard Larter first came to public notice in the 1960s with confronting works based on the female body, politics, and a sensibility informed by British Pop. However his work also celebrates place, mood and medium.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Jul-14
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1929
- Summary
- England apprenticed in engineering, later taking a position with GM Holden. He campaigned in motor racing, joining REPCO in 1952 and by the mid-1950s, he was designing the Ausca sports car powered by a GM Holden engine. The car was complete by 1956. In the 1960s, he designed and built another Ausca motor racer using Volkswagen components.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude46.8255578 Longitude16.0382213 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sotina, Slovenia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Curman was a commercial photo-lithographer initially working for the printer John Sands & Co., Sydney. A specialist in 4-colour printing, he worked for printers in Adelaide and elsewhere. After 1969, he became a principal in Associated Lithographics, then in 1979, he founded Curman Lithographics. In 2002, he was named Graphics Arts Person of the Year by Print21 , the official magazine of Printing Industries Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.960707 Longitude151.1003611 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hurstville, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Brabham, working with Ron Tauranac, developed the Brabham motor racing marque under the name of Motor Racing Developments (MRD) in 1962 while continuing a successful motor race driving career. He retired in 1971.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude52.3744779 Longitude9.7385532 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hanover, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Taft-Hendry was initially an art collector, later opening Galleries Primitiff, Woollahra in 1959, touring works from Papua New Guinea internationally in the 1960s. She formed a partnership with Leo Fleishmann until his death and continued the gallery afterward expanding into Pacific Island art. She was a benefactor of the University of Newcastle and the Australian Museum.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude55 Longitude24 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithuania
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1923
- Summary
- Miksevicius trained at Darmstadt Werkstaetten, Germany immigrating to Australia in 1948. He exhibited initially with a Baltic-associated group "Six Directions" and took up teaching art in a Sydney high school. His work is modernist, but as Christopher Allen wrote in a 2019 review of a retrospective, difficult to categorise.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-31.0900743 Longitude150.9290159 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2014
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-33.7553899 Longitude151.1518099 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gordon, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Dorothea Margaret Bisset,known as Margaret, was the daughter of successful businessman and inveterate letter writer O.D. Bisset and his wife Gwen, recent immigrants from Britain who had settled at Warrawee north of Sydney. After attending Abbotsleigh, which had a well established lively arts program for its girls, she studied ceramics at East Sydney Technical College. As with most of her generation her life was reshaped by World War II. In 1942, at her 21st birthday party, her patriotic parents invited a group of visiting British airman to the party. One of the party was A. J. (Tony) Tuckson, a Spitfire pilot who shared her interest in the visual arts. The following May the couple were engaged, although Tuckson was then posted to Darwin. They were married on 23 November 1943. Their son, Michael, was born in 1945. Margaret and Michael remained in Australia at her parents’ home while Tony was posted back to England until early 1946 when he returned to Australia where he was discharged from the RAF. For the following three years the family lived at the Bisset family home. Tony studied art under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme while Margaret resumed her pottery, studying under Mollie Douglas and Peter Rushforth. She joined them to become one of the founders of the Potters Society of Australia.In 1950 Tony joined the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where he eventually became Deputy Director. Gradually he ceased to show his art, so much so that even most of the gallery staff were unaware that he was continuing to develop his work, all in private. Their first house at East Gordon was the site of her first attempt at raku firing as she continued to experiment with ceramic forms.In 1958 she and Tony joined Dr Stuart Scougall’s expedition to Snake Bay, Melville Island where he commissioned works to enter the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She was an active participant in recording the works as they were being made. The Tutini are among the gallery’s most prized possessions. The following year the Tucksons travelled on another collecting expedition to Arnhem Land. Margaret photographed the artists collaborating on the bark paintings that now form the core of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ collection.In 1962 they moved to a new house in Lucinda Avenue Wahroonga. The house, designed by Russell Jack, took into account both Tony’s painting and Margaret’s ceramics as her studio included a kiln. The adventurous design included a long terrace so that the house backed directly onto the bush. Most of her works in public collections come from this period.In 1965 the Tucksons visited New Guinea for the first time, and Margaret developed a life-long passion for New Guinea ceramics. She made many return visits throughout the rest of her life. With Patricia May, who she met when May was first appointed to the NSW Gallery as curatorial assistant, she undertook many expeditions to record the work of individual potters as well as noting regional differences. Their book, The Traditional Pottery of Papua New Guinea remains the authoritative account of the field.In 1973, just before the Art Gallery opened its first dedicated gallery for Aboriginal and Melanesian art, Tony Tuckson died. Margaret ensured that his wishes about the display and the information on the artists were carried out. Although he had begun again to exhibit his paintings, his public profile was simply as an arts bureaucrat. In the decades after Tony’s death Margaret ensured that his thousands of paintings and drawings were all catalogued and then, with Watters Gallery. carefully released onto the market. She was the driving force behind the publication of the first monograph of his work and continued to generously encourage scholars and curators to see and know the full depth of his oeuvre. In this she was assisted by Richard McMillan, who wrote his masters thesis on Tuckson’s work and later by Ian Gunn. At the same time she continued to be an advocate for Papua New Guinea ceramics, supporting and encouraging potters to have faith in their work.A few days before she died she visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to see again the New Guinea work she had assisted in acquiring.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 23 October 1921
- Summary
- Tuckson was a potter working first in low-fired earthenware. She expanded her interest to Papua New Guinea ceramic traditions publishing "The Traditional Pottery of Papau New Guinea" with Patricia May in 1982. She was a founding member of the Potters Society of Australia. After the death of her husband, the artist Tony Tuckson, she ensured that his position as Austrlaia's pre-eminent abstract painter was properly recognised.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Aug-14
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 20 October 1920
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Apr-14
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1919
- Summary
- Spooner was an architect, graduating from Sydney Technical College with the conservationist Myles Dunphy. His career migrated toward landscape architecture after 1954 and became involved in highway design notably for the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway and commissions in South Australia and the Northern Territory. He became an lecturer at the UNSW developing their landscape architecture course, later becoming head of the department.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude68.24170235 Longitude14.66708159 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Helle, Norway
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1912
- Summary
- Halvorsen, son of a Norwegian boat-builder, designed and built motor yachts from shipyards in Neutral Bay, later Ryde, then Bobbin Head NSW. While the company's timber motor yachts were sold internationally, he and his company also designed and built sailing vessels. He was a celebrated sailing competitor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 102
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1965-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 22 April 1965
- Summary
- Hensel was an industrial designer employed by Nielsen Design Associates, Sunbeam and later principal designer for Sunbeam Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1957-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 19 June 1957
- Summary
- Rogers was an illustrator, the founder of the Brisbane Book Illustrators Group, a lecturer at the Queensland College of Art as well as a painter. His illustrations and design appeared for the Univ of Queensland press, childrens' books and other publications. He helped establish the genre of illustrated books for older readers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-May-13
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1953-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1953
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude32.109274 Longitude76.5366901 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kangra, Punjab, India
- Biography
- Michael Anthony O’Ferrall was born in India, the son of Colonel John O’Ferrall of the British Army and his wife Valerie Minchinton. After India became independent the family returned to England. On completing school O’Ferrall left England to hitchhike across the then accessible roads through Turkey, the middle east, Afghanistan, India, Thailand and Malaysia before arriving at Perth on Christmas Eve, 1965.For the next few years he undertook various unskilled labouring jobs, including at the Whyalla shipyards, which involved working with asbestos.This gave him sufficient funds to enrol in a degree in Asian studies at the Australian National University. He had an active extra curricula life at the ANU, becoming active in the Poetry Society and Jazz Club as well as organizing events on campus. In September 1970, he married fellow student Ilse Alps.The couple moved to Sydney where some years later he became one of the early students to complete the new Diploma of Museum Studies at the University of Sydney.Shortly after completing his studies the O’Ferrall family, which now included a baby daughter Elvira, moved to Yirrkala where he became the community arts organiser. In 1979, after he was appointed lecturer at James Cook University, the family moved to Townsville. In 1984 he left academic life for Perth, when he was appointed the first curator of Aboriginal and Asian art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.He became a pivotal figure in the west, an active advocate for Aboriginal artists. In 1988 he enabled the Gallery to acquire the Louis Allen Collection of Arnhem land and Tiwi art, which had previously been housed in the Unity States. He later used the Allen collection as the basis for his groundbreaking exhibition, K_eeper of the Secrets_. In 1990 he was curator for the first exhibition of Aboriginal art to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. Even though only two artists, Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls, were represented he made sure that viewers understood the diversity of Australian Aboriginal visual traditions. He also foresaw the need to encourage Indigenous Australians to become curators within the system rather than limiting themselves to be makers of art. He was responsible for the Art Gallery of Western Australia establishing an Indigenous curatorial internship.In 1995 O’Ferrall formally ended his employment at the gallery, but continued to be involved with the collection and staff, and was a significant contributor to the Indigenous Art book published by the gallery in 2001.He conducted many independent workshops for artists around the state. In 2010 he discovered he was suffering from mesothelioma, a legacy of his early career in the shipyards.
