Norma Redpath

{{Infobox artist

| name = Norma Redpath

| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|size=100%|country=AUS|OBE}}

| image = Photo of Norma Redpath in 1964.jpg

| caption = Redpath in 1964, photographed by Mark Strizic

| birth_name = Norma Redpath

| birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1928|11|20}}

| birth_place = Melbourne, Australia

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|2013|1|12|1928|11|20}}

| death_place =

| nationality = Australian

| field = Sculpture

| training = Swinburne Technical College and Universita per Stranieri in Perugia

| movement = Centre 5

| works = Treasury Fountain, Canberra

| patrons =

| awards = OBE

}}

Norma Redpath {{post-nominals|country=AUS|OBE}} (20 November 1928{{spaced ndash}}12 January 2013) was a prominent Australian sculptor, who worked in Italy and Melbourne.

Early life and education

Norma Redpath was born on 20 November 1928.{{cite news|last=Wasch|first=Kenneth|title=Australian sculptor who was enamoured with Italy|url=http://www.theage.com.au/national/obituaries/australian-sculptor-who-was-enamoured-with-italy-20130122-2d5ko.html|accessdate=24 February 2013|newspaper=The Age|date=23 January 2013}}

She studied painting from 1942 to 1948 (with a long break due to illness) at the Swinburne Technical College in Hawthorn, and from 1949 to 1951 sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, both in Melbourne. Her studies there were largely self-directed, as she found no contemporary sculpture of interest to her in Australia.File:Norma Redpath Untitled 1964.jpg

While still a student, she was invited to be a member of the Victorian Sculptors' Society (VSS) (which in late 1967 disbanded, and was reconstituted as the Association of Sculptors of Victoria (ASV){{cite web | title=History | website=Association of Sculptors of Victoria | url=https://sculptorsvictoria.asn.au/page/history | access-date=25 February 2021}}), where she exhibited, and was later vice-president.{{cn|date=February 2021}}

Career

File:Norma Redpath Treasury Building Fountain side view detail.jpg

File:Sculpture at the ANU School of Music April 2013.jpeg

File:Norma Redpath Sculpture.jpg

In 1952, she was teaching at the Korowa Anglican Girls' School and the Melbourne Technical College, and around this time also set up her first self-funded professional sculpture studio.

In 1953 she was a founding member of the "Group of Four" with Inge King, Julius Kane and Clifford Last.{{cn|date=February 2021}}

During the 1950s, she travelled to Europe, and studied in Italy from 1956 to 1958 at the Universita per Stranieri in Perugia, developing a love for Italy and Italian art.

In 1958 she returned to Australia to take up a teaching post at the Swinburne Technical College, and became a founding member of the renowned "Centre Five" group of sculptors in 1959, a group which expanded from the Group of Four to add (among others) Lenton Parr, Vincas Jomantas and Teisutis Zikaras, who broke with the VSS and organised private exhibitions. In 1960, she was one of the artists selected for the National Gallery of Victoria's Six Sculptors exhibition, which was the first exhibition of local modernist sculpture by the Gallery.

By 1961 she had decisively turned to bronze, with Dawn figure, a plaster cast envisaged for casting which was awarded the inaugural Mildara (later Mildura) Prize for Sculpture. The same year she won both the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship and the Althea Dyason Bequest travelling scholarship (awarded by the Art Gallery of New South Wales{{cite web | title=About the Norma Redpath Studio | website=Centre of Visual Art, University of Melbourne | date=27 February 2020 | url=https://sites.research.unimelb.edu.au/cova/projects/exchange-programs/norma-redpath-studio/about-the-norma-redpath-studio | access-date=25 February 2021}}).

In 1962 she pursued her studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, northern Italy, where she would later make a base as she travelled frequently back and forth between Italy and Australia. Sculptures cast there formed the basis of her Gallery A exhibition in Melbourne the following year. One of the sculptures was awarded her second Mildara Prize for Sculpture in 1964, and in 1966 she won the Transfield Prize for Sculpture.

