Artists make sense of the world through images. Writers do the same through words, sometimes in response to what they see, including art itself.
I recently attended a creative writing workshop at the Art Gallery of South Australia that invited us to explore this interplay. We responded to visual works through poetry, personal reflections, or letters to the artists — each piece an act of interpretation.
Still Life
Lights on dial
Sewing basket not on trial
Music plays
Green trails
Happy face perky, not pale.
Framing
She lounges across her comfy chair
Looking wistfully through the window
Soft filtered light barely makes it to the room
Outside the tiny entrance garden
A welcoming sight from inside
Pots of green, bursting with life.
Perspectives (from Dorrit Black)
Brown glows across the blue stern lines, scattered in the hidden shadows, with a tree shining bright.
Who is being seen?
The protective layer envelopes the jagged core while smart thoughts calm the frazzled mind. It makes life big but there is a way to go. There is patience and some cloudy love but also frustration that the world moves so slow. And yet, here we are almost through another year. What is the Dangerously bold next step? What does life hold? Where will she go?
Jill Jones, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide
AGSA Ehibition
Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890–1940
24 May – 7 Sep 2025
Fifty trailblazing artists. They belonged to an unprecedented wave of women journeying from Australia through Europe and beyond at the turn of the twentieth century, prevailing against centuries of social constraints to pursue international careers.
C. L. Allport, Jean Appleton, Cristina Asquith Baker, Eva Benson, Dorrit Black, Elise Blumann, Stella Bowen, Ethel Carrick, Evelyn Chapman, Mary Cockburn Mercer, Ola Cohn, Edith Collier, Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Crowley, Janet Cumbrae Stewart, Anne Dangar, Bessie Davidson, Bernice Edwell, Florence Fuller, Bessie Gibson, Agnes Goodsir, Nora Heysen, Frances Hodgkins, Justine Kong Sing, Eleonore Lange, Stella Lewis Marks, Daphne Mayo, Eileen Mayo, Dora Meeson, Josephine Müntz-Adams, Bess Norriss Tait, Kathleen O’Connor, Dora Ohlfsen, Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor, Iso Rae, Alison Rehfisch, Gladys Reynell, Eleanor Ritchie Harrison, Hilda Rix Nicholas, Florence Rodway, Maud Sherwood, Norah Simpson, Ethel Spowers, Helen Stewart, Eveline Syme, Violet Teague, Jessie Traill, Barbara Tribe, Marie Tuck.
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