Writers:
akirpalani
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 9 May 1945
- Summary
- Michael O'Ferrall was one of the key curators in fostering recognition of the complexity of Aboriginal art. He worked closely with Aboriginal communities, especially in Yirrkala and Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Feb-13
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1945
- Summary
- John Peart's lyrical abstract paintings were first exhibited in Sydney in 1965, and his career kept very much in the same direction of sweetly beautiful abstract painting.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Oct-13
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-33.8797123 Longitude151.2561988 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bellevue Hill, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist and art director, was born in Bellevue Hill [Rose Bay, acc. NGA], Sydney, on 21 January 1942. He attended Cranbrook 1952-59. While studying art at East Sydney Technical College in 1960 he submitted cartoons to the Bulletin . In 1961 he enrolled in Architecture at university (SU and/or UNSW). He was in trouble for obscenity for the cartoon The Gas Lash in the UNSWstudent publication Tharunka’s 1964 Orientation Week issue. Fifty years … says that he contributed both to Tharunka and Sydney University’s Honi Soit . In his third year of Architecture he returned to ESTC to study art, completing three of the five years of the course. In 1962 he won the Mirror Art Award. In 1963-64 he attended the Mary White Art School at the Rocks while simultaneously (1963-65 [1962-64 [ sic ] acc. McCulloch]) working as art director of Oz and being its major contributor of drawings and cartoons. The prosecution of Oz in 1964 for breach of the Obscene and Indecent Publications Act concentrated on a Sharp cartoon, The Word Spread Round the Arms (about an Ocker surfie), published in issue 6 (February; almost the same time as the similarly controversial The Gas Lash in Tharunka ), which consisted (almost) only of words (ill. Lindesay WWW , 159). Within weeks of Tharunka’s editors being convicted over The Gas Lash , Neville and Walsh were sentenced to six months gaol with hard labour and Sharp to four months, though all three were later released on bail pending an appeal, which was upheld. According to Coleman (p.12):
“The case caused such a sensation that it figured in the 1965 State election when the Opposition Leader Bob Askin, following Oz , made it his policy to abolish censorship. He won the election and that was the end of trial-by-magistrates in obscenity cases in New South Wales. It all added to the glory of Oz , Martin Sharp and cartoonists.”
A subsequent $300,000 libel suit, the departure of Sharp and Neville for England via Asia in 1966 to establish London Oz , the cancellation of advertising and the continued refusal of Gordon & Gotch to distribute Oz finally resulted in its demise (Lindesay, WWW , 156-160).
In December 1965 Sharp held a solo exhibition, Art for Mart’s Sake , at Clune Galleries, Potts Point. Martin Sharp Cartoons was published in 1966. Some of his cartoons also appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald , e.g. one about Prince Charles coming to school in Australia in 1965: “I sincerely hope he’s funnier than his father” . Others are [Aborigine in garbage tin with man bending over it] “You wouldn’t give us any trouble like those boongs in Los Angeles, would you Jacky” n.d. (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 74, 184). His cartoon Loading Up , published in the Australian 1965, about the Menzies government arms’ spending increase, is ill. King, 174.
Sharp lived and worked in London in 1967-69. He came back to Australia in 1970 then returned to collect his portable artworks for The Incredible Shrinking Exhibition group show, which opened at the Yellow House on 1 April 1971. He remained in London 1971-72 painting murals and publishing his Art Book etc..
Hamilton Art Gallery owns Sharp’s etching of Luna Park, Just For Fun? (clown on stage) 1981, ill. Hansen, cat.260 (the Hogarth Gallery’s copy was used in the 1999 S.H. Ervin Gallery show). Posters designed for the Nimrod Theatre are at ML POSTERS 810/1-7. On 4 March 2001 Dahlia Stanley was auctioning his silkscreen prints, Tiny Tim Eternal Troubadour Opera House 1982 , Kaspar (Nimrod November 7), The Venetian Twins and Art Sale for Land Rights n.d.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 January 1942
- Summary
- Late 20th century Sydney artist. Sharp's 1964 cartoon "The Word Spread Round the Arms", published in "Oz" was seen to breach the Obscene and Indecent Publications Act and resulted in charges being laid against Sharp and his editors. Later, after reprising his antipodean success with the London edition of "Oz", he returned to Australia where he founded the Yellow House at 59 Macleay Street Potts Point.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Dec-13
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-31.5021772 Longitude150.6804062 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Quirindi, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Lila Lawrence, painter, screen-printer, ceramicist and weaver, was born on 2 July, 1940 in Quirindi, NSW and attended school there until the age of 15. She has lived in a number of places with her parents, mother Leah Olive Beale (née Suey) and father, Claude Beale, including Gunnedah, Curlewis and Tamworth before settling in the Wollongong region on the South Coast of NSW. Encouraged by her friend and fellow artist, Mabel Dungay, Lawrence attended art classes at West Wollongong TAFE in 1998 and was awarded her Advanced Diploma of Visual Art in August 2006. Lawrence is an artist member of the Boolarng-Nangamai Aboriginal Art & Cultural Studio based in Gerringong on the NSW South Coast and in 2006, as a member of this organisation, her work was included in their NAIDOC exhibition at Wollongong City Art Gallery and another exhibition titled “Looking through European Eyes”, also held at the Wollongong City Art Gallery, in which Illawarra Aboriginal artists were asked to respond to works from the Gallery’s Colonial collection. Lawrence has also exhibited at the Karoona Gallery, West Wollongong TAFE in 2004 and at the 2005 and 2006 Royal Easter Show. Lawrence stated in an interview with the author that her paintings, which are created using make-up brushes, are landscapes that “reflect from my memories of places and land I have travelled throughout my life.” Lawrence also conducts workshops at Boolarng-Nangamai in weaving, storytelling and cultural awareness. Lawrence said in the same interview that being a member of Boolarng-Nangamai also enables her to practice her Aboriginal culture and to be with her people.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Note:
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 2 July 1940
- Summary
- Lila Lawrence is a painter, printmaker, weaver and ceramicist who works out of the Boolarng-Nangamai Aboriginal Art Studio in Gerringong, NSW. Her paintings often depict personal memories of her life and the landscapes of places she has travelled through.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Apr-13
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- Gunter Christmann was one of the group of young artists who exhibited at Central Street in Sydney in the 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2013
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Gwyn Hanssen Pigott had an established reputation in England and France through her inclusion in significant exhibitions and prominent collections before she returned to Australia. Although we in Australia know little of this aspect of her career, her nomination as a Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen in London in 1963 indicates the high regard in which her ceramics were held. This profile has now been reasserted on a broader scale through the significant achievement in her Still Life groupings. Evidence of this profile is to be found in her receipt of numerous awards, inclusion in many public collections and successful solo exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, St. Louis, New York and London. These works, produced from the late 1980s, are the culmination of forty years of dedication and commitment to her craft.
The tradition of functional ceramics has informed her career and an astonishing consistent quality of clarity of vision and precision of execution has been manifested throughout. The still, calm presence of artists such as Piero della Francesca and Giorgio Morandi have been acknowledged influences which she then transforms with the sensate experience of the potter. To hear Hanssen Pigott speak of the qualities of tension of the forms, the defining character of rim, foot and profile, the volumetric presence of the interiors and the penetrations into surrounding space is to appreciate how important these properties are to potters such as Leach, Cardew, McMeekin and Hanssen Pigott. It also emphasises how poorly such values have been regarded within the framework of European art history.
As a Fine Arts student at the University of Melbourne Hanssen Pigott passed through the displays of Chinese ceramics at the National Gallery of Victoria on her way to the painting galleries which were the principal focus of the course. She responded to the presence of the ceramics in the famous Kent Collection (both the serenity of the Sung pieces and the vitality of the Neolithic wares inspired her). There she also saw the work of Harold Hughan, Australia’s first exponent of stoneware, who told her of Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book when she visited him. She decided to devote her third year thesis to contemporary Australian pottery and, unusually for the period, she was permitted to do so. Armed with this aspiration and the inspiration of Leach’s book she visited other potters to try to elucidate in contemporary pieces the spirit that Leach venerated. She heard that Ivan McMeekin had just returned to Australia after four years experience with Michael Cardew at the Wenford Bridge Pottery, Cornwall. When she visited him at Mittagong she recognised the qualities she had intuited both in his own work and in the pots he collected. Hanssen Pigott then terminated her academic studies and became his apprentice for three years from 1955. She recalled: “Ivan taught me how to read pots: with my eyes and hands. He taught how to know the qualities of clay bodies, the subtle differences of glaze surface and depth, about thoroughness and patience and the futility of short cuts” (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 46).
The philosophy and publications of Bernard Leach had a profound effect on pottery in post-war Australia. Consequently Hanssen Pigott travelled to England to further her studies with him (at his Pottery at St. Ives), and other major potters of the time, Ray Finch at the Winchcombe Pottery, Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew at the Wenford Bridge Pottery and Alan Craiger-Smith at the Aldermarston Pottery. She states:
Those five years, in rural workshops, taught by generous and enthusiastic masters who had given so much of their life’s energy and understanding to their craft, nourished and formed me as a potter and confirmed my choice of vocation. Here I was witness to the daily commitment to quality, the constant curiosity and change, the personal involvements with the history of the craft and the obsessive reaching for deeper insights (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 47).
While most Australian potters followed Leach in looking towards China (and later Japan) as the source of their inspiration, Hanssen Pigott was largely focused on Europe.
Her apprentice years ceased when she set up a pottery in London with the Canadian writer Louis Hanssen (who she met while at the Leach Pottery and later married). She established a friendship with the Austrian potter Lucie Rie who became an important mentor and through her met the German potter Hans Coper. To her understanding of the integrity of the country based potters she added an appreciation of European elegance and sculptural presence which their work manifested. If there was a lasting influence on Hanssen Pigott’s work it is to be found in the refined forms of Rie. Coper’s 1965 exhibition at the Berkeley Galleries, London, however, had an effect which she only fully assimilated decades later, “I walked down the steps into a place so still; held, not immediately by the pots themselves, but by a sense that the space between the pots were recognised forms too: negatives.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 47).
