Tag: art
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Iona House Red and Blue
Iona House in all its glorious Kodak Instamatic colour. There’s the old bank/playhouse on the left. Looks like we had visitors that day. | Iona House, 2066 Main Drain Road, c1960s | The architect of the Iona House, John Davidson said “Your parents were looking for a contemporary statement, not an imitation heritage, or pseudo […]
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Iona House Features
In the black and white days of the Iona House at 2066 Main Drain Road, Iona, family and possessions were falling gently into place. A whole new world of light filled, curtain free spaces and a plan for a really big garden. | Iona House c1960 | The stairway up to the more formal lounge room […]
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Iona House Family
| Iona House, c1960 | I contacted architect John Davidson and he kindly corresponded with me about the “Carlowrie” house at Iona. I have always loved the ramp device on the house and John mentioned it was my mother Hayden’s idea to make it easier to get the prams into the house. At this stage, […]
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Iona House Beginnings
As the grand-daughter of a Koo-We-Rup East Iona pioneer, my mother Hayden Ritson (Kavanagh) inherited all sorts of land around Iona. In the late 1950s, my parents decided to build a brand new house in the modern style. It would be right next door to the Iona Post Office. They called it “Carlowrie” after the […]
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Swampland
I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with Australian land. I’m sure it’s got to do with my ancestors and their struggle with the land and the obvious question of what happened to the indigenous people of the area. | Unknown, Aboriginal Australian shelter in bushland (Gippsland?), c1883, State Library of Victoria | In 1892 my […]
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Fitzpatrick’s Drouin
Photographer Jim Fitzpatrick was an official war photographer for the Australian Information Service. The activities of this government department were many and varied, and in 1981 two packets of photographs of the rural Victorian town Drouin were sent back to Australia by the New York office of the A.I.S. Some of these photos had appeared […]
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Drouin Drinkers
I spent my early years in Gippsland. The Swamp District. I came across this image of my Great Aunt Eileen, pulling beers, or turning on the tap, at the Drouin Hotel. Eileen Glen. | Jim Fitzpatrick, Mrs Gleeson pours a beer for customers at the Drouin Hotel, Drouin, 1944 | In 1944, the Curtin government […]
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Lina Bryans Richmond
Lina Bryans met a lovely architect Alex Jelinek in the 1950s and found a really large house at 39 Erin Street, Richmond. Jelinek took this great shot of Lina doing her thing. Lina is painting a portrait of Brita Sievers, the wife of photographer Wolfgang Sievers. | Lina Bryans, 1958, photo by Alex Jelinek | Architect […]
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Lina Bryans’ Pink Colony
Artists’ Colonies seem a particularly Melbourne thing in the early part of the 20th century. A dog bite was responsible for Bryans’ Colony. Lina Bryans knocked on the door of Ada May Plante (a painter friend of Jock Frater) for some help and the reclusive artist offered Lina a room to stay for the night which […]
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Young Lina Bryans
Lina Bryans was born in Europe but her parents were Australian. Bryans was a Hallenstein whose family had made their money from a successful tannery and leather business in Melbourne. Her maternal great-grandfather, Sir Benjamin Benjamin, had been Lord Mayor of Melbourne in the 1880s. The family moved from St Kilda to South Yarra in the […]
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Music of Lina Bryans
In memory of Brian Finemore, Lina Bryans gave one of her major late works, Landscape Quartet, to the National Gallery of Victoria. | Lina Bryans, Landscape Quartet, 1971, oil on canvasboard (4 panels) | What an amazing painting. And finally her last two paintings. Softly swirling pale landscape. | Lina Bryans, Cooper Meander, 1971, oil on canvas on […]
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Lina Bryans You-Beaut
Around the same time Lina Bryans was changing direction, there was a new generation of young curators on the scene in the Australian art world.
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Mary Cecil Allen
Melbourne born Mary Cecil Allen was a very well known artist and educator from the 1930s who after her death was another one of those ladies sidelined by art historians.
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Dancing and Painting
George Johnston was very positive about the state of the arts in Australia in 1966.
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Football and Lifesaving
There is a big section in George Johnston and Robert Goodman’s The Australians on sport. The Sporting Life.
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Hyde Park and Opera
Another chapter in The Australians by Robert Goodman and George Johnston is The Cities.
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Fitzroy River and Judith Wright
In The Australians, published by Rigby Limited in 1966, Robert Goodman and George Johnston’s first chapter concerns The Land.