In 1968 she returned to Melbourne, establishing her second studio, in the inner-city suburb of Parkville, where she worked on a number of major commissions.

In 1974, while again in Italy, Redpath married Antonio de Altamer, an Italian naval architect. The worked together to refine the technical procedures of the Fonderia Artistica Battaglia and other foundries in the next decade. From the late 1970s she ceased studio work, instead describing her sculptural ideas in a manuscript, Ideas and Images.

From 1974 to 1985 she lived and worked alternately in her Milanese studio and Melbourne, and from 1985 she returned to Australia with her husband and set up her third Australian sculpture studio, this time in Carlton. Her last show was at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, in 2000.

Recognition

In 1970 Redpath was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to contemporary sculpture.{{Cite web|url=https://honours.pmc.gov.au/honours/awards/1108934|title=Its an Honour|last=|first=|date=|website=AUSTRALIAN HONOURS SEARCH FACILITY|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=}}{{cite web|last=Mendelssohn and Kirby|first=Joanna and Sandy|title=Bibliography|url=http://www.daao.org.au/bio/obe-norma-redpath/biography/?|publisher=Design and Art Online Australia|accessdate=24 February 2013}}

In 2006 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from her old college, now Swinburne University.

Later life and legacy

Redpath's husband died in 2000, the same year as her last show.

After a long illness, she died in Melbourne in 2013, aged 84.

Her Carlton studio and home is owned by the University of Melbourne, and is now available to artists and academics. It is managed by the Centre of Visual Art, and is able to be visited. Residencies of varying lengths of time are offered to artists, writers and researchers to develop new work as well as engage with the local workers in related fields.

Selected works

Areopagitica (1958), Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne
Bronze Reliefs (1964), BP Administration Building, Crib Point, Victoria – relocated to BP building South Melbourne, relocated again to the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park in 1997. (image and details)
Treasury Fountain (1965–1969), Treasury Building, Canberra (ACT) – a two-piece bronze fountain in a rectangular granite pond.
Victoria Coats of Arms (1968), above entrance, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne– a bronze relief
Sculpture Column (1969–1972), Reserve Bank of Australia, Brisbane
Facade Relief (1970–1972), Victorian College of Pharmacy, Parkville, Melbourne
Sydney Rubbo Memorial Capital (1970–1973), Microbiology and Immunology Building Courtyard, University of Melbourne
Higuchi Sculpture (1971–1972), Manning Building at the Monash University in Melbourne – unveiled by Dr. Takeru Higuchi [https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/176328/alchemy21.pdf details in pdf document page 6]
Extended Column (1972–1975), Canberra School of Music, Canberra
Paesaggio Cariatide (Carrying the Landscape) (1980–1985), undercroft of State Bank Centre, Bourke Street, in Melbourne – since 2003 at the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park in Langwarrin, Victoria{{Cite web|url=https://charlesnodrumgallery.com.au/exhibitions/norma-redpath-works-from-the-studio-1970s-and-1980s/|title=Norma Redpath: Works from the Studio, 1970s & 1980s|website=Charles Nodrum Gallery|language=en|access-date=19 March 2020}}

References

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100207062123/http://www.charlesnodrumgallery.com.au/StockroomRedpath.htm Website Charles Nodrum Gallery: Biography and some works]
[https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-192209826/listen Norma Redpath interviewed by Hazel de Berg in the Hazel de Berg collection] – audio recording

Category:1928 births

Category:2013 deaths

Category:20th-century Australian sculptors

Category:20th-century Australian women artists

Category:21st-century Australian women artists

Category:21st-century Australian artists

Category:Artists from Melbourne

Category:Australian Officers of the Order of the British Empire

Category:Australian painters

Category:Swinburne University of Technology alumni

Category:RMIT University alumni

Category:Università per Stranieri di Perugia alumni