Three years earlier (1962) on a visit to Paris Hanssen Pigott saw an exhibition of French traditional wood-fired pottery from Haut-Berry at the Museum of Folk Art and Tradition and was attracted by their freshness and vigour. In this work she discovered a European tradition of long wood firing which paralleled that of Japan but was quite without its self-consciousness. Subsequently she purchased a house in Achères in Central France and set up a pottery. The first pots she produced, with dense vitrified bodies, were strongly influenced by the local examples which she described as “unpretentious but rich in a way I could easily relate to with their ash glazes, celadons and proto-porcelain type glazes.” (Hanssen Pigott, p. 1971, p. 4).
It was not long, however, before she began using porcelain refining the glazes and using the wood firing to produce more subtle effects. It was her response to the clay, form, glazes and firing that was important. For Hanssen Pigott there was no sense in separating production ware from one-off-work as an expression of the potter’s personality as, “One is expressing oneself in everything, absolutely everything. In the way you make the glaze, the way you pack the kiln, it is all yourself.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1971, p. 5).
The death of her husband in 1968 and the social unrest at the time introduced a period of dissatisfaction and soul searching. Like many of the 1960s generation she meditated and experimented with communal living. She lectured at several European institutions and worked with the Bread and Puppet Theatre of Vermont before deciding to return to Australia in 1973. Hanssen Pigott taught at the East Sydney Technical College for a time then settled in Tasmania with John Pigott where they established a pottery at Linden Rise, Kingston in 1975 with the help of a Crafts Board Grant. (John Pigott set up another pottery at Lower Longley in 1979). The stoneware items they produced there made use of local clays and glazes. Hanssen Pigott then undertook a year’s tenancy at the Jam Factory Workshop, Adelaide in 1980. During this year she shared a gas-fired kiln which gave her greater control, especially in relation to celadon glazes, which she adapted for a range of dinner wares. She also started to decorate her pieces with blue geometric patterns inspired by Nigerian indigo dyed textiles. Subsequently she was invited to continue the production pottery established by Kelvin Grealy at the Brisbane College of Advanced Education (now the Queensland University of Technology) at Kelvin Grove. She built a wood-fired kiln and remained potter-in-residence until 1988 when she established a pottery at Netherdale in the Mackay hinterland. It was in Queensland that the various strands of her life melded in a remarkable way.
While in Paris she saw an exhibition by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, who was new to her, “I found his early work disturbing. There was austerity in his drawings and etchings, a pulling back from colour and sensuality in his painting which I found difficult at first. And then it began to reach me, the profound realness of what he was painting and describing.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1987, p. 12).
But it was not until 1988 that the idea of constructing still life groupings inspired by Morandi’s painted assemblages evolved. It would also, of course, be mediated through the groupings of ceramics that form when production wares are displayed and used.
During these years in Brisbane the support of artists such as Madonna Staunton and Leonard Brown was especially gratifying to Hanssen Pigott. They were responsive to her work. The Garry Anderson Gallery in Sydney represented Staunton, who produces extremely reductive collages, and Brown who paints subtly tonal canvasses. Hanssen Pigott’s work meshed very well with the refined and intellectual style this gallery promoted. Her first exhibition with his gallery was later the same year.
After the 1986 wood firer’s conference in the Latrobe Valley Hanssen Pigott was invited to use Heja Chong’s Bizen kiln. She prepared for the firings by producing shapes unrelated to Eastern traditions some of which, such as the tapering and mallet shaped vases, find parallels in Morandi’s early paintings. She first exhibited a group of these pieces at the 'Australian Crafts 1988’ exhibition at the Meatmarket Craft Centre and received a Bicentenary Crafts Award. She did not pursue Bizen style firings as she found the markings of the pieces too complex to create her still life groupings. Her first specific still life works were made during her period at the Fremantle Art Centre in early 1989 and formed the basis of her exhibition at the Garry Anderson Gallery later that year.
At the same award she introduced the first group of her 'Inseparable Bowls.’ Hanssen Pigott has always worked in a domestic scale and bowl forms are of great importance to her, but the modest dimension of her pieces tend to be overlooked in group exhibitions. Group of bowls both create a stronger presence and emphasise the tension of from relationships.
One of the enduring qualities of her work is her deep reverence for the tradition, materials and processes of her craft,
The qualities that make you ask how can such a simple thing as a bowl, something you eat from, last in time and still be magical, still be elusive in this century? How can something so simple be so alive and lasting? . . . I was not interested in being a potter for the sake of earning a living, making functional pots, putting my hands in clay, expressing myself, adopting a lifestyle-none of those things. It was the curiosity about the quality, the essence of the pots (Hanssen Pigott, 1989).
Hanssen Pigott underwent a practical training through the system of apprenticeship and not the 'hot house’ tertiary education system where every student is expected to develop a unique style.
Her development as a potter focused on interior qualities. It is this element of the still life works that shines forth in the still calm and the quiet presence. Hanssen Pigott’s forms, composed as there are of rounded wheel-thrown forms, are even more restricted than the forms chosen by Morandi, and with the restrained glaze colours are as subtle as Morandi’s most reticent watercolours. Although Morandi’s work may have been the initial inspiration the groupings have asserted their own individuality. 'Still’ lifes is also something of a misnomer when we consider the jauntiness of works such as Jug Parade 1995 or the slow, lateral movement of her landscape groupings.
Her preference for wood firing also introduces the idea of transformation. In preparing the pieces for glazing it is her response to the form and the character she wishes to develop that determines the colour and finish of the glaze. She then responds to subtle changes breathed on the surface of the glazes and the variation of the forms that enhances their initial character which prompts their selection for specific groups. She selects and places and works with a group of pieces until a resolution is established – it is essentially an intuitive process. Hanssen Pigott speaks of her response to her arrangements,
As we look, volumes turn to line, and interior colours float from thin rims, making an echo. Kinship of form, tone, line and remembrance, brings the pots together and holds them there. We, at whim, can change all that: can pour the jug, test the ties, change the stillness: watch the play. I love to tread the fine line between the static and the lively, the seductive and the pretty (Hanssen Pigott 1995).
Essentially these pieces have become non-functional 'art works’ though informed with the entire history of traditional ceramics. These essentially European objects have become true objects for contemplation in the Eastern tradition. Hanssen Pigott acknowledges that the pieces could be arranged differently (In fact, in her more recent works Hanssen Pigott offers alternate settings for the selected group which evoke different emotions in the potter and viewer.), but it requires a high level of visual sophistication to be aware of the forms and tensions of the grouping. Despite the easy rapport such works foster with the viewers most would defer to Hanssen Pigott’s own arrangement.
In 1992 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three year Artist Development Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council. She moved from her rural retreat in the Mackay hinterland to Bundamba, a suburb of the old industrial town of Ipswich (now a dormitory suburb for Brisbane) to be closer to support and resources.
Significant honours have continued to be awarded to Hanssen Pigott including a Visual Arts and Crafts Emeritus Award in 1997; an Australia Council Fellowship in 1998; and Order of Australia Medal in 2002, all in recognition to her contribution to the field of ceramics in Australia. For a practicing potter, however, the greatest honour has been a survey at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 'Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey 1955-2005’ in 2005.
Hanssen Pigott’s work is a telling rejoinder to some contemporary 'post-modern’ ceramists who play with the concepts and traditions of pottery without having the technical skills (or as profound a knowledge of pottery’s own history) and others who promote the gratuitous appeal of colour and style.
It is work in which the quality of making is an intrinsic part of the overall effect. Hanssen Pigott is an artist who understands her material and the processes of throwing and turning; and who appears to relish the delight of battling with them to achieve a dynamic control between balance and freedom. But more than this, these are pots which refer to the way we often take 'the domestic’ for granted. By encouraging us to meditate on the importance of everyday objects, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott restates a commitment to ceramics which is especially welcome at a time when post-modern cynicism offers stimulation but no solutions (Copper, 1993, p. 5).
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.Note: Primary Biographer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1935
- Summary
- Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was one of Australia's most distinguished potters whose career extended over more than five decades in Australia, England and France. She has worked and exhibited extensively and established an international reputation for her exquisite works from her base in Queensland.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Jul-13
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Janet Mansfield (1934-2013) was born in Sydney, NSW. She became interested in pottery as a young mother, attending evening classes, then studying ceramics at the East Sydney Technical College (now the National art School) from 1964-1965. Setting up her studio at Turramurra in the north of Sydney, she began making thrown domestic stoneware, handbuilt garden pots and thrown and assembled sculptural pieces.
Students from ESTC had set up the Ceramic Study Group in 1963 with Peter Rushforth as patron. Mansfield became president of the group from 1968-69 and later a life member. This was the first of many senior positions she occupied in national and international craft and ceramic organisations over the years, including president of the Australian Potters’ Society from 1985-86 and of the International Academy of Ceramics from 2007.
In her professional practice she used grants to study in Japan and the UK, and to research salt glazing. In 1977, she moved with her family to 'Morning View’, a property near Gulgong, NSW, where she continued to make salt-glazed and anagama wood-fired vessels using local Gulgong clays. With Gwyn Hanssen Pigott and Peter Rushforth, she is one of Australia’s most revered wood-firers and her work is represented in major public collections in Australia and overseas.
