Art Deco

Art Deco: The World Turns Modern is a fascinating, free exhibition on loan from the National Gallery of Australia, showing at Ipswich Art Gallery from September 7 to October 27.

Travelling from Canberra to Ipswich, Art Deco's only Queensland showing at IAG includes paintings, works on paper, sculptures, fashion, photographs, and decorative arts and design that capture the excitement and optimistic spirit of post-World War I Australia.

This unique exhibition explores a remarkable moment in time when Australian artists were rejecting wartime austerity and creating images of an abundant nation characterised by youth and vigour, glamour and jazz.

While many Australians may think of art deco as something that happened elsewhere - Manhattan skyscrapers and Parisian flappers - this fascinating exhibit reveals how Australian artists and designers were embracing the art deco style and applying it to Australian subjects.

Art Deco features Jean Broome-Norton’s ambitious sculpture Woman with horses (1934) and Rupert Bunny's lyrical paintings,  along with key examples of Australian design such as Marion Mahony Griffin’s Café Australia chair, one of only four known examples.

As art deco is an international style, the curators have also included a selection of European examples, including Sonia Delaunay’s printed fabric Signal, which she first created for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, held in Paris in 1925, from which the term Art Deco was derived.

Images:

Margaret Preston, Flapper 1925, oil painting, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1988

Hilda Rix Nicholas, Une Australienne 1926, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2014                                 

Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein, Tea set c.1928, glazed earthenware, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1988

Walter Dorwin Teague, No.1 A Gift Kodak camera c.1935, chomed metal, wood, glass, enamel, leather, cloth, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1988

Napier Waller, Christian Waller with Baldur, Undine and Siren at Fairy Hills 1932, oil and tempera on canvas mounted on hardboard, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1984.

And, for more great things to see and do in Ipswich, visit Discover Ipswich HERE.

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