Practicing across disparate mediums, styles and moments in time and space, Australian artists Bessie Davidson (1879–1965) and Sally Smart are connected not only by relation: they are also both strong feminist presences in male-dominated, avant-garde traditions. The exhibition explores these ties through over 50 paintings by Davidson and several key works by Smart.
Davidson spent most of her life in Paris, where she first moved to study in 1904 with fellow painter Margaret Preston. Her Impressionist interpretation of domestic interiors, landscapes and female portraits reflected her thriving creative surrounds. Geographically dislocated from her homeland, Davidson’s choice to remain overseas was unusual. “Davidson and other female artists of this period do not fit neatly into the ‘canon’ of art history, nor does Davidson ascribe to traditional notions of the avant-garde,” explains exhibition curator Tansy Curtin. “Yet the life she chose to lead was quite avant-garde.”
In contrast, Smart looks back in time, combining a range of mediums including performance, collage and textiles to reimagine experimental dance and other cultural histories from a feminist perspective. As Bessie Davidson’s niece, Smart was inspired by her aunt’s work. “The influence of Bessie Davidson on my identity as a young artist was profound,” reflects Smart. “My early art education enabled knowledge of Margaret Preston, compounding Davidson’s relevance and my interest in women artists and their artistic legacy.”
Smart envisions her aunt’s friendship and relations with Preston in a new video work featuring dancers Jo Lloyd and Deanne Butterworth. The dance explores “their decade-long relationship through a tumultuous time in human history and their lives as women artists in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century,” says Smart. “They were courageous artists.”
Two artists and the Parisian avant-garde
Bessie Davidson and Sally Smart
Bendigo Art Gallery
6 June—26 July
This article was originally published in our March/April 2020 print edition.
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.
Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.
A new exhibition at the Australian National Capital Artists Inc (ANCA) asks 12 artists—including Dan Powers, S.A.Adair, Emma Beer and Lisa Sammut—to explore scale: from the miniature to the monumental.
Julie Mehretu’s first solo exhibition in the southern hemisphere, now showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, attempts to harness the urgency and energy of the Ethiopian-born New Yorker’s multilayered painting practice.