She was also a significant publisher and author, having written several major books on Australian and international ceramics as well as numerous journal articles. After editing Pottery in Australia from 1976-1989, she established a new international journal – Ceramics: Art and Perception – in 1990, followed by Ceramics Technical in 1995. These were published in Paddington, NSW, where she also ran the Ceramic Art Gallery on Glenmore Road until her retirement in 2005. (The task of editing the two journals has now been taken over by Elaine Olafson Henry.)
In 1987, she was awarded an Order of Australia, and she held many other national and international awards for her contribution to the arts and to ceramics.
Throughout her career she was passionate about sharing her love of clay with others. From her base in Gulgong she invited international artists to share their insights with Australian practitioners at nine triennial events – Woodfire (1989), Fire-Up (1992), Claysculpt (1995), Hyperclay (1998), Clayfeast (2001), Clay Modern (2004), Clay Edge (2007), Clay Energy (2010) and Clay Push (2013). She died on 4 February 2013, just before this last event was held.
Her work is marked with an impressed 'JM’.
Writers:
Judith Pearce
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 19 August 1934
- Summary
- As a speaker, writer, publisher, juror and convenor, Janet Mansfield put Australian ceramics on the international stage. Her magazine "Ceramics: Art and Perception" set a new standard as a high quality journal dedicated to ceramic art. As a master potter, she made stong woodfire and salt-glazed works, many of which now reside in public and private collections.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Feb-13
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.7660606 Longitude151.1601121 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Killara, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Andrews was a garden designer with training at the Ryde TAFE College. She worked as Judy Andrews Garden Design, Gordon specialising in domestic garden design. Her Rumsey Rose Garden, Parramatta Park received an award from the Horticulture Research Intl Association.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-35.3596404 Longitude145.7347999 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Jerilderie, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1931
- Summary
- Fox was a milliner, training in Sydney 1949-1958, later moving to London working for Otto Lucas, Hardy Amies and others. He kept a studio in Bond Street and made over 350 hats for the Queen of England and other members of the royal family. Recipient of many British honours, he also designed hats and headgear for film.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor, was born in Melbourne, the younger of two daughters of ceramic designer Harry Redpath and his wife, Dorothy. Her formal art training began as a commercial art course in 1943 at Swinburne Technical College, but tuberculosis combined with a long convalescence interrupted her studies. In 1946 she resumed study at Swinburne, but switched to painting. Discontent with both her work and the medium led Redpath to enrol in sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT)where she studied from 1949 to 1951. Her studies were largely self directed as she found no contemporary sculpture of interest to her in Australia, however her work soon attracted the attention of the sculptor Karl Duldig. She first exhibited with the Victorian Sculptors’ Society in 1950, and she was awarded the Society’s Stanley Hammond Prize in 1953. She also contributed to their activities as a council member and, later, as vice-chairman until her resignation.The quality of her work led her to be invited by recent immigrants,Julius Kuhn (later Kane), Inge King and Clifford Last, to join them in what became known as the Group of Four. The group exhibited in 1953 and 1955. By this time Redpath was also teaching art at a girl’s school.In 1956, with savings from two years of teaching, sales and commissions, she sailed for Europe. In Italy she studied at the Universita per Stranieri, Perugia. Later, when based in Rome, she cast two bronzetti, her interest in the potential of bronze as a medium having been aroused in Melbourne.On her return to Australia she continued to work in wood. In 1958 she was awarded the commission for for a mural based on Milton’s Areopagitica for the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne. It was carved in silky oak. In 1960 she was selected for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Six Sculptors exhibition, the first local demonstration of modernist sculpture.But by 1961 she decisively turned to bronze with Dawn figure which was a plaster cast envisaged for casting. It was awarded the Mildara (later Mildura) Prize for Sculpture. In the same year she was awarded both the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship and the Dyason Bequest travelling scholarship. In Milan in 1962 Redpath pursued further studies at the Academia di Belle Arti di Brera, gaining foundry experience on the recommendation of her teacher, Luciano Minguzzi. Two large sculptures and twelve bronzetti cast there and formed the basis of her Gallery A exhibition in Melbourne the following year. One of the sculptures gained Redpath her second Mildura Prize for Sculpture in 1964. In 1966 she won the Transfield Prize for Sculpture.Her most significant commission was the Treasury Fountain (1965-69) for the Secretariat Building in Canberra. James Gleeson described this as 'less a decoration than a morality in water and metal’'. The year after its completion she was awarded an OBE for her services to art.
Other commissions include Extended Column (1972-75) for the School of Music, Canberra; Sculpture Column (1969-72) for the Reserve Bank of Australia, Brisbane; and Bronze Reliefs (1964) for BP Australia, the Victorian Coat of Arms for the Arts Centre of Victoria (1968), Facade Relief (1970-72) for the Victorian College of Pharmacy, the Sydney Rubbo Memorial Capital (1970-73) at the University of Melbourne and Paesaggio Cariatide (1980-85) for the State Bank of Victoria, Melbourne.
Redpath regularly travelled between Italy and Australia, living and working in both countries. In 1972-74 she was awarded a Fellowship in the Creative Arts, Australian National University, Canberra. Then she worked out of her Milan studio (1974-85) before returning to develop her existing studio and production base in Melbourne. In the late 1970s Redpath ceased studio work, but instead described her sculptural ideas and projects in a manuscript, Ideas and Images. Her final commission, Paesaggio Cariatide was received in 1980 and is installed at the State Bank Centre in Bourke Street, Melbourne. The work was donated to the McClelland Gallery in 2003.
She continued to make was maquettes until the last years of her life.
She is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, the state galleries of Victoria, NSW and WA, in regional and institutional holdings and in private collections in Australia, Italy, UK and USA. In 2006 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Swinburne University.
Writers:
Kirby, Sandy
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 20 November 1928
- Summary
- Norma Redpath was a leading sculptor of the generation who emerged after World War II. Her success was even more remarkable as her career was forged at a time when it was especially difficult for women to succeed as artists. In 1956 she made the first of many visits to Italy, and there is a strong Italian influence in her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.8125405 Longitude151.1115717 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ryde, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Carrol trained as a milliner at Moray Millinery, Sydney working in women's millinery, then transferred her skills to theatre, television and film in the mid-1960s. She also taught at NIDA, TAFE NSW and the Australian Forum for Textile Artists' Fibre Forum and elsewhere. She also tutored privately.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, teacher and critic, was born in Melbourne. She studied at the National Gallery School under William Dargie, Alan Sumner and Murray Griffin in 1945-49, winning prizes for drawing and still-life painting. Sumner sent some of his students, one of them Braund, to the George Bell School for extra study, which proved a major influence. While still students at the NGV Braund and Judy Hunter had modernist works accepted by the Contemporary Art Society (Vic.) for exhibition (c.1943). They were threatened with expulsion from the CAS because they were reported in Truth as saying they had entered the works for a lark. Braund apologised and continued in the CAS, but Hunter employed lawyers, refused to apologise to John Reed and did not exhibit again with the CAS (Furby, p.91).
After finishing classes with Bell in 1949, Braund studied in England (1950-51). She rejoined the Contemporary Art Society in 1952 and in 1954 became a regular 'Thursday night’ participant at the George Bell studio until Bell’s death in 1966. Bell appreciated her ability to use form, colour and surface to create good pictorial design, and Braund became a confident exponent of Bell’s teaching ideas. She taught art at three Melbourne schools in the 1950s, gave talks on ABC radio in 1961-64, and reviewed children’s books for the Australian in 1969-77.
Instead of feeling victimised by being a woman artist, Braund stated in 1979 that she was glad that 'the collectors aren’t interested because it means that people buy my paintings because they like them, not because they are good investments’. She works in oil, gouache or watercolour, her later work being more angular in the treatment of figures and more abstract during the mid-1960s. Two excellent gouaches, The Art Class 1960 and Bathers, Sandringham 1979, were auctioned at Christie’s Sydney on 14-15 August 1994, lots 186, 194E.
In 1992 Christopher Heathcote noted that many artists who came to maturity in the 1950s have been 'unjustly neglected’ and that Braund was no exception. She held her first solo exhibition in 1952 and has exhibited consistently ever since. Her work is held in many collections: the National Galleries of Australia and Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery and regional and university galleries. She has travelled extensively: to England and Europe in 1950-51, to Greece in 1958, as well as visiting the Mediterranean, India and Asia.
