In 1899 artist Mary Cockburn Mercer ran away from her Melbourne home to Paris. She was 17 years old. After living what we might call the ‘bohemian artistic life’ Mercer went on to become a respected (and somewhat elusive) Australian painter.
This particular story is only one of many being told in Intrepid Women: Australian women artists in Paris 1900-1950. Showing at S. H. Ervin Gallery, the exhibition features paintings, prints and ceramics by 30 Australian women who travelled to Paris to study, paint and pursue their artistic lives. The show includes works by well known artists such as Grace Crowley, Anne Dangar, Ada May Plante and Margaret Preston, amongst others.
“The first half of the 20th century was a time of great social change and women benefited from new found freedoms,” says Jane Watters, director of S.H. Ervin Gallery. “Paris was the undisputed capital of the art world and artists of all nationalities gravitated there to experiment in life and their artistic practices.”
Yet despite the social advances being made, women artists travelling abroad to chase their artistic careers were still living quite boldly for their time. As Watters points out, “Many of these women, freed from the expectation of marriage and motherhood, embarked on art careers; some with the support of family whilst others worked tirelessly to achieve their goal of travelling to Europe.”
“Those artists who were in Paris during the cubist and modernist periods, including Grace Crowley, Dorrit Black and Anne Dangar, certainly embraced the innovations in art and, in the case of Crowley and Black, brought back a deep understanding of these movements,” says Watters. Indeed Crowley and Black both began art schools on their return to Sydney. But as the director notes these women “were met with stern opposition to their modernist teachings.”
This final point links to the central core of Intrepid Women: the simultaneously liberating position of these women alongside the difficulties of their time in Paris. As Watters sums up, “We hope that audiences will admire these women who bravely travelled to France, often alone, and appreciate what some of them had to do to get there.”
Intrepid Women: Australian women artists in Paris 1900-1950
S. H. Ervin Gallery
2 December – 11 March (closed 18 December – 5 January)
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
For Lardil and Yangkaal writer and curator Maya Hodge, Archie Moore’s presentation at this year’s Venice Biennale is a powerful symbol of reckoning—one that asks the world to bear witness to the long shadows of colonial violence and clears space for possibilities ahead.
Bringing together 70 artists from 30 countries, the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art fosters connections across cultures and borders, and translates cultural knowledge for the present day.
In a new collaborative exhibition at PS Art Space, in partnership with Cool Change Contemporary, five artists with process-lead practices contemplate material ethics through actively engaging in slowness and reuse.
