One of Australia’s most highly regarded painters Margaret Olley (1923-2011) may no longer be with us but her spirit was omnipresent at Lismore Regional Gallery on March 18 when a $500,000 cheque from her foundation was handed to Lismore City Council, which runs the gallery.
The donation will be added to a Federal Government grant of $2.85m and Lismore City Council co-funding to develop the Lismore Quadrangle cultural centre on Keen and Magellan Streets. A feature of the project is a new art gallery.
Bearing the good tidings and the donation was renowned Brisbane gallery owner Phillip Bacon who represents some of Australia’s best known artists - alive and not - including Jeffrey Smart, Robert Dickerson and Olley herself (a show of her works opens there on 26 July).
On behalf of the Margaret Olley Trust he presented the cheque to Lismore Mayor Jenny Dowell who recalled feeling intimidated when meeting the Lismore-born artist when she visited the city towards the end of her life.
Like most places, the gallery was a smoke-free zone, but no one was going to tell the feisty artist, an inveterate smoker, that she had to butt out.
“Margaret’s dream was for this to happen, “ Mr Bacon said, adding it was “irrelevant what happens up the road.”
This was a reference to the faithful relocation of much of the interior of Olley’s Duxford Street, Paddington (Sydney) home and studio to the Tweed Regional Gallery, a superb facility funded significantly by the Anthony family. The project might have been sited in Lismore had funding been found quicker.
“She’d be very happy with this,” Mr Bacon went on, “it really is the closing of a circle.”
Framed by the lovely Margaret Olley paintings on the wall, some of the works she donated to the gallery in her birth place, he said, “This is the remarkable thing about artists, even when they’re gone, they remain with us.”