Writers:
Mahoney, Bronwyn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2013
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 April 1924
- Summary
- Howel 'Jim' Chesterfield, sign writer, was born in Brisbane in 1924. He attended Rainworth State School, married Ann, and worked as a farm hand. Chesterfield produced many signs for shops and offices and real estate agents in Brisbane and south east Queensland under the company logo he started as "JC Signs".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Jun-13
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- Bert Flugelman was born in Vienna, where as a child he haunted museums and art galleries near his grandmother’s home. Once he sheltered from a rainstorm in the gallery for Secessionist art, and became entranced by Schiele, Kokoschka, and Klimt. His life changed in 1938 when the Anschluss led to Hitler’s Germany annexing Austria, and he fled.Flugelman was a 15 year old refugee, with no English when he came to Australia, so took labouring jobs in the bush. Later he enlisted as a non-combattant in the Australian army. At the end of the war he considered his future, and thought again of art. Supported by the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme he studied painting at East Sydney Technical College under Frank Hinder. At the end of his course Flugelman and his wife Rosemary travelled to Europe for adventure and exposure to art. He was struck down by poliomyelitis and fled to London for medical care at the Fever Hospital. He later credited that experience with making him take painting seriously. A fellow Australian, Cedric Flower, heard of his illness and approached the Royal Academy on his behalf. The three year grant he received from their Benevolent Fund enabled him to both survive financially and to establish his career as an artist. Years later, in Australia, Flugelman started a similar fund for Australian artists.After he recovered they traveled to New York, where he discovered a love of making sculpture. He continued so paint for some years, but it is as a sculptor that he has made his greatest impact.Shortly after returning to Australia in 1956 he began teaching part-time at East Sydney Technical College. In 1968 Donald Brook successfully argued that the University of Sydney’s new Department of Fine Arts should work with the Faculty of Architecture to create an experimental art workshop at the old tin sheds on City Road. Flugelman became the first tutor at the Tin Sheds,where he stayed for over five years. His experimental approach combined with a rigorous work ethic influenced the next generation of Australian artists, including the young Imants Tillers. Later he moved to Adelaide, and became involved in the fledgling Experimental Art Foundation and ran the Sculpture Department at the South Australian School of Art. In 1984 he moved to Wollongong University, to head the Sculpture Department at the Art School. He retired from formal teaching in 1990 but continues to mentor young artists and encourage a questioning generosity of spirit.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 28 January 1923
- Summary
- Sculptor, painter, and mentor to many younger artists, Bert Flugelman came to Australia as a refugee shortly before the outbreak of World War II. In the 1970s he oversaw the radical artists associated with the Tin Sheds Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Feb-13
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.2319581 Longitude21.0067249 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warsaw, Poland
- Biography
- Binem (William) Grunstein was born in Warsaw on 26 February 1921, the son of Herszl Grunstein and his wife Sarah (Kuperman). His parents and almost all of his family were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941, but Binem escaped to the countryside where he was able to survive by working as a farm labourer. He was joined by his brother Mark, but as the farm could not conceal two fugitive Jews they were captured.Grunstein’s ability to paint portraits of his Nazi captors led him to survive as he was transferred to a total of 14 prison camps, painting portraits at ever location. After the war he met Chana (Hania) Bornstein, another survivor. He came to Australia as an assisted immigrant in 1949, where he worked as a kitchen hand for the Australian army camp at Casula. In 1951 Chana joined him and they were married at the Great Synagogue in Sydney on her arrival.He returned to painting while working full-time as both a kitchen hand and making dresses, and later managing a dress factory. He also studied art and fashion at East Sydney Technical College. He became an active member of the Royal Art Society of NSW, and in his later years taught with them as well as exhibiting with them. He had frequent exhibitions at the Holdsworth Gallery, and his work was acquired by the Sydney Opera House.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 26 February 1921
- Summary
- His skill at portrait painting enabled Binem Grunstein to survive the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. After the war he immigrated to Australia, where he painted landscapes and other works for his own pleasure.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Jeffrey Smart was born in Adelaide on July 26, 1921, as the only son of Francis Isaac Smart, a real estate agent and his second wife, Emmeline Mildred (nee Edson). His elder half-sister was from his father’s first marriage. He first travelled to Europe when he was a child of four, but after the Great Depression destroyed his father’s business, life became more confined. Nevertheless he was able to take Saturday drawing classes from the age of 12. His early interest was in architecture, but financial reality meant that he became a trainee teacher instead. He also attended classes at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts.He was fortunate that the pioneer modernist, Dorrit Black had returned to Adelaide and it was she who first introduced him to the clean pure lines and cubic forms of modernism. He began teaching school in 1941,the same year he first exhibited with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts. He then approached a Melbourne commercial gallery, where he held his first solo exhibition. His clear-toned smooth painted geometric urban landscapes, where human figures sometimes appear as an intrusion, led him to be seen as an inoffensive modernist, an artist who could straddle both the Charm School and Surrealism.He first travelled to Europe as an adult in 1948. His experience of the great European collections, especially the work of Cezanne which he saw in Paris,and the work of the Quattrocento Italian artists helped mature his own vision. Smart returned to Adelaide in 1951 and after he was awarded the Commonwealth Jubilee Art Prize he moved to Sydney, where there were opportunities to exhibit his art.In Sydney he became the art critic of the Daily Telegraph, while continuing to support himself by working as a school teacher. Later he became the beloved Phidias, the art expert, at the ABC Radio children’s Argonauts program. Later he made the transition to television. As he became more successful as an artist Smart was able to leave school teaching and taught for a short time at East Sydney Technical College.In 1963 he was able to leave teaching and relocate to Italy where he was based for the rest of his life. Although he was surrounded by antiquity, the subjects he chose for his art tended to be those from modernity. He was entranced by the giant cubic shapes of industrial containers, empty streets, the absurd conjunction of old and new, of nature meeting geometry.Smart continued to exhibit in Australia for the rest of his life. He held exhibitions in public galleries as well as dealer galleries, and he was the subject of significant public praise. The Art Gallery of New South Wales held a retrospective exhibition of his paintings in 1999.As with many of his generation, Smart was hesitant at first to declare his sexuality, but later wrote a memoir, Not Quite Straight. His longest, and most loving relationship was with a fellow artist, Ermes de Zan who was with him from 1976 until he died.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 26 July 1921
- Summary
- With a career lasting over sixty years the Adelaide born artist Jeffrey Smart was an expatriate realist painter best known for his depiction of isolated individuals in industrial landscapes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jun-13
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude55 Longitude24 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithuania
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 January 1919
- Summary
- Zilinskas was an artist, designer, acrobat and trapeze performer who immigrated to Australia and worked in the Yuraygir National Park near Coffs Harbour NSW as a timber getter. While working there, he designed and built a timber, concrete and bottle sculpture in the forest ca.1960's that survives in 2019. He later joined the Ashton Circus where he continued designing and making circus equipment.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Aug-13
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-30.748889 Longitude121.465833 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kalgoorlie, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Bessie Saunders was book in Kalgoorlie and educated at Miss Parnell’s Girls High School Claremont before attending Margaret Saunders’ Perth School of Art. She exhibited with the WA Society of Arts, winning prizes on at least two occasions. Later she became the Society’s secretary.In 1936 she married the painter Allon Cook and while she may have continued making commercial work, she appears to have ceased working as an artist after the birth of her son, the artist Phillip Cook.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2013
- Age at death
- 100
Details
Latitude42.989911 Longitude11.8687316 Start Date1972-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sarteano, Tuscany, Italy
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 11 November 1972
- Summary
- Cavaliere’s desire was to bring to light what she did not remember of her early years in Sarteano. Her art became a lifelong project transforming the packing, storing and transporting elements of her possessions into art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude-27.1170905 Longitude150.8946408 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. September 1956
- Summary
- Kieran was an active participant of the 1980s Qld ARI sector and in community based media including 4ZZZ public radio.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.2012
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-34.4278083 Longitude150.893054 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wollongong, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by adding to it.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1952
- Summary
- Michael Callaghan's political posters helped define urban dissent in the 1970s. Later he founded Redback Graphix and created the popular health poster figure 'Condoman'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2012
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1949
- Summary
- Coote is an interior designer and furniture maker active in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, later working in Sydney for Decor, an interior design firm run by Tom Harding and David Lorimer. His firm, Coote & Co is now based in London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Trevor Nickolls was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1949. He first exhibited as a student and gained a Diploma of Fine Art from the South Australian School of Art in 1972. One of his teachers was the printmaker Franz Kempf. In 1978 he undertook a diploma in education which enabled him to work as a school art teacher. In 1979, when undertaking postgraduate studies at the Victorian College of the Arts he met the Papunya artist Dinny Nolan. He later described this as a turning point in his art, and in his life as Nolan mentored him in gaining an understanding of the directions his art could take.
The following year, after graduating with a postgraduate diploma of painting, he was appointed an education officer. This meant that he was able to travel through the Northern Territory, meeting artists and coming to see how modern the ancient techniques could appear to be. His own art changed to incorporate his new understanding of a changing tradition of Aboriginal art.In the 1980s he lived in both Sydney and Melbourne, and began to paint the awkward duality of the changing perception. It was the works of the 1980s, that showed the awkwardness and pain of Aboriginal people responding to a rapidly changing world and the growth of industrialisation, which finally brought him widespread critical acclaim. He coined the catch phrase, “Dreamtime to Machinetime” to sum up both the dilemma and the response. Dreamtime is the harmonious connection to nature and ancient traditions, while Machinetime is the trap of the modern confined life.
In 1990 Nickolls joined Rover Thomas to become the first Aboriginal artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. His work was widely collected by many institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
He was well aware of the gifts that art could bring. His last gift was to establish the Trevor Nickolls Art Award for Aboriginal artists can undertake studies at art school.After his death, his friend the artist Vernon Ah Kee wrote: “For Blackfellas like me, the work of Trevor Nickolls, in the 1970s and ‘80s was a visual language that gave voice to the confusion and complexity around the identity politics of the times. As a visual artist, he gave voice to our frustration and anger at our powerlessness and our invisibility like no artist before had.”
