Grace Cossington Smith at the Mornington Gallery
I recently went to the Know My Name exhibition at the Mornington Regional Gallery with fellow blog writers, Jane and Caroline. This Gallery was hosting a subset exhibition of a larger exhibition in Canberra, Australia.
The Know My Name initiative is part of an ongoing series of gender equity displays which seeks to raise the profile of women artists who have previously been omitted from published histories and public collections. 1
This travelling exhibition draws from a two-part exhibition which was held over 2020- 2022. Caroline and I wrote about that, and you can read our posts if you click the links in the footnotes below. The initiative especially focuses on moments in which women created new forms of art and cultural commentary through time, dating back to the 19th century, right up to modern times. 1
A number of artists that we have featured on the blog previously were represented, such as Margaret Preston, Dorrit Black, Dorothy Braund and Hermia Boyd, just to name a few.
But today I would like to focus on the one example that there was in the exhibition by Grace Cossington Smith. I’ve written about Grace Cossington Smith previously, and you can revisit that post if you click here.
There is also a lovely 5 minute video by the National Gallery of Victoria which describes Grace’s artistic journey, and how she painted almost in obscurity until she was “discovered” in her later life. It also features the painting that was in the “Know My Name” exhibition at Mornington, and is well worth watching:
And now to show you the painting, called “Interior in Yellow” and the description card that was beside it....
The composition and colour show the room as a light and airy, but it is the detail of the brushstrokes that had me fascinated. Here are a few of photos I took, and I hope you can see what I mean. And the fact that these thick, short brushstrokes make up the whole painting is just amazing!
I love the place card saying that by the time Grace painted this she was age 70, and ... "had thrown caution to the winds” in terms of her use of bold, bright colours!
This again bears out the fact that Grace was almost glad that she was unknown for most of her life as she could paint exactly how and what she wanted!
Even though I had included an image of the work in my original post, it was such a privilege to be able to see the actual painting and examine it up close! I hope you like it too!
Footnotes