Bessie Davidson & Sally Smart - Two artists and the Parisian avant-garde
20 MAR 20 - 26 JUl 20
This exhibition brings together more 50 works that highlight Davidson's 'modern French impressionist' style of painting - with light filled domestic interiors, landscapes and portraits of women. In addition, the gallery has invited Sally Smart to create a new body of work responding to and developing upon the cultural legacy of Davidson as a pioneering female South Australian artist - firmly placing the work of this ground-breaking artist back into the story of Australian art history.
Smart, who recently retraced Davidson's life in Paris, has worked with leading dancers Deanne Butterworth and Jo Lloyd to create a new cross-disciplinary video installation that represents Davidson's relationship with lifelong friend, and rumoured lover, Margaret Preston. This newly commissioned work "embodies the timeless psychological tensions for these women, grappling with the avant-garde in art and life, at a traumatic period in human history - with war, isolation, gender, and modernity," and will be shown alongside a survey of key works from Smart's Australian and international collections.
Excerpt from the Bendigo Art Gallery website
https://www.bendigoregion.com.au