On 17 November 2012 the Art Gallery of South Australia held a public commemoration of his life.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1949
- Summary
- South Australian Aboriginal painter who began working in the visual arts in the early 1970s. Along with Rover Thomas, Nickolls represented Australia in the 1990 Venice Biennale. Nickolls has work in many public collections including the Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery of SA and the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Oct-12
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North East Arnhemland, NT, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1945
- Summary
- Using distinctive white and black crosses on a red ground, Yogngu artist Gulumbu Yunupingu (1945-2012) painted Garak, the starry universe, on barks and poles. She came to national prominance when she won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award (2004), and to international prominence with her scaled-up version of Garak for the Musee du quai Branly (2006).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude54.44588805 Longitude17.07368774 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stolp, Pomerania Poland, Stolp, Pomerania (Poland)
- Biography
- etcher, was appointed Founding Head of Printmaking at the Canberra School of Art, now part of The Australian National University in 1978. There is some speculation that he taught print making to Albert Namatjira Jnr while visiting Arnhem Land in 1976 and to Narratjin Maymuru and his sons when they were artists in residence at Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, in 1978. Appears to do colour etchings and engravings mostly.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1942
- Summary
- Jörg Schmeisser, etcher, is thought to have taught print making to Albert Namatjira Jnr while visiting Arnhem Land in 1976 and to Narratjin Maymuru and his sons when they were artists in residence at Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, in 1978.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.2012
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-38.2399682 Longitude142.9146792 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Terang, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2012
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, scriptwriter and stand-up comic, was born in London on 5 November 1933. A stand-up comic for thirty years, he first came to Australia in 1964 to appear at Chequers nightclub then 'just stayed and stayed’. Since about 1988 he has been employed as a scriptwriter at Channel 9, so draws few cartoons. Previously, however, he had contributed cartoons to the Bulletin , Penthouse and various other magazines. His cartoon in the B/W Artists’ Club collection (ML PxD 586/ G-I) showing two boys saying '“My Dad’s a Cartoonist.”/ “Mine’s a miserable sod too” was reproduced in Inkspot 16 (Autumn 1991), 21 (ML Q741.5994/47) and in Kerr. As a freelance cartoonist NSW, his colour cartoon of a teacher and pupil was reproduced in Rainbow – “What do you know about Federation?”/ “They build nice houses?” – a rare unpredictable view of the topic.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 5 November 1933
- Summary
- Contemporary London born, New South Wales based cartoonist, scriptwriter and stand-up comic.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- Mark Strizic (b.Marco Strizic 1928 Berlin 19.04.1928 – d. Wallan 08.12.2012) migrated to Australia from Croatia in 1950 and became a widely published architectural and industrial photographer, portraitist of significant Australians, and fine art photographer/painter known for his multimedia mural work. He, and other postwar immigrant photographers Wolfgang Sievers, Henry Talbot and Helmut Newton exerted significant influence on Australian photography, particularly in its transition to Modernism. He taught photography at tertiary level in Melbourne from 1978, and in 1984 he became a full time artist, photographer and designer. The winner of a number of photographic awards and grants, he exhibited his work widely from 1958 onwards. Strizic’s work is represented in the Australian National Gallery and several state galleries. He settled in Richmond, subsequently moving with his wife Sue to Surrey Hills, Melbourne, and finally to Wallan in country Victoria, living there until his death in 2012.
Strizic was born in 1928 in Berlin, where his father Zdenko Von Strizic (1902-1990) was studying and practising architecture (later becoming a Professor of Architecture). In 1934, in reaction to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the family fled to Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). There Strizic began to study physics and geology.
At the end of WW2 Strizic fled to Austria as a refugee following the liberation of Yugoslavia to escape the Communist regime. As there was a five-year waiting period to emigrate to the United States, he decided to go instead to Australia and departed Naples on the converted Australian Navy seaplane carrier Hellenic Prince, arriving in Melbourne in April 1950. There his good spoken English soon gained him a position as a clerk with the Victorian Railways Reclamation Department, and he resumed his studies in physics part-time at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In 1952 he married Hungarian-born Sue. Strizic bought his first camera, a Dianette, and began to photograph his environment, developing a love of strong light which he found abundant under the clear skies of his adopted city. He enjoyed contre-jour (shooting into the sun) and low afternoon side-lighting effects for their high-contrast graphic silhouettes in black and white prints, and that became his signature style for his historically and culturally significant photographs of post-war Melbourne. His abandonment of physics in 1957 for a career in photography was encouraged by his father (who visited Melbourne in 1957 as guest professor at the School of Architecture Melbourne University) and through his friendship with David Saunders (who had stayed with Strizic’s parents in Yugoslavia in 1952.1 Saunders, a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Melbourne who was then acting Assistant Director at the National Gallery of Victoria, provided increasingly frequent photography commissions. In 1957 Saunders introduced him to Leonard French, an artist and the Gallery’s Exhibitions Officer, who asked him to document exhibitions, including the 1959 retrospective of cabinet maker Schulim Krimper’s furniture.
Postwar industrialisation in Australia then led to work for BHP and Humes Limited and McPhersons, photographing the plants, manufacturing, products and workers for annual reports and advertising, while the concurrent housing boom provided further opportunities. Again through Saunders, in 1958 Strizic met modernist Robin Boyd of architectural firm Grounds, Romberg and Boyd, who became a major client. Boyd controversially criticised Australian suburban culture in his book The Australian Ugliness of 19602, and likewise Strizic’s photography began to illustrate Australians’ disdain for their architectural heritage and their scant regard for the visual aesthetics of their urban environment amidst the destruction of magnificent Gold Rush era buildings and verandahs and their replacement by high-rise modernist office-blocks. His work was widely published in architectural books and journals but also illustrated social commentary during this period of a national identity crisis with frequent contributions of his photo-essays to Walkabout, Australia Today and other travel magazines. In 1960 Strizic joined David Saunders to produce Melbourne: A Portrait, stating 'Its central thought is that while men make cities, the cities also affect the men’.3
Having become the first photographer to exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968, Strizic moved more emphatically into fine art, finding a market for large scale mural installations amongst corporate clients. He began combining, enlarging, cropping and transforming elements from his black and white negatives through montage, then colourising and posterising the monochrome images in the manner associated with Pop Art. Symbols of urban ugliness such as power poles and billboards were his subject matter and critical target in often apocalyptic imagery intended to provoke a social consciousness. Strizic was an early adopter of digital imaging for the construction of such works (he discussed these processes in an address to “Still Photography?”, International Symposium in Melbourne, 1994.
Strizic lectured in photography at a number of tertiary education institutions including Preston (Phillip) Institute of Technology (1975-1977); Melbourne College of Advanced Education (Lecturer in Charge of Photography 1977-1982) and the Victorian College of the Arts (part-time lecturer in Photography 1982-1984).
1. 'Professor’s wife from Yugoslavia’, The Age, May 15 1957
2. Boyd, Robin 1960, The Australian ugliness, F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne
3. joint statement by the authors of Strizic, Mark & Saunders, David 1960, Melbourne : a portrait, Georgian House, Melbourne p.1
Writers:
James McArdle
fishel
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 19 April 1928
- Summary
- Mark Strizic is one of the remarkable generation of photographers who migrated to Australia in the years after World War II.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Dec-12
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8936689 Longitude151.1656456 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stanmore, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Bevan was a typographer who established a graphic arts business Dalley Typesetting P/L, later known as Paul Dalley Apex P/L. He introduced computerised transfer of images from film to lithographic plates for 4-colour printing and was involved in the abandonment of hot-type for computerised typesetting. His firm, then known as Adtype, was acquired by Harland and Hyde in 1993.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kensington, London, England, UK
- Biography
- Born and trained in London, the daughter of expatriate Australian artists, painter Evelyn Chapman and composer Sir George Thalben-Ball, Pamela Thalben-Ball worked as a landscape and portrait painter in Australia from the 1960s onwards, initially as a visitor but eventually based in the Sydney suburb of Avalon.
Writers:
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- London-born and trained daughter of expatriate Australians, worked as a landscape and portrait painter in late twentieth century Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2012
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Walford was an interior designer and a founder member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia. His design practice (est.1957) specialised in a period-based style, often mixing European furniture and furnishings with Australian work. Design commissions included the first iteration of Elizabeth Bay House, Kirribilli House (Whitlam era), Pruniers restaurant and work for socially prominent families.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 July 1927
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Feb-12
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Davis was a puppet designer and maker with fashion design training from St Martins School of Art, London. She began work in puppets for the BBC. Touring Australia in 1956 with Peter Scriven's Marionette Theatre of Australia, she stayed on in Sydney. She later worked in puppetry in TV. Her most celebrated puppet was Amanda the Cat. She retired in 1991. Her puppets have been placed in Australian collections.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Pollack began his career as a dress designer by working as a tailor with a shop in Elizabeth Bay Road, Kings Cross. He later began a fashion design business called "Shapely Creations". His designs were sold through David Jones Department Store, Sydney and other outlets
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Tasker was a sailor, ship-chandler, sailmaker and boat designer beginning in skiffs, later customising a 40 Square Metre class yacht sailing as "Siska" for ocean racing. In his later years, he created the Australian Sailing Museum, Mandurah, WA (2008-2012)
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Harrison was an engineer with an active interest in design and competitive rowing. He formed a partnership with Ted Curtain to design and develop a rowing machine with ergometric features. He later became involved in boat design introducing hull improvements, improved winches for sailboats and other mechanical devices. He retired from teaching in the 1980s but continued his consultancies.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Brisbane, Qld, on 9 December 1922; studied art Brisbane Technical College 1938. After five years in the army he worked as a cartoonist and artist while continuing his studies at ESTC (1948-51); then worked as painter in Brisbane apart from visits to England and Italy in 1957 and 1958. Won an Italian Government Scholarship to Italy, and in 1958 won the Women’s Weekly Portrait Prize. Won many prizes including Richards, Sulman and Melrose. Member CAS, Qld, and of Half Dozen Group of Artists, Brisbane, Qld.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 9 December 1922
- Summary
- Brisbane based painter and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Oct-12
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.65233935 Longitude-2.64356407 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Shropshire, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Dearnley was a small boat builder who was part of a team of five designers who created the Heron sailing dinghy. He was at one time the President of the National Heron Sailing Association. In addition to his design work, he was also a book editor and founder of the Ulysses Motorcycle Club.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 19 February 1921
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude37.7790262 Longitude-122.419906 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in San Francisco (USA), a fifth-generation Australian who came to Sydney as a young child with her parents. She went to school at Ascham in Sydney and at Westonbirt, England. Her mother, Ailsa Lee Brown , was an artist, and Mitty also studied art: at East Sydney Technical College under Frank Medworth and William Dobell in 1944-46. While still a student, she took up residence at Merioola in Woollahra, a boarding house run by Chica Lowe who actively sought tenants with an interest in all fields of artistic expression. In 1944 Mitty Lee Brown was runner-up to Anne Wienholt , another Merioola resident, for the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship. In 1945 three pages of Present Day Art in Australia were devoted to her work; the paintings reproduced included a self-portrait, Sulky Girl .
