Out of the Shadows of a Long Summer

Out of the Shadows of a Long Summer

Alison Rehfisch and her contemporaries

Jean Appleton, Janna Bruce, Enid Cambridge, Margaret Coen, Grace Cossington Smith, Nancy Goldfinch, Adelaide Perry, Margaret Preston, Alison Rehfisch

Curated by Nick Vickers

4 September to 10 October 2019 

A group of women artists emerge from the shadows of the long summer of Sydney during the nineteen thirties.  These are the late afternoon shadows that stretch from the northern suburbs of Pymble and Waitara to the tiny bohemian enclave of Rowe and Bligh Streets in the centre of a city exhaling the dust of the second world war. Sometimes these are the shadows of their male contemporaries who were riding a wave of Modernism into the ateliers and galleries that peppered that part of town.

The Dattilo-Rubbo studio, based in Rowe Street was to become the central meeting point for many of the women artists of that inter-war period. It was not just a physical location but also a studio where the location of ideas, philosophies and colour theories become the dialogue of the day. Dattilo-Rubbo was energised by the works of Cezanne, Matisse and Gaugin and his influence on the direction that the works of artists like Alison Rehfisch, Grace Cossington-Smith, Nancy Goldfinch, Adelaide Perry and Margaret Coen were to take forms the central curatorial of this exhibition.

Image above: Alison Rehfisch Berrima Landscape, oil on canvas

Images courtesy and © the artists

Installation photography Richard Glover