Much anticipated exhibition opens its doors at MAC

Published on 12 May 2015

One of Mildura Art Centre’s most generous art donations will be officially opened this Thursday with the Joyce McGrath Donation exhibition going on show for the very first time.

Accomplished local artist Joyce McGrath OAM donated thirty artworks to the Mildura Arts Centre collection in 2014 and will be on hand to see her donation presented to the public.  Her autobiographer, Jan Harper OAM will also be in Mildura to open the exhibition. 

The Joyce McGrath Collection exhibition offers arts enthusiasts a rare opportunity to view works from the Australian Tonalist movement. The movement was established as a school of painting in Melbourne by painter and teacher Max Meldrum in 1917 and was prominent until the 1950s. 

The donation includes a selection of paintings by the artists A.D. (Archibald Douglas) Colquhoun, Shirley Bourne, Rex Bramleigh, Amalie Colquhoun, Alan Martin, Ray Hewitt, Ron Crawford, Dorothy Whitehead, Peter Glass, Judith Wills, Percy Leason, Harley Griffiths and Max Meldrum himself. 

Acting Arts and Culture portfolio Councillor Judi Harris said that Joyce McGrath was the first Arts Librarian at the State Library of Victoria and is a respected portrait painter who has had many exciting and interesting experiences throughout the course of her 90 years.  

“Joyce was born in 1925 and is the daughter of one of the first Soldier Settler families to take up land in Red Cliffs,” Cr Harris said. “As a young woman, she commenced her formal art education by studying drawing under Harold Freedman at RMIT and painting in the Bourke Street studios of Amalie and A.D. Colquhoun. 

“Joyce’s work centred mainly on portraiture and she has won many awards including the Alice Bale Art Award for Painting in 1990 and also the Rembrandt Melbourne Artists Supplies Award for a landscape in 2000. Her commissioned portraits hang in the Royal Children’s Hospital, Mannix College at Monash University and Melbourne Grammar School,” Cr Harris said.

“We are also very lucky to have Jan Harper OAM to open the exhibition.  Mrs Harper wrote the ‘twin’ biography of Joyce McGrath and Dr John Colquhoun.”

Dr Colquhoun was an orthopaedic surgeon and the lives of these two interesting and fascinating characters first crossed when the four-year-old Joyce, afflicted with tuberculosis of the hip, was a patient of Dr Colquhoun.

Their paths would cross later on in life when Joyce was commissioned to paint the much-respected late-career doctor.

In addition to her Order of Australia Medal, Joyce has been a Council member of the Victorian Artists Society since 1990 and exhibits with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and the International Society of Miniature Painters.

Her talents have also been recognised with an Honorary Life Member of the Victorian Artists Society. 

The exhibition opens this Thursday 14 May at 6pm and will be on show until Sunday 5 July.


ENDS


Media enquiries
Angela Umback
p) 03 5018 8689
e) angela.umback@mildura.vic.gov.au

 

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