Mitty Lee Brown left Australia with Wienholt in 1945, travelled extensively and did not return to Sydney until 1962, then but briefly. This inveterate traveller has lived in Paris and near Bordeaux in France, in Rome and, briefly, in Tokyo. She has built a house in Bali near Donald Friend’s longtime residence, lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, India, and renovated a house on the Greek Island of Cos. She has also undertaken two overland journeys from Europe to Australia via Turkey, Afghanistan and India. From 1980 until her death in June 2012, as Mrs Risi, she lived and worked near Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, but maintained regular visits to Australia.
Writers:
Simmons, Paul
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Lee Brown a painter and printmaker, doyenne of the Charm School. Born in San Francisco was runner up in NSW Travelling Art Scholarship, 1944. Left Australia in 1945 to travel extensively around the world. She spent her final years in Sri Lanka.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and comic book artist, was born in Glebe, Sydney (acc. Shiell ed). He always wanted to draw cartoons and attended Saturday morning art lessons as a boy at Oswald Brock 's studio in Sydney’s Victoria Arcade. He left high school during the Depression and found work as a junior poster artist with Hackett Offset Printing, meanwhile studying commercial art at night at East Sydney Technical College. He stayed at Hackett’s for six months, then became a designer and illustrator for a furniture manufacturer, Corkhill & Lang (later Frazer’s Furniture). He moved to Grace Brothers as furniture artist and salesman, but this was short-lived; he spent 1941-45 in the AIF and RAAF.
After the war Wedd decided to complete his Commercial Art course under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. He created his first strip, Sword and Sabre , during the 1946 Christmas break. It was sold to Syd Nicholls’s publishing company and appeared as three monthly episodes in Middy Malone magazine. Wedd produced eight more strips for the magazine, all like Sword and Sabre about the French Foreign Legion. Nicholls, who was both nationalist and anti-war, encouraged him to try an Australian story, resulting in Captain Justice , the bushranger who righted wrongs, and a lifelong passion for Australian history. The strip first appeared in a Middy Malone book, was upgraded to a Fatty Finn comic, and when Nicholls was forced to abandon publishing after the 1950 Coal Strike, Wedd managed to get a contract with New Century Press for a series of 'Captain Justice’ books with the hero now from the American Wild West. 23 comic books were isssued in this series.
Meanwhile, Wedd produced one-off comic books, Kirk Raven and Tod Traill – the latter an American Western – for Elmsdale Publications. He created strips for Stamp News (on the history of the stamp) and for Dr T.S. Hepworth’s Australian Children’s Newspaper (which lasted for 16 years) and designed and illustrated all eight ABC Argonauts annuals. In 1954 he created The Scorpion for Elmsdale. It became a bestseller with sales of up to 100,000 per issue, he claimed, despite being banned in Queensland. Calvert Publishing decided to re-issue the Captain Justice books, but they had to be largely re-drawn to satisfy 1950s censorship rules and regulations, e.g. the hero’s face could not be entirely hidden, no flashes could issue from guns, no character could carry an offensive weapon in the hand, and no-one was allowed to be killed (the code did not apply to rival American strips, of course). He also wrote and illustrated eight books for Calvert about a war-time American, Kent Blake of the Secret Service .
Aching to do 'something really Australian’ (Wedd in Rae, 91), Wedd sold to the Women’s Mirror a serial strip called Children of Fortune set in the Macquarie period. Its success led to other commissions from the magazine, part of the Bulletin stable. At the same time he was producing a local version of Chuckler’s Weekly for Telegraph Newspapers. When local comics 'again took a nose dive’ in the early 1960s, Wedd found a new part-time career discussing his growing collection of Australiana and other historic topics as a TV guest on various Channel 9 programs. In 1965 he drew about 60 'Dollar Bill’ strips for the Decimal Currency Board. In 1966 he joined Artansa Park Studios and helped design a Lone Ranger animation feature for TV. This was followed by Rocket Robin Hood (also 1966). In 1968 he worked with Eric Porter Studios designing a TV series about his old Chuckler’s Weekly characters, leading to further work in the 1970s.
Wedd was in great demand for the Cook Bicentenary, creating historic strips, illustrations and cards for everything from TV series to Minties and washing powder in 1969-70 (Wedd in Rae, 92-93). He finally cracked the Sunday comics in 1974 when the Sunday Mirror accepted his Ned Kelly strip. It ran for 146 issues, until July 1977, and was published in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Bold Ben Hall followed. A longtime member and vice-president of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, Wedd lives at Williamstown, NSW (Lindesay 1994). He is married and has a family. In 1993 he was awarded an Order of Australia for his services as author, illustrator and historian. He won Stanley Awards in 1987 and 1989.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
stokel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 5 January 1921
- Summary
- Wedd was a Sydney cartoonist, designer and comic book artist who worked on the nation's earliest animated film "Marco Polo vs the Red Dragon". He also executed covers for pulp fiction, drew trading cards and other emphemera. His obituary cites the establishment of his "Monarch Historical Museum", Dee Why (1960). Early in his career, he also designed selected items of furniture for Corkhill & Lang and Grace Bros., Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-39.9324904 Longitude175.0519306 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wanganui, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1920
- Summary
- Bethwaite was a aircraft pilot who initially designed gliders, then designed sailing dinghies such as the Northbridge Junior and later the 4.5 metre Northbridge Senior. After founding a company Starboard Products, later Bethwaite Design, he developed the Laser 2 (two crew Laser) and the Taser. Their final boat design developed by his son Julian was the 49er FX, a new Olympic sailing class.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-43.53 Longitude172.620278 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, cartoonist and art teacher, was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 13 November 1904, daughter of Arnold Wall (who wrote articles that were published in Lone Hand 1907-8) and E.K.M. Curnow. After initial art studies at Christchurch, Edith studied in Rome and London (Westminster Polytechnic). In 1933 she married Oscar A. Bayne, an architect; they had one daughter, Cosima. Wall came to Sydney in 1939 when her husband was appointed director of the Commonwealth Experimental Building Station; later the family lived in Balwyn, Melbourne.
Wall regularly exhibited watercolours and drawings with Sydney’s Society of Artists, the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS), the Contemporary Art Society (Vic.) and elsewhere. Strawberry Ices (two very fat women in fox stoles), shown with the Society of Artists in 1943, was illustrated in their catalogue; Woman with Cinerarias (a nasty Sydney socialite) was included in 1945. Alan McCulloch praised her satiric drawings in 'Contemporary Art Displayed’, Herald (Melbourne) 11 May 1955, 21.
Between 1940 and 1950 Wall worked primarily as a cartoonist, producing trenchant, witty and occasionally bleak cartoons for the Ure Smith publications Australia National Journal and its companion annual Australia Weekend Book . The fifth (1946) volume of the latter published a portfolio of her cartoons, all signed with the gender-neutral signature 'Wall’. Many were acid comments on wartime society, women and businessmen, but it was her military cartoons in particular that encouraged the belief that 'Wall’ was a man. The joke frequently lay in the incongruity of soldiers and situation. Hence a tough digger deep in the New Guinea jungle in 1942 reads a romantic novel to two even beefier mates ('Now, we’d just got to the part where Gervaise, suspecting Lady Irma’s infidelity, slips from the conservatory’), or else four hideous Hun officers worry in January 1945, 'Mein vriends, if things go on like this ve vill all become pure ornaments’. The artist’s gender was revealed in Australia National Journal in June 1945 with the publication of a photograph of her by Olive Cotton .
Wall’s 12 joke cartoons in Australia Week-end Book 1 (1942) include the ludicrous “Playtogs?” and [2 effeminate male dancers] “Well, frankly, I think that bow on top makes your costume look slightly silly” . She was the most prolific cartoonist in the book. Vol.2 (1943) contained 15 cartoons by Wall, equal to (but reproduced larger than) those by “Wiz” .They include: “Doctor’s sorry he can’t come; he says would you mind if the local man had a look at you?” (i.e. witch doctor), “I’m tired of this war – aren’t you?” , “I love the [Sydney] harbour trip – must be my seafaring blood coming out” , and “Now, we’d just got to the part where Gervaise, suspecting Lady Irma’s infidelity, slips from the conservatory” . Vol.3 (1944) has 17 Wall examples, again the same number as “Wiz”. They include The Drawing Lesson , cheese /furniture polish cartoons and “George is with the Eighth Army…” Vol.4 (1945) had 10 cartoons (just less than Wiz). Vol.5 included a 'Portfolio of Wall’s Drawings’, pp.161-76 (Wiz got a portfolio too).
