Women of Influence
- When 4 Aug - 3 Sep 2005
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Where
IVAN DOUGHERTY GALLERY
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Address
SELWYN ST, PADDINGTON NSW 2021
From the 1930s through to the late 1960s, Rowe Street Sydney was one of the principal locales for viewing art and design. Running alongside the former Hotel Australia, Rowe Street attracted the fashionable and fascinated of Sydney, to explore the latest in art and design. Among the many fashion boutiques and coffee shops was a number of interior design galleries. Most notably were those run by Marion Hall Best, Margaret Jaye and Margo Lewers. These enterprising women introduced Sydneysiders to new ways of expressing themselves through the fabrics and furnishings of their habitats.
As well as importing the latest interior design ideas and products from Europe or the United States, Best, Jaye and Lewers championed the development of contemporary Sydney design by exhibiting the cream of post war Australian designer-artists. At 12 Rowe Street, Margaret Jaye gave the noted Australian designer, Gordon Andrews, one of his first exhibitions while also providing one of the first points-of-sale for fabric designers such as Frances Burke and Nance McKenzie. Marion Hall Best ran shops at 25 Rowe Street and 153 Queen Street, Woollahra. She promoted designers of the calibre of Grant Featherston, Clement Meadmore as well as Gordon Andrews, and showed the design work of artists such as Elaine Haxton. Margo Lewers’ Notanda Gallery at 17 Rowe Street featured the latest in her own and other’s ceramic designs as well as the new work of designers and artists such as Adrian Feint.
The exhibition, 'Women of Influence', is a small tribute to the foresight, courage and conviction of Best, Jaye and Lewers who with their professional interest in promoting the latest in art and design, provided rare opportunities for the cross-fertilisation between art and design that contributed to the development of both on the Sydney art and design scene in the middle 20th century.
Artists
Marion Hall Best
Margaret Jaye
Margo Lewers
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Curated Bryan Fitzgerald and Allan Walpole



Public Program
Exhibition talk
1-2pm Wednesday 10 August
With the curators Bryan Fitzgerald and Allan Walpole.
Tile Image: Marea Gazzard, Boulder (series) 1966, handcoiled earthenware, Gordon Andrews Wrapping papers for David Jones Ltd c.1949
Installation Images: Installation view, 'Women of Influence', Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, 2005.