Joy HesterRemember Me

This major survey exhibition celebrates the powerful work of Joy Hester, a unique figure in twentieth-century Australian art.

Joy Hester produced some of the most distinctive and intriguing imagery to emerge in Australia during the 1940s and 1950s. Working almost exclusively with brush and ink, she focused on potent expressions of the human figure, using drawing as a vehicle to grasp life in all its complexity.

The exhibition traces the progression of Hester’s artistic interests, from her formative works responding to the oppressive climate of World War II to compelling psychological portraits and later intimate images of faces and lovers made not long before her untimely death in 1960. Hester was unafraid to explore subjects considered highly provocative during her lifetime: love, sex, birth, and death—themes that are threaded throughout the exhibition. Joy Hester: Remember Me brings together significant works from public and private collections including many drawings that have never before been on public display, offering new insight into the working methods and creative processes that Hester developed from the very start of her career.