In 1956-70 Wall taught art, worked as an illustrator and publicist and designed an Australian exhibition display for Britain. She was a committee member of the NSW Contemporary Art Society in 1944-50 (and exhibited with it 11 times up to 1959: see Paula Furby, PhD pp.157-58) and of the Melbourne CAS in 1960-64. She held a solo exhibition in 1954 (see McCulloch, 'Satirical Intentions’, Herald 4 August 1954, 16), won the VAS drawing prize in 1956 and the Minnie Crouch prize at Bendigo Art Gallery in 1971 – the year she had a solo exhibition of her small-scale satirical works at Melbourne’s Leveson Street Gallery. Her last solo show, held at Melbourne in 1996, apparently consisted mainly of watercolour landscape paintings. She told JK in 1994 that she did few satiric works because people only bought landscapes.
Wall’s other interests were 'history, languages, cooking’, she wrote in 1982, adding:
I started drawing at the age of two, and so my ideals had to be invented later. I am a descriptive, not abstract, artist; I am continually hunting the adjustments between colour and space, shadow and substance, finite form and infinite ambience. Colour and line are the weapons I use to attack reality. My main object is to paint a picture that has not been seen before. This is difficult as it necessitates a many-fronted approach.
Wall also drew cartoons for Man .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 13 November 1904
- Summary
- Mid 20th century New Zealand-born, Sydney and Melbourne-based painter, printmaker, cartoonist and art teacher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Apr-12
- Age at death
- 108
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1956
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jun-11
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude52.0799838 Longitude4.3113461 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- The Hague, Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 18 August 1954
- Summary
- John Barbour was an Australian Experimental Art Foundation council member from 1996-98, its council chairman from 1997-98. He was a long-time lecturer at the South Australian School of Art. First exhibiting in the 1980s, John Barbour's contemporary art has since shown in Stockholm, London, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Auckland. His work is represented in the Art Gallery of South Australia
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Apr-11
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1946
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude52.2434979 Longitude5.6343227 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Holland, Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1934
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Humble began her training at the East Sydney Technical College under Phyllis Shillito and others. She initially studied industrial design but did not pursue it. She took a number of jobs, at one time working at the Martin Boyd Pottery. She completed her diploma in 1959. Her first solo show was held in 1972 and she later exhibited with the Eva Breuer Gallery, Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude52 Longitude20 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Poland
- Biography
- In 1950 Polish Holocaust survivor Sabina Wolanski, alongside husband Zdenek (Dennis), arrived in Sydney as an assisted immigrant. The couple had been living in Paris for two years, where Zdenek was a cutter in a shirt factory. Sabina recalls, “One day in Paris I saw a man promoting a tie on the street. I was intrigued and thought it was a clever idea for a business. I bought this strange looking product and packed it when we came to Australia. It was a clip-on tie, a real novelty, and we could see its potential. Zdenek refined and completely changed its structure and shape.” Using this experience, Zdenek gained employment working in a manufacturing company in York Street. The couple introduced the clip-on tie to David Jones and had great success under the Stardust name. It was in a shiny fabric dotted with tiny points that resembled stars. This tie was then patented and they became the Lido Tie Manufacturing Company. By 1956 the couple were travelling to Como, Italy, to buy and import custom-designed and hand-woven fabrics for their ties, bow ties and cravats.
Writers:
Jenni Hagedorn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1930
- Summary
- Designer and Director of Lido Tie Manufacturing Company
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-23.2759057 Longitude129.3881877 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kintore, NT, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-29.7379146 Longitude151.7356326 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glen Innes, Australia
- Biography
- Thomas Fletcher Gillies (1928-2011)
The interior decorator Thomas Gillies was a contemporary of such notable Sydney designers and decorators as Marion Hall Best, Deric Deane, Meryl du Boulay and Florence Broadhurst. While Tom (as he was more commonly known) valued privacy, he moved effortlessly amongst his clientele where he became known for his ability to mix and match old and new furnishings to provide ease as well as style. “I don’t like the impossible,” he said in a recorded 2010 interview, “where you don’t know where to sit down and be comfortable.”
Tom Gillies was born in Glen Innes, NSW. The district is known for livestock and his father, Bruce Gillies, was a successful stock and station agent and his mother Edna attended Teachers College. Mrs Gillies’s teacher training proved crucial to the family after Bruce Gillies’s death in 1941.
Gillies was educated in Glen Innes and had no early design training or exposure to the arts. In 1945, he was placed in a clerical position into the local Commonwealth Bank. Three years later, he asked for a transfer to a Sydney branch. He mentioned a Sydney placement, he said, because he had visited the city once with his father.
Soon restless with clerking, he took up an opportunity in the furnishings department of McDowell’s department store at King and George Streets. Shortly afterward, he met the interior decorator and architect Deric (Frederick) Deane who ran a well-known antique shop in Rowe Street and later, an interior decorating studio known as Deane and Hall in the Trust Building, King and Castlereagh Streets. Deric Deane and his partner Don Hall introduced him to the profession of interior decoration.
Deric Deane was Sydney’s pre-imminent interior decorator as well as a registered architect and Deane and Hall had an impressive clientele including such figures as Sir Alfred Davidson, the head of the Bank of NSW and Mr and Mrs Robert Brash, the chairman of the Sydney Stock Exchange. After a year with Deric Deane, Gillies decided that he needed to do a design course at the East Sydney Technical College but Deane and his associates tried to discourage it, telling him it was a waste of time. But he persisted and took courses with Phyllis Shillito, the noted colourist, who trained him in colour mixing. Her theories, he said, allowed him to mix any colour a client wanted, even matching colours that had been on the walls for thirty years.
In the 1950s, Deric Deane folded the practice in the city and Deane and Gillies established a new practice in Edgecliff advertised under the name “Thomas Gillies”. The practice was successful enough to earn attract Taubmans paints who featured Thomas Gillies interiors in a series of colour advertisements. Deane died in 1960 and Gillies then began to practice independently from a new Edgecliff shop, later moving to Bay Street, Double Bay and other locations in the eastern suburbs.
Many of Gillies’s early clients were well-known NSW families who continued to rely on Thomas Gillies through two generations. He maintained that he had done hundreds of country houses. While reluctant to identify clientele, he noted professional relationships with Lady Pagan [Sir Jock and Lady Marjorie Pagan], Dame Helen Blaxland, and provided designs for “The Lodge”, Canberra for Hon. Malcolm and Tammy Fraser. He developed an interior design scheme for Government House, Parramatta for the National Trust of Australia (NSW) and “Clydebank” in The Rocks for Caroline Simpson.
As an interior designer, Gillies was a soothing but shrewd practitioner. “If you’ve got ideas and you want your client to have them, quite often you’ve got to be very diplomatic how you present them,” he said in a recent interview. “If they want a black and white and yellow room, you might do a yellow room with black and white. But they think they’ve got a black and white and yellow room. It was a good way to put things together.” But at the same time, he respected the client’s taste. “You can’t just thrust your personality onto them; you’ve got to step back. Your client is the most important person.”
Unlike contemporary interior designers, Gillies did no drawings or colour boards at all. He simply took three metre samples of textiles to the client and a hatful of ideas and presented his thoughts about decor in their living room. He also resisted floor plans, insisting that furniture should always be moved about, considering that fixed schemes for rooms were anathema, arguing that rooms should change for the seasons.
Gillies continued to practice in Sydney with an interlude in Burley Heads, Queensland in the 1970s when he explored flower painting with exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries in Canberra, Victor Mace, Brisbane and the Painters Gallery, Burton Street. Then after five years in the tropics, he returned to interior decoration to re-launch his career in Double Bay.
He considered his interior decoration for the 19th century Government House in Darwin to be one of his most exciting commissions. The house’s gabled rooms open onto the cane furniture of a screened verandah that circles the white-painted building. “I gave them simple things,” he said. “So I thought, it’s the tropics, so I gave them big simple sofas covered in printed linens, simple striped curtains and nice clear colours.”
In his later years, he kept up with his friends and acquaintances, worked with the late Caroline Simpson, one of his oldest and closest friends, on her house and museum, “Clydebank” in The Rocks, Sydney and auctioned his collection in 2008 through Sotheby’s as “The connoisseur’s spring collection: including the private collection of Colin Lennox and Tom Gillies, John Stephens and the late John Klinger.” He maintained his creativity by executing tapestry work to his own designs. His career is now commemorated with the annual Thomas Gillies Scholarship for Interior Design and Decoration students at Design Centre, Enmore sponsored by Radford Furnishings.
Michael Bogle with Annalisa Capurro who interviewed Thomas Gillies in December 2010. Thanks also to interior decorator Malcolm Forbes for valuable information regarding the career of Deric Deane.
[Prepared as an obituary, published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 2012]
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Gillies was an interior designer/decorator who apprenticed with the architect and interior designer Frederick Deane's practice in Sydney known as Deane and Hall (Don). In the 1950s, Gillies and Deane combined their practice in Edgecliff, a Sydney suburb as "Thomas Gillies". Gillies continued the practice under his name as various locations. In the 1970s, he moved to Burleigh Heads, Qld, then back to Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-11
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- Sahm was a production potter working with Terra Ceramics, Sydney and Gutenhalde Ceramics, Stuttgart, Germany. He established a pottery in Mosman in 1958 and taught at the National Art School. He continued working in ceramics and teaching until his retirement in 1984.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-11
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jan-11
- Age at